Work Text:
Edwin stood in the centre of the summoning circle, and longed desperately for a cigarette. Smoking was the one craving from his body’s previous inhabitant he hadn’t been able to shake, and he was therefore masochistically determined to stamp it out. The church, round the corner from Charles’ flat, was a poky little methodist thing, reliably quiet on any day that wasn’t a Sunday and certainly deserted at this time of night. It was cold, though, drafty, and the chill sparked up that empty hollow in Edwin’s bones where he knew there was space for someone else.
Well. Not empty for very much longer, he supposed.
He’d put on what he considered to be his most possession-proof outfit: a thin black turtleneck and slacks, soft and light. No sharp edges, nothing in his pockets. The meagre collection of items he’d bought with him— phone, keys, wallet— were safely on the other side of the circle, on a chair behind Crystal.
She worried at her lip.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“Getting cold feet?” Edwin said archly, mainly because he definitely was, but he’d be damned (ha) if he admitted to it. “This was your idea, if you’ll recall.”
For all that Edwin might have resented it, Crystal’s logic was sound. He had over a century’s worth of demonic possession under his belt, and had not— as yet— perished, or utterly lost his mind. If you asked Edwin, this was all due to a technicality. If you asked Crystal, it was due to Edwin being the most miserably stubborn bastard ever to walk the earth. If you asked Charles, he’d probably go all misty-eyed and start talking about Edwin’s tenacity, or some such nonsense, which was why Charles was under no circumstances to be told about the plan.
“If we fuck this up, Charles will kill us,” Crystal said.
“Charles will kill you,” Edwin corrected. “In the event, I shall be mercifully indisposed.”
Crystal pulled a face.
“Just— please don’t make me have to have that conversation with him, okay?”
“I would much prefer to avoid that outcome, yes,” Edwin agreed stiffly.
Crystal stared at him in that uncannily piercing way of hers, seemed to find whatever she was looking for, and pulled out a knife. Edwin obediently stuck his hand out over the boundary of the circle, and let Crystal cut a line across his palm. He did not flinch. She cradled his hand for perhaps a second longer than either of them would have liked.
“See you on the other side,” she said, and it began.
Charles stared at the unconscious boy in his bed, and did his level best not to fidget.
In his defence, Charles’ usual limit for sitting still was roughly thirty minutes, and the boy had been unconscious for three days. Not that Charles blamed the bloke, mind you— he knew fine well that being possessed took it out of a chap.
And this had been a bad one. Charles tried to reconcile the still, delicate form in front of him with the scene from the church: eyes black from end to end, an inhuman, leering grin, and then— and Charles was never going to be able to wipe this image from his mind—the boy spewing up a torrent of spiders, an unnatural bleached white, making this awful clicking, skittering noise as they swarmed out of the summoning circle and towards Charles at top speed.
If Charles found a single spider in his bed, he was going to burn his entire flat to the ground. He’d decided it was a bit weird to undress blokes you didn’t know, even blokes you’d pulled a demon out of, so with the exception of pulling off his shoes the boy lay there pretty much as Charles had found him, sprawled across Charles’ poky little bed. He was dressed in the tattered remains of a suit, dark hair spilling across the pillow, face sheet-pale. Charles was sort of starting to wonder if he was ever going to wake up, or if he should cut his losses and try to subtly dump the poor bloke at the nearest hospital.
He hadn’t meant to get into the whole demon-hunting, exorcism business. But he’d been a teenage runaway, licking his wounds, and he’d fallen into increasingly seedy and increasingly supernatural pockets of London. Nowhere else to go. And then he’d run into some girl frantically trying to exorcise her mate, and obviously the only thing to do was to lend a hand. After a chill winter of having to accept favours with increasingly humiliating gratitude, it had felt unbelievably good to help someone else, for a change.
Much to his surprise, Charles, who’d spent most of his life feeling like an abject failure at pretty much everything other than cricket, found that he was good at it. Exorcism, he’d learned, relied less on knowing the Latin than on a combination of bloodyminded determination and a certain willingness to get thrown about a lot. And if there was one thing Charles knew how to do, it was take a punch.
The boy jolted bolt upright. Charles lurched to attention.
“Hiya— I’m Charles— I dunno if you remember much from the, er, exorcism—”
The boy stared at him, eyes steely and remarkably focused.
“What year is it?”
Charles told him. The boy retched, and Charles swore and jumped to his feet, but there were no spiders: just thick, black sludge, ominously iridescent, spilling down his front and over his hands.
“Aw, fuck,” Charles said, lunging forward.
“Sorry,” said the boy. He sounded utterly miserable.
“No, s’not your fault, come on,” said Charles, pulling back the duvet cover and helping the boy up onto shaky, baby-deer legs. “Let’s get you into the shower, get you all cleaned up.”
“Shower?” the boy repeated blankly. But he let Charles herd him into the bathroom, docile enough, show him how the taps worked, where the towel was.
“Feel free to grab anything from my wardrobe, get yourself all sorted,” Charles said. “I’ll just— strip the bed down, then I’ll be in the kitchenette, just through there, yeah?”
The boy nodded jerkily. Charles hovered outside the bathroom door till he could the steady thrum of the shower start up, took off the soiled bedsheets, and set about making two cups of tea.
By the time the boy emerged, he looked remarkably put-together. He’d fished out what must have been Charles’ only white dress shirt, a job interview staple (exorcism was not a particularly profitable career path), and paired that with black slacks and a soft blue jumper. His hair fell over his forehand in damp, dark waves.
Charles beamed at him.
“There you are, mate,” he said, shoving one of the mugs forward. “Made you a cuppa. Dunno how you usually take it, but sugar’s usually best, after— well.”
“Thank you,” the boy said softly. “I do apologise for my earlier outburst.” His accent was crisp, perfect RP, as even as if delivering the weather report.
