||Devil's Advocate||Betelgeuse x Adam x Barbara

(𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐅𝗼𝐮𝐫) Word for Word

As Adam and Barbara helped Lydia put the talisman she'd gotten from Delia around her neck by levitating it up around it, Lydia suddenly felt a bit off... like there was something up with the jewel of the talisman. As Barbara and Adam finished and backed away from her, their eyes widened in shock as they noticed Lydia's skin turn a little paler in shade; almost white; than it usually was. Barbara quickly lay Lydia down on the couch and used her powers to remove the necklace from around her neck. Almost immediately afterwards, the teenager felt a bit better and sat up.

"What on earth was that?" Barbara asked cautiously, scratching her head.

"Not sure, but it was strange." Adam carefully levitated and put the talisman necklace back in its box, willing it away with a snap of his fingers in hopes that it would never hopefully show up again.

Barbara took another glance at Lydia, who had once again laid herself down on the couch, now face down, face buried in a pillow. Barbara laughed on the inside as she levitated the pillow from underneath the teenager's face and caused her to groan playfully. Lydia sat up again, looking back towards Barbara.

"Thanks for that, guys. I'd have to say that in the short amount of time that I wore that talisman necklace of mine, it gave me a sort of terrifying vision. Then a weird feeling came about. One that I can't even describe in detail." The teenager let out a sigh and a much needed breath, closing her eyes and opening them again.

"But you're okay, right?" Barbara guessed knowingly.

"Yeah..." Lydia focused her attention on the ouija board she'd gotten, only for Adam to teleport it away.

"No, Lydia..." he laughed, rolling his eyes playfully.

"Adam, I wasn't going to take it out of the box. I was just going to look at the box itself." The teenager rolled her eyes as well, sticking her tongue out at him. He playfully did it back at her, a goofy grin stretched across his face.

Once Adam had teleported the ouija board box back into Lydia's hands despite making more goofy faces, the teenager moved over to the middle of the living room and sat the box on the floor before sitting in front of it. Almost immediately, she took the lid off the box and Adam sighed and laughed, he and Barbara moving to stand over near where Lydia was sitting, both ghosts folding their arms and giving Lydia amused yet stern looks.

"I thought that you said you weren't going to take the ouija board out of the box, silly," Adam amusingly joked.

"I only said that to get you to give it back to me, ghost dad," responded Lydia, looking up and giving the male ghost a humorous look.

"You kidder!" laughed Adam, leaping towards and tackling the teen to the ground before proceeding to tickle her nonstop, causing her to laugh. After a few long minutes of it, however, he ceased with it and stood up, allowing Lydia to sit upright and take the ouija board out of the box.

Lydia turned her attention over to her ghost parents, an inquisitive look in her eyes. "Can you guys play this with me? You can say a bunch of funny things through it to make me laugh."

Adam exchanged a worried and tense, yet flustered look with Barbara before the two ghosts turned their attention over towards Charles and Delia, both of whom had the same looks plastered on their faces. Then they looked back over towards Lydia, Adam saying, "hmmm... I don't know about that, kiddo..."

"Please?" asked Lydia, turning her attention solely over to Adam.

"Maybe sometime tomorrow morning," Barbara firmly stated after a mental conversation with Adam, placing one of her hands on her hip and giving Lydia a strict, but calm look. "It's getting dark after all."

Lydia glanced out of a nearby window, then at the time on her phone. "It's 8:30. Just one small session and then I'll go upstairs."

"Fine," laughed Barbara. "But only for half an hour."

"Thanks."

Lydia nodded in response, sitting herself on the floor in front of her ouija board as her dad and Delia headed up the stairs to do their own things. Adam and Barbara made themselves transparent, but still visible to Lydia, their hands extended out in front of them. As soon as Lydia started the session, the first word that Adam decided to spell out through the ouija board was 'malarkey'.

"Hahaha... Adam!!! Cut it out!" Lydia spurted out as she burst into a bout of laughter. "That was too funny!"

"I agree with Lydia," said Barbara, amusement in the tone of her voice. "My turn!"

She concentrated hard, managing to spell out 'bumfuzzle'; which made Lydia laugh even louder than she had been.

Balderdash!

Amphigoric!

Blather!

Capricious!

Rigmarole!

Lunacy!

Quatsch!

Razzmatazz!

Slipslop!

Lydia burst into a long and amused bout of laughter, and the Maitlands eventually joined in on it after a few long minutes, the amount of fun they had out of spelling out all of those random words through Lydia's ouija board faltering. Again, she put the board away, its box still sitting there on the floor unopened, pulling out her phone and checking the current time. 9:10.

"Shit!" Lydia cursed under her breath, putting her phone away. Barbara gave her a stern and serious look.

"Language," the female ghost sternly reprimanded the teenager, shaking her head.

"Sorry," the teenager apologized. As she went to head upstairs, Adam speaking up stopped her in her tracks.

"Aren't you forgetting to do something?" he asked, his right hand extended out towards the empty, unopened box that was still sat there in the middle of the carpeted floor. Lydia spun on her heel, looking down towards it.

"I'll put it back into the box in the morning," Lydia said rather tiredly, pausing to yawn in between her words. Adam and Barbara looked at each other, nodded in unison, and then turned their attention to Lydia. The teen girl was just standing there, eyes half closed, looking half asleep and Barbara helped steady her so she didn't fall.

"C'mon. Let's get you upstairs and into bed," the female ghost said as she and Adam levitated the teenager into the air with their powers, failing to notice the ouija board's planchette lazily start to spin as they all left the room and headed upstairs.