PART OF HOPE WAS scared about Malik's old ways of coping that had been resurfacing. If Malik started drinking then that only meant things were going to get bad little by little. He worked so hard to recover... and now he's falling back down again. And Hope was scared that there was no saving him.
So... she called in another set of hands that would arrive shortly.
Malik was seated in the library, his flask in his hand as he watched Landon go through book by book. His head was starting to hurt from all the intake of liquor but the pain seemed to fade every five minutes.
"Boom! I got it!" Landon exclaims in excitement, he looks over at Malik smiling. "Oh god— you're a day drinker?"
Malik stands to his feet groaning, he places the flask in his pocket. "No— well just this once. Anyway, what did you