“Hey, nothing to apologise for, yeah? Demonic possession,” Charles said, testing the waters, “does tend to take it out of a chap a bit.”
The boy’s only response was a tight nod. So he’d been aware, at least a bit, of what was happening to him. Poor bloke.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Charles said carefully, “d’you know what year it was? When—”
“Nineteen-sixteen,” the boy said.
“Fucking Hell,” said Charles.
“Quite.” The boy’s smile was a tight, humourless little thing.
“That’s— fucking Hell,” Charles said again, impotently. Vessels didn’t tend to age while they had a demon in them, so Charles supposed that was technically possible. But demons as a rule were also bad about remembering that humans needed to do things like eat, or sleep, or not get stabbed, and so they tended to burn through bodies pretty quickly. To have a demon inside of you for over a century and come out the other side walking and talking and talking was nothing short of miraculous. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a possession lasting that long.”
“My circumstances were… unusual,” the boy said. At Charles’ inquiring glance, he took a deep breath, and went on. “I was sacrificed, initially. The demon owned me, body and soul, so— possession, in both senses of the word. I imagine that made me rather more— durable.” He spoke with a careful sort of detachment, but he was holding himself very still, shoulders tense.
“That sounds— hard doesn’t even begin to cover it, mate,” Charles said. “I’m glad you made it out.”
The boy looked at him, something molten in his eyes.
“In large part thanks to you, I suspect,” he said. “Charles, did you say your name was?”
“Yeah, Christ, totally forgot my manners,” Charles said, scrambling to stick out a hand. “Charles Rowland.”
“Edwin Payne,” said the boy— Edwin— reaching out to clasp it. His fingers were long, and still slightly damp.
“Well, Edwin,” Charles said, liking the old-fashioned shape of it in his mouth, “s’not much, but you’re welcome to stay with me till you get yourself sorted, all right? More than a century. Bloody hell.”
“Thank you,” Edwin said, softly. “I realised time was passing, of course, but I had not realised quite how much.” He gave a shy sort of smile. “The— shower, was it? Was rather novel.”
Charles blinked.
“Bloody hell, mate. Showers. Well. Let’s get you settled into the future, shall we?”
It wasn’t a surprise that Edwin’s parents were dead, not after Charles had told him how long it had been. Nevertheless, the sight of their names on a gravestone was oddly, dispiritingly final. Some infinitesimal bit of hope he’d been daft to hold onto, he supposed. And his brother. Bertie. Nineteen-eighteen. No chance of relatives, then, no great-grandchildren. Probably that was just as well. It wasn’t as though Edwin had the foggiest how he would explain himself to them. It was lonely, though.
Edwin was not enjoying the twenty-first century very much. It was all remarkably busy and remarkably loud, and his only recollection of it was whatever vile things his possessors had thought it would be amusing for him to have to witness. He was finding it remarkably difficult to be a person again. And in the midst of it all was poor Charles, who had been unaccountably kind, and was now saddled with a penniless sort-of time-traveller who jumped at loud noises and had screaming nightmares.
Edwin had tried to tell Charles that it was all right, he would go and take up accommodation in a workhouse. Charles had very gently told Edwin that those didn’t exist anymore. And so he and Edwin continued to sleep top to tail in Charles’ poky little bed, and when Edwin woke up in the middle of the night with his heart in his throat, the sight of Charles’ feet in their red-and-white stripy socks, his skinny ankles, were so reassuring in their normality that it made Edwin feel— very full. Very fond.
He had, he knew, grown far too attached, far too quickly. But what else was he to do?
Edwin ran his hand over his own name on the stone, felt the cold finality of it. He heard Charles’ sharp intake of breath from behind him.
“I can hardly blame them for wanting closure,” Edwin said, keeping his voice carefully even. “In a way I suppose I was dead. And it is— nice, to be remembered.”
Charles placed a hand on his shoulder, feather-light.
“Sorry, mate,” he said. “I knew you were about my age, but— sixteen. Bloody hell.”
“Almost seventeen,” Edwin said, reflexively. He sighed. “It happened at school. A group of boys. It was intended to be a prank, I think. Only the demon they summoned was real, and— I killed them all. I tore them apart.”
Charles knelt down beside him.
“It wasn’t your fault, mate,” he said. “It wasn’t really you.”
“It was my hands,” Edwin said, slightly shrill. “And I hated them, they were horrid, and I was just starting to understand what they’d done to me, but— nobody deserves that.”
He stared down at the hands in question, soft and white and limp in his lap, and tried very hard not to think about what they had felt like, covered in hot blood, viscera under his nails. Charles reached out, and gently took one of them. Edwin interlaced their fingers, and squeezed tightly.
“I want to help you,” he said, the words feeling almost pulled out of him. “With the exorcisms. I used to be rather good at languages, and I— I should very much like to stop this from happening to anybody else.”
Charles squeezed his hand back and smiled at him, achingly bright.
“Yeah? I reckon we’ll make a cracking team, mate. Those demons won’t know what’s hit them.”
On the walk back, Edwin asked Charles about how he’d gotten into the exorcism business, and in amongst a depressingly familiar story of school bullies and some neat sidestepping around why, precisely, Charles had felt he couldn’t return home, they discovered that they’d attended the same school.
“It’s got a hell of a lot to answer for, St. Hil’s,” Charles said darkly.
“Do people ever talk about what happened?” Edwin asked. The prospect made him feel oddly shy.
“There were loads of ghost stories, and things,” Charles said. “I never thought they were real, though, Christ.”
“You know, Saint Hilarion was an exorcist,” Edwin said.
“You’re having me on,” said Charles. “Was he?”
“He lived in the desert and exorcised demons and healed people and the like,” Edwin said. There was also the bit about the Devil igniting the flames of lust within poor old Hilarion, but he decided to leave that out.
