He snorted. "I never dated ya, only slept with ya. Supposedly."

"What the hell do you mean supposedly? You can't remember? Not even that whole bathroom thing?"

He risked a backwards glance at her. "What? What bathroom thing?"

"Nothing. If you can't remember, I ain't tellin' you."

"You're making that up," he accused. But she continued to give him a haughty glare, and he got a sick feeling she was being truthful. What had they done ... no, he didn't want to know. He was drugged to the gills anyways; she probably was too.

"There it is," she said, pointing off to the right. "Lot number seventeen, off to the right."

It was a sad little single wide, a dried piss sort of yellow gold with brown trim, and a yard that wasn't so much a lawn as a midget mud wrestling pit. Beneath the sagging car port with peeling tar paper on its roof was a pea green Prizm that had probably seen a better half decade.

"And you dated this mook how long after seeing where he lived?" He wondered, as he parked the bike at the end of the gravel driveway.

"Three days."

"Why that long?"

"I'm not as shallow as you are," she claimed, then added, "I didn't have wheels then."

"You do now?"

"At the moment? No. Goddamn insurance doesn't believe the car accident wasn't my fault."

He got off the bike after she did. "Why not?"

" 'Cause the fucking truck was parked when it hit me." She shook her head disgustedly and led the way up the driveway, trying to take the least muddy path to the door. She didn't look back to see him staring at her. Oh, she had to be kidding - fucking Belial.

She knocked on the flimsy, mud spattered white door before he reached the small steps that made the entirety of his front porch. "Keenan, it's me," she shouted, adopting a sweet, wheedling voice. "Can you let me in?"

After a rather long moment, a shrill male voice shouted: "Go away! Leave me the fuck alone!"

Clia scowled at the door. "Cocksucker," she muttered under her breath, then, adopting that sweet voice again,said: "Honey, don't be that way! I'm sorry I left last night! Let me make it up to you!"

"Go away! I can't help you!"

That seemed an odd response. But Logan then realized there was an odd smell too. "He's scared shitless," Logan told her. "He's just about pissin' his pants."

She scowled at him. "How do you know?"

"I can smell it."

She raised her eyebrows at him, the look on her face suggesting he just told her how fun it was to eat paste. "You can smell fear? Through the door?"

"You can't? You're a demon - I thought you all did."

"Not through a door! Fuck, is that another one of your super powers? Super smelling?"

He sighed, and rather than leave or nudge her into the mud pit, he punched the door lightly. There was a crack of thin wood inside, and the flimsy door seemed to shudder open, a part of a decorative wood strip that lined the jamb falling to the mustard yellow carpet.

"And another super power is breaking and entering. Cool." She said, going inside.

Logan wondered why he was doing this, but followed her anyways.

The interior of the trailer seemed to be classic bachelor - second hand furniture in various states of disrepair, with unwashed clothes on the couch and floor, and a towering stack of take out pizza boxes that made the whole place smell like day old pepperoni on top of faint body odor. Clia instinctively headed back towards the bedroom, and once again he followed her lead. There really was no need; he could have just followed the fear stink.

She tried the door knob, but the bedroom door was locked too. No real surprise. "Keenan, honey, come on, open the door. I just wanna talk."

"Leave me alone," he shouted, a catch in his voice indicating he was crying. "I can't help you! It wasn't my fault!" Now he was outright sobbing. "I only wanted something better than this, you know? I'm sorry you got hurt, I'm sorry!"

"Got hurt?" She replied curiously. "What are you talking about? You never hurt - "

"Just leave me alone," he moaned piteously. "I can't bring you back."

Clia gave him a frustrated look. "I have no fucking idea what he's talking about."

"I'm not sure he's talking to you," he admitted, then gestured towards the door. Although she still looked confused, she stepped aside, and he gave the door a love tap just to the right of the knob. Just like the front door, there was a minor crack of wood, and the door swung open of its own accord.

