A/N

Sorry for the delay guys! At first I was caught up with the wave of laziness that always infuses christmas break, and then I was caught up in the neck-breaking pace of moving into a new apartment for my next semester of college. Anyway, I'm back now with a new update. Hope I haven't lost all your valuable interest!

Thanks again to all my reviewers, you guys are the best! I'm running late or I'd list you all, as well as all those who favorited-you make me feel capable! :D

Chapter 5—Deals with the Devil

They had moved inside when her nose started running. Hiei had wrinkled his nose at her, and, though she knew he was just a visible representation of the back of her mind, she'd blushed in embarrassment and insisted on moving their little meeting somewhere warmer. It took some persuading, but after a threat to wipe her nose on him instead of the back of her hand, he'd kept silent and zipped inside her window obediently.

Her initial reaction was to go open her bedroom door, since she wasn't allowed to have boys in her room with the door shut. She stopped herself after one step, and rolled her eyes. When it came to hallucinations, she was pretty sure the gender didn't matter.

She turned back to Hiei and sat down on the bed. He stood by the foot of it, his eyes piercing through the blackness like smelted daggers.

"Well?" She said.

His eyes narrowed. "Hn."

She frowned. The scab on her lip stretched too far and she winced as blood leaked into her mouth. She wiped it on the back of her hand and straightened.

"Biting your lip is a sign of insecurity. It lets your enemies know you're unsure of yourself. Marks you as prey." Hiei turned to face her. "If you want to find her, you're going to have to stop that."

She nodded. Stop being scared. Right. Her shoulders slumped. Because it was that easy, to stop being scared, when it was basically all she'd done this past year.

"That too." His pale, accusing finger sliced through the darkness. "Sit up straight again. Meet me in the eyes. I won't help a weakling."

She straightened out her spine. It felt stiff and uncomfortable. Peering through the shade, she found his red eyes simmering at the end of her bed. His finger descended and retreated, melding back into his shadowy form.

"Better." He murmured.

"Okay," She said. "So, um, can you start telling me what I'm missing? What key thing am I supposed to remember?"

"You fool." Why was her subconscious so mean? "If you don't have the strength to remember, even I can't help you."

She gawked at him. "What? It's not like I'm locking away the memories or anything! I just can't remember. I'm forgetful, it happens okay?" She folded her arms and glared at him.

His eyes narrowed. She couldn't see the tilt of his head through the darkness, but she was almost sure he was staring down at her condescendingly again. "Are you so sure about that? Your mind is full of fear, fear so dark it tastes like the very flames of hell." The eyes widened, filled with the clamoring wrath of the damned. "You reek of terror. How sure are you that you aren't hiding from yourself?"

She swallowed hard, searching those eyes. If he was a part of her, wasn't all that pain and death in her as well?

Suddenly, her chest seized. No. She could see something in those eyes, something foreign; something completely not her. Grace scrambled for her inhaler, unable to look away from his gaze, the terror he spoke of filling every vein in her body.

Just as she touched the cool plastic of her inhaler, a pale hand came down on hers and wrenched it from her grasp.

"NO!" She shouted, and dived for it.

He lifted it out of her reach, a powerful hand on her shoulder, holding her back. "You cling to this contraption like it was your mother. It's pathetic."

"I need it!" The words were getting harder. She flailed against his grip. His fingers dug into the flesh of her shoulder. Panic raced through her mind, her lungs squeezing together, her head swimming. "Please—" her air was almost gone, "—I can't breathe!"

He didn't relinquish. Grace struggled for breath as he began dissolve right before her eyes. She slipped out of his grip, and hit her bed, her limp, struggling body giving a small bounce. Air, she screamed in her head. Please! Her subconscious obviously wasn't listening—no, Hiei wasn't listening. Those fingers, the memories in those eyes. Starving her of air. He wasn't a part of her, any part.