“Bloody Hell,” said Charles. “Well, that’s ironic, what with—” he gestured awkwardly between the two of them. Something about the expression on his face, some mixture of amusement and bewilderment and righteous indignation, made Edwin honest-to-goodness giggle. He didn’t think he’d giggled in the last century.
“Quite,” said Edwin. “Well. At least something good has come out of that dreadful place. I should think that Hilarion ought to be rather proud of you, carrying on his good work.”
“Of us, just you wait,” Charles said, elbowing him gently in the ribs, and something in Edwin’s chest sang.
The thing about Crystal Palace’s arrival was that it was really rather logistically inconvenient.
In the three and a bit years that Edwin had been living at Charles’, they’d never quite gotten round to getting another bed, still piling up into Charles’ dinky not-quite double each night. Adding a third person to the equation did complicate matters somewhat. Crystal got the bed the first night, of course, because she’d just survived an exorcism and seemed really rather confused. Edwin and Charles each folded themselves into one of Charles’ ratty old armchairs, and made do. Then in the morning, it transpired that her memory loss appeared to be permanent, and that she had nowhere else to go. So.
Charles tried to instil some kind of rota, initially, but Edwin seriously doubted that Crystal wanted to share a bed with him anymore than he wanted to share one with her. So Edwin played the nightmare card and claimed the living room-slash-office-slash-kitchenette for himself, pulling the two armchairs together in and amongst their piles of bibles and spellbooks, and left Charles and Crystal to share the bedroom. He was trying very hard to be mature and reasonable about the whole thing. He was not particularly succeeding.
It would, obviously, be massively hypocritical for Edwin to be annoyed at Charles for taking in strays. And perhaps Edwin was simply a massive hypocrite. But he could see how Charles looked at Crystal, and he could admit, begrudgingly, that she was an attractive young woman. What was perhaps worse was how, in a matter of days, she’d noticed things about Charles that Edwin somehow hadn’t, in their three and a bit years together.
Edwin had thought that Charles hadn’t wanted to talk about his family, about whatever it was that had pushed him to run away from home, and so he carefully, diligently, hadn’t asked. Had spent three years not asking. But then Crystal had come along, and Charles had seemed all too eager to tell her, and so perhaps the problem, really, was that Charles simply didn’t want to talk about such things with Edwin. This sent a horrible, lurching feeling swooping through his stomach. Edwin was all too aware of his own shortcomings. But he had thought, at least, that he was a good friend to Charles.
After the Devlin exorcism— nasty business— it became abundantly clear that this was not the case. Edwin spent a sleepless night curled up on the armchairs, trying very hard not to think about what might be going on behind Charles’ bedroom door, and not to be so bloody pathetic about it. The next day, he announced, unceremoniously, that he’d be spending the night at Thomas’.
“Thomas?” Charles said, voice slightly shrill. “Half demon Thomas?”
“Don’t be bigoted,” Edwin said primly. “We both know I’m most likely damned anyway, it does no harm to network.”
“He wants to do a lot more than network, if you ask me,” Charles said darkly.
Privately, Edwin thought that if he was going to be filled with such childish jealousy, he might as well do so from the comfort of Thomas’ silk sheets, with incontrovertible evidence that someone wanted him.
“I’m an old man,” he said instead, “and that blasted armchair is doing my back in.
Charles folded his arms across his chest.
“You’re almost a year younger than me.”
“I’m one hundred and twenty-five,” Edwin said.
“The years you were possessed do not count,” Charles said firmly, and then deflated, shoulders slumping. “Look, is everything okay? I know having Crystal here is a bit of a change, but—”
“Everything is perfectly fine,” said Edwin. “I just need a bit of— space. I’m sure you and Crystal do, too.”
Charles worried at his lip.
“You can tell me anything, you know.”
“Yes,” said Edwin, a bit sadly. “You can, too.”
Things improved, after the three of them had worked together to exorcise Niko. Grew more balanced, at any rate. What with Edwin second-guessing his every interaction with Charles, which he knew, really, was manifesting as him being even more withdrawn and irritable than usual, it was a blessing to find someone who seemed to understand him effortlessly. Crystal got on with Niko like a house on fire, too, and perhaps Edwin ought to have been as humiliatingly jealous of that as he was of whatever was going on between her and Charles, but in the event, it seemed to give them a point of common ground. Edwin would spend some nights in Niko’s flat, bundled up in one of her ridiculously fluffy blankets and watching Scooby-doo. Other nights, Crystal would stay over at Niko’s, and it would be just him and Charles again, like old times. Things settled into a tentatively pleasant equilibrium.
And then Niko died. Killed by a witch, Esther Finch, who had wanted to use Edwin’s probably-damned, demon-owned soul to open a portal to Hell.
There was something else for him and Crystal to have in common, he supposed. A shared thing to mourn. Edwin had gotten the bed all to himself that night. He’d been half catatonic with pain and grief, and had hardly noticed.
Edwin sat on the roof of Charles’ apartment building, dressed in flannel pyjamas and an old bathrobe— Charles’, everything was Charles’, really— and tried to get his hands to stop shaking enough to light a cigarette.
“Need a hand?” Crystal asked from behind him, and Edwin flinched hard, letting out an undignified yelp, and dropped the lighter.
“Christ,” he hissed, scrabbling to pick it up. “Don’t startle me like that, I could’ve dropped the bloody thing over the side. Gotten someone in the head, all that.”
“Sorry,” said Crystal, unrepentant. She peered over the edge of the building.
“You reckon we’re high up enough for it to kill someone?”
“Why don’t you run on down,” Edwin said, “and we’ll have a little science experiment.”
“Go to Hell,” Crystal said, but without much heat.
“I’ve been,” said Edwin, equally mildly. “I would not particularly recommend the experience.”