They saw a small messy bedroom - there were even more clothes on the floor here - curtains pulled against the scant daylight, the smell of unwashed clothes and semen strong enough to be nauseating. Keenan was curled up in a ball in the far corner of the room, behind an armchair with a broken back, like a frightened child trying to hide from the boogeyman. It didn't look like he was wearing clothes, but it was possible he was wearing underwear - the way his knees were pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them, it was impossible to tell. Logan didn't smell blood, but he was sobbing so miserably you'd think he had been hurt.

"Keen honey?" Clia asked solicitously. "What's wrong?"

Only when she crouched down in front of him and touched his messy brown hair did he react. He snapped his head back so hard it hit the wall,and his brown eyes, red and swollen from tears, looked right over Clia's shoulder. "Just leave me alone. I can't help you!"

Logan followed his gaze, but only saw an empty hallway. Clia glanced back over her shoulder and saw the same damn thing. She looked at him, and suggested, "Think he's lost his mind?"

Logan shrugged, looking around the messy room for signs of cult activity or drug use, when he heard Clia say: "Some people can't deal with pain as well as you can."

He looked back at her sharply. "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"

Clia, who had turned her attention back to the cowering Keenan, scowled at him. "You know - gone crazy? Muy loco? One taco short of a combo plate?"

"Yeah, I got that bit. The other bit."

"What other bit?"

"She didn't say it, love. I did." A woman said, and then he finally realized it wasn't Clia's voice at all.

Head snapping around violently, he looked at the open doorway, and saw Mariko standing there, gazing back at him impassively.

10

It was while Xavier was using Cerebro to locate Logan that Jean cornered him in the kitchen.

He needed a drink, and could have zapped in a Castlemaine, but he didn't want to be a worse influence on the kids than he already was - most of them were not indestructible. So he grabbed a cherry Pepsi and told himself he's be happy with the sugar and the caffeine, both of which could stun a lemur. That was the one good thing about it.

"Bob," Jean asked, coming into the kitchen just as he had his head buried in their industrial sized refrigerator. "Why is it imperative to bring Logan in?"

He pulled out of the fridge with his diabetes in a can and nudged the door shut with his foot. "You don't want him here?" Bob asked, feigning naivete while he opened the can.

She scowled at him, staying by the closed kitchen door. It was partially out of the pain she felt when she got close; it was partially because she didn't know if she dared to trust him. "Don't, Bob. As far as I'm concerned, you're another telepath, so cut the shit."

He raised his eyebrows at her, hiding his smile behind the can. "Bein' around Logan is really rubbin' off on you, isn't it?" Her glare was extremely unkind, and her thoughts even more so. "Nah, I'm just takin' the piss. I'm glad you're finally openin' up about usin' your powers, but don't get carried away."

"Why does he need to be here?" Jean repeated, crossing her arms over her chest. "I thought you made it abundantly clear we couldn't fight Fenrir."

"You can't. I guess Logan never told you what went on in Sydney, huh?"

"He said he helped you with a personal problem, but that's all he said."

"Well, that was true. And no, I ain't elaborating. If he chose not to, I respect his call on that."

He knew she thought he influenced his unwillingness to speak. But one of the great things about Logan was his inclination to be taciturn. "Why do you want him here if he can't help?"

"Ah, but darlin', he can. Remember what happened on Dis when we switched bodies?"

She frowned, brow furrowing, arms drawing tighter as if to protect herself from his influence. "He used your powers to shut the gateway. What does that have to do with anything?"

"It taught me we're a powerful team, a lot more than the sum of our parts. He helped me shut down one god - " Okay, three, but who was counting? " - and I'm pretty sure we can work that magic again."

He must gave said it the wrong way, because she was instantly suspicious and hostile. "You're going to
deliberately switch bodies with him and use him to attack Fenrir?"

"Oh, hell no. I'd never use him like that, although, knowin' him, he'd volunteer. No, I'm gonna have to come up with something more clever than that."

"Like what?"