"If you want to find your mother, you'll breathe!" His shout rang over her cloudy skull. "If you allow yourself to take your own life, how can you expect to stop anyone else from doing so?"

His voice fell over her face like a steaming washcloth. Her eyes were rolling back in her head; she could feel the blood thundering in her temples. Air! She screamed inside. Her lips ripped apart in desperation. Air!

"Breathe, dammit!" Hiei barked.

The nighttime became tangible. She was breathing now, suddenly, but she was breathing in blackness. It pervaded all her senses. She couldn't see. Her lungs were heavy with the weight of it; her tongue grew lax with pain. It was too thick. Too thick to breathe. She was better off not breathing at all.

"Woman!" the word clawed itself through the blackness stuffing her ears. "I said breathe!"

Her lips stayed parted, but her chest was too tight. She closed her eyes and let herself fall into the night.

Heat spread through her mouth. Grace lurched up, suddenly sucking in air, her head spinning. Gasps dragged themselves up and down her throat; she hit a hand against her chest, coughing out the blackness, and kidnapping air with her parted lips. She swallowed and threw her head back.

"Gah!" She cried, and dropped onto her back. As her eyes cracked open, she found Hiei's burning gaze narrowed on her from above. She rubbed her thundering temple. "What—did—you—do?" She managed between pants.

"Tsk." The moon highlighted the curl of his upper lip. "You failed to save yourself. Pitiful."

She swallowed and, hesitantly, touched her lips. They were hot. Not burning, but hot. She looked up at him questioningly.

A glare was his only answer. "Be warned, this is the last time I save you. Next time, I'll let you suffocate on your own fear."

"It wasn't fear." She mumbled. "It's called asthma. It's a medical condition."

"Maybe for some." He walked around her bed to stand in front of the window. He seemed even less real bathed in the moonlight, somehow. "For you, it's a crutch. An excuse. The way some people use family or friends, you use this thing." He lifted the inhaler and inspected it, his hair leaning with the breeze of the open window.

"That's not fair." She meant to continue, but she couldn't find the words.

"Heh." He turned slightly, so one crimson orb caught the light and glittered at her like a spark. "That's true, human. But life's not fair." Grace watched in horror as he pulled his arm back, and chucked her inhaler out the window. "Get used to it."

"No!" Her voice ripped through the back of her throat, and she threw herself at the window. Her hand stretched into the night, useless and desperate. She looked through the night, hoping to find some sign of her only relief. Trembling, she retracted her arm and, slowly, bent herself in half over the window frame.

"Stand up straight and at least pretend you have some kind of pride." Hiei said. His voice was monotone and withdrawn. "No wonder you always smell of fear."

The window scratched against the band aid on her forehead. She peeked out the side of her arm, through her hair, to watch his profile. There was no hint of emotion; no satisfaction, not even disgust. He was an objective narrator, freely exposing her faults without giving reaction.

It burned her up inside.

Grace straightened up in an instant, snapping her spine into place, and faced him. He stared out the window, carelessly. Before she even knew what she was doing, her palm struck out.

He caught her by the wrist. She gritted her teeth, heat swelling in the corners of her eyes until she was terrified that she might cry. She couldn't cry; not in front of him. Not in front of this horrible, withdrawn shadow.

He turned his head. His eyes filled with flames again. She could almost feel heat blossom over her fingers as he stared at her hand like it was an alien.

Slowly, a wicked smirk pulled at his thin lips. His crimson eyes stared at her between her spread fingers. "Better, human." His voice was so low, it was almost thunder. "But can you hold onto that boldness when you need it most?"

She yanked her hand out of his grip. He let it slide through his agile fingers. "I guess I'll find out." She scowled.

He tipped his chin up and regarded her. His eyes were still hot and alive. She decided she liked it better when they were like that; the intensity was a bit frightening, but when he was engaged like this, she felt less humiliated. At least this way, she was regarded in some way—not dismissed like a fly squirming in a distant cobweb.

"Are you ready?" He said.