“Always got to win the trauma Olympics, huh?” Crystal said. Edwin shrugged jerkily. He managed, finally, to get his cigarette lit, took a drag, passed it to Crystal. His hands suddenly felt far too empty, and he clutched his knees to his chest.
“I can’t stop thinking,” Edwin said, voice hoarse. “If it hadn’t been for— it was me Esther wanted—”
“Stop it,” Crystal said firmly. “You do actually win the trauma Olympics, this time, asshole. You spent all of yesterday getting tortured, you don’t get to feel guilty, too. You just have to— miss her, like the rest of us.” She handed him back the cigarette. “Besides,” she said, in a much smaller voice, “it was me Esther was aiming for. So if anyone gets to feel guilty, it’s me.”
“If I’m not allowed to feel guilty, you certainly aren’t,” Edwin said. “Niko chose to jump in front of you. That was her choice, not your fault. Her final choice. Don’t belittle it.”
“What the fuck do you know?” said Crystal. “You weren’t paying attention, you were being tortured at the time, remember?”
“I can multitask,” Edwin snapped.
“If she chose to jump in front of me,” Crystal said, “she also chose to come rescue you. So.”
There was nothing Edwin could say to that, so he just took a drag of the cigarette, flicked the ash off the end.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Crystal.
“I don’t,” Edwin said. “The third demon who possessed me, though, he’d do so incessantly. He puppeted me around for decades, and I never even learned his name, can you believe that?” He sighed, handed the cigarette back to Crystal.
“I suppose sometimes I find it easier to seek recourse in old hurts, rather than to make sense of new ones,” he said, after a moment.
“I guess that’s the difference between you and me, huh?” Crystal said. “You’re all past, and I don’t have one.”
Edwin took the cigarette back, and tilted his head in consideration. Crystal sighed.
“I know David’s name, though,” she said. “Well, I think I knew him more than that. I mean, I don’t remember, but I get the sense he was the person closest to me. This– evil fucking demon, and I’m pretty sure that was the most important relationship in my entire fucking life. That he got me.” She sniffed, took the cigarette back from Edwin. “Paints a pretty bleak picture of old me, huh?”
“Are you frightened?” Edwin asked, doing his best to be gentle. “Of him coming back, possessing you again?”
“Are you?” Crystal asked.
“Yes,” Edwin said. “All the time.”
Crystal manoeuvred the cigarette into her left hand, grabbed Edwin’s hand tight with her right. He squeezed it back. They pointedly did not talk about Niko. They just sat in silence, miserable and grieving and afraid. Another thing they had in common, Edwin supposed.
And so, the plan. It was simple, really. Edwin was a good vessel. Crystal was a talented psychic. If they could summon David, get him to possess Edwin, Crystal reckoned she’d be able to wrench her memories back from him. It’d be as controlled an interaction with David as they could manage. There would be no collateral damage, nothing for either of them to feel guilty about. That was another reason Charles couldn’t know, even if he was the best exorcist of the three of them, something Edwin reckoned came down to his faith, not in a higher power, per se, but in– rightness, perhaps. In people.
That warm, glowing way in which Edwin’s thoughts tended to swirl around Charles was, perhaps, the principal reason Edwin did not want him around while something else was combing through his brain, piloting his body. That, and the fact he would probably take issue with the entire foolhardy operation, and might try and talk them out of it.
Edwin couldn’t speak for Crystal, but he found that nothing was able to drive thoughts of Niko out of his mind quite as much as the possibility of reliving his worst nightmare. Grief made the two of them into fine co-conspirators.
Edwin’s blood hit the floor of the summoning circle with a hiss, and the air started to crackle with the smell of ozone. Crystal looked at Edwin, standing posture-perfect in the very middle of the circle, feet together, in his nice soft clothes, and was filled with a sudden wave of affection for the uptight prick. All right, he was snarky and territorial and clearly hopelessly in love with Charles, but he also got it. The way possession left you scraped raw, missing time and disgusted with your body and unsure where you ended and the horrible thing in you began. And here she was, about to do it to him.
“Fuck, Edwin,” she babbled, “What if it all goes wrong— what if David takes your memories, too—”
“Crystal, everyone I knew prior to my possession is dead,” Edwin said, briskly. “You might have a family out there. People who love you. If I can be instrumental in reuniting you with them, then that would be my honour.”
Something about Edwin of all people being all noble and self-sacrificing made Crystal want to punch someone.
“You have people too, you know. Me and Charles.” And Niko, she almost added, before she caught herself.
“I do know,” Edwin said, managing to sound businesslike and scathing and, somehow, slightly fond all at once. Probably it was the mention of Charles. “That’s the reason I’m willing to go through with this.”
Crystal felt her eyes start to water, in spite of herself.
“If you weren’t in the middle of a summoning circle, I’d hug you. You dick.”
“Yes, well,” said Edwin, as reassuringly uncomfortable with displays of affection as ever. “You have begun the summoning, so if you would please turn to the Latin and attempt to direct just what we are summoning, that would be a great comfort.”
Crystal winced.
“Right. Okay.”
She got to it, reciting Edwin’s neatly printed notes, very carefully not looking up to see if he was doing some bullshit like correcting her vowel lengths under his breath, in case she did something unutterably embarrassing like start crying.
By the time she’d looked up, Edwin wasn’t there anymore.
David’s shit-eating grin looked remarkably out of place on Edwin’s face. Not that Edwin didn’t have his own smug fucking smirk, but— it wasn’t cruel.
“Babe,” he said, and watching Edwin’s eyes flick up and down her body like that was almost as jarring as hearing him speak with an American accent. “I knew you’d miss me.”
Crystal tried to school her expression into something normal. “That is so not what is happening here.”