He shrugged helplessly. "Hopin' to brainstorm with the big guy there. Fightin' is his forte." He couldn't help but chuckle at her incredibly hostile look, and told her, "Jean, seriously, don't try and protect Logan. If he was here, he'd be laughin' his ass off. He was looking after himself long before you people came along - he can deal, better than most of you. Believe it or not."

"Even with you?"

He smirked at her thoughts, not her question. "I don't push my friends." Well, not unless it helped them. "And yes, I consider him a friend."

She leaned against the doorjamb, clearly doubtful, and then asked the question that was really bugging her: "Who are you Bob? Okay, so maybe you're not Loki, but you are somewhere in those  books, aren't you?"

He chuckled, but it was somewhat forced. "I'm not a god."

"Then how can you fight Fenrir?"

"It's a demon thing."

She scoffed, but before she could accuse him of being full of shit, her posture stiffened, and her eyes stared at nothing somewhere near the cutting board island in the center of the kitchen. Chuck was making telepathic contact with her.

It was rude to eavesdrop, but he did anyways. *Jean, find Bob and come down here immediately*

( Bob could hear the tension in his thought. Shit, what had Logan gotten himself in now? He hadn't hung on to that Ganesha fetish he'd given him, had he? )

*What's wrong?* She sent in reply. She had picked up the tension too.

*I'll tell you when you come down*

Something bad then. Something really bad.

He admitted he picked that up, and offered to zap them down there, but she had no interest in that. So they took the long way - walking to the elevator and waiting for it to make its downward journey. Why was she so suspicious of his motives? Maybe because she couldn't read him, not without killing herself. And, admittedly, these niggly little facts he never bothered to mention before kept popping up, and he and Logan seemed to have some "secrets" between them they didn't bother to share ...

... jealousy? Oh, come on! It wasn't like Logan consciously chose him over the wonder squad here - he really didn't have much of a choice.

"I stopped the thought before its drip became insisting," he sang idly, leaning back against the lift wall. Although it had been fixed, he was pretty sure he saw a bullet hole in the far corner near the floor. "I rubbed it out and loved the spot where it went missing."

Jean gave him an odd look, wondering why (A) he always sang, and (B) if he was making up these bizarre lines. Soul Coughing was not bizarre! Not like Mr. Bungle.

"She's widely known the only maquereau that pays her taxes,I got to box her for the money. Said it might end reeling and stumbling ... " He left his can of pop behind, as he could get something better to drink later.

Scott was waiting with Xavier at the end of the metal lined underground corridor ( no, you couldn't guess Magneto helped him put this together ), and Chuck looked more grim than Scott, a rarity that was always troubling. Scott, for his part, guessed it was bad news but wasn't sure how to feel about it, so he stood there stone faced, arms crossed over his chest, waiting to see where the chips fell. Out of respect for the general air of doom, Bob stopped singing.

Bob let Jean join Scott and hung back, near the second elevator, and when Storm appeared around the second corridor junction, they were theoretically all here. "What's the problem, Chuck?" Bob asked, leaning against the wall.

It was impossible for Chuck's lips to get any thinner; they seemed to be verging on non - existence as it was. "I couldn't find him. He's not out there."

"Logan?" Storm said, and sounded genuinely startled. After the little escapade with Scott in Japan, Storm had figured Logan was so close to indestructible that any argument to the contrary was just semantics. Not a lot of people shrugged off shots to the face like kicks to the shin. "How is that possible?"

"Could he be sleeping?" Jean asked, tamping down flutters of panic.

"He doesn't sleep," Scott pointed out. It sounded catty, but Bob knew what he was getting at - sleep usually didn't involve that much screaming, not if you were doing it right.

Xavier shook his head, glancing down at the floor in what could have been shame. "It's possible he's simply unconscious."

"Or dead," Jean whispered, bringing a hand to her mouth. She was trying her best to conceal how upsetting that thought was to her.

"Who in the hell could kill Logan?" Scott asked, peeved at how upset Jean was pretending she wasn't ( yes, he figured it out ). But then something occurred to him that made him feel less hostile towards Logan. "Fenrir."