She knitted her brows together and frowned. "For what?"

He glared. "If you act this insipid, I'll leave."

She swallowed, her eyes dancing over the highlighted side of his pale, eerie complexion. He wasn't something she'd imagined. He'd burnt her, he'd strangled her, and then—saved her? And even now, looking into that boiling gaze, she could feel memories entirely foreign struggling in his black pupils.

"What are you?" The words streamed from her mouth in a whisper.

He blinked. The fire quieted. He was deathly still. "A demon." He said. "From the pits of hell." He cocked his head to the side, his top lip curling back. "Now, are you ready?"

Red demon. It was so ironic, yet it fit.

She backed away, paused and climbed onto her bed, her back facing him. Obviously, she wasn't going to get a serious answer out of him. She took several unsteady breaths. Her lungs caught against her ribs on the third inhale, but after a momentary struggle, she loosened it. She didn't have her inhaler anymore. If she had an asthma attack now, it would be the end of her and her mother.

"Okay." She whispered. "I'm ready."

Truthfully, she was bluffing. She had no idea what Hiei intended to do in order to help her reach her subconscious, the answers she was missing, especially now that she knew he actually wasn't a part of her unconscious mind. But he was here, and he acted like he had an intention to help. "Demon" crap or not, he was here, and she could almost feel how much she needed him.

She closed her eyes as his hands touched the crown of her head. A hot, swirling heat spread down her skull and crawled into the rest of her body. She shuddered.

"Don't resist." He said.

She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, when a shock of purple lightning rocketed through her senses. She remembered screaming, clutching her chest, before everything shattered into blackness.

"That's it!" Yusuke's rugged yell blew through the alley. "Spirit gun!"

A scream wrenched through her mouth before she knew what was happening. Her eyes seared with pain as blinding light erupted down the alley—did he have a bomb?—and a rush of scratchy heat peeled her hair back from her face. She choked on the crackling smell as it coursed through her nostrils, and slid to the gravel ground as the wind suddenly stopped and left her heart hammering and throat parched.

Grace stood over herself, watching the gravel scatter over her body as she winced into the wall. She blinked and rubbed her eyes.

"You're missing the important part." Hiei's voice snapped.

She whirled around. He was standing beside her, his eyes cold and narrowed on her. She jumped, and he scowled as heat flickered back into his expression.

"What—" Grace turned in a circle, taking in the scene with a growing sense of confusion. "What's going on?"

"Fool."

She turned to him and frowned. He met the unpleasant face and raised her a cold glare. His arms lifted and a finger extended in the opposite reaction, targeting Yusuke's distant form.

"Try to be less self-involved." He said. "The Detective is what you're missing."

She glanced around his black figure and found Yusuke, his hands clasped in front of him like he was holding a gun. He wasn't moving. "He didn't do that before." She mumbled.

"Of course not." He snapped. "This is your memory. I paused it so you could attempt to analyze it." He tipped his head back, staring off in Yusuke's direction. "Unless that's too much for you, human."

"Stop calling me that." She hissed, and stomped off into the alley. The gravel crunched under her feet. She glanced over her shoulder to find Hiei staring down at her body by the wall like it was a vaguely amusing animal. "And don't look at me—er, it, er, me—" She squinted and shook her head. "Just leave that me alone, okay?"

"You are truly a master of language." His lips barely moved with the insult.

She stopped by Yusuke. "Shut up!" Her cheeks burned as his eyes narrowed. "And do you mind explaining how the heck we're here? In my memories? Or is that too difficult for you?"

Her spunk evaporated when Hiei suddenly appeared in front of her. She cringed back, wincing preemptively, and peered at him over the arm she had raised to block the way between the blow she expected and her face. He rolled his eyes.

"I won't hurt you, woman." He took her arm and forced it down to her side. "If you have to keep asking me questions I've already answered, I'll cease speaking."

She caught a scoff in her mouth and swallowed it whole. His hand was still locked around her arm, and, despite having judged him as her ally, she wasn't eager to test his temper.

