“Hey Kim. You know we love having you over, but is tonight really the best night? I was going to go on a date with Christine tonight, and hopefully leave a sock on the door for Betsy.”

Charlene smiling. There was pain behind the smile, there always was recently. Meanwhile Betsy was in a call with her boyfriend. The conversation was, strained, to say the least. They always did say long distance made relationships harder. Kim was convinced Charlene teasing Betsy about her friendship, and admittedly infatuation that seemed to be obvious to everyone else, with Johanna probably hadn’t helped Betsy’s actual relationship with Jerry. Or was it Jeffery? James?

Ah. So she is a she today? How’s that going? You’re longest relationship so far this year, correct?

Christine, also known as Christopher depending on the mood, was Charlene’s partner since early December. Considering it was mid February, that was definitely her longest relationship. Kim was well aware of that fact, unless Charlene was talking about a different Christine. Which she doubted.

“Yeah. She’s sweet. Honestly, without her or Betsy, I’m not sure if I would have been able to get through January. You were helpful to, don’t get me wrong, but- wait! You are getting me off topic, answer my question.”

Fine. Alexis has already reserved the room all night. With a sock on the doorknob, as you put it.

“Maybe you should find yourself a cute boy to cuddle up with. Or girl? I actually don’t know what you prefer, you never said.”

That’s because Kim was asexual, though she saw no reason to explain this to Charlene. Unless the girl started flirting with her, which thankfully she hadn’t, then Kim saw no reason to tell her of her feelings towards partners. So she just rolled her eyes at the girl and didn’t offer an answer. Charlene huffed, then got ready to speak, just to be interrupted by a particularly loud statement from Betsy.

“What do you mean? It was an accident, I swear. I mixed up the packages, it even says Happy Birthday on Johanna’s. Look, I’ll just go pick up the package meant for you tomorrow and send it in the mail! No, I am not lying! Yeah, well, maybe I should leave it with her, if this is how you’re going to react! No, no listen. No, Charlene was joking. You’ve met her, she’s irreverent.”

Kim glared at Charlene who are least had the presence to look guilty. Truth was, however, that this wasn’t her fault. It seemed like even though their friend and fearless leader hadn’t been going behind her boyfriend’s back, she had been missing a lot of their scheduled calls lately. She’d also been spending more and more time out, both at the hideout and elsewhere. Kim had half a mind to track Betsy down, one of these times, and see what she was up to.

“Perhaps I made too many jokes about the two of them. But he’d only been here twice. And hadn’t even met the Johanna, why’d he take them so seriously? They were obviously jokes.”

Its probably because the two hadn’t met that he distrusted her. After hearing she was lesbian, he started treating her the same way he would treat a guy, at least if my brother’s behavior is anything to go off of, with regards to Betsy.

“Ugh. Maybe I did make it worse. Think I should apol-“

“Well if you’re going to behave like that, maybe I shouldn’t try to find the package meant for you! I said I thought it might have gone to Hana’s place because you got what was supposed to be her birthday gift in the mail. BIRTHDAY. Yours was the Valentine’s Day gift. Do I need a 400lb guy to tackle that into your thick skull!”

“Kinky.”

Shut up, Charlene, Kim glared while signing.

“Okay, fair.”

The two sat there in awkward silence trying to ignore the argument their normally pretty unflappable friend was getting into with her boyfriend. She seemed strangely on edge, recently, in a way she hadn’t ever really been other than the first fight against the demonic, fiery dog. Even when they were rescuing what turned out to be Johanna, she just seemed more focused and indignant.

You’re her roommate. Has she been weird lately, or is that just…

Kim trailed off, kind of just waving her hands in the direction of their friend. Even now she looked put together. She always did. No loose hair, light and subtle make up, seemingly pressed blouses and skirts and pants. She wore no perfume, but she never did. Seemingly because of an allergic reaction to some scents, which Charlene had to throw out earlier in early September. And yet, something was off. More makeup than usual, especially around the eyes. Probably because of the strange hours she kept, which Charlene had noticed and tried to subtly comment on, though when she told Kim it sounded less like subtly commenting and more like skirting the subject. Talking to someone on her phone who was listed as Technomancer, though considering they all had strange nicknames, usually geeky, on her phone the only strange thing there was that she hadn’t seemed to be talking to him/her/them before last month. Sometimes Kim would head over to the hideout for some peace and quiet only to find Betsy asleep there in some random place. Yep, Kim decided, it was time to follow her.

“Come on, Kim. Lets go. Charlene needs the room and we have an entire hideout to hide out at,” Betsy abruptly hung up her video call, looked at Kim, and grabbed a bag as she spoke, breaking Kim’s train of thought.

Kim just nodded. She closed her own laptop, which she had been doing some homework on, and slipped into her bag. She was the most casually dressed of the three, in just a sweater and some trousers. She was ready to keep an eye on Betsy all night though, if she had to. See if she could figure out what was going on and help. She was secretly relieved when the only thing that went wrong that night was a couple C-Grades attacking a movie theater, interrupting their inane conversation with the goddess. They let Charlene know via text that they had it covered and got rid of the demons quickly. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’d like to check on a missing person’s case.”