“It’s not as intimate as being in you, babe,” David continued, steamrolling over her, “but I’ll admit that the separate bodies thing has its perks.” He made a crude thrusting gesture with Edwin’s groin. Crystal did her best not to throw up in her mouth.
“You’re wearing my friend, asshole,” she said tightly. “And ew.” Her definitely gay friend, at that, but that was a conversation they were still working up to. Maybe this whole demon-summoning exercise would work well enough as a bonding session.
David waved a hand lazily, toed the edge of the summoning circle.
“He’s just a vessel. And what, a fourth-hand one at that?
“And what about me, huh? Was I just a vessel too?”
“Don’t be like that.” David let his eyes go black from end to end, tilted his head. “You know you’re a special case.”
“Damn right I’m a special case,” Crystal said, “because you took my fucking memories. And I want them back, right the fuck now.”
And she darted her hand across the summoning circle, and latched onto Edwin’s wrist.
— he stared down at Simon, pressed against the wall, face teary and snotty and scrunched up with terror, and he’d never seen him look like that never ever but there was something inside him and the thing inside him pressed up close and jerked his face into a rictus smile and pressed his hands against Simon’s stomach and he could feel him flinch at the contact, and then it clawed his hands into fists and he was tearing through the soft skin of his stomach, blood flecking his wrists, pulling his steaming intestines out onto the cold basement floor and Simon was screaming and he wanted to scream too but the thing inside him wouldn’t let him move his mouth—
Crystal pulled back, breathing hard, the taste of Edwin’s misery acrid in her mouth, and David grabbed at her with Edwin’s other arm, doing his best to drag her over the line of the summoning circle. Crystal shrieked, clawing at him with her acrylic nails, boots scrambling madly across the floor.
“You’ve got to do better than that, babe,” he hissed, “You know why you’re special? Because you let me possess you. You asked for it. Never told your little buddy here that, did you?”
“Don’t fucking victim-blame me,” Crystal said, managing to get her left foot steady enough on the floor to lash out and give David a solid kick in the shin with her left Doc Marten. Sorry, Edwin. It managed to give her enough force to push herself away from him, though, wrenching her wrists free. “I didn’t ask for this,” Crystal spat. “I didn’t know what you were— I didn’t understand—”
David laughed, sounding, just for a second, uncannily Edwin-like. He pushed up right to the edge of the summoning circle.
“You knew,” David said, “Because you’re just like me. Because we’re the same. You’re not a good person, babe.”
“Fuck you,” said Crystal. She dug her nails into her palm, trying to push back a sudden hot wave of tears. She was not going to let this asshole get to her, not even when his words sunk into the great vacuum inside her with the heavy certainty of truth.
“I’m not judging you for it. Your broken little vessel here,” David continued, gesturing down at Edwin’s body with a look of disdain, “all the shame and all the suffering, he could never understand that power in your veins. How good it feels to make someone do what you want. But I do.”
Crystal turned sharply on her heel, went over to the chair behind her, the one with Edwin’s belongings piled up on it. She was getting sidetracked. She ran her fingers over Edwin’s phone, just so she could feel a masochistic stab in her stomach at the sight of his lockscreen, an eminently terrible selfie of him and Charles, hair dishevelled, both in flannel pyjamas.
“Crystal fucking Palace, pull yourself together,” she muttered under her breath, and picked up a small silver bottle. She made sure to rattle it menacingly as she stormed back over to the summoning circle.
“Holy water, motherfucker. Give me my memories back right now, or this is about to get messy.”
David blinked his eyes back to Edwin’s usual green. “Oh, come on. You don’t want to hurt your little buddy here, do you?”
Crystal thought of every single time that Edwin, in that smug tone of his, had gone on about his supernaturally high pain tolerance, and hoped to god he hadn’t been lying.
“Well, like you just said. I’m not a very good person.” She flipped open the bottle and flung its contents at him.
“Bitch!” hissed David, darting as far back as the summoning circle would allow. His skin, where it had come into contact with the holy water, was an angry red, and seemed to be smoking slightly.
“Give me my memories,” Crystal repeated, “and maybe I’ll just kick you out of Edwin, instead of sending you straight back to Hell.”
“You know, Eddie only agreed to help you in the hopes that once you got your memories back, you’d fuck off and leave him alone.” David drew Edwin’s face into a mock pout. “He’s going to be so disappointed when he finds out that you’re a miserable bitch that nobody misses.”
“Give me my fucking memories back,” Crystal repeated, balling her hands into fists.
David spread Edwin’s arms, like he was waiting for a hug.
“If you want them,” he said, “come and get them.”
Crystal felt like crying, or yelling, or both. This was a terrible fucking idea. But the night was drawing on, and she just wanted to get them both home. She took a few steps back, drawing level with the chair. Edwin’s phone buzzed— Charles, probably, wondering where they were. Crystal took a deep breath, and charged.
She threw herself at Edwin, full speed, managed to send them both tumbling to the ground— good thing he was so fucking scrawny, that would have never worked with Charles. David laughed wildly and clawed at her, and she scrambled to get the bulk of her weight firmly on top of him, pinning him down. She grabbed hold of him, and—
— Edwin tried his best to keep his shaky hands still, to stop them from rattling the heavy manacles encircling his wrists, but it had been so long since he’d last been in control of his own body and he seemed to have lost the knack, trembling and terrified. The air was stiflingly hot and humid and even breathing seemed to require an inordinate amount of effort, and he could hear, somewhere, people screaming. He didn’t know what was going on, only that Sa’al was no longer in him but standing over him, looking like he had that night in the basement. The thing next to Sa’al had bone-white skin, stretched too tight over its bones, and ink-black, vertical gashes for eyes, dripping down its face. It leered at Edwin, rows upon rows of rotting teeth jammed into its maw.