"I'm sorry." She forced out. His eyebrows leapt up behind his black bangs. "Just, I must have missed it. Indulge me. Please."

He frowned deeply to one side. Suddenly he snatched his hand back from her arm, as if she had just burnt him. "I'm a demon, fool. My Jagan allows me to break passed mental barriers and constructs."

She stared at him. Blinked. Shook her head. "Did you fall back into Japanese just then? Because I didn't get any of that."

She took a small step back when his glare came at her at full force. Even her organs felt like shriveling up; her stomach was gripping itself. Unbridled fire filled his eyes as he digested her stupidity. It wasn't her fault he was talking in code or something!

"You fool." He spat. It was different from his other insults. This one was branded with perfect rage and glistened with venom. "I am a demon. I come from Demon World, Makai, the depths of Hell." His hand lifted to his forehead, brushing past his bangs. Grace caught sight of a white head band and nearly raised her eyebrows (what? Was he planning on dropping by the gym?), when he grasped the cloth and wrenched it off. A small bump was on his forehead.

Grace nearly reached out to pat him, make him feel more comfortable. Zits were a part of growing up, though she had to admit she'd never seen one this big, or pale. Maybe he had put some concealer over it. She wouldn't blame him, with the size of it. She started to smile.

His eyes were too serious. Her gaze darted from his burning pupils up to the bump. At first, she thought her mind's eye was playing tricks on her. Then she started shifting through her thoughts and realized that it wasn't a trick. There was a line across the bump, and it was separating into lids. Lids that were peeling back across his forehead. To reveal something that made even less sense. An eye. An eye in his forehead.

She slapped a hand over her mouth and pointed. "H-Hiei-!" She choked on whatever else she was going to say as the eye widened, staring directly at her, and glowed lavender. Her ribs were crushing inwards again.

"This is the Jagan, the evil eye." His voice was swarming around her, drowning out the frozen scene around her. Everything was dissolving into purple mist. "It pulls down your mental barriers and allows me passage. But in a way, it has a mind of its own." She could hear the dark grin in his voice. "Resisting it would be unwise."

She could feel herself resisting. The memory was collapsing on and rebuilding itself in repeated succession. The only definite objects anymore were her own paled figure and Hiei's. Three eyes stared her down through the mist, grasping her as she struggled against it.

"Woman!" Hiei's voice barked. It rang through her skull.

Tingles were erupting in her legs—her real legs. She could almost feel her physical body seated against the unkempt sheets of her bed. She felt her body yanking on her mind. It was like a great, reverse wind, calling her back as the purple mist held on tightly, pressing her into herself, as it held her fast. Her mind groaned as she was pulled apart.

"Woman!" Hiei snarled through the chaos. "Do you want to find your mother or not?"

Her mother. Her eyes snapped open. All she could see was the purple mist, swirling out from the glowing, third eye. Her stomach turned. Mom, she whispered. The word hissed through the flickering scenery. The wind stopped pulling her back, and the eye sucked her back in.

She gasped. She was back, surrounded by the frozen memory of the alley way, Yusuke to her right and Hiei directly in front of her. She stumbled forwards and caught herself on his shoulders. His muscles tensed into cords of steel.

"Onna." A warning.

She sucked in a couple more breaths before moving back, eagerly separating them. "Sorry." She panted, and looked around her. "Just . . . I don't understand. This can't be real. It can't."

"Of course." Hiei stated blankly. "It's a memory."

She scowled up at the grey sky. Everything had a pale, greyed film over it. "Not what I meant." She shook her head and looked over at Yusuke's posed back. "I mean . . . demons? That's crazy. I'm crazy." She closed her eyes and pressed her hands over her face. "I need to wake up. I'm dreaming, or hallucinating, and I need to wake up."

"Wonderful idea." Hiei snapped. "Maybe your mother's there too, and you've dreamt it all." He gave a light scoff. "Face reality, ningen. This is your world and there's nothing you can do about it."

