Bloody Genius

For as long as Terry could remember, Mickey had been there. He was really more of a brother than a friend. He knew everything about Terry; his hopes, his dreams, his secret fears (of which there were plenty), and he was always the one Terry went to, when the need for advice arose. He would always give it, of course, but not without his own secret spite. When would it be his turn? When would Mickey get a chance? He couldn’t remember the last time he had even seen the outside world, let alone been allowed to walk around in it. Mickey was patient, remarkably so, but his patience was just about spent.

Terry was thirty-eight, now, but he looked about fifty. He had never been particularly healthy, and Mickey sure hadn’t helped, on that front. Mickey and Terry shared one body, and they both took whatever vitality they could from it. If Terry would just let Mickey out once in a while, it wouldn’t be a problem.

But Terry never let Mickey out. Not anymore.

Terry worked in a machine shop, as a lathe operator. He fed bits of metal through a slot, and used a rotating blade to shave it down to the required specifications. It was somewhat mindless work, which suited Terry just fine, as his mind had never really been his strongest attribute. The machine did most of the measuring for him, so, after getting it set up, he could just feed the slot all day. This drove Mickey crazy. Not only was it depressingly boring, but it gave him just enough hope that he had to pay attention the entire time. Here, directly in front of their face, for eight hours a day, was his ticket to freedom. But Terry was usually very good at following safety procedures, which only made Mickey feel like the stupid bastard was mocking him. It was like he was in prison, and his jailer had left the key on the floor outside the cell, just barely out of his reach.

“Stick your face into the lathe,” Mickey would say, and sometimes, Terry would consider it. But there is a vast gulf between consideration and action, and that’s where Mickey resided.

“No, I really shouldn’t, Mickey. You know that’s against the rules.”

“Oh, who gives a fuck about rules?” Mickey would respond. “Rules are for scaredy-cats, my man. People who are too afraid to do anything cool. You’re not a scaredy-cat, are you Terry?”

“No, I’m not a scaredy-cat, Mickey, but I need this job.”

“No, you don’t, Terry. You don’t need anything, except me. And you’ve got that. I’ll take care of everything. Come on, it’ll only take a second. After that, you won’t have to worry about jobs, or rules, or any of that lame shit. It’ll be fun. You like having fun, don’t you, Terry?”

“Yeah, I like having fun.”

“Well, there you go! When’s the last time you had fun, huh? What has it been, ten, twelve years?”

“That was fifteen years ago, Mickey. You know that.”

“That’s right! Fifteen years! Wow, time flies, don’t it, Terry? You were just a kid, then. Twenty-three years old (or, years young, am I right?). Felt good, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, it felt good.”

“Then, come on! Let’s do it again! There’s nothing stopping you. Stick your face into the lathe.”

But Terry always resisted.

Terry’s life was nothing special. He had no real friends, other than Mickey, and the only time he ever left his apartment was to go to work at the machine shop. Every day, he got his breakfast from the gas station down the street from his apartment, and every night, he ordered takeout from the local Chinese restaurant. Lunch was either a hamburger from McDonald’s, or chicken nuggets from Wendy’s. Terry liked routine, even if that routine was monstrously sad.

But he also like games. Video games, board games, games on his phone. If Mickey could turn his freedom into a game, there might be a chance he could escape.

“Okay, Terry,” he said one day, in the middle of work. “I have an idea.”

“What’s that, Mickey?” Terry asked.

“I wanna see how close you can get to the lathe, without actually touching it. I bet you can’t get closer than a few feet away.”

“I’m a few feet away now, Mickey. All I have to do is lean in a little, and I can beat that.”

Terry positioned his head slightly closer to the lathe.

“Alright! Good job, Terry! I was wrong. But that’s probably the closest you could get. I mean, don’t wanna touch it, right?”

“No, I don’t. But I could get closer than that, if I wanted.”

“Not too close, though, Terr. After all, we don’t wanna break the rules.”

Terry laughed. “There’s still lotsa room, Mickey. Watch this!” Terry leaned in even closer, only a few inches away from the spinning blade. Mickey thrummed with anticipation. This was the closest he had been in years. Terry stared at the lathe as if transfixed, and Mickey could tell he was thinking about finishing the job. It would be so easy. Then, Mickey would be in charge.

“Woah, easy there, Terry!” The voice came from behind. Terry straightened and turned around, to see his supervisor, Alonzo, standing there with a concerned look on his face.

“Oh, hi, Alonzo.”

“Hi yourself, Terry. You okay? That was pretty close to the blade, there.” Alonzo was a very nice man. Terry knew that if he had had any other supervisor, he probably would have been fired years ago.

“Yeah, sorry, Alonzo. I guess I just kinda spaced out, for a second.”

“Okay. Well, be careful, bud. Wouldn’t want anything to happen, would we?”

"No. Sorry.”

Alonzo slapped Terry on the back and moved on. Mickey was furious. They had been so close.

It happened a couple weeks later. The crazy thing was, Mickey had nothing to do with it. He had been taking a nap, when Terry accidentally dropped a metal piece, trying to fit it in the slot. You’re supposed to turn the machine off and unplug the power cord, when this happens, but for some reason, Terry didn’t do that. Later, Mickey would make him tell Alonzo that it had merely slipped his mind, but that didn’t seem like the whole story. It was more likely a purposeful forgetfulness, Terry subconsciously putting himself in a position where he could finally let Mickey out. Because the truth was, Terry did always like it whenever Mickey drove. It was so much more fun than being the one in charge, having to make all the decisions all the time. But it usually turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. They’d have fun, sure, but it would only be for a night or two, and then they would have to move again. They’d lived here in Dallas since the last time. Fifteen years. A record. But apparently, some part of Terry’s spirit had become restless, and even if he wouldn’t say it, he wanted out just as much as Mickey did.

So, he didn’t unplug the lathe, didn’t even turn it off. He reached down to retrieve the metal piece and slipped, and the blade tore into his forehead. Only for a second, but that’s all it took. A gash appeared right above the eyes, and almost immediately, their face was covered with blood. It was enough for Mickey to play around in, and for the first time in fifteen years, he breathed fresh air.

It was beautiful. He took total control of their body, moving it down the hall towards the restroom, despite the pain. Mickey liked the pain, because it told him he was free. He would take all the pain in the world, if it meant he didn’t have to be cooped up in that simpleton’s veins any longer. This was it. He was never going back inside. Not this time. Not ever again. Whatever it took, he was going to hold on to this feeling.

At first, he thought the bleeding wasn’t going to stop, and Terry would keel over and die, right there on the restroom floor. That would be no good, as Mickey needed their body, at least for the time being. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been ethereal, and he was actually afraid of how he would take it. He’d heard of others like him, who, once released from their hosts, simply evaporated into nothingness, unable to contain themselves. What a waste that would be, to get lost in the ether, when he had just gotten out.

Thankfully, there was a first aid kit in the restroom closet, and he was able to slow the bleeding down enough that an uneven scab began to take hold. The wound would probably leave a scar, Mickey thought. Let it. One more trip out, and he would remember how to leave this body forever. It was crazy how much was already coming back to him, how natural it felt to be in control. Terry had never had any interest in learning what Mickey was, just happy to have a friend, and Mickey had thus receded into complacency.

But no more. He’d never felt more alive than in this moment. This was his re-birth, and he had enough energy to accomplish anything. And when Alonzo opened the restroom door to check on Terry, Mickey knew exactly what he was going to do.

Maggie Blalock was burning out. Used to be, she could crank one of these shows out in a day, no problem. She had “experts” sitting on deck, ready to talk with incredible confidence on any topic imaginable, and enough b-roll that she usually didn’t even have to send a crew out into the field anymore. Hers was the cheapest show to produce the network had, but it consistently got some of the highest numbers. That it was a piece of shit didn’t really factor in anyone’s math.

But she was set to start shooting the new season next week, and she had nothing for the premiere. At least nothing that lit her world on fire. She had lost her edge.

“What about a cult?” she asked her producing partner Claude, over bagels and coffee, just four days before the shoot.

Claude shook his head. “Nobody cares about cults these days. Everybody’s either in one or knows somebody who is. I mean, if you have footage of a real creepy one, sure, I guess, but it’s not gonna get asses in seats.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m just so over doing shows about old haunted hospitals and werewolves. I want to do something believable.”

“Maggie, nothing we put on the air is even remotely believable.”

“And yet, people believe us.”

“Only crazy people and soccer moms.”

“I find it interesting that you delineate between the two.”

Claude laughed. “Yeah, well, there’s definitely some overlap. But most soccer moms aren’t nuts. They only believe this shit because they’re bored.”

“Bored and rich,” Maggie said.

“Too true, Mags. Which is why we need a better idea than ‘cult’.”

“Okay, then, hotshot, you think of something.”

“Come on, I thought up the last one.”

“Um, you most certainly did not.”

“Yes I did! Remember?” Claude said.

“Of course I don’t remember, because it didn’t happen. You just wanted to do another episode about aliens mutilating cows, but I thought up the chupacabra angle. I had to convince you.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot we changed that one.”

“Oh, yeah. So, nice try, bucko. I had an idea, it’s your turn.”

“Okay. Huh…let’s see…oh! Stonehenge?”

“Seriously?” Maggie said.

“What?”

“We just did Stonehenge, three episodes ago. Do you even work here?”

It went on like this for another half an hour, at which point Maggie gave up and headed back to the office.

