Austin slams the apartment door open and shut, throwing his jacket and boots down on the floor.
“You would not believe -”
He’s met with a chorus of shushes. Austin blinks, momentarily offended, and notices four figures lingering around the darkened living room, all floating a few inches off the ground, all staring at him.
“Landis just fell asleep,” Danton hisses.
Austin nods and moves into the kitchen, turning his back on the ghosts and rummaging through the fridge. He’s starving. He ate dinner a few hours ago, before coming back to the library to meet Walker and Mac, but his stomach feels empty and yawning like he hasn’t eaten all day. He takes a container of leftover rotisserie chicken out, and sits down at the kitchen table to eat it cold, shoveling greasy strips of skin and meat into his mouth with his fingers. Danton, Wes, Mal, and Jeremy follow him quietly into the kitchen.
“S’Otter asleep?” Austin asks them as they assemble around the table. He’s met with nods from all sides, and swallows down another few mouthfuls of chicken before asking his next question. “How’d the thing with the witches go? They went, right? Otter said they were going out in the woods to do some coven shit.”
“Oh, you know, about par for the course,” Mal says dryly. “Landis got stabbed and almost died.”
Austin freezes, a piece of meat halfway to his mouth. “What?”
“He said the coven tried to use him as a sacrifice,” Jeremy says, nervously folding into himself, crossing his arms over his chest. “To bring the lake back, you know. To get it to possess him and be their familiar or whatever.”
“Jesus,” Austin says under his breath.
“It’s pretty fucked up,” Wes agrees.
Austin puts the lid back on the container of chicken and wipes his greasy hands on his jeans, thinking. I should have gone with them. The library thing could have waited, but I decided to do a pointless stakeout while Landis and Otter were out getting hurt and lost in the woods. Some fucking friend I am. Some fucking boyfriend.
“Is Landis…okay?” he asks carefully. “And Otter?”
“Both fine,” Jeremy confirms, and Austin feels a weight lift off his chest. “Landis had a big gash up his arm from the witches getting his blood, but Otter stitched it up for him.”
“But,” Danton says, then stops abruptly, the four ghosts sharing a look amongst themselves that Austin can’t read.
“But what?” he asks. Danton shakes his head, looking away with his lips shut in a tight line.
“Landis said the witches did manage to summon whatever kind of spirit or demon was in the lake,” Wes says.
“Only now it’s not in the lake anymore,” Mal adds, dripping with disdain. “Now nobody knows where the hell it is, and it’s already killed one person, all because Landis decided to play fucking boy adventurer out in the forest.”
Austin pushes his chair back from the table. “I’m gonna ignore that you just insulted Landis. Go back to the part where the thing from the lake is walking around killing people?”
Mal glares. “Fuck you. He murdered me, I think I’ve got the right to -”
“Look,” Austin says,” I’m not going to get into that argument with you, because as much as I’d love to, I’ve also already had books and tables thrown at me tonight, been treated to a two-story fall, and found the bones of a murdered child in a cardboard box in the building where I work. So you’re going to tell me what you know, and you’re going to do it without insulting Landis, because I like to think I was raised better than to take the night I’ve had out on you.”
The ghosts are silent. Mal looks stunned for a moment, then lets out a barking laugh.
“What is this, fucking good cop, bad cop? You know you can’t follow through on that threat.”
Austin smiles. “No, but I can wake Otter up and get him in here.”
“Alright, hey, there’s no reason to do that,” Mal says quickly. “You want to know about the lake? What do you want to know?”
Austin raises an eyebrow, shifting his chair back into place. “Start with the part where someone died.”
“Oh, yeah,” Danton says before Mal can open his mouth again, probably trying to prevent him from pissing Austin off. “So, Landis said the witches used his blood to summon it there, right? Only instead of possessing him like they wanted it to, the lake grabbed one of the witches and, uh…ate her.”
“I thought it drowned her?” Jeremy asks.
Wes shakes his head. “Landis made it sound more like she got absorbed or something.”
“Well, regardless,” Mal says, “she’s dead now.”
So the entity from the lake has a physical body now. Austin bites the inside of his cheek. That can’t be good. Especially not if it’s still planning on killing everyone in town, like it was while inside his body. And to make matters worse, Austin isn’t sure that making the entity feel pain will be enough to trick it again. Now that it’s got its own body, it’s probably a lot more resilient than a human shell. Which means it might not even notice being stabbed.
“You said nobody knows where it went?” he asks Mal, who nods.
“Not a clue. Landis blacked out - typical - and it was gone when he woke up. Said Otter saw it disappear.”
“He thought maybe it possessed the head witch or whatever,” Wes chimes in.
“But the witches told Landis it was with him and Otter,” Jeremy says softly.
Austin chews at his cheek more, until he can taste the coppery tang of blood filling his mouth. Shit. There’s no way to know where the entity is, then - it sounds like it either vanished to somewhere else, or isn’t actively possessing anyone. Austin’s seen passive possession before, and with malevolent entities, it’s never pretty. Usually even the person being possessed doesn’t know they’re sharing their body with something else. The entity from the lake could be disguising itself as an intrusive thought in someone’s head right now, a night terror or unpleasant memory. There’s no way to know where it is until it rears its ugly head again and makes a play. Austin’s stomach churns.
“What’s wrong?” Danton asks. “You’re making a face.”
Austin sighs, dragging his hands down his cheeks. “Rough night. And I don’t like it when demons make me play by their rules.”
Mal cocks his head. “What, there’s no magic spell or something you can use to make it pop back up?”
“Even if there was, I don’t know how to kill it,” Austin groans. “God! I hate this!”
“So,” Wes says slowly, “what do we do now?”
“Nothing.”
Austin’s voice is steady, even if he doesn’t feel very determined or resolute. The ghosts all look at him again, except Jeremy, who looks towards the living room. Towards Landis, sleeping soundly on the couch.
“There’s nothing we can do?” he asks, finally.
“We can wait,” Austin says. “We can wait, and hope that it doesn’t kill anyone else before we figure out where it’s at.”
The ghosts seem to take it as a satisfactory answer, and slowly disperse from the kitchen, each headed off in a different direction to somewhere Austin can only imagine. Only Danton lingers behind - Austin can feel his presence still in the room, lingering in the doorframe. Austin looks up at him.
“Yeah?”
“When you find it,” Danton says, and there’s no doubt that he’s talking about the lake entity, “I want you to kill it and make sure it can’t fucking come back, ever again.”
There’s no implicit threat in his voice, no anger, but his tone is more serious than Austin’s ever heard it. Austin thinks the request over, and chuckles.
“Yeah. I’ll see what I can do.”
i love austin and paper museum bonding over horrible demonic blood sacrifice talk <3