“May as well have some fun with the boy first, before I take him out for a spin,” it said, voice like corrugated iron, and—
Crystal dragged her way out of Edwin’s memory, but held on tight to his wrist, her acrylics digging into his skin, and pushed herself further into his mind. She seemed to trip over thin air, suddenly, free-falling into nothingness, and landed on what looked like a giant chessboard, black squares alternating with a vast expanse of glowing purple. David stood in the middle of the board, looking just how Crystal remembered him, douchey jacket and all.
“Fancy seeing you here,” he said. That smile made Crystal’s skin crawl even more when it was on his own face.
“I want my memories back,” Crystal said again, voice shaking. David spread his hands wide, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
“You can have them, if you care that much. They won’t make you happy, though, babe. I mean, really, I took them for your own good.”
“That’s a fucking lie,” Crystal said.
“Yeah,” David said, “it is, you got me. But babe, what was I supposed to do? My vessel here and his little buddy were trying to rip you away from me. I just wanted to keep you close, in whatever way I could.”
Crystal actually laughed.
“You expect me to buy that this is what, some kind of romantic gesture? You just wanted to make me scared, and vulnerable, so that I’d come crawling back to you.”
David sighed.
“Don’t be like that, babe. But fine. I’ll cut you a deal. I could give you your memories back, if I get to keep you wearing your little friend here. Nobody missed dead-y little Eddie back in 1916, and nobody’ll miss him now.”
“His little buddy would, for a start,” Crystal snapped. “And so would I. I wouldn’t fucking trade him for me, I’d never—”
David mock-pouted.
“You see, babe, this is why you don’t want your memories back. Because you would. You so would.”
“Well, then I’ve changed,” Crystal said, voice tight. “I don’t care. But I want my memories back, and I want to be able to decide that for myself.”
“Alternatively,” David said, sidling up close, “you could let me back in. I’d give you your memories back, we can go back to how it used to be. You and me together, babe.”
“What is it about me?” Crystal asked. Her voice was very small. “Why do you want me so badly?”
David rolled his eyes.
“Always so needy, Cryssie. Ugh. Fishing for compliments.”
“Why,” Crystal asked. “Give me a good reason, maybe I will let you possess me again.”
“You’re powerful, all right?” David said. “Is it so wrong that I want that? It’s feminist, really.”
“You,” Crystal said, “are such a fucking douche.” She didn’t know why that stung. Some final miserable humiliation. Even her demon ex didn’t really want her for her.
David grinned in a way she was sure he thought was charming.
“Enough stalling, babe.”
“You’re right,” said Crystal. “Enough.”
Crystal pulled, with everything she had.
The smirk slid off David’s face.
“Hey, babe, come on—”
“You’re right, babe,” said Crystal. “I am powerful.”
She didn’t need to ask David for shit, especially not when he was wearing her friend. And with a final yank, Crystal Palace Surname-von Hoverkraft dragged her memories back into place. They slotted in with a neat little click, and she gasped. David growled and lunged at her, but Crystal did the psychic equivalent of kicking up through Edwin’s mind like she was underwater, swimming up and up until she burst through its silvery meniscus into
– The demon hunter was yelling, and the thing inside Edwin was laughing, high and cold, but then she pushed him, hard, and he tripped backwards over the edge of the roof, and he was falling, falling, falling, and for a just a moment, Edwin and the thing inside him were equally powerless to control his body.
Then he hit the ground.
Edwin felt several important things inside himself shatter, a grind and snap of gristle on bone, and it hurt and hurt and all he wanted to do was lie there in breathless agony, but the thing inside him just laughed, standing on broken legs, and it could disconnect itself from the pain and drag him onwards, but Edwin couldn’t, and it hurt– and Crystal grabbed memory Edwin’s shoulders, doing her best not to jostle him, because Jesus fuck.
“Edwin,” she said firmly, “you’ve got to fight him.”
“Crystal?” Edwin said, and then looked startled at the sound of his own voice. A thin trickle of blood was making its way out of his nose, down to his mouth. He raised his hand to his lips, and then looked startled about that, too. Crystal did her level best not to look at the rip in his sleeve halfway down his forearm, where it bent unnaturally and a thin sliver of white winked out from a tacky mess of blood and gravel.
“This is a memory,” she said. “You’re– fine? I hope. It’s 2025. You’re not possessed by whoever this asshole was, but you are possessed by David. Do you remember?”
“David,” said Edwin, sounding dazed. “Yes.”
“I’m going to exorcise him,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice steady. “I’m going to get him out of you, but I need your help, all right? I need you to fight him. It’s your body, not his. Show him who’s boss.”
“Yes,” said Edwin. He still sounded far-off, eyes glassy. “All right.”
The monosyllables and the total lack of histrionics freaked Crystal out a bit, made her think Edwin was maybe in shock, but she figured it was the best she was going to get. She held out a hand. Edwin took it. And Crystal Palace Surname-von Hoverkraft— fuck, that was going to take some getting used to— pulled them up, up and out.
Crystal blinked hard, and did her level best not to throw up right in Edwin’s face. She didn’t think he’d ever forgive her.
“Um. What the fuck?”
Crystal whipped her head round.
Charles Rowland stared down at them, cricket bat in hand.
Crystal was suddenly very aware of the fact that she was straddling Edwin’s hips.
“Crystal,” said David, staring at Charles with a fascinated sort of loathing. “Are you cheating on me? And with Eddie’s little crush?”
“We,” Crystal said through gritted teeth, “are unbelievably broken up. Come the fuck on, Edwin!”
“What the fuck,” Charles repeated, sounding hopelessly lost.
“Charles, get exorcising!” Crystal yelled. “Edwin!”