Her desk was always a chaotic mess, so she almost didn’t see the envelope someone had left there. It hadn’t been mailed, as it didn’t have any postage, but it had her name written on it. If this had been ten years ago, she would have been afraid to open it, thinking it would be full of ricin or anthrax, but that wasn’t the style of today’s whackjob terrorist. Nowadays, if some loony got a vendetta against an organization (say, a basic cable network focused primarily on the supernatural), they would just shoot the place up, and be done with it. Just another reason no decade would ever live up to the nineties. These things used to take at least a little bit of creativity.

So, she ripped open the envelope and looked inside. All it contained were a few newspaper clippings from Dallas, dating from last week. Someone had already highlighted and circled certain bits of information they thought were important. Maggie found the earliest story and started reading.

Alonzo Tompkins, fifty-two, was by all accounts a good man. Went to church every Sunday (and it was a regular church, too. No buck-wild fire and brimstone deal), donated to charity, coached little-league in the spring. HIs wife had died of cancer seven years before, and he never remarried. He had held down the same job for over twenty years, managing the floor of a local machine shop. A normal life. Better than many. Nobody could think of any reason why someone would break into his house, in the middle of the night, and chop him up with an ax.

After reading this first story, Maggie had no idea why someone had thought she would be interested. It was spooky, to be sure, but it wasn’t exactly up her alley. Violent murders happened every day, and even the ones where no motive could be determined still belonged in the land of normal. Maggie wasn’t worried about normal. She needed something weird. But there were more clippings, so she decided to at least read them, before coming to a conclusion.

The second one was really just a rehash of the first, with an added statement from a department spokesperson saying that they had a suspect for the killing, but that they were not prepared to disclose who that suspect was, just yet. This confused Maggie even more, as the only thing less interesting than a normal murder was a normal murder that got solved right away. Really, why had someone gone through all this trouble to give this to her?

The final story revealed who the suspect was, saying that a statewide manhunt was underway, but that as of yet it had come up fruitless. This was a little better, as manhunts tend to put people on edge, to get them thinking about who (or what) might be waiting for them just around the corner. And the picture of the guy was definitely spooky enough. His name was Terry Loeb, a thirty-eight-year-old loner who had worked with Mr. Tompkins at the machine shop for the past fifteen years. People tended to stay away from Terry, but none of his coworkers were willing to say they thought he was a killer. A sad, pathetic man, not too bright and definitely unattractive, but nothing more than that. And he apparently had no reason to want to murder Alonzo Tompkins.

“Alonzo was always so nice to Terry,” one guy said. “Too nice, really. Any one of us could’ve taken on Terry’s job, easy, but Alonzo kept him on, when he didn’t have to. He was such a good guy, Alonzo. I just can’t believe this.”

But the case against Terry Loeb was solid. Police found his blood at the scene, way more blood than there should have been, seeing as Tompkins had been in bed when Terry attacked, and he didn’t appear to have put up a fight. A neighbor of Alonzo’s heard a loud noise, and had just managed to get to the window in time to see a large, ugly man stumbling off the front porch, his entire face absolutely covered in blood. His own blood, according to the police. They found a spot, along the side of the house, where they thought he had cut himself, starting the flow before he even kicked the door in.

That was definitely unsettling, Maggie thought, but she still didn’t know if it was what she was looking for. That is, until she saw the little note the person had scrawled on the bottom of the third newspaper clipping. It said, simply, “Blood Jinn.”

Mickey knew they were on to him and Terry. It would be worse than the other times. In the past, whenever Terry let him out, they would cut loose, but usually end up doing something only remotely naughty. They had only killed a couple people before, and always in ways that looked like accidents. Mickey liked the power in knowing that something was about to happen to someone, and letting it. He always knew he contained the capacity for outright murder, but he had never crossed that line. At least not that he could remember. The truth was, he still couldn’t really recall what he had done before meeting Terry, as his and the buffoon’s minds had been so symbiotically linked. He knew a few basics about his life before, but he just couldn’t remember any of the gritty details.

Mickey knew he was at least a thousand years old, though he figured we was probably much older. After all, people had known of his kind for a couple thousand years, and he did have some vague memory of humans learning that they existed. There were all sorts of names for what he was, but he couldn’t remember which one (if any) was the official title. Labeling things was such a human concept, that it was just as likely that he had no real name. He only went by “Mickey” because he first awoke inside Terry while Terry was in a movie theater, watching some stupid cartoon about a talking mouse. He had slept for generations, before that, and his arrival was just as big a shock to him as it was to Terry. He hated the kid from the moment he met him, but he was stuck. It was another five years before Mickey remembered that he could step outside of his meat prison, if Terry would only open his veins enough for him to get a grip. But Terry was a good kid, and he only gave in to Mickey’s goading a few times, throughout his childhood and adolescence. The last time, Terry had been twenty-three, and since then he’d been capable enough to resist the urge. Considering it all, Mickey had to admit that Terry was much stronger than he had any cause to be.

But even the strongest walls crumble, eventually, and Mickey had finally managed to demolish the barriers Terry had built. He was out, now, in total control, and it felt fantastic. When he set Terry’s apartment on fire, Terry offered hardly any protest. He seemed to know it was necessary. He had given Mickey his face, just before they went into Alonzo’s house, and that meant that the police probably had lots of evidence against them. They were going to have to start over again. Except this time, they couldn’t just fudge a few papers and get some low-paying, no questions asked job and move into some low-rent, no questions asked apartment. They had made the news. The TV people even knew his real last name, which he hadn’t used, since the last incident. They were on the run now, and Mickey could feel Terry’s fear, boiling just beneath the surface. Mickey was afraid too, but in this exhilarating way that only pushed him to go on, to move deeper into the darkness than ever before. He was just getting started.

“Blood Jinn?” Claude asked. “You mean like a genie, like Aladdin?”

“Um, kinda. Yeah,” Maggie said.

“Oh, come on, Mags. I know we gotta show to put on, but this is ridiculous.”

“What’s so ridiculous about it?”

“Do I really have to spell it out? Some maniac cuts his face and then chops up his boss, and you think it’s because he’s possessed by the ghost of Robin Williams?”

Maggie laughed. “Not what I think, but it would work for an episode.”

“Where did you even get this idea?”

“The newspaper.”

“The newspaper,” Claude said.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Which newspaper? You said this happened in Dallas.”

“It was a Dallas newspaper. Someone…left it on my desk.”

“On your desk? Who was it?”

“I don’t know. I was having breakfast with you when they left it.”

“You know this sounds crazy, right? Like some kook snuck into your office and left you some Muslim propaganda, and now you’re considering putting it on television.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Maggie said. “I looked it up. The concept of Jinn actually predates Islam, maybe even by hundreds of years. Lots of different religions, even Judaism, feature entities like them. Some people even think that the word comes from the same Latin root as ‘genius,’ which used to mean, like, an outside divine presence, guiding a person through their entire life, influencing them to, I don’t know, create works of art, or something. Kinda like a guardian angel.”

“A guardian angel that tells you to kill your boss. Soccer moms are gonna love that,” Claude said.

“Look, we don’t actually have to pick any one of these and say that’s what it is. I think it’s entirely likely that all these concepts are just attempts to explain the same thing: an invisible, influencing force, living inside a person, making them do things.”

“You just defined schizophrenia,” Claude said.

“Yeah, Islamic scholars have been debating that connection for centuries,” Maggie said. “Claude, I’m not trying to sell you on this idea as an idea. Okay? I’m telling you this is our episode. You said it yourself, nothing we put on the air is even remotely believable. But this works. I mean, the guy covers his face with his own blood, kills a guy, and goes on the run. Is still running, right now, and we have a reason to do a show about him. This is the episode.”

Claude sighed. “Come on, Mags. This isn’t your first rodeo. You have to know why I’m against this. And it’s not because of the idea.”

Maggie nodded. She was glad he finally came out and admitted his real problem with the Jinn premise. It meant she had already won. “Of course. We’re gonna have to send a crew to Dallas. Probably end up taking most of our budget for the season. But I wasn’t the one who agreed to operate on such tight purse strings. We bring in more viewers than almost any other program on the network, and for less than half the cost. My job isn’t to negotiate funding. That’s your department. My job is to get people watching, and this is what I got.”

Claude was defeated. He knew it the second he saw the look on her face that she was going to win this one, but he had to at least put up a fight, for posterity’s sake. “Do you even have any idea what you’re gonna do, when you get to Dallas?”

“I already called the police department, but they’re dealing with a lot of their own PR shit right now, and they don’t want anything to do with us.”

“Okay.”

“But I got a hold of this private investigator, and he said he’d love to help out. He even knows a couple people in the area we can talk to about Jinn.”

“What kinda people?” Claude asked.

“We’re a paranormal investigation society,” the guy said on the phone. “People call us with all sorts of problems. Hauntings, lost time, memory theft. You know, odd occurrences.”

Maggie, talking on speakerphone with Claude next to her, nodded her head. “Yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about, uh, Jason, was it?”

“Yes, ma’am. I started this outfit over ten years ago, and since then, we’ve become the top paranormal society in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex.”

“Well, that’s very impressive, Jason. Have you ever looked into any sort of possession? Like a demon, or some other malevolent spirit, taking control of a person’s body and making them do things they otherwise wouldn’t do?”

“Oh, sure,” Jason said. “We’ve done that kinda thing. Been to a couple exorcisms, myself. Pretty wild. Intense stuff. Why, you know someone who’s been possessed?”

“Um, maybe. We’re television producers, doing some research for an upcoming episode, and we’re probably gonna be heading down to your neck of the woods pretty soon. We’d like to interview you, on camera, if you’re okay with that.”

“Okay? Lady, I’m more’n’ okay with it. That sounds great. You gonna pay me?”

“Of course. We’ll work something out that I think you’ll find fair.”