She squeezed her eyes closed against the soft, squishy surface of her palms. Heat was building between her lashes again. Sobs jogged in her chest. No, no, no. She couldn't cry where he could see.

She lifted her face out of her hands, and, as quickly as she could, walked around Yusuke on the opposite side to the shadow. She blinked hard, fast, to let the tears evaporate. She hid her shaky breaths by examining his pose, and the target she hadn't been able to identify before.

"Agh!" She scrambled backwards as she found a headless—thing. She swallowed a wave of nausea and came closer. It was large and dressed in a suit, like a human, but from what she could see, it was anything but. The skin was red, the feet large and clawed, decorated with pieces of torn shoes. Its hands were large and beefy, with nails as long and sharp as knives.

Grace tried to resist, but her eyes scanned the ground in search for a head. "Ugh," she mumbled and forced back the bile climbing her throat. It was a distance away, frozen a foot or so from the ground. She scrubbed a hand down her face, pulling on her left eyelid and the corners of her lips.

Hiei strode over to the head, paused, and kicked it towards her. She yelped and jumped out of the way. The flesh slapped against the ground and rolled to a stop face up. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and crouched in front of it.

"A . . . demon?" Her voice was meant to sound strong, removed, but the last word tipped off her lips like a sick, drunken sailor.

The face was too large, the hair unruly and black like an animal pelt's. The eyes were large and bulging, the mouth too wide for proper human proportions with teeth crowding its every grotesque inch. A horn was imbedded in its forehead; large, white tusks sprung up from its bottom jaw and curled out of its mouth. The empty look in its wet, swollen eyes sickened her the most.

When Hiei didn't acknowledge her earlier statement, she continued. "But . . . it doesn't look like you at all."

"Hn." His boots appeared in the upper left of her peripheral vision. "It's barely a C-class, that's why." He shot forwards and kicked the head away again.

Grace looked up at him as she stood. She was nearly taller than him at full height, she realized, yet even straightened out as she was, she felt small and weak in his presence.

"I don't know what that means." She told him with an exhausted sigh. He was taking all his knowledge for granted; did he think she knew all the ins and outs after five minutes?

He frowned as he watched the head roll to a stop a distance away. "It means it had no chance against Yusuke." He glanced at her. "And it wouldn't have lasted a second against me."

She blinked a couple of times, trying to get what he meant out of his round-about explanation. "So . . . weak demons look like butt-ugly trolls?"

He gave her a single nod and turned away, walking back towards the paused, slumped form of her past self. She ran after him.

"Wait, wait," She called. "Why show me this memory? So I can understand you and Yusuke better or—"

"That would be a waste of time." Hiei walked passed her past form and started into a muddy, undeveloped part of the memory. "I have no use for such things."

"No use for friends?" She muttered under her breath.

He stopped before the rippling, undecided scenery beyond and cast her a frozen look over his shoulder. "Friends are a crutch for the weak. I have none, and refuse to weaken myself with that kind of hideous baggage."

Grace watched his back as he turned away and stretched a hand toward the mass. It began to coagulate, sinking towards his fingers, seemingly bending to his will. Despite how utterly insane this was, she wasn't paying it much attention. Instead, she was filled with a dot of remembrance. She'd baited him with a promise of peace if he helped her recover memories. A peace she'd been certain she could grant because she had thought he was her subconscious. He wasn't. Yet he had been drawn in by the promise nonetheless.

"But you want them, don't you?" She said.

He didn't even pause. "What are you babbling about, human?"

"You want someone to be close to you, don't you?" She came up beside him, searching his profile. It revealed nothing; it was as cold and hidden as a candle in a snowdrift. So why did she feel her words with such certainty? "Don't you? That's why you're helping me."

Hiei said nothing. The rippling finally stopped, and suddenly wrenched apart. Grace ducked her head as wind whipped out from the opening.

