Prophecy: Tome of Skin

9. Next to the Devil

Percy greeted Austin and Toby with exhaustion when they finally arrived. It wasn't like they'd kept her waiting long, and even though they'd come over as soon as she'd sent word-via text, via Dill-she still acted as though they had taken too much of her time. As if the concept meant anything to her in her present state. Still, she floated about excitedly, rattling off the list of things she'd tried already before even telling them what she had wanted them to come over for in the first place. It wasn't until they both stood there staring at her blankly that she redacted her diatribe and started again, with more detail than before.

"One of you has to do something about Myrna, she hasn't come out of her room in like over a week." She threw her ghostly hands into the air.

"You were right to be worried, I'll go check on her." Austin responded, taking action immediately and heading for the stairs.

"Worried? No, I'm not worried, she left me here to manage her shop by myself! Who does that?" Percy's remarks were not met with kind eyes, and once Austin had disappeared from sight she turned to Toby. "I really did try everything, sympathy, ice cream-even old reruns of my favorite show, Danger in Denial!"

"Yeah, I don't give a shit what you did. Myrna's tough, she'll be okay. I get why you wanted Austin, but what am I doing here?" He cut her off before she could twaddle on any further.

"Excuse me, what crawled up your ass and died? I thought, oh rude one, that maybe we could try to figure out what we're supposed to be doing about the whole mass destruction situation. You know, Angel, Monica, super soldiers." She did her best to lead him to it without painting the whole picture. She still remembered that he was not supposed to know that any of them knew about the prophecy's renaissance-though that had made it kind of hard to explain her reappearance to him. Ultimately they told him it was an ongoing mystery.

"You don't need me for that, I'll just go ahead and recuse myself," Dill chuckled, moving quickly towards the door. He knew that if he stayed and listened to the conversation he'd be forced to relay everything to their enemies later. Stephanie's coercion had evolved since she originally shot him into submission-she'd brought a telepathic demon last time to make sure he wasn't lying or holding out on her.

"Oh no, no," putting on a playful frown, Percy turned to him, her voice lightening as she held out her hand. "Stay, pickle."

"It doesn't matter if he stays or goes, why would I waste my time planning strategy with the least effective members of the team? What are you going to do, haunt them to death?" Toby actually laughed at his own joke, his statement earning him a scornful look from the both of them.

"Need I say it again? Rude. Keep it up and I'll haunt you instead. Anyways, you can't just sit back and let them keep going, you've been, like, super lazy lately. Hello, have you noticed the mayhem that's been going on around us?" She shrugged dramatically, bugging her eyes out at him.

"You shut your damn mouth." He jammed his finger in her direction, his anger springing to life in an instant.

"Hey! We're all friends here," Dill stepped closer, holding his hands out in an attempt to calm the dissension between the two of them. It didn't take empathetic powers to see what was up with the both of them. Percy had made quick work of acclimating herself to the world she lived in, to the prophecy and what role she might play. Whether she showed it or not, it was now important to her. Toby on the other hand, he was feeling the weight of Angel's words, and to hear them echoed by an ally was not soothing, definitely far from the reassurance that he was craving.