“Well, alright. When ya comin’?”

“Our plane leaves at eight am tomorrow, so we should be in town by around one, one-thirty.”

“DFW or Love Field?” Jason asked.

Maggie looked to Claude. “Oh, I don’t know. Claude?”

“DFW,” Claude said.

“Perfect! That’s not too far from our offices. Just gimme a holler when you get in, and I can send someone to come pick ya up.”

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Claude said. “We can manage our own transportation.”

“No offense, uh Claude, right?”

“Claude, yeah.”

“Okay, well, no offense, Claude, but we don’t let anyone into our office unless they’ve been cleansed of all evil influence. If you were local, we coulda sent someone to your place to clean ya out, but since you’re flyin’ in, it’ll just be easier if we can knock out the cleansing process in the car on the way to the office.”

“Oh, come on--”

Maggie interjected, “No problem at all, Jason. I’ll give you a call as soon as we land, and we’ll meet your guy by the terminal.”

“Great,” Jason said. “Nothing personal, just how we do business.”

“We understand.”

Claude rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Just one more thing,” Jason continued. “It won’t be a guy you’re lookin’ for. It’ll be my wife, Charlotte. She’ll have a sign, or something.”

“Awesome. Thanks a lot, and we’ll see you tomorrow.” Maggie hung up.

Claude cleared his throat. “What the hell was that? Cleansing process?”

“Claude, you’ve dealt with these kinds of people before. Compared to some of the other mental cases we’ve used over the years, that was downright professional.”

Their plane actually got in a little early, but when Maggie called Jason, he said that his wife was already on her way. They had just grabbed their bags before the tall woman with black hair and two full tattoo sleeves walked up to them and introduced herself. The car was already waiting, she said, and they would have plenty of time to make sure their spiritual vessels were devoid of any malignant entities, en route to the office.

“Sounds great,” Maggie said.

The “car” was actually a huge black van with the words “Dallas Ghost Hunters” spray-painted on the side. It was about as conspicuous as you could get, and more than a few people were staring at the party as they loaded in. Charlotte seemed not to notice, or, if she did, she was just so used to it that it didn’t even register. Maggie simply saw it as funny, but Claude looked like he might die from embarrassment at any moment.

The van had two bench seats, and the one in front was turned around, so the passengers could face each other. Claude and Maggie sat in the back row, while Charlotte sat in the front, in between Mick, the camera guy, and Louis, the sound guy. Neither one of them had any opinion about what was going on. All these crew guys ever cared about was maintaining the equipment, getting the shot, then hitting the local bar when the day was done. This was just another of a long string of incredibly bizarre assignments.

The driver pulled out, and soon they were headed down the highway. Charlotte reached under the seat and pulled out a black bag, containing the tools she would need for her cleansing ritual. First, she removed four crystals and handed one to each of the four visitors. “Hold these up, in front of your chest, like this,” she said, positioning her empty hands in front of her as if she were clutching a candle. Then, she pulled out a bundle of sage and a cigarette lighter. She lit the sage on fire and started waving it through the air. Pretty soon, the van filled with smoke.

Claude coughed. “Can we crack a window, or something?”

“Not yet,” Charlotte responded. “This is part of it. If you have any spirits residing within you, this will smoke them out. Once I’m certain they’ve abandoned your bodies, we can open the window, and they’ll be sucked out, along with the smoke.”

Maggie smirked. “Do we have evil spirits inside us, can you tell?”

Charlotte smiled. “You don’t, sweetie. You’ve got something in there, but it’s nice. This won’t kick that outta you. But you,” she turned her gaze, now cold and piercing, to Claude, “you’ve got some bad juju, amigo. I just hope we can get it all out, before we make it to the office. If not, I’m afraid you’re gonna have to stay outside, while the rest of us do business.”

Maggie, Mick, and Louis all burst out laughing, but Charlotte remained stern. What she had said was in fact not a joke. Claude was clearly upset by all of this, but he didn’t say anything, having finally given up any hope of resisting whatever ridiculous current he was floating on.

Ten minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot for DGH headquarters, and, to no one’s surprise, Claude was ruled still too unclean to enter. He hung by the door and made a few necessary calls on his cell phone.

The office was one of those strip-mall business spaces, the walls still mostly bare drywall, the ceiling that spongy, porous foam material you see in community college libraries. It looked unfinished, but no one could say it wasn’t lived in. There were boxes of files stacked on the floor, next to loose piles of strange equipment that looked like something out of a Spielberg movie. In the middle of the main room was a large conference table, itself covered almost completely with books and three-ring binders full of printed-out documents. Jason Slaughter, the owner and senior investigator of Dallas Ghost Hunters, was seated at the head, and he rose from his chair when he saw his guests walk in.

He motioned to the group. “Where’s that other guy? Claude?”

Maggie chuckled and extended her hand to Jason. “He’s outside. Too unclean.”

Jason winked. “Yeah, I had a feeling about him. Please, sit down.” Maggie, Mick, and Louis sat down, while Charlotte wandered off into the other room. “Don’t worry about her,” Jason said. “I’ll fill her in on all the details later. She hates these little meetings. Thinks they take all the spontaneity out of it.” He raised his voice, to ensure Charlotte could hear him. “Which is the whole point, right? I mean, when I’m huntin’ ghosts, spontaneity is probably the last thing I want.”

Charlotte re-appeared at the door and flipped Jason off, behind his back. She had a mischievous look on her face, and something told Maggie that Jason knew exactly what she was doing. This was all part of their sales pitch, to show what a tight-knit group they were, that they were comfortable with one another, and that they were able to delegate responsibilities to whichever one was the more capable. Maggie was charmed, but it was unnecessary. She had already paid Jason for his participation, considerably more than he had even asked for. In many ways, cable television was still the wild west, and she knew that more often than not, producers were looking to fuck people like Jason over. But she had never liked that about the business, and she had definitely never cared about the network’s bottom line. Besides, having an organization like DGH in your good graces could end up being incredibly beneficial for everybody, especially if this Terry Loeb guy managed to elude the authorities for a little while longer, and they were able to milk a few episodes out of it. But she appreciated the effort, nonetheless.

“Alright,” Jason said, “what exactly is it you wanna talk to me about? You mentioned demonic possession, on the phone, so I pulled up a few of our old cases. This one fella, got back from vacation, only speakin’ Latin. Never knew it before. We brought in this preacher guy, fixed him right up.”

“Uh-huh,” Maggie said. “You ever see a case where the possessed individual was made to do something? Like something violent, or at least out of character?”

“Well, that does happen, sometimes. You see it mostly with kids. But, tell ya’ the truth, I think most cases involving children aren’t real possessions.”

“Really? Why not?”

Jason sighed. “Well, being a kid’s tough, ain’t it? Everything’s confusing, nobody listens to you, you don’t know the right way to tell people how you feel. It can be easy to get kinda…fed up with all that. Get all filled up with frustration, and just, you know, explode. Do and say things you don’t wanna, but that you can’t really stop. We had this one case, this woman called us to exorcise a spirit outta her son. Only four years old. When we got there, we could tell she had been abusing him. I mean, it was bad. I think she really believed he was possessed, but what he really was was…something else.”

“Oh, my God,” Maggie said. “That’s so sad. What did you do?”

“We did what the mom hired us to do. Got rid of the demon. Called CPS on her ass. He’s livin’ in a foster home now, comes and visits every now and then.”

Maggie’s eyes began welling with tears. “Do you and Charlotte have any kids?” she asked.

Jason smiled. “Not yet, no. Some day, maybe.”

“You’ll make wonderful parents.”

“Thank ya’ ma’am. But anyway, we have worked a couple cases like what you’re talkin’ about. And it seems to me like you have a particular one in mind.”

Maggie nodded. “Yes. Have you heard the news, about the guy who broke into his boss’s house and killed him.”

“You mean that guy who slashed his own face and then cut up that fella with an ax?”

“Yeah, that’s who I’m talking about. What do you think about it?”

“I think it’s pretty fucked up, if you’ll excuse me. But, if you’re askin’ if I think he was possessed by a demon, then, I don’t know what to tell you. Hadn’t really given it much thought. I figured he was just a crazy man. Don’t need anything else to call him.”

“That’s what I thought, too, at first. But someone brought to my attention the idea that maybe the guy had been taken over by a spirit. Specifically a…genie.” Maggie retreated slightly, worried that Jason was going to think she was stupid.

But Jason waved a dismissive hand in the air and said, “You don’t gotta be afraid to say stuff like that, here. It’s not any more nuts than most the cases we work. I don’t see why bein’ a genie would be any different from bein’ a ghost.”

“Well, that’s good to know. Are you familiar with genies?”

“Not really, to be honest. I just know some a’ the basics.”

“Like what?”

“Well, they’re spirits that you gotta catch, either in some sorta vessel, or in a place. I’ve never heard of genies possessing people, but, like I said, I don’t know too much about them. I do know that they’re drawn to ruined places.”

“Ruined?” Maggie asked. “What do you mean?”

“Like, destroyed cities, old, broken buildings, stuff like that.”

“That’s interesting.” This gave Maggie an idea for a shoot. They could find some old abandoned building in the area, and film Jason and Charlotte walking around inside it, looking for any evil spirits. That way, they could get the footage they need without actually having to look for Terry Loeb for real.

She had Mick and Louis shoot a quick interview in which Jason claimed to be an expert on demonic possession, specifically as it pertained to jinn. At first, Jason hesitated, because he had no real expertise in the field, but Maggie assured him that their viewers didn’t care. He probably did know more about these topics than most people alive, if for no other reason than the fact that people didn’t believe in them. That was good enough. Eventually, Jason was convinced, and they got the interview they had come to Dallas for.