"Move." He ordered over the noise of the wind.

She shuffled forwards, pressing slowly, cautiously, into the opening, when she lost her balance and toppled into its depth. Her scream was drowned out by the wind, before she cut it off herself in a great gust of silence. She looked around, and found herself. Literally.

She was curled up into a ball under her bed. Grace went over and sat by her past self's arm, gazing about and wondering why she was so small in this memory, and watched Yusuke's footsteps pace through the strip of space. Hiei appeared, standing, next to her. She looked up at him. He didn't spare her the slightest attention, simply raised his arm to point at the frustrated steps of memory Yusuke. She turned back and listened closely.

"What's the problem, Yusuke?" The voice sounded like it was coming from a device. Kind of crackly, like a phone with a bad signal. "Have you taken care of the demon or not?"

Oh, had he. She thought back to the beheaded creature and shuddered. A breeze flew past her shoulder from behind, and she frowned as she realized her past-self was breathing hard and frantically, like she was having a heart attack. It was a wonder Yusuke hadn't heard her meltdown.

"Calm down, baby breath." Yusuke said. "You're stupid human trafficker's wasted in an alleyway. Now listen, I've got a problem. Some American girl saw me taking him out and now I can't find her."

How could he not? Her breath was so loud from behind, it sounded like a tornado in her ear. Suddenly, it stopped, and Grace felt a rough buzzing sit down in her skull.

"Did you catch that?" Hiei said.

She rubbed her left ear, trying to wipe the moisture from her spastic breath off the thin skin. "What?"

Hiei snapped his head down to look at her, eyes wide and furious. She cringed and held out her hands, "Sorry, sorry!" Her voice shrunk on her tongue. "Give me a second, I'll think of it."

He straightened out, gritting his teeth and staring off at Yusuke's feet frozen in mid-step. Grace let her eyes run up Hiei's black side and trace along the line of his jaw to his mouth. She detected a small line in the clenched block of white teeth and stood up slowly. He glanced at her, his gaze narrowed and waiting.

"Are those fangs?" She asked.

His eyes widened lividly. "I'll take you out myself if you can't concentrate, human!"

She winced away from his burning rage and turned her back to him. She could still see the sharp line of his incisors in her mind. Fangs—the whole idea was so preposterous, but so were tusks and demons, and freaky purple third eyes in the middle of people's foreheads. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, feeling the ache deep in her skull, and let out a spotted breath.

Mom, she thought desperately, how can I find you when I have to try and accept all this?
She wiped her hands down her face. It didn't matter. Whatever it took; demons, exorcisms, espionage; she would find her mother. The sudden release of pressure sent large bubbles of yellow and black floating through her vision. She locked her knees to stay standing as her head swam.

When her equilibrium didn't recover quickly enough, Grace simply closed her eyes and concentrated. She sent Yusuke's conversation with the crackly phone voice through her mind and tore it into pieces, dissecting it sentence by sentence. The words trickled down her ears. Demons . . . baby breath . . . American girl . . . stupid human trafficker . . . wasted in an alleyway.

A shock caught her by the spine and sapped the air straight out of her lungs. Her mouth opened desperately. Human trafficker. Wasted in an alleyway.

She whirled around, her breath locked between her bones, eyes desperate for confirmation.

Hiei met her stare and raised an eyebrow. It made the lower lid of his creepy third eye crinkle, like it might almost be amused.

She shook her head and practiced her lungs until air leaked back inside them. "H-Human trafficker?" She coughed up. His eyes smoldered soberly. "That's . . . no, wait." She closed her eyes. She could almost feel a hand shuffling through her memories, reaching further back, and grabbing at the Yahoo Home screen article her dad's laptop had displayed a week or so ago. "No way." She ripped her eyelids apart, stumbling towards the shadow as he simply stood there, watching her piece it all together. "The human trafficker rumors . . . I saw an article on it. But I thought it was further east! In New York, I thought, not here in Missouri." She pressed a hand to her thundering temple. Her skin was growing hot and gathering a slick layer of sweat. "They . . . have my mom, don't they?"

