Forces Beyond The Grave

9.3

Skye looked up from her phone after hearing the front door close across the room. She took her headphones off, turning around as Lennox made her way through the living room. 

"Hey, you're back early, class doesn't start until nine." She smiled, swiveling on her stool as Lennox looked at the clock on her phone. 

It was five past seven - she had at least another hour before she would have needed to make her way back to campus. 

"Yeah, well I figured the earlier the better right?" She sighed, putting her bag down on the counter as she walked passed Skye, who noticed the dark circles under her eyes. 

"You look exhausted. Did you actually get any sleep last night?" 

Lennox thought about her long night caring for her father, and how grateful she felt when Will showed up at six thirty saying he'd gotten off early and could take over from her. She'd used the opportunity to come back to college before her dad had woken up, and was feeling slightly off about doing so. Telling Skye the truth would've meant going into story mode about what happened, and at that particular moment in time, telling another story was the last thing Lennox wanted to do. 

"I got a few hours. It was just weird being home." She covered. 

Without a second thought, Skye had believed her. "Yeah I can imagine, I bet it was nice to spend some time with your dad though." 

"Yeah it was." Would've been nicer if he was conscious for most of it. 

"Did you talk to him about...you know who?" Skye took another mouthful of her yoghurt as Lennox closed the fridge and turned around with an eyebrow raised. 

"You know who?" 

"I'm sorry okay? I don't know what to call her, it's the best I could come up with." Skye sighed with a frown on her face, Lennox resonating with her defeated inflection. 

"I know it's confusing, and no, I didn't. I don't know how I'm supposed to talk to it yet, but I'll figure it out." 

"Well what about you? Has she gotten in touch with you?" 

"No." 

"I don't know what's worse; the fact that Kaila wasn't even Kaila when she was here or that now she's gone and we don't know what she's up to." 

"Probably conferring with the spirits if I had to guess." Lennox suggested, sitting opposite Skye as she shook her head. 

"I wish we knew what to do. Maybe you could try and contact Ekaterina through some sort of communication ritual, you guys could talk it out and then it'd be over." 

Lennox let out a laugh at her friend's enthusiasm. "Yeah, somehow I don't think that's gonna be enough to stop a 600-year-old witch Skye."