Shadow of Death, Part Eleven

4 November 2005

Matteson and Kyle, our other roommate, had a rather heated discussion at some point before I got home from Buhl Park and, while I didn't know exactly how it went, I do know that Matteson and I had spent the last couple days replacing the door and patching the walls and blocking off the windows with plastic until he could convince the landlord to get new ones. He insisted I didn't use magic, partly because he was concerned about the amount of effort I'd spent lately and the fact that my eye was now, apparently, permanently blue. I didn't tell him it was an incredible amount of effort to do any magic in the house anyway, since he had been living here long enough that the place itself seemed to take on some amount of his resistance to magic.

Truth is, he hadn't asked for my help at all, and seemed very hesitant to accept it. But I couldn't very well let him handle all of this alone, and he was away at work in the afternoon while I was painting over the last of the patches on the wall and heard a knock on the door. When I opened it, which was a little difficult because we had hung the door slightly crooked--an issue we were planning to correct that night--but when I got it open I found Lori standing there with a box.

"Lori! Please, come in!" I took the box and led her inside, sitting down on the couch while she stood near the door. "How are you holding up, hon?"

"I'm not sure yet." She crossed her arms and slinked in, sitting on the arm of the love seat.

"Right. Well, Matteson isn't here right now, he-"

"He's at work. I know, that's why I came now."

"Ah. Okay." I opened the box and found a stack of pictures, a shirt, and a bunch of old books.

"She...the other one, she stole all his books on possession and exorcism and ghosts, you know. I knew where she put them, of course, so I thought I'd return them."

"That does explain a lot. Look, Lori-"

"I'm not ready to have the conversation you want to have. I appreciate all you did for me, but...not yet." I stopped, then nodded. "Thank you." She turned to leave.

"Stay safe out there." She paused, then turned to me with a weak smile.

"You, too. Thanks for everything." She closed the door on her way out, and I carried the box into the study.

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