She told Jason about her idea for a night shoot, and he was all for it. He even came up with the brilliant idea that they should include Peter Slovas, the private investigator Maggie had contacted, in the inspection of whatever building they decided upon. That way, they could frame it as being the result of his findings in the hunt for Terry Loeb. Maggie was impressed how quickly Jason had caught on to how television programs were created. Apparently, once he realized you could stretch the truth to achieve a more compelling narrative, it came naturally to him. Funny how a person who investigated fictional phenomena was so devoted to honesty. Maggie took that to mean that Jason was a true believer, and not simply some con man profiting off people’s gullibility and grief. She liked Jason and Charlotte, and was already looking forward to working with them more, in the future.

They decided to go ahead and shoot tonight, after Maggie and the rest of the crew got situated in their hotel.

There were moments, there, where Mickey really thought it was over. At least for Terry. It had dawned on him, after Kansas City, that he didn’t need the idiot as much as he thought he did. There was really no reason to even run from the authorities, when you thought about it. If the cops caught them, what exactly would happen? One of two things; either they would capture Terry and put him in prison, at which point Mickey would have a veritable buffet line of new victims at his immediate disposal, or they would kill Terry, at which point Micky would go ethereal. Getting on the Greyhound bus the night after killing that jogger in the park, Mickey realized that he had been born an ethereal being, and reverting back to that state would be as natural as a fish being reintroduced to the ocean. His fear for Terry’s safety, while never for Terry benefit, had been a result of his living inside Terry’s veins for so long. He hadn’t been able to comprehend a life outside. But that was nothing but conditioning, like when a kidnapper leaves their hostage alone all day, in an unlocked house, safe in the knowledge that they won’t be going anywhere. Even though Mickey was not a human, he was not entirely separate from humanity, and his thinking often mirrored that of men. He didn’t need Terry, any more than Terry needed him. Each one was the other’s parasite, and it was only stupidity that had kept them together for so long.

But why stop in the middle of a good run? Since Alonzo, Mickey had used Terry’s body to kill four other people, though admittedly not in such obvious fashion. He was pretty sure none of the subsequent bodies had been discovered, and he was confident that even if they were, no one would be able to link them to the murder in Dallas. There was a part of Mickey that wanted to see how many bodies they could rack up, before it was lights out for Terry, and there was another part that was simply enjoying the change in scenery, and both those parts were best served on the lam.

It didn’t hurt that Terry had the kind of face that you would rather forget, the second you saw it. His face had been plastered on the TV, all over the country, but, so far, no one had recognized him. Mickey had made him grow a beard and dye his hair, but neither one of those would fool anybody who took a real good look at them. But what worried Mickey more was the scar that had developed on Terry’s brow, just above the eyes. He had successfully flipped their ownership of the body, meaning that he no longer needed Terry to bleed to step outside, but he still made him do it, before every kill. Not wanting to leave too much evidence, he had taken to covering his head with some sort of see-through garment (plastic bag, part of a rain poncho) in an attempt to catch as much of the blood as possible. So far, he thought they were alright, as he had decided to start moving the bodies after the kill, but it was just a matter of time before somebody somewhere found an errant drop. When that happened, he would have to become even more vigilant, as the whole face-cutting thing would be a huge talking point. So Mickey hadn’t let Terry take off his hat in public in over two weeks, and he often had to remind the moron that it was rising above the line of the scar.

“The point isn’t to look fashionable, dumbass,” Mickey would say. “If they see your scar, it’s over.”

“Oh, sorry, Mickey,” Terry would say, from inside their mind. If Mickey could just keep the idiot in line, they had a beautiful winter ahead of them.

Peter Slovas was very much into Jason’s idea of framing their shoot as a part of his investigation. In fact, when Claude called him at his office, he proclaimed to already have a location in mind.

“His apartment?” Claude asked.

“That’s right. He set it on fire, right before he went on the run. Thankfully, it only destroyed a few units. They were able to save the rest of the building. But it’s perfect. It’s where the guy lived, so it’s relevant to the manhunt, but there’s absolutely no chance of him returning to it. And, Jason told me about these beings liking ruined places, so it all adds up.”

“Yeah, it does. But how are we gonna get in? I’m okay with a little light trespassing, but not with breaking into a murder suspect’s home.”

“That’s the awesome part,” Slovas said. “It’s totally fucked up, so there’s no evidence there. The cops already looked it over. Homicide couldn’t find anything, and the arson squad could only tell that he used the oven to start the fire. They’re done with the place. It’s a really shitty apartment complex. I paid the super a hundred bucks to let us in. Everything’s copacetic.”

“Wow, you really have thought of everything,” Claude said.

“Well, I figured I should supply something to the episode, since I obviously won’t actually be finding the creep for you.”

“No, of course not. In fact, we don’t even want to know where he is, yet. Let the cops track him down in a few weeks or so, after we’ve had a chance to milk the story a little.”

“How refreshingly capitalist of you.”

Claude laughed. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. I want them to catch the guy, before he kills anyone else. And if, for some unforeseen reason, we do get some actionable information, we’ll of course send it the cops’ way, but him being on the loose is a situation we could use to our benefit.”

“Hey, man, don’t gotta convince me,” Slovas said. “I get it. Whether you shoot these episodes or not, that won’t affect them tracking Loeb down. Might as well make a little scratch, while we’re waiting.”

“Exactly,” Claude said. He liked Mr. Slovas.

An hour later, and they were outside Terry Loeb’s apartment building. Looking around, Maggie could barely tell the place had been lit on fire. Not because the fire hadn’t done anything, but because the entire neighborhood was already so burnt out. There were more than a few abandoned buildings on either side of the housing complex, and those that were still occupied were in need of some serious maintenance. It was an unsettling location, altogether, and she just wanted to get the shoot over with.

They got an establishing shot of Slovas pointing out the apartment to Jason, then it was just a quick walkthrough of the damaged unit. Inside, Jason and Charlotte did their normal routine, scanning the area for any spirits, pretending to hear ghostly voices, and just generally being spooky. Slovas followed behind them and gave them a basic rundown of the case, with his own opinions sprinkled in.

“Yeah,” he said, “I talked to the cops, and they said this guy’s scared. That’s why he burned the place down and left so soon. But keep an eye out, because suspects have been known to come back to their homes, from time to time.” He was just speaking out of his ass, but Maggie had to admit that it did make for some compelling footage. She could see the soccer moms now, huddled up on the couch, recoiling in fear, watching the screen through the fingers they put up to shield their eyes. This was going to be a much better episode than anyone had anticipated.

Two weeks passed, and Mickey had made it all the way to Chicago. Since Kansas City, he had killed seven more people, bringing his grand total, including Alonzo, to twelve. While no one had directly linked the killings, some people on the TV were insinuating that this sudden upturn in disappearances along the highways and bus routes could be the work of a single person. But that was just human nature. Something about the human mind loved serial killers, so much so that they would make absurd connections that clearly could not be possible. Mickey didn’t know if it was because people were morbid, or if they just naturally enjoyed patterns, but it confused him. People were interested in serial killers, and the larger the body count, the more into it they got. But that was stupid. It’s actually a lot more unnerving to think that there are multiple killers out there at once, each causing their own form of bedlam on the populace. If you catch one guy, you haven’t just solved twenty cases. That guy probably only offed one, maybe two people, before he was caught. That left you with so many loose ends, so many variables, that catching them all seemed damn near impossible. That thought scared even Mickey, who could now be counted among history’s most prolific murderers.

He was going to do some things in Chicago. In many ways it was the perfect city in which to kill a bunch of people. Access to highways, multiple bodies of water, and a class disparity and culture of violence that meant that many deaths went unresolved every year.

He was home.

The episode was a huge hit, garnering record ratings. They planned on making a follow-up episode, but decided that they should hold off on that for a few weeks. Better to give the soccer moms a reason to tune in every time, as opposed to just waiting until the genie story wrapped up and then tuning out. So, they spent the following days returning to business as usual, with cryptozoologists and psychics making shit up in front of a camera, and Maggie helping to scrape together some cohesive narrative together in post. She was back in her groove, and everything was as it should be.

She returned to her office after another day of shooting in the studio, and turned on her computer to check her email. The first few messages were nothing out of the ordinary, just your basic back-and-forth from the network. But then, before her eyes, an email popped up. It was from Jason, and the subject line said, CALL ME NOW! The body of the message had nothing in it. Apparently, he was just trying to get her attention. Maggie realized, just then, that her phone had been on silent for most of the day, as she was in a live studio. Looking down at her phone, she saw that Jason had called her ten times in the last hour. She called him.

He answered on the first ring. “Oh, thank God, you answered. We’ve been callin’ you non-stop.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Where are you? Are you somewhere safe?”

“Yes, Jason, I’m at the office. Just relax, and tell me what’s wrong.”

“Peter. The bastard killed Peter.”

Maggie felt a hole develop in her stomach. “What? Peter’s dead?”

“My God,” Jason said. “Oh, my God. Yes. Peter’s dead. It was Loeb. That genie motherfucker killed him.”

“Jason, calm down. Where are you right now?”

“Charlotte and I are on our way to the airport. Us and Robert. You remember, the guy who drives the van?”

“Yeah, I remember. Listen, how do you know it was Terry Loeb who killed Peter?”

“Because he bled all over the place. He busted into Peter’s office and jumped on him with a knife. Stabbed him to death right there, sitting at his desk. He musta’ already cut himself, that fuck, because his blood was everywhere. We just got done talking to the police about it, and they made us promise we wouldn’t leave town. But fuck that. We’re outta here. Headed outta the country. I suggest you do the same.”