Kim was worried. Who was missing? When she’d sensed Betsy sneak by her room on her way out of the dorm, she woke up, thanked her traps, transformed, and snuck after her friend to see what was up. She’d grown worried upon seeing her go to the police station. Just because they fought demons didn’t mean normal crime wasn’t a thing. But who was missing.

“Sure. Name please?” the receptionist was obviously tired, and only half paying attention.

“Her legal name is Avery Briar.”

There was a slight pause. Or maybe they were simply talking to low for Kim to hear. Her senses might have been enhanced thanks to her transformation, but she was still a distance aways and without direct line of sight to either of their faces. After a moment, and some clicking, she heard a voice again.

“Sorry we don’t have anyone by that name in the registry. Would you like to open a case?”

“I have already. Multiple times.”

“Well what name did you use? And are you sure it was a woman? The only local cases we have are three different dudes went missing up at the college.”

“What do you mean? She’s been missing over a month and you still don’t have her in your records?!”

“Yikes. If thats the case you should have reported this earlier.”

“I did. Several times! I just said that!”

“Okay, no need to bite my head off. Here, fill out this form and return it. We’ll put the case in the system, though it being over a month, there probably isn’t much we can do. Sorry.”

Kim heard an angry ruffling of paper and grumbling, probably just as unintelligible to the receptionist as it was to Kim, seeing as she was still close enough that everything was at conversational volume. After a few more moments, probably Betsy filling out the form for whoever this Avery person is, she could hear her friend walking out of the police office. Kim, in the meantime, had pulled out her phone and texted a question to Charlene asking if she knew anyone named Avery Briar, though she hadn’t received a response by the time Betsy was back in view. She followed her friend a little more, until they got to the apartment complex near where that shadow demon had first attacked. It had been back, but generally ran away when faced with the bright light Betsy let out. Considering nothing else seemed to hurt it, they had decided on a non-engagement policy for both her and Charlene, which unfortunately left something else on Betsy’s plate. Kim wished that the girl would just accept her friends’s offers of help, but she refused every time.

Betsy headed up to a room on the third floor and tried the handle. It was locked. She then tried that credit card in the door trick to unlock it, but that failed as well. Kim was curious as to why she was trying to break into an apartment, and wondered if she’d just kick the door down, when Betsy surprised her. She just crumpled to the floor and sobbed quietly for a bit. Kim was about to walk over there, she didn’t care if she’d reveal the fact that she was spying on her friend if it meant she could comfort her, when Betsy startled at something, something Betsy couldn’t sense, and got up and walked away quickly, talking under her breath so quietly that not even Kim could hear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Sorry I didn’t answer your text last night. Didn’t see it until I was awake. Avery Briar. Not sure about the Briar part, but Avery sounds familiar. I can’t place it though. If I remember, I’ll call you back later and let you know. For now, though, I have French. Because why I took that as a language, I don’t know, but I guess I could have taken something harder. Like Russian.”

Kim had nodded at Charlene when she had told her that this morning. She hadn’t gotten a further text so she didn’t know anything else out of the Charlene about Avery. So, instead, she decided to head back to those apartments from last time. While they could all teleport, they all did it in different ways. Charlene made portals, mostly, though she could just directly displace things and people. Betsy sort of turned herself, and some limited extra mass, into light and reformed everything at the target location. Kim kind of just, for lack of a better term, skipped space. It meant she could go through things such as walls and doors without knowing whats on the other side. An ability she used to enter the apartment.

What she found on the other side of the door was, to her shock, an apartment. There was a layer of dust on everything, and an open bottle of wine and a cup with some dregs in it sitting on a table that looked to be a mix of a coffee table and a dining table. It looked like a pretty poor apartment, which made sense for the area. A main room that served as kitchen and living room, a single bedroom hardly bigger than a closet, and a bathroom with a shower. There was a window in the living room that looked out to a brick wall. Kim judged the dust to be at least a month old, probably closer to two. Was this Avery’s place? She’d overheard that she was missing for at least a month. There wasn’t much character to the place: a rack with a set of car keys, a laptop hooked up to a tv by a cable, she wasn’t sure if the plain sheets were a choice or a necessity of wealth. If there’d been more junk all over the place than just the wine bottle and cup, she’d think the person was messy. As it was, she thought they were suddenly removed, likely kidnapped if they truly were missing. The food in the fridge was going bad, but that was to be expected.

Then she felt a chill. She whipped around drawing the magic string of her bow. Magic, because the string itself was made of magic, and summoned an arrow from the quiver without her having to draw one. She always questioned the quiver, but assumed it was for the look. It quite obviously wasn’t necessary. There was no one and nothing behind her. She slowly circled, taking stock of everything around her, heading for the door. It was dark, and she was cold. They didn’t get cold in these forms. She tried to skip through the door.

The world went out. Like turning off a tv, the sights and sound all died. The smells and feeling of air on her skin as well. If she’d had something in her mouth, she assumed she would have lost the taste as well. And it. Was. Cold. Freezing, in fact, even more so than it had been before. What ever this demon was, it was growing stronger. She changed the arrow that was on her bow to a fire arrow. She hoped the flame it set when she launched it would help. She aimed down at what she presumed was the floor and fired it. When she sensed no difference, Kim swore in her head. She had no way to force it back, it seemed no one but Betsy did, though it seemed Betsy could put her light on others to give them some way to resist. Kim would just have to put up a good fight till the others got to her.