She could hear Charles clatter about behind her, his muffled swearing quickly slipping into well-practiced Latin, steady and sure, even if Crystal could half-hear half-sense the nerves jangling underneath. She kept her face fixed on Edwin, though, as David writhed beneath her, pulling his face into an ugly sneer, eyes black, like she could drag her friend to the forefront through sheer willpower.
“Three’s a crowd, you know that?” said David, and then laughed, high and maniacal, as what felt like an invisible tornado started to whip through the church, setting everything in it into creaking, rattling motion.
Crystal whipped her head round, saw Charles narrowly duck out the way of a church pew and a series of flying hymnals, and clung on tighter to Edwin, her hair catching her in the face and obscuring her view.
“There’s four of us here,” she said. “Edwin!”
There was a clattering sound behind her, and Charles’ Latin faltered back into profanity for a second, then picked up again, louder and angrier than before. David-Edwin-David screamed, eyes flickering from green to black and back again, his body shuddering under her. He gasped roughly, and the wind stopped, the furniture clattering to a halt.
“Edwin?” Crystal asked again, her voice very small.
“Crystal,” said Edwin, in all his glorious British bitchiness, “could you get the fuck off me?”
“You’ve got him?” Crystal asked.
“I’ve got him,” Edwin said. “Now— get him out.”
Crystal nodded, clambered off Edwin with only minimal fumbling, extricated herself from the circle. Edwin made no move to get up, just lay there breathing hard, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
Charles, face drawn and eyes wide, tossed her a bible, and they took up positions on opposite sides of the circle. Charles gave her a curt little nod, and they started chanting the Latin as one, walking round the circle as they read.
Edwin’s whole body convulsed, and he started to cough, violently. Tendrils of something inky and iridescent started to spill from his mouth, pulled up by some invisible string, a whole column of darkness. Crystal was reminded, improbably, of a magician pulling strings of handkerchiefs out of thin air. When the column was about as tall as Edwin himself, it slipped free. Edwin let out a final deep, retching cough, turned his head just enough to spit on the ground next to him, and roughly wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his turtleneck. The undulating darkness coalesced into a sort of cloud. There was a powerful stench of rotten fish. Crystal’s nausea returned in full force. The edges of the summoning circle started to crack, a deep, bloody red shining up from the fissures, and Edwin yelped and curled himself up as small as possible, hands up over his head. The black cloud hung in the air for a moment, buzzing malevolently, and then was pulled sharply down into the cracks. The ground sealed up around it with a steady rumble.
“Charles,” said Edwin, slumping bonelessly in the middle of the circle, “would you possibly happen to have a cigarette I could borrow?”
Charles blinked.
“Um. Yeah?”
They sat in a row on a wonky church pew, passing a cigarette around in contemplative silence. The church looked somewhat like a bomb had gone off, orders of services and torn pages from bibles and hymnals scattered every which way, the crucifix askew on the wall. One of them really ought to clean up, Edwin thought, not to mention scrub the summoning circle off the floor. Not him, if he could help it. His entire body ached.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Charles said after a while, sounding hurt.
“We did not want to worry you,” Edwin said. “And we thought you might disapprove.” He took the cigarette from Charles, took a drag. “I ought to do that again, I think.”
“Are you fuck doing that again,” said Charles, a bit pitchy.
“I have spent the better part of the last few years petrified of being re-possessed,” Edwin said, matter-of-factly. “But once Crystal had pointed the way, so to speak— I think I could do that again. Take back control. I should like to practice.”
“Yeah?” said Crystal. “That— helped?” Her voice sounded suspiciously damp, and Edwin was terribly grateful for the solid presence of Charles in between them, in case she did something dreadful like try to hug him.
“There is absolutely no need for undue sentimentality,” Edwin said hurriedly. “But you have your memories?”
“Yeah,” said Crystal. “Yeah, it worked.” And she burst into tears. “David was right,” she said. “I’m fucking horrible.”
Charles wrapped his arms around her.
“Hey, hey,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”
Edwin was very grateful that the cigarette gave him at least something to do with his hands.
“You are not horrible,” he said stiffly, leaning awkwardly round Charles. “And Crystal, David was lying, when he said I only wanted you to get your memories back so you would leave. I cannot pretend the thought never crossed my mind, but– you have become a dear friend. And you will always have a place with us.”
“Really?” said Crystal, voice small and shaky. “Because I think I might have to. Fuck, I was so horrible to all my friends– and my parents are fucking assholes–”
“Join the club,” said Charles, grimly. This, for some reason, just made Crystal cry harder. Edwin and Charles exchanged panicked glances.
“There, there,” Edwin offered, unenthusiastically. Charles glared at him. Edwin glared back. He’d just been possessed. Charles, he thought, could handle the emotional business.
“Well, it’s nice to see the two of you getting along, I suppose,” Charles said after a while. “Even if I wish you’d chosen an activity other than fucking demon-summoning to bond over.”
Edwin would freely admit that people skills were not his strongest suit, but even so, he felt that was a fairly useless statement. Crystal’s sobbing gradually began to taper off, though.
“I want to learn how to fucking kill demons,” Crystal said wetly. “And then I’ll kill David. I’ll march into Hell if I have to, I don’t care. And then,” she said, pointing a finger at Edwin, “I’m going to kill all those fuckers who possessed you.”
Edwin could not quite suppress a smile, strangely moved by the sentiment. It felt a bit like when he’d first seen his name on a gravestone, some forlorn desire to be mourned.
“That is– oddly touching, Crystal, thank you. I am sorry you had to see– all that.”
“Sorry I had to go through your head. And sorry for putting David in there.”
Edwin waved his wrist dismissively.
“Yes, well,” he said, “you’re hardly the first. At least this time it was for something.”
“It’s still fucked up,” Crystal said.
“Well,” Edwin said, “trauma Olympics, and all that.”
Crystal snorted.
“I think you win gold today, yeah. Jesus.”