Maggie was almost afraid to ask Jason what he meant. “Um, why should I leave the country?”

“I think Loeb’s coming after us. You, Claude, and me and Charlotte.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Peter’s contact book was on his desk. Loeb went through it and found the pages with our names, and he ripped ‘em out and…”

“And what, Jason?”

“He…oh, fuck, Maggie. He shoved ‘em in Peter’s mouth.”

Maggie gasped. She was back home, hundreds of miles away from Dallas, but right then she felt as if Terry Loeb was standing directly on the other side of her office door. She tried to say something to Jason, but she was having trouble forming the words.

“Maggie? You still there?”

“I…uh…yeah. I’m still here. Why…why do you think he’s targeting us?”

Jason sighed. “I’ve actually been thinking about that a lot. I think he musta seen the episode, and it pissed him off. Maybe when Peter said that he was afraid. Probably that.”

“Yeah,” Maggie said.

“Anyway, I figured I should call you and let you know, since the cops didn’t seem all too worried about giving you a call. They’re focused on catching him here in town, and, you being so far away, I guess they were gonna wait a little, before they warned you. But I’m not so sure that he’s still around. They said he killed Peter early this morning. That’s plenty ‘a time to make it outta town.”

“Yeah, thanks, Jason. I’ll call Claude right now.”

“Where ya gonna go?”

“I have no idea, but we’ll figure something out.”

“Okay. Be safe. Charlotte and I will call you, once we’ve landed. I’m not sure where we’re goin’ either, but it’ll be somewhere far away. If the cops call you, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell them I called.”

“Okay. And Jason?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m so sorry about Peter. And for getting you mixed up in this.”

“Oh, don’t do that, Maggie. This is no one’s fault, except that possessed monster.”

“Do…do you really think he’s possessed, Jason?”

“He fuckin’ better be. Cause if he ain’t, what does that say about the rest of us?”

“Good point. Keep me posted. Goodbye.”

“Bye.”

Maggie hung up and sat motionless at her desk. Out of all the possible reactions to the episode she should have been prepared for, this one had never crossed her mind. She guessed it wasn’t too crazy to assume that Terry Loeb had seen the show. Probably in some seedy motel or bus station. But he had been on the run for almost a month, and nobody had any clue as to where he had gone. Returning to Dallas and committing another high-visibility murder was an incredibly illogical thing to do. But, applying logic to crazed killers was also not on list of sensible moves. Jason’s theory made sense, that Loeb had taken offense to being called scared, and had come back to prove to Peter, and to the world, that he wasn’t scared of anything.

But why would he know to target the show’s production crew? What degenerate murderer has such a deep understanding of the behind the scenes workings of a tv show to even know that someone like Maggie existed? Terry Loeb did not seem like the kind of person to know something like that. Maybe, Maggie thought, he hadn’t just “jumped on” Peter, like Jason had said, but had taken his time, forcing Peter to give up anybody else involved with the show. This thought sent a shiver up Maggie’s spine.

She had to leave. Now. Call Claude, Mick, and Louis, and do what Jason and Charlotte were doing. Just hop on some random international flight, and worry about everything else tomorrow. It was almost eleven p.m. Jason was right; if he had hurried, Terry Loeb could have easily made it to her offices by now. She shook herself out of her nearly catatonic state and started gathering her things. As she did this, she called Claude, putting her phone on speaker and leaving it face-up on her desk. It rang for fifteen seconds before Claude answered.

“Mags, what’s up? Everything okay?”

There was a knock at her office door. Maggie’s blood flash-froze inside her veins, and she was incapable of either speech or movement.

“Mags?” Claude said. His voice was coming through brash and tinny. “Maggie?”

The person knocked again, harder this time. Maggie emitted a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a whimper. She heard the handle to her office door rattle, and she remembered that she hadn’t locked it. She wanted to run towards the door, to slam the full weight of her body against it and flip the lock. But she was glued in place.

“Maggie? You’re freakin’ me out,” Claude said. “Say something!”

The office door opened, and Maggie’s body still refused to budge. She could see the figure in the doorway, but they were lit from the hall lights behind them, and she couldn’t make out their face. She knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that she was about to die. To her surprise, this revelation clamed her, and she reached over and pressed a button on her phone, ending her conversation with Claude. It was over. There was nothing she could do but accept it.

The figure walked confidently towards her. It was a man, roughly six-foot-two. Terry Loeb was six-foot-two.

Maggie cleared her throat and said, “Make it quick, at least?”

The figure chuckled. Maggie closed her eyes, but she could still recognize the figure’s proximity from the darker shadows they cast upon her lids. The figure leaned in close to her face and said, “Do not be afraid, Maggie Blalock. I am not here to hurt you. I am not Terry Loeb. My name is Arsalan, and I am here to save you.”

For once, Terry was right, and Mickey knew it. He overreacted, going back to Dallas to kill that P.I. asshole. But when he saw him, on the television, talking shit like that, he just couldn’t control himself. Scared? Him, the blood-thirsty force of nature? Who the hell was this guy, to walk into Mickey’s home, and tell the world that he was scared? Standing there, laughing. Well, he’s not laughing now, that’s for sure.

But it was sloppy. He had escaped Dallas, once and for all. Good riddance. He had no intention of every returning to the “Lone Star State,” once he and Terry had hopped on that Greyhound. The world was his oyster, and one state full of rednecks and immigrants didn’t matter, on such a grand scale. Any type of person Mickey could kill in Texas, he could find elsewhere. His plan was to cut a swath through the entire country, then take his kill show international. Hamburg, Germany. Dehli, India. Hell, fucking Moscow. He and Terry had such a bright future together, and now it seemed like he had thrown it all away.

Terry had been remarkably silent for the past few weeks, while Mickey drove their body to commit more and more heinous acts of depravity. At first, Mickey thought that the idiot actually was scared, and that he had retreated into the cold embrace of their shared sub-conscience, but that wasn’t the case. After the first kill in Chicago, Terry finally admitted that he was having a good time. He had fought it his entire life, but some things even the best man can’t stave off. And Terry most definitely was not the best man. Mickey’s wicked influence had taken over completely, now, and Terry had just become aware of how cool with that he was. Not only was it a relief to be able to sit back and relax, but it was a real gas to see the kind of shit Mickey had been getting up to.

So Terry didn’t want it to stop, any more than Mickey did. In fact, Terry’s mortality made him far less likely to surrender, in the face of their eventual capture. Mickey really had nothing to lose, but Terry’s life was on the line. So he finally grew a pair and told Mickey that he thought it was a bad idea to go back to Dallas. It didn’t matter what the man on the TV had said. Let him talk. While he was back there, sifting through the ashes of their old life, they were miles ahead of them, on their own journey that that man couldn’t even comprehend. Let it go, and let’s have some more fun.

He was right, of course. But being right doesn’t always matter, when it comes to these things. Mickey saw red, and all he cared about was proving to that motherfucker that he wasn’t scared. Not of him, not of anything.

So they went back to Dallas and did what they had to do. But for this one, they took their time. Terry, now in the thick of it, whether he had wanted to be or not, at least saw the opportunity in front of him, and actually took a role in the kill. That hadn’t happened before; it had always just been Mickey calling the shots. But this time, Terry stepped up, and told Mickey what to do. Terry knew, from watching a lot of TV over the years, that shows didn’t just happen. They needed people to make them, otherwise you’d never see it. So he had Mickey ask the P.I. dude about the people who had made their show.

The guy didn’t want to tell them, at first, but Mickey could be very persuasive. Eventually, they had a whole list of people. And the coolest part was, they weren’t even here in Dallas. They could skip town again, hopefully for good this time, and keep this train rolling.

“Please, sit,” Arsalan said, motioning towards the sofa. “I will make you some coffee, and then I will explain myself to you.”

It had been something of a challenge dragging Claude out of bed. She had called him back, but when he answered, she was still too hysterical to really get her point across. She had had to give the phone to Arsalan, a total stranger, and let him convince her friend that his life was in danger. Claude flirted with the idea that it was some sort of practical joke, but Maggie wasn’t the kind of person to pull a prank like this. He finally decided that, even if it was bullshit, she believed it, and he owed it to her to listen. And once Arsalan told him what had happened to Peter, he was all ears.

Maggie and Arsalan drove by Claude’s place and picked him up, on the way to Arsalan’s book store. Claude tried calling Mick and Louis, but only Mick answered. They weren’t worried, though. Louis was a known partyer, so he was probably just out drinking. They would keep calling him, of course, but after the three of them were safe. Mick was still on his way, but Arsalan decided to start his explanation without him.

He brought them their coffee and sat down in the recliner facing the sofa. They were in the book store’s back room, which was adorned with all sorts of occult paraphernalia. If not for the sophisticated eye with which the stuff had been arranged, it would have looked like some goth teenager’s bedroom. It was ridiculous, but Maggie found it impossible to take it anything but seriously.

“I imagine you have questions,” Arsalan said.

“Fuck yeah, I got questions,” Claude responded. “Like, who are you? How did you know Peter was killed? And how did you know to find us?”

Araslan smiled. “I will explain each one, and more, in time. First, I want to reassure you that you are safe. Even your two friends who are not yet here, they will not be harmed tonight.”

“And how do you know that?” Maggie asked.

“I have friends, too. They are watching over Mick and Louis, as we speak. The Genius will not get them.”

“The Genius? You mean Loeb?”

“That is correct. My name is Arsalan Parsa, and I have been fighting geniuses for as long as I can remember.”

“Why are you calling them that?” Claude asked. “I thought they were genies.”