They all stared at Bob, and Bob found himself mentally reeling. Holy shit. "I'm pretty sure Logan's out of the country."

"Does that matter to him? It? Whatever?" Scott asked. "If it knew enough about you to come after us, couldn't it have known about your connection to Logan?"

"And taken him out of the equation," Xavier said, with a certain grim finality. It did make a certain kind of sense.

Bob felt his stomach clench, and wondered if Fenrir was that clever. He was certainly smart enough to focus on Xavier's group, killing in an ever shrinking circle around them ... but that was shark like behavior that didn't necessarily need much forethought. Taking out Logan was just too damn smart for Fenrir, whose idea of strategy was a scorched earth policy. He shook his head, certain now that that hadn't happened. "I'd know if he were dead."

"Fenrir couldn't interfere with that?" Scott asked.

Oh, damn him and his contrariness! "He could if he knew about it, but I can't see him knowin' about it."

"Why not? He's a god, isn't he?"

"But to know that much about me, he'd have to have revealed himself to me, and he didn't risk that until he was ready."

"Could that Organization have him?" Storm interjected.

Bob shook his head, a little more certain about this. " I'd think they're still regrouping, especially after losing Camp Lejune and Control."

"Control?" Jean repeated, glad to get her mind off a dying Logan for a moment. "The guy? I didn't think he was there."

"At the base? No. But to find the info he found on me ... he had to deal with beings that don't like Humans knowin' anything about them. I'm sure they'd have killed him by now."

"What kind of beings?" Storm asked. She had joined Jean and Scott in making a sort of human shield around Xavier.

"Can't tell ya, can I? Not unless you want to end up like Control." Bob sighed, not wanting to admit his own disappointment.  "I assume Logan is fine, and will until we find a body."

"Or an adamantium skeleton," Scott muttered. Jean, who was fighting back tears, gave him a look of pure murder.

"He's just out of play for now," he continued, ignoring Scott's aside. "I'll have to go to plan B."

"What's plan B?" Chuck asked, risking a gaze up at him. He had to squint from the pain of it.

Bob shrugged and started walking back towards the lift, figuring it would be polite to teleport out of their presence. "I'll let you know as soon I think one up," he admitted.

Why did things always have to be this difficult?

***

She wasn't here. She simply couldn't be here.

Logan closed his eyes, willed her away, opened them again.  Mariko was still standing in the doorway, looking at him as if she was waiting for him to say something. She wore a turquoise silk blouse with an open collar, revealing a delicate black pearl pendant around her neck; a slim black skirt that demurely fell to her knees, and sensible black flats that were still flattering to her slim, athletic legs.

Her lovely almond shaped eyes - so brown they were black - locked onto his, delicate pale lips pulling back in a sort of uncertain grimace. "I don't know why I'm here either."

Did psychotic breaks just happen like that? So quickly and bloodlessly you could sleep right through them? "Does that drink, "Seein' God" or whatever, have side effects?"

"Besides a motherfucker of a hangover?" Clia replied. "Nothing. Why?"

"No reason."

Clia was holding Keenan's face in her hands, which was a continuing struggle, but he had his eyes screwed tightly shut and was continuing to make pathetic whimpering sounds. "Keen, it's me. What's going on? What's happened?"

"Leave me alone," he moaned, not even opening his eyes.

"He's seein' things," he guessed, continuing his search for an address book in Keenan's dresser drawer. All he found so far was wrinkled clothes that still needed washing, and a couple of girlie mags. There was one he'd never in his life seen before on any newsstand anywhere: it said, in big yellow, Gothic style letters "Demoness", and seemed to have a scantily clad blue woman with horns, a tail, and three breasts on the cover, sprawled languidly on a stone alter. Clia wasn't kidding - he was a demon fucker.

"What things?" She asked peevishly.