Hiei blinked. She knew it was a nod.

A tiny burst of hope shot through her chest. "Wait!" She gave in to an unsure grin. "Yusuke killed the human trafficker demon, right? So it was demons running it! And he killed him, so my mom is safe now." She ran to him and grabbed his shoulders, grinning fully now. Her cheeks felt like they were going to pop.

Yusuke had saved her mother. As soon as Grace went and got her from wherever she was being held, she would have her mother's footsteps filling the empty places in the house. Grace was going to watch her dad smile again, the way he used to. She wouldn't have to stare at his back as the telephone rang, waiting for him to enter reality, to accept it. She would be able to pick up her running shoes! She felt warm tears fill her eyes as Hiei started backwards, his shoulders tense and mouth stretching into a hard, resistant frown. She would be able to run for her mom again. She would pound her feet into the tarmac, run for hours, punish her legs until her mom knew how sorry she was. She would sweat out her apologies, and her mom would watch her come home, covered in a grimy, wet film, and her wonderful mother would smile and understand. Grace would finally be able to repent. For IT. For everything.

Hiei snatched up her arms, holding them by the wrists with a curl of his upper lip, and forced them from his shoulders. "Your powers of deduction are amazing. Now try not to be sick."

She began to ask what he meant, when a horrible fire erupted in her forehead. She wrenched her mouth open to scream, feeling a hurricane grasp her body and throw her backwards. Her neck screamed, eyes bled, limbs shattered, as she smashed back into her own body.

"Agh!" She half gasped, half screamed and doubled over in the darkness of her room.

"Hn." Hiei shifted behind her, his hand retracted from her head. "Now what are your plans, onna?"

She swallowed the searing pain, pressing it down from her forehead and hiding it in her stomach. She peeled her eyelids back and jumped when she found the shadow's sharp eyes glowing out from the darkness, directly in front of her. They narrowed.

Grace took a relaxing breath. "I'm not sure yet." She furrowed her brows at his bored expression. "But I'll figure it out. I guess maybe I'll review some Sherlock Holmes." She picked up the anthology lounging on her bedside cabinet and fingered through the paper, page numbers illuminated just enough for her to locate 1125, "The Bohemian Scandal". She'd studied it recently in AP English; maybe a refresher would inspire her detective skills.

"Tsk," Hiei's voice felt almost tangible in the darkness. "Your initiative is inspiring."

She bit on the corners of her mouth and glanced up through her bangs. He had closed his eyes; she couldn't find him in the shadows without those glowing fires. "I'm not exactly a detective, okay? This is by Arthur Conan Doyle, the greatest mystery writer of all time. I'm thinking that if I study it, I might—"

"She could be on the edge of death." The eyes appeared like a forest fire—sudden, all consuming. "Who's to say the demon Yusuke killed was even the leader? The Detective isn't as perceptive as his title implies."

She opened her mouth, but her thoughts had shriveled up when he said the word "death." She locked her mouth together and clenched the edges of the anthology until her knuckles groaned.

The eyes glanced off to the side.

The air was muggy and hungry for relief. Grace rubbed at her shoulder, ran her tongue over her front teeth—they felt furry—and went to the window. The breeze had faded away. She leaned her head out of the frame in search of it.

"She's not dead." She said. She wanted to believe it too badly to harbor it only in her heart. "She's not."

"Hn." He was next to her, now.

She sucked in a sharp breath, glanced at his dark figure illuminated only by a thin strip of moonlight, and leaned into the corner of the window frame. Did all demons move that quickly?

"Why did Yusuke kill that awful creature-thing, anyway?" She looked back at the ethereal being beside her. He didn't meet her probing gaze. "I mean, he comes all the way from Japan and obviously doesn't care enough about school to get into the exchange school program. So, like, what is he? A supernatural bounty hunter or something?" As she thought about it, this whole situation sounded eerily similar to the terrible plot for a paranormal romance she'd seen sitting in the seedy section of the local bookstore. She rubbed her forehead with a depleted sigh.