“They are one and the same. My ancestors called them Jinn, which, yes, became what you know as genies. But before that, they were geniuses. Ethereal muses that guided those lucky enough to have the ability to see them. But even that is a recent moniker, comparatively speaking. In truth, we don’t know what the geniuses are, only that they predate man, and are capable of latching onto a human’s psyche. In all likelihood, they are responsible for the vast majority of human achievement.”

“I don’t understand,” Maggie said. “If they’re so good, how come this one’s killing people?”

“They are neither good nor bad. They are not human, but they are not unlike us, in many ways. They procreate, like we do, and have their own systems of morality and religious belief. Like us, the species as a whole is neutral, encompassing the entire spectrum of good and evil.”

“I’m sorry, but this is a load of crap,” Claude said. “If this was a real thing, how come we’re just learning about it? If they’re so prevalent, why haven’t we known about them, all this time?”

Arsalan sipped his coffee and looked unblinkingly over the mug at Claude, like a teacher stalling for time while he considered the nicest way to explain something to his stupidest student. “We do know about them, of course. Think of how many times you’ve heard of someone having ‘a stroke of genius,’ or ‘divine intervention.’ Sadly, it seems that in this point in time, there are only two schools of thought, concerning geniuses, and neither one of them even comes close to being correct. If you are a believer, the voice you hear is that of God. If you are an atheist, then it is some random flaring of synapses that has no discernible diagnosis. Either way, it is a genius, speaking to you. Giving you inspiration, or dangerous motivation.”

“What about schizophrenia?” Maggie asked. “Does that not exist?”

“Oh, no, it does,” Arsalan said. “The two phenomena seem similar, at first glance, but, for one who knows about geniuses, the differences are usually obvious. David Berkowitz shooting someone because he thinks his neighbor’s dog told him to is a clear sign of mental illness. When a real genius is involved, the person’s motivations make much more sense, from a certain point of view.”

Maggie’s phone rang. She jumped, but calmed down once she saw that it was Mick who was calling. He was outside the book store, but the door was locked. She and Arsalan got up to let him in. When they reached the door, Arsalan got a worried look on his face. He recoverd quickly, greeting Mick with a smile and beckoning him inside the book store, but it was obvious something was bothering him. Once Mick was inside, Maggie approached Arsalan.

“Everything okay?” She asked.

“Um, more than likely, yes, everything is fine.”

“But…”

“But, I would like you to go inside the store now, and lock the door behind you. It is alright, I have the key, so I can get back in.”

“What’s going on?”

“My friend wishes to speak with me, alone.”

“Your friend? Where? I don’t see anyone.”

A man walked up to the door, seemingly out of nowhere. There were no particularly dark shadows, as the store’s parking lot was illuminated by a street light, but he had been practically invisible, until he moved. Maggie jolted slightly, clearly still shaken by the events of the last hour. The man smiled at Maggie, but did not say anything, only looked to Arsalan with squinted eyes. Maggie went inside.

She walked back into the break room, where Mick had helped himself to a cup of coffee from Arsalan’s machine and taken a seat next to Claude on the sofa. He looked up at Maggie, obviously afraid.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Loeb,” Maggie said. “He’s coming after us.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Where’s Arsalan?” Claude asked.

“Um, he told me to come inside and lock the door. He’s talking to one of his ‘friends.’ He seemed worried.”

“What friend?” Mick asked. “There was no one around when I got here.”

“Yeah, there was. He must have been hiding, or something.” It was the “or something” that Maggie couldn’t stop thinking about.

A moment later, Arsalan returned, followed by the man from the parking lot, who introduced himself as Jerome. Maggie started to say something, but he cut her off with a motion of his hand. “You need to call your friend Louis. Right now.”

“What? Why?” Claude asked. Maggie had already pulled out her phone, and was dialing, as they spoke.

“We have lost contact with Bernadette, our friend who was watching him.”

“He’s not answering,” Maggie said.

“Keep trying him,” Arsalan responded. “At the very least, we need to figure out where he is, so we can go get him.”

It had been dead for most of the night, but it was finally starting to pick up. There were a few ckicks at the bar, now, clearly out strolling for dick. And, wouldn’t you know it, Louis had one of those, all trimmed up and good to go. He had his patented four beer, one shot buzz going, and there was just about nothing he couldn’t do, tonight. First things first, however, he had to pick his target, and separate her from the pack. It was almost an arbitrary decision, as none of them were anything to brag to your mother about, but there was no way he was going to get anything, with them all bunched up together like that, so he had to choose. If he had had a quarter, he would have flipped for it, but who had quarters, these days? Finally, he simply fell back on his tried and true protocol: whenever possible, go for the redhead.

The bar was huge, spanning the entire back wall of this club, so he still had to make his way over to the gaggle. His plan was to get close (not too close, mind you) and tell the bartender to give the firecrotch a shot of tequila. Then, when she looked around, all stupid and confused, he would get her attention. Not in any wild, gesticulating way. He had this eyebrow raise he employed that usually did the trick. She would see it, and he would smile, then turn and walk a little in the other direction. And she would follow, of course.

His phone had been buzzing in his pocket, for the last thirty minutes or so, but he had ignored it. It was probably Maggie, calling to ask about some work bullshit. How many times did he have to tell that woman that when he’s off the clock, he’s off the clock? She would never learn.

People were crowding the bar from the dance floor, making movement more difficult than it had to be. It also didn’t help that the club had set up their lights to match the music, and most of the music they played was best accompanied by flashing strobes, leaving the place in total darkness once every couple beats. It was obnoxious, and Louis hated places like this. But bitches didn’t. Bitches loved places like this. So, this was where Louis went.

He started his journey down the length of the bar. He kept bumping into people, and it was tough keeping a straight face. But he was no home-schooled virgin, and he knew how to keep cool, in any situation. The lights flashed on and off with greater frequency, since the song that had just started had a faster tempo than the last one. Louis bumped full-force into this dude who was a little taller than him, but way beefier. Louis tried to get past him, but the dude stepped to his left and stayed in his way. He didn’t say anything to Louis.

“Hey, excuse me, man,” Louis said. “I’m trying to get by, here.”

The guy was silent. Louis was having difficulty seeing him, in between the flashing strobes, but it seemed, from the fleeting glances he was afforded, that this man was ugly as fuck. I hope he’s hung, Louis thought, otherwise there’s no hope for this guy.

He still wouldn’t move. Just stood there, like some fucking idiot. Louis didn’t want to start any shit, not when he had finally developed a game plan for salvaging this boring night, but he was starting to get pissed. “Come on, man, just let me squeeze by you, there.”

Nothing. Louis looked on in bewilderment. Could the asshole not see him, or what? In the strobes, Louis could see that the dude had something in his hand. It caught the light, briefly. It was a razor blade. Louis didn’t know what to do. If this guy wanted to fight, they could do that, but a razor blade was probably not going to help at all. But the dude wasn’t going to use the blade on Louis. He raised it to his own forehead and dragged it across his brow, with absolutely no hesitation. Louis stood transfixed. This man was crazy.

His phone started buzzing again. He went to pull it out of his pocket, but never quite got there. The maniac with the razor blade grabbed his arm and held it tight, staring into Louis’s eyes as the cut above his own started to bleed. Louis, in the final realization of his life, remembered the guy from the episode a few weeks back. The guy from Dallas, who cut up his face before killing his boss.

Something cold and skinny slid under Louis’s ribcage and into his left lung. It took a few seconds to feel anything, and by the time he did, the guy was gone. Nobody had seen what had happened, and Louis, in his frantic attempt to scream out for help, could manage nothing more that a weak wheeze. He fell to the ground. The music kept pumping and the lights kept flashing. The redhead never got her free tequila shot.

“He won’t answer,” Maggie said. “What do you think that means?”

Arsalan sighed. “It means that your friend Louis is dead.”

Claude stood up. “Hold on a fucking minute, man! You don’t know that.”

Arsalan, as calm as ever, said, “I am almost positive. We have not been able to contact Bernadette, either, and she is very skilled. If the genius slipped past her, killing Louis would be no trouble at all. I am sorry.”

Claude wanted to argue, but all of a sudden, all vigor seemed to drain from him, and he collapsed back onto the sofa.

Mick looked up, confused. “Is anyone going to explain, I mean really explain, just what the hell is going on?”

“I have told you,” Arsalan said, “The genius infecting Terry Loeb is coming.”

“No, I know that, dude. And I know you said he killed Peter. But, I’m sorry, I just don’t believe Louis is dead. Not until we have some proof.”

“In this business, you often must act before proof is provided.”

Maggie started hyperventilating, and Claude appeared to be on the verge of tears. Mick, however, forged ahead. “Okay, even putting that aside for now, how do you know any of this, huh? How did you know we needed your help? What is all this?”

Arsalan sat down. For the first time, an unease began to show on his face. “I learned of this genius when it first revealed itself to the world by killing the man Alonzo Tompkins.”

“How?” Mick asked.

“I have methods of detection which I could explain to you, but frankly we do not have the time. Suffice it to say that I was made aware of its presence. I thus enacted a plan to flush it out, so as to put myself in a position to capture it.”

Maggie had finally calmed herself enough to speak. “Wait a second. What kind of plan?”

Arsalan didn’t say anything.

“It was you, wasn’t it? You’re the one who put those newspaper articles on my desk.”

“Yes. Well, actually, it was Bernadette, acting on my orders.”

“Why?”

“I knew you were about to start shooting your new season, and I needed access to the resources you had at your disposal. I shadowed you, from here to Dallas, and back, all the time engaging in my own private investigation. It was not my intent that Mr. Slovas even appear in the episode, let alone make those types of derogatory remarks concerning the genius.”