"Dead people," Mariko said. Logan looked back at Clia, but she hadn't heard her, confirming the delusion was his alone. He wondered who Keenan was seeing.

With a grimace at the cliche of it all, he told Clia, "Dead people."

She snorted humorously. "Yeah right. What dead people?"

He looked to Mariko in the doorway, and she shrugged. "The people he sacrificed last night?" He guessed.

"I'm sorry," Keenan moaned, and seemed to be a confirmation of what he just said.

"How'd you know that?" Clia asked, sounding stunned.

Logan shut the bottom drawer a little harder than he needed to. Didn't the guy ever wash his socks? "Would you believe my late wife told me?" Before she could comment on that, he moved on to a more relevant topic. "Does Keenan have a little black box? An address book? Anything? Are you sure you don't remember the names of the cult guys?"

"No. Was that a joke? Whadda ya mean your late wife told you? Who the hell would marry you?"

"Can I hit her?" Mariko asked.

Even though he knew she was just a figment of his tortured imagination, he couldn't help but smile at her. "You could try."

"Huh?" Clia replied. "Try what? Marryin' you?" Her harsh laughter followed him down the narrow hall to the messy front room. Mariko had disappeared from the doorway when he approached, and he thought, with equal pangs of relief and regret, that she had gone. But he found her perched on the edge of the camel colored couch, hands folded together and resting on her knees in what he judged to be a nervous posture. "Why the fuck would I marry you? I ain't a sadist!"

"Why in the hell are you with her?" Mariko asked. "You could do a lot better."

He shrugged, and went back to his search, as looking at her was painful. "I was drunk. Or drugged. One of those two."

"I mean, even an inflatable love doll would be an improvement."

He couldn't help it; that surprised a laugh out of him, and he looked at Mariko in amazement. She grinned back at him slyly, her eyes sparkling in a saucy sort of amusement. "Riko, how do you even know about such things?"

"Oh, when you're the worldly sort that I am, you learn all sorts of sordid things," she replied, almost unable to keep a straight face.

"What's so funny?" Clia shouted.

Logan went back to searching, starting at a side table beside the abbreviated kitchenette; the phone was on it, so it was a good bet that if he had any kind of names or addresses, they'd be around here somewhere. But he felt a curious shortness of breath, a constriction in his chest that he knew Mariko alone was responsible for. He wished she wasn't here, or, if she had to be, she was here in the flesh, alive and breathing.

"Why are you here?" He asked her, shuffling through papers. Most of it was unopened junk mail.

She must have shrugged, because there was a long pause before she said, "I don't know."

"Is it a spell? A gas leak? Am I still drugged?"

"Do you stay drugged long?"

"No." Clia was now cursing at Keenan, but he was no more lucid than he had been before. Frustrated by the lack of anything useful, he swept all of the junk mail onto the floor, almost knocking the phone off.

The phone.

It was an older model, probably bought used like the furniture, but the base had about a half dozen little plastic plates on it - names beside programmed speed dial buttons. Of course instead of sensible things there were guy things - no police, no fire department, but the local pizza joint, Clia, and some guy ( he assumed it was a guy ) named "Boner" ( or maybe it was a phone sex line ).  Too bad there was no nameplate reading "Cult".

But there were a couple of guy's names - Brent and Kevin ( the sixth button read "Home", with a little cartoon smiley with x's for eyes next to it ). Could one of them be involved in the cult?

He picked up the handset, and only then remembered none of the phones were working.

Except he heard a dial tone.

"What the fuck ..?"

"Maybe being in a death cult has special privileges," Mariko said.

Now he knew there had to be something demonic behind it: it was picking and choosing people for its largesse.

( And victims? )

He completely forgot about the speed dial shit and tried to call Bob's number. When it didn't go through, he depressed the receiver and tried the mansion - if he could get through to Xavier, he could contact Bob for him. But he couldn't get through to that either.

"Is there an outside line for a reality bubble?" He muttered in disgust, and depressed the receiver violently. The phone worked all right, but probably only inside the bubble.