How had her life become a supernatural soap opera?

Hiei finally reacted; his black eyebrow twitched upwards. "He used to be employed by Spirit World as a guardian of sorts. This pathetic human realm would have been demolished by demons ten times over by now, if he hadn't stubbornly stood by to protect it."

She stared at him. He turned to her, probably provoked by her unusual stillness, she guessed, and narrowed his eyes. They weren't filled with anger, rage, or grand annoyance this time, however. They were almost suspicious. Watchful.

She let out a hard stream of air through the slight gap between her front teeth. "I sound like I'm in an even more screwed up version of Twilight. Or some other contrived New York Times Bestseller."

She shook her head and groaned quietly, in the back of her throat, at his expression. If nothing else, it was obvious that he didn't live in this world. His face was completely vacant; not even an amused twitch at the Twilight joke.

"'kay." She muttered, and pressed her head back out the window. "So, um, you wouldn't happen to maybe—just maybe—want to help me with the next step?"

Something gave a dark purr behind her. She twisted to give him a wide-eyed stare over her shoulder. Despite the worry pressing into her body with every tense second, amusement began to carve at the left corner of her mouth.

"Did you just purr?" She forced back a hilarious smile.

He seemed surprised for a moment, before his expression twisted into a murderous glare. Grace decided later she must have been in shock because so far, when Hiei glared at her, she had been filled with fear. Now, suddenly, she was filled with a bubbling sensation that burst out her mouth in the form of raucous laughter. He grew more and more furious as she laughed, but she was suddenly swollen with the hilarity—and probably some trauma-induced, chemical imbalance—of the whole situation and couldn't find it in herself to be scared.

"It was a growl, moron." He snarled.

She slapped a hand over her mouth, desperately trying to muffle her guffaws. Her dad was rarely stirred from his work at this time of night, but considering everything that had happened within the last twenty-four hours, he might find the distant sound of laughter trailing from her room the slightest bit disconcerting.

She pulled out of the window and threw her head up, tipping back until she lay on her bed, her hair scrunching beneath her, bathed entirely in the slow moonlight.

After a few moments, her laughter trailed off into bemused hums. She looked up then, at the shadow revealed by the moon, and let her face flatten.

"Please?" She asked.

Half of his face stretched into the night. The other was cold, unrelenting marble, power-washed with the moon. He tipped his head, and his left eye ate up the light, consuming it without apology.

"I have no reason to." He said.

She nodded. He was right.

He turned his back to her, transforming into a silhouette. "I've missed the smell of blood. . . I suppose I will get my fill if I join you and hunt down the disgusting, lower-class demons crowding this world."

Mommy, she thought hard across the distance, beaming at the dark back before her window, It might have just taken a deal with the devil, but I'm coming for you. Hang on.

A/N

Me: Well, there you go! Exciting? Mystifying? Your opinions are high valued by yours truly. No, not Yours Truly, me.

Yours Truly: Well, maybe I find them valuable too!

Me: Everything's about you, isn't it? Hush for a minute, I'm talking to the readers.

Yours Truly: (grumble)

Me: Everyone, have a fabulous day and I would absolutely LOVE it if you reviewed. No pressure, no pressure. haha

Sneak Peak:

She grabbed him by the back of his shoulders. His knees buckled, and suddenly she was on his back. It was broad and warm. A stodgy lump of horror lodged in her throat, blocking off her air, as his hands grabbed her thighs and yanked them around his hips.

Only a thin squeal managed to force its way past the lump. She clung onto his shoulders, digging her nails through the fabric of his cloak, as he straightened with her on his back.

He turned his head. Her heart raced, driving against her unsteady ribs, as he flashed her a burning, dangerous look over his shoulder. "What did you think you were doing, woman?"