“You get a silver at minimum, I’m sure,” Edwin said, magnanimously. He leaned over Charles and handed Crystal the cigarette, then straightened his back and stared at Charles, suddenly serious.
“Really, though. I think it might be useful. When we need to— interrogate a demon, something like that. And I would like to get more control over it.”
Charles worried at his lip.
“Isn’t that going to be awful for you?”
“As I say,” Edwin said, voice oddly calm, “it’s nothing that hasn’t been done to me before. Better me than somebody else.”
“Well,” said Charles, not sounding particularly happy about it, “if you’ve both sorted out your new year’s resolutions. Can we go home?”
Edwin got first shower, on account of having just been possessed. He scrubbed his skin raw, avoiding the shiny red patches where the holy water had gotten him, and used almost half the bottle of mouthwash trying to get the taste of rotten fish out of his mouth. Afterwards, while Crystal went next, he stood in the kitchenette, damp hair falling in his eyes and fingers wrapped round a cup of tea, and blinked at the sudden, overwhelming sense of deja-vu, dragging him straight back to the day they’d met.
There was still something pinched and miserable about the set of Charles’ mouth.
“I am sorry we didn’t tell you,” Edwin said. “I cannot speak for Crystal, but I found I needed a distraction, after Niko died. This whole scheme was a much-needed outlet and I— did not want you to dissuade me, I suppose.”
Charles stared down fixedly at his mug.
“I could’ve helped,” he said.
“You did help,” Edwin said firmly.
Charles sniffed.
“Just sped up the exorcism, really. You two seemed to have it pretty much handled.”
“Then I fail to see what the problem is,” Edwin said, wondering if he’d gone slightly mad.
“The problem,” said Charles, “is that the two of you have spent weeks plotting behind my back, and it was– fucking fine, so I can’t even be properly angry with you about it, and now you want to be, like– a demon telephone, or something, and I’m not clever like you are, and I’m not psychic, and I’m a fucking angry mess who’s not as okay about my parents as I’ve spent the last couple of years pretending to be, so– what d’you need me for, really? What’s the the fucking point of me?”
“I’ll always need you,” Edwin said softly.
“You’ve been slipping away from me,” Charles said. “Not just with tonight, but– for months. Since Crystal got here, maybe.”
“You’re so kind,” Edwin said. “You’ve been so kind to me, Charles, but you never asked to be stuck with me, not forever. And with Crystal joining us, it became apparent that perhaps you’d outgrown me. That I was holding you back.”
“Well, that’s bollocks,” Charles said hotly. “Maybe I like being stuck with you, ever think of that?”
“I like being stuck with you, too,” Edwin said. “I could never have imagined having a friend like you, before. It means more than I can say.”
Charles looked down, avoiding Edwin’s gaze.
“Until you run off and go and– do whatever it is you do with Thomas.”
“We talk about you, mostly,” Edwin said. “It infuriates him to no end. But he has helped me to– make sense of certain things.”
“You could’ve talked to me,” Charles said, petulant, but at least he was actually looking at Edwin now.
“Not about this,” Edwin said firmly.
“I– well, bloody hell, what were you talking about?” Charles asked. His eyes were very wide.
“You have never been possessed,” Edwin said. “You didn’t go into this line of work for revenge, or because you know what it’s like, but simply because you are kind, and you want to help people. And I admire that more than I can say. But there are some things–” he paused, took a scalding sip of tea, tried to wrangle his thoughts into some semblance of order. “You don’t know what it’s like. And I would not wish you to know. But I was terribly young, when I was first possessed, and there was this– thing raking through my mind, mocking things that I was not ready to admit, not even to myself. But I can admit it now, I think.”
“Admit what?” Charles said. He sounded hopelessly lost.
“I am a homosexual,” Edwin said, doing his best to keep his voice even. Charles blinked.
“Oh,” he said. “Aw, mate. Look, I don’t want to be dismissive, and I know things were different when you grew up, but you’ve got to know I’d never–”
“I’m in love with you,” Edwin said.
“Oh,” said Charles.
“I do not expect you to feel the same way,” Edwin said. “But I don’t want to keep my distance any longer, particularly if– I’d never want to hurt you–”
Charles surged forward, and kissed him. Edwin let out a little squeaking noise, and almost upended his entire cup of tea onto Charles’ chest.
“Sorry,” Charles said, eyes massive. “I thought–”
Edwin carefully placed his mug on the kitchen counter, out of harm’s way.
“I should like to try that again,” Edwin said carefully, “without the risk of me scalding you. That is, if you’re amenable.”
A smile played around Charles’ lips, soft and flickering. Christ, his lips.
“Yeah, mate,” he said. “I’m amenable.”
Edwin grabbed Charles’ shirt collar, pulled him in close, and kissed him in earnest. Charles kissed back, and Edwin drank in the wonderful closeness of him, looping an arm around his neck. Charles drew back, just slightly, and looked at Edwin, those big eyes of his staring hard, drinking him in.
“I love you so much. I don’t– I can’t lose you yeah?”
Edwin couldn’t suppress the frankly undignified smile that spread across his face at that. Charles leaned back in and kissed it.
“Oh, gross,” Crystal said from behind them, and Edwin lurched backwards. She sighed. “I’m happy for you, losers. About time.” She picked up the cup of coffee Edwin had left on the side for her, and pointed a finger accusingly at the two of them. “We’re definitely getting a second bed now, though. No funny business.”
Not that night, though. That night, all three of them piled into the bed together. Charles was in the middle, and Crystal stole the duvet and Edwin snored and Charles’ feet stuck out at the end of the bedspread, clad in fuzzy purple socks that almost certainly belonged to Crystal. In some kind of statistical marvel, for perhaps the first night since all of them had taken up residence in Charles’ little flat, not one of them had a nightmare.
So that was all right then.