"Do you ever wonder why they seem to underestimate your intelligence?" Mariko asked.

He looked over at her, slightly startled. "Huh? Who?"

It was almost painful to look at her. She wasn't drop dead gorgeous but she was lovely; she had a face that was, as the saying went, easy on the eyes. Instantly endearing, with a warmth that couldn't be faked or slapped on with make up. Her long, sleek ebony hair was mostly pulled away from her face, held by a silver clip that had multicolors stones inset in an oval frame, so it resembled the eye of a peacock feather, and he wondered where all this detail was coming from. Him? His own mind? Could he remember things without being consciously aware of it, ever?

( Was the demon targeting him? )

"Everyone," she said, meeting his gaze fearlessly. "Many people seem to treat you like you're an idiot, but you never have been. Maybe you slum, but you're not stupid."

This change of topic almost threw him off his game. He shook his head, and pressed the speed dial button for the first man's name ( Brent - he'd only try "Boner" if there was no one left to try ). "I have my moments."

"We all do. But the phone - I'm not sure I'd ever think of that."

"Yes you would. You were smarter than me." That was out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. Was she? Well, probably, but when you got down to it, that wasn't much of a feat.

"There you go again," she sighed, confirming she existed only in his mind. He hadn't said it aloud, had he?

The phone on Brent's end had rung about a dozen times now, and obviously he had no answering machine. Logan let it go a few more times, then hung up. It didn't seem so smart now.

"You were a natural bodyguard, a natural investigator," the ghost of Mariko went on. "You thought of angles that eluded most people."

He shrugged, not knowing what to say, not sure if that was true or not. "My senses are different. It gives me a different perspective on the world." He was relatively sure that was true, and, if not, at least it sounded good. He pressed the button beside Kevin's name.

"They'd drive me crazy," she commented, unclenching her hands and resting them on her knees. "Well, the hearing might, especially in the city, and the smells. God, I didn't know how you took the smell. I had to stop wearing perfume so you could get near me."

"You learn to filter." He then paused and looked at her, receiver resting between his ear and shoulder. "You did?" He would swear he could recall a faint perfumey scent with her name.

She nodded. "I would wear a single drop, usually combed into my hair or in some inexplicable place, like on my knee. That way I could still have it, and yet not make you reel back like you'd been punched. And you always knew when I was wearing it too, even just the drop."

"Huh." He wondered if that was true. Well, god knew most women who wore heavy perfume would have done him a favor if they just hauled off and shot him instead. Would have been less painful.

It was on the fifth ring that someone picked up Kevin's phone.

"Yeah?" The young man replied, sounding annoyed.

"Kevin?" Logan asked.

There was a suspicious pause before the guy answered, "Yeah. Who's this?"

Now here was where everything could fall apart. He was pretty sure - if his shouting was any indication - that Keenan had a slightly higher pitched voice than his, and a pretty thick Toronto accent, so he couldn't really bluff as him. But maybe, if this guy was in on the cult, he could bluff as someone else in it - a friend of a friend. "You don't know?" Logan replied, feigning aggravation ( not at all difficult ). "Look, there is some weird shit happening, and I wanna know why you didn't warn us about this."

There was a pause, and then Kevin snorted derisively. "I did warn you - wall of unreality, remember ?"

"I don't recall there bein' any mention of dead people followin' you around, 'cause that's what I've got happenin' now."

"Do you talk to yourself a lot, or are you having some kind of episode?" Clia asked, joining him in the living room. Obviously she'd given up on Keenan.

He gestured violently for her to be quiet as Kevin sighed heavily, and said, "Look - unreality. It means a lot of unreal shit can happen, all right?"

Clia mouthed the words "Who is it?' as, behind her, Mariko - who was a good four inches shorter than her - mimed punching her in the back of the head. Logan tried to twist his smile into a grimace and looked away, as Kevin clicked his tongue impatiently on the other end of the line. "You knew what you were getting into, okay? So just deal."