Claude scoffed. “You talk like you were the one making the decisions about the show.”

Arsalan shook his head. “I wish I had been. But, there are ways to influence other people’s decision making processes. Subtle ways. Please do not think of it as manipulation.”

“So,” Mick said, “you ‘influenced’ us into making the episode? That sounds like you hung us out to dry.”

Arsalan looked to Mick, with real sorrow in his eyes. “It does sound like that, because that is the case. I was sloppy, and I underestimated Loeb’s genius. I am truly sorry.”

“Yeah, well, tell that to Peter. Or Louis,” Claude said.

“The death of you friend Louis is a real tragedy. But Mr. Slovas had a chance to escape, and he chose not to.”

“What do you mean?” Maggie asked.

“Once I saw the episode, I returned to Dallas to warn Mr. Slovas of the danger he had put himself in, with those remarks. I explained the situation to him, like I am to you, right now, but he refused to believe me. He was entirely unprepared.”

Maggie stifled a sob and said, “But if you knew Loeb was gonna come for Peter, why didn’t you do something about it? I mean, if you’re so great at catching these things, how did he even get in the same room as Peter without you knowing?”

Arsalan winced, as if Maggie had just touched upon a subject he had hoped to avoid. “I…underestimated him, like I said. Geniuses emit a form of energy, you might call it an aura, that I can pick up on. It was how I had felt it, to begin with. But normally, the genius is so powerful that it cannot hide. This is because they act almost like a parasite, feeding upon their host’s vitality, overcoming their life force. But Mr. Loeb’s genius is different. It can, for lack of a better word, disappear. Like camouflage.”

“Camouflage?” Claude said.

“Yes. There can only be one explanation for this. Terry Loeb is working with his genius. They can decide who is the more spiritually prevalent, at any given moment.”

“Is that uncommon?” Maggie asked. “I mean, don’t people usually know when they have a genius?”

“Well, yes and no. A genius’s presence is not usually so noticeable, to the person it inhabits. It feels like a natural part of the host’s being, and they only comprehend its existence after the fact. But if Mr. Loeb can speak to his genius, it stands to reason that he can change places with it, whenever he wants. This is why I was unable to detect it, earlier. He has been on the run for weeks now, and while I have caught glimpses of the genius, say, in Kansas City, or Chicago, there has always been something blocking me from pinpointing his precise location. Remember when I said that, for people who know what to look for, the difference between schizophrenia and genius possession would be obvious?”

“Yeah.”

“That is not the case, here. I would not be surprised if Terry Loeb has been diagnosed as schizophrenic. For most of his life, his genius will have been nothing but a voice inside his head, hiding behind Terry’s life energy. So, I was indeed on the lookout for the genius, but it must have slipped past me by covering itself up. Terry Loeb snuck into Mr. Slovas’s office, and I was unaware. That is probably also how it evaded Bernadette tonight, though her not answering my calls has me worried.”

“So, they’re in it together?” Claude asked.

“Yes. Of course, if Terry were a normal host, he would not be responsible for the killings. At least not on a spiritual level. He would most certainly be tried and convicted for them in human court, but, in the court of the higher authority, he would be considered innocent. But this cooperation between him and his genius implicates him directly in the murders. Whether that is from a lifetime of evil influence from the genius or just an incredibly unfortunate coincidence, I cannot say.”

“Coincidence?”

“Yes. Like I said, a genius can be either good or evil, just like a human. It is very likely that many evil geniuses have possessed good humans, and vice versa. But, both entities being malignant is, if nothing else, incredibly unfortunate.”

Mick stood back up. “So, what do we do now, huh? What’s the fuckin’ plan? I say we run, like Jason and Charlotte did.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Claude said. Maggie only sighed.

“That is no longer an option,” Arsalan said. “Loeb and his genius are already on their way here. To my book store. Right now.”

“What?” Mick said. “How do you know that?”

“They are not hiding any more. I can sense them as clearly as I can see and hear you. They’re coming.”

“But how do they know to come here?” Maggie asked.

Instead of answering, Arsalan looked to Claude, who furrowed his brow in utter confusion. “Why are you looking at me like that?” Claude asked.

Arsalan closed his eyes. “There is something inside you, which is calling out to the genius. Can’t you feel its presence?”

“Something inside me? Uh, no, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Is it a genius?” Maggie said. “Is Claude possessed?”

“No,” Arsalan replied. “It is not anything as sentient as a genius or a demon. It is more of a state of being. But it is very noticeable. Loeb’s genius can feel it, just as I can.”

“Jason’s office,” Maggie said.

“Huh?” Claude said.

“Remember, when we first met Jason? Charlotte said you weren’t cleansed enough to go inside the office. She said there was something bad in you.”

“She was just messing around, playing a little joke,” Claude said in a way that told the others that he was no more convinced of its veracity than they were.

“If they searched your spirits for entities, I have no doubt they were able to detect whatever inhabits you,” Arsalan said. “It is calling to Terry Loeb as we speak, and Terry Loeb is responding.”

There was a loud banging on the front door. Maggie, Claude, and Mick all jumped, but Arsalan held up his hands in a placating gesture. He remained silent but pointed to a door at the far end of the back room. The others looked in that direction but remained where they were sitting. The banging started again, louder and more frantic this time. Arsalan pointed again, and this time, the others got up from the sofa and started creeping towards the door. Arsalan and Jerome looked at each other and nodded, making their way to the front of the building.

When they got there, they saw Bernadette, absolutely covered in blood and raving, but definitely still alive. She was trying to scream, but no noise would escape her mouth. Jerome opened the door and Bernadette fell inside, as Arsalan closed the door and re-locked it.

He turned and faced Bernadette. “What happened?” he asked.

Bernadette still could not speak. She sobbed silently and closed her eyes. Jerome put his arms around her, and she appeared to fall asleep, right there by the front door.

Arsalan knelt down and looked her over. She did not appear to be injured, despite the fact that here clothes and face were soaked in blood. He motioned for Jerome to take her to the back room.

Standing back up, Arsalan was hit with a sour awareness. Terry Loeb was close. So close, in fact, that Arsalan could practically reach out and touch him. They were not ready. The capture of a genius was not the most difficult act in the world, but it required at least some preparation. Arsalan had once again miscalculated Loeb’s ability to fly under the radar. The man and his genius would be there in under five minutes.

Inside the closet, Maggie, Claude, and Mick stood, scrunched together, each terrified beyond belief. There wasn’t enough room for all of them, and if Loeb found them, he could likely take them all out in one easy motion.

“What are we gonna do?” Mick asked.

“I don’t know,” Maggie said. “I’m so sorry, guys.”

“For what?”

“For getting you into this.”

“Mags, stop,” Claude said. “You have nothing to do with anything that’s happening right now.” In fact, he thought, but refused to say out loud, it was his fault. Whatever the hell everybody was talking about, about him having some nasty bitch of a spirit inside of him, that was the real problem. He hadn’t meant to, but it seemed he had gotten his friends into this mess. So, he was going to have to be the one to get them out of it.

Arsalan followed his friends to the back room. Jerome laid Bernadette on the sofa, and Arsalan pulled him aside.

“It is happening. Right now.”

“Yes,” Jerome said, “I feel it, as well.”

“We do not have time to set up an extraction circle. I had hoped to save Terry Loeb’s life, at least until the authorities could apprehend him, but that is no longer an option. There is only one way to release a genius’s hold, without an exorcism.”

Jerome nodded. “We have to kill the host.”

“That’s right,” Arsalan said.

“Do we have any weapons?”

“I have a shotgun, but I am not certain it is loaded. Head to my office and see. It is in the closet.”

Jerome nodded and rushed to Arsalan’s office. Arsalan approached Bernadette. He stroked her hair, and his hand came back bloody. She still seemed unable to speak. Perhaps she had been placed under some sort of spell. Jerome came back holding Arsalan’s shotgun and a box of ammunition.

“Somewhat inelegant, but it will definitely kill a man.”

Arsalan nodded. “You keep it. I have never been any good with firearms. I would just make things more chaotic.”

“What will you do?” Jerome asked. “If Loeb attacks, you will not stand a chance.”

“Sure I will. I can sense his aura, and I can broadcast my own, as well. My plan is to cause enough spiritual interference to distract him long enough for you to strike.”

“What about Bernadette? Are we just going to leave her here, on the sofa?”

“Yes. I will do whatever it takes to keep the fight within the confines of the book store itself. The others, here in the break room, are our top priority. If Loeb makes it back here, all will be lost.”

Jerome nodded and finished loading the shotgun. “What else do we need?” he asked.

“I need a vessel,” Arsalan said. “Something I can use to capture the genius, once we have released its hold on Loeb. Anything will do. I just have to bless it.”

Jerome looked around the room, until he saw something. “How about that?” he asked, pointing to the pot Arsalan had just used to make coffee for his guests. “Will that work?”

Arsalan considered. Normally, he would use something more substantial. Perhaps made out of some precious metal. But they were running out of time. The coffee pot was the closest option, and it would do, in a pinch. He nodded. “That will work. At least for the time being. Once we have it imprisoned, we can transfer it to something more secure.” He reached out and grabbed the pot, saying a quiet prayer over it, until he was satisfied that it was properly blessed.

With that, he and his friend walked into the front of the store, closing the door to the back area behind them.

Terry Loeb was already standing at the front door, staring through the glass, his face covered in a dark red liquid mask. The temperature inside the store dropped considerably, and Arsalan felt his entire body shiver.

