Nekomaru: Thanks. I really like your cheerleader comparison, because that's basically what she is except without all the cheering and the preppiness. I didn't understand what you meant by all my characters are equal. I know this is supernatural I just wonder about some of the other books that go along with this series. I'm guessing the three-headed lion is for that one story with everything in it. I'll use that idea for that storytoo, but because it really fit this one plot problem I was having with Of Real Magicmuch better than it fit the plot of the other oneI'm going to give your lion thingy a slightly bigger part in the ORMbook, if that's okay with you.

Chapter 4

She had been lucky. After having wandered the middle class suburban alleyways of the neighborhood adjacent to the hospital in thought for hours, she became lucid enough to notice a garage with the car parked just outside of it hugging the walls.

It was one of those signals that people give when they aren’t at home. She made her way to the front, as quietly and inconspicuously as she could to make sure she didn’t draw attention from any insomniac neighbor who might be looking outside at the time. There weren’t any cars parked right in front of the house and a sign on a lamppost clearly stated the time and day of the week that cars weren’t supposed to park on the side of the street. Which explained the car parked outside of the garage. She made her way up to the front door to look down through the mail slot. There was a bit of mail sitting in basket not too much, but certainly more than a days worth.

Marisol sighed heavily and went through the motions that she had perfected over a couple short years. Going through a side yard to make her way to a back door, pulling out two hairpins out of her hair, along with a loose fall of wavy white hairs that went hanging in her eyes. Then, bending back one of the prongs on one of the pins, she manipulated the two in the key lock, feeling blindly into the dark space with the metal until she heard a click. She turned the heavy doorknob and slid the door open making her way inside. Cautiously dropping her bag on the linoleum floor, she closed the door back behind her self. Inside it was dark and noiseless, but Mari wasn’t stupid enough to turn on any light other than the little one on her key chain that she kept pointed cautiously towards the ground.

Houses were always much more homier than the hostel’s and the homeless shelters, but Marisol could hardly be sure what a home was anymore it had been so long since she had had one. The room she was in was the kitchen and Mari quickly made her way to the fridge and opened it despite the luminous light it produced. Lucky yet again, there was week old lasagna still in the refrigerator. She knew no one would miss it. The people who lived there were probably just wishing it would go away in the first place.

Balancing the casserole dish of lasagna on one arm she walked through each room in the house, stuffing her mouth on the way. With the discernment of a practiced general she quickly surveyed the house for the room she could sleep in where the neighbors would be least likely notice her from and that she would most easily be able to exit the house just in case the residents came home unexpected. The laundry room was the best choice this time, which discouraged her from sleeping. Marisol was still a little concerned that she had made enough of a connection with the spirit to still receive it in her sleep.

Taking a shower in their beautifully white tiled bathroom Marisol didn’t think twice about taking liberal amounts of shampoo, conditioner, body scrub, and wearing a hole through the bar of soap as well as the houses water bill. She wondered exactly what the old hag had meant by ‘driver’s test’. It couldn’t be too dangerous or the spirit wouldn’t have challenged her like that. Either that or they had all finally had enough of Mari’s actions and just wanted to get rid of her.

“That can’t be it,” Marisol mumbled tiredly as she put her hands over her eyes and felt the hot water hit her back and the steam rise up off of her body. She turned into the jet stream and looked thoughtfully at the brassy hot and cold handles coming out of the wall.

She sighed heavily and put her hand at the ready over the cold knob and closed her eyes. Marisol was only checking she just wanted to know for sure whether or not she was even still connected. Normally she would have a small connection, something she could go back on when she was at a loss for ideas, but she wasn’t sure this time. There had never been a spirit attached to a memory. She slowly let her mind slow to a near stop, silencing the information of the bathroom around her and the noise of her thoughts. Only keeping her hand hovering above the knob present in her thoughts so that if she got sucked back into the memory again she would be able to free herself of it before she had sunk into it to deep. Feeling around in the darkness at the back of her mind for the girl’s spirit, she held her breath.

There was nothing.

She exhaled and turned off the shower all together and put on the fresh clothes she had taken the liberty of washing and drying in the house’s washer and dryer.

Settling herself into the master bed, trying hard not to fall asleep Marisol thought hard about the choices at hand. Help the girl but be even though she didn’t and couldn’t really know what was going on. Or she could just leave go to some other town; find some other more typical spirit. Typical. The word burned in her head. It eased her and scared her at the same time. She could do it until the day she died, the typical. It might have seemed like an okay deal to Marisol before this day but after finally experiencing something she had never experienced before in her life and in the limits of her abilities, she could only wonder what the limits of her abilities were. She knew that the spirits kept things from her. She had always sensed that there was something more than the world of the lost dead and now she felt it deeply in her conscience where it had only been a mild fascination before.

Maybe the hag had been right. That trying to understand things was what Marisol had really misunderstood all along.