The urge to laugh gone, he looked back at Clia and shrugged, at the same time he mouthed the name "Kevin". "No, I don't think I did," Logan replied, as Clia's brows sunk downward, and she replied quietly, "Kevin?" She knew him? "I thought there was gonna be a payoff here. I ain't feelin' it."

"How can you feel immortality?"

Was that the "payoff" to the cult? Talk about a booby prize. "Wouldn't I feel different? And would I have these fucking dead people on my case?"

Clia came over and gestured that she wanted to talk to him. Mariko was standing back by the couch, arms cross over her chest, a look on her face suggesting she really didn't like Clia at all. He didn't suppose he could blame her.

"Oh, suck it up, asshole," Kevin snapped. "It'll be over soon."

"How do you know?"

He handed the receiver over to Clia as he heard Kevin reply, " 'Cause I'm the leader, fuckface, and you do what I say." Jackpot. Too bad all they had was the name Kevin.

"You're the fucking leader of this thing?" Clia exclaimed in disbelief.

He didn't need to be near the phone to hear Kevin's side of the conversation. The good part about his range of hearing. He wandered over towards Mariko, wondering why he was doing so, as Kevin said, "Cliandra? Shit - who the fuck's with you? That didn't sound like Keenan."

"What the fuck does it matter?" She shot back. "Keenan's a gibbering wreck. Did you do this to him?"

"What the fuck do you care? You left. Think I didn't notice?"

"You were the dickhead in the High Priest costume? Have things gotten that bad for you?"

"Fuck you, bitch! I own this town!"

He found himself staring at Mariko's familiar and yet somehow new profile. She wasn't here, of course, she existed only in his mind, but he would swear he could smell her. She glanced at him with a sweet smile, and as much as it hurt him just to see her, he wished they could leave. Just go, get out of here, leave this stupid demon shit for Clia and her wacky family to handle. "We could," Mariko said. "Of course, I think we'd have to stay in town."

"The bad part," he muttered to her, hoping Clia didn't hear.

"Oh please," Clia snapped, paying him no attention at all. "I'm a demon, limp dick - think I'm afraid of your big bad poser? Pul - lease, Human!"

"Think that's why she's not seeing any dead?" He wondered. " 'Cause she's a demon?"

Mariko shrugged a single small shoulder. He suddenly knew they were creamy pale under the long sleeves of her silk shirt, and that one - the right? - had a dimple. He could imagine kissing it, and the two dimples on her back. ( Yes, she had them on her back - right beside each other, one slightly higher than the other, near the center of her spine. Why was he remembering such small and inconsequential details now? )  "Either that, or she doesn't feel guilty about anything."

That brought him crashing back to reality. "Guilty? What - " But he couldn't even say it, because it made perfect sense. Was Mariko not the biggest failure of his failure ridden life? The one person that probably meant the most to him, and he couldn't protect her; he couldn't use his freakish abilities to save her.

He looked down at the dirty carpet, swallowing hard, feeling rage and embarrassment make his face flush. He was such a moron sometimes, wasn't he? That's what had driven Keenan over the edge: he felt guilty about all the demons they sacrificed last night ( "I can't help you! I'm sorry!" ), and now he couldn't even think past his own shame.

"I'll make you eat those words, demon cunt!" Kevin snapped.

"Oh yeah?" She snarled, and then her voice became a savage, mocking purr. "A little boy like you wouldn't even know what to do with me. Sic your big bad doggies on me, castrati - I'll try and remember to be scared."

Logan felt something like a warm breeze against his cheek, and only when it held steady did he realize it was Mariko, her hand cupped against the side of his face. "I don't want you to only associate me with pain," she said, her voice a whisper. Only then did he realize she was speaking Japanese, and he had probably been responding to her in the same language; no wonder Clia had made no comment on what he was saying - she probably didn't speak the language.

Clia slammed the phone down violently, nearly breaking the rickety side table. "That stupid jackoff," she raged. "We should so kick his scrawny little ass!"