Jerome raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger, but he was still too far away, and Loeb was able to back away, unharmed. He evaporated back into the shadows, and Jerome approached the door slowly, his finger still on the trigger.

A window along the side of the building broke, and Jerome, in his panic, swung the shotgun in that direction and fired. But there was nothing there to hit, and now his gun was empty.

The front door flew open with supernatural force, and Terry Loeb charged inside, running straight for Jerome. He flung his arms around Jerome’s torso, and threw him to the ground. Jerome dropped the gun and put his hands in front of his face. Terry Loeb, straddling him, tore Jerome’s hands away and inserted his thumbs directly into his eye sockets. He lifted the head, and with one definitive thrust, slammed it back against the floor. Arsalan could not tell if his friend was dead, but he most certainly was no longer conscious.

Terry Loeb made a truly disturbing growling noise as he rose back to his feet. Arsalan, finally remembering his plan, adjusted the spiritual energy escaping from his own body, forcing it into a frequency incompatible with that coming from Loeb. Loeb stopped only temporarily, and scrunched his face, as if he were holding back a sneeze, before walking calmly towards Arsalan and back-fisting him in the face. Arsalan fell down, dazed, and he lost the ability to control his aura.

Terry Loeb looked down at Arsalan and smiled, and Arsalan knew that he was about to die. He had hunted geniuses his entire life, longer than many people had been alive. He had bested forces much more formidible than whatever was influencing Terry Loeb, but, for some reason, this one had taken him by surprise. He was a failure.

Terry Loeb walked right past Arsalan and to the door leading to the back area. Arsalan, in utter shock, found himself unable to move. He knew he had to keep Loeb in the front of the building, or Bernadette and the others were as good as dead, but he was frozen in place. It felt as if a system of roots had emerged from his legs and latched on to the one piece of floor upon which he lay. He looked on, helpless, and his eyes filled with tears.

Loeb kicked open the door with an unsettling ease and crossed the threshold into the back area. His first priority, even before killing that Maggie woman and meeting whatever being resided inside the other man, was to find the one who had evaded him, earlier that night. He had gotten reckless, with this one, allowing Mickey too much time with her. They should have killed her right away, but instead, Mickey had toyed with her, splattering his own blood all over her body in some bizarre ritual. Mickey was always like that, letting his emotions get away from him, clouding his judgment, and Terry was sick of it. For as long as he could remember, Mickey had been there, claiming ownership of their brain, asserting himself as the logical one. But that wasn’t the way it was at all. Terry was beginning to understand that it had never been like that. Micky wasn’t smarter than he was, only louder. And Terry, being a child when they first met, had been unable to differentiate between the two.

He looked around the back area, but the woman was nowhere to be found. It seemed like someone had just been sitting on the couch, but they weren’t there now. Terry could sense the others, that Maggie woman and her two friends, cowering behind the door at the far end of the room, but they weren’t going anywhere. He had enough time to handle this loose end.

If only he could find her. She had to be around her somewhere. He would tear the entire building apart, if that was what it took. He wasn’t leaving until she was dead.

She could barely think, let alone walk, but Bernadette had somehow managed to scramble off the sofa and into Arsalan’s office, just before Loeb kicked down the door leading to the back area. She collapsed behind the desk, still incredibly exposed to danger, should Loeb look for more than a second. The office only had the one door, so she had nowhere else to run. This was it.

Terry Loeb appeared at the door to the office. He chuckled and took his first step towards the desk. He knew exactly where Bernadette was, and he was going to finish the job, this time. Bernadette, still, for some reason, unable to speak, let out a pathetic whimper as Loeb bent down and looked at her, their twin bloody faces acting as bizarre reflections of one another. He extended his hand.

“Hey, asshole!” It came from the back area. Loeb turned to see who had said it, and Bernadette used that split second to get up and run out of the office. Loeb reached out to grab her, but she managed to squirm out of his way. He stood back up and returned to the back area of the book store.

Standing in the middle of the floor was Claude, clearly sacred out of his mind, but refusing to budge.

Terry smiled. He had planned on leaving this guy for last, but now would do.

“I don’t know what your deal is,” Terry said, “but I like it. There’s something else in you, isn’t there? Maybe I should send Mickey out, to see what it is.”

Claude didn’t know who the fuck Mickey was, but he wasn’t about to get distracted. They had a plan, and he was going to stick with it. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said.

“What kind of a deal?” Terry asked.

“You let everyone else go, and you can have me. Whatever you can sense that’s in my soul, or whatever, it’s yours. Just let the others walk outta here, and it’s yours.”

“You’re as good as mine right now, and I don’t have to let anyone go to get you. I could kill you all, and take whatever the fuck I want.”

From his pocket, Claude pulled a hand gun. He put it to his temple. “Not if I off myself. From what I've heard, if I die, then the force inside me will float away, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. You’re all the way across the room from me, and the safety’s off. You don’t stand a chance of making it all the way over here, before I pull the trigger.”

Terry Loeb winced. Honestly, he did really want to meet the being inhabiting the man called Claude, maybe more than he had ever wanted anything else. From the second he had gotten into town, he had been drawn to this man, in this obscure way that he couldn’t explain. He had to know what it meant, what this unspoken power could give him. He hated the idea of letting these people go, especially that woman Bernadette, but there was no doubt in his mind that they were less important. Besides, it would only take a second to consume Claude’s beast, and then he could go back on the hunt, even stronger than he was now. He put his hands in the air.

“Okay, fucker. You convinced me. Just put the gun down. We wouldn’t want anything to hurt you, would we?”

“I think I’ll keep it where it is, thanks,” Claude said. “Mags, you, Mick, and the others go on out. I got this.”

Maggie, who until now had still been in the closet, poked her head out and said, “No, Claude, I changed my mind. I can’t let you die like this.”

“Maggie, I swear to God, get the fuck out, right now. We agreed.”

“No, it’s not right. I won’t do it.”

“You should do what your friend tells you, Maggie,” Terry Loeb said. “He’s saving your life.”

“You stay out of this, you psychotic prick,” Claude said. “And keep her name out of your mouth. Maggie, just go. It’s okay.”

“No,” Maggie said.

Claude sighed. “Mick?”

Mick reached around from behind and grabbed Maggie with both of his hands. She struggled to get free, but she couldn’t, Mick started shuffling both of them awkwardly to the door. Terry followed them with his eyes, a look of absolute glee on his bloody face. He was having the time of his life.

So he didn’t notice that Jerome had snuck up behind him with the shotgun. His eyes were ground to hamburger meat, but he had picked up a thing or two from Arsalan, and he could see Loeb’s aura as clearly as if they were still fully functional. There was a brief instant, once he heard the man prime the next shell, when Terry Loeb tried to turn around and evade the shot, but, unfortunately for him, it was not long enough. Jerome pulled the trigger, and half of Terry Loeb’s head disappeared in a flash of gore. His lifeless body fell to the floor with a powerful thump.

Once he had breathed his final breath, a purple light began to shine from his corpse. Mickey was escaping. Jerome hadn’t even considered taking the coffee pot from Arsalan, as all he was concerned with was saving the lives of the others, so he had nothing with which to capture the genius.

It took longer than anyone had expected for Mickey to fully extract himself from Terry’s body and congeal into his entire form. In this time, everyone, even Arsalan, still rooted to the ground, watched in disbelief, as the light converged into a sphere and floated away. Arsalan wailed, knowing that the genius was giving them ample time to capture it. But he was unable to do anything about it. He considered calling out to Bernadette to come retrieve the coffee pot, but he knew that that would only prompt the entity to leave all the more quickly.

The orb floated motionless for a moment, before hovering slowly in Claude’s direction. Claude, in probably the most badass moment of his life, spit on the orb. To his surprise, some of the saliva seemed to make actual contact with the light, clinging to it for a second, before dripping slowly back to the ground. Finally, the purple sphere disappeared, and they were left alone, with each other.

It was okay, Mickey thought. He knew this was bound to happen, eventually, especially after what he had put Terry through, the past month or so. He would just have to find a new host, another child, that he could raise, like he had done with Terry. Only this time, he wouldn’t forget who he was. There would be no handicap of a decade, before he remembered. Next time, it would all make sense.

“I’ve had time to think it over, and I’ve decided it was all bullshit.”

Maggie and Mick sighed. They had just left Louis’s funeral, and neither one was in any mood to discuss the events of a few days ago. But Claude had been disturbingly silent on the whole matter, and so they didn’t want to discourage him from sharing, if he was finally willing to.

“Bullshit, huh?” Maggie asked, keeping her eyes on the road.

“Yeah,” Claude responded from the back seat. “I don’t believe any of it.”

Mick, sitting shotgun, turned around. “Claude, we were all there. We all saw the same thing. You know, as well as I do, how real it was.”

Claude shook his head. This wasn’t going the way he had intended. He had really hoped that they would both respond with, “well, of course it was bullshit, man,” and everything would be normal again. But a normal life was something that was out of the question, from here on out. Mick was right: he had seen it, with his own eyes. And whatever else Claude was, he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he wasn’t crazy. So that left only one option: it was real.

The whole genie thing he could handle, honestly. It was freaky, sure, but whatever. It was the other thing that had him bothered. The thing living inside of him, the spirit, or force, or whatever the fuck. He had thought that the ghost hunters had been playing a trick on him, saying that he had malignant entities inside him, but that Arsalan guy had said the same thing, and Terry Loeb seemed to be drawn to him, like a moth to a flame. What did that say about him? That he was…evil? He didn’t feel evil, but was it even up to him? As far as he could remember, he had never done anything truly evil, but maybe that was simply from lack of trying. He sulked in the back seat, unable to come up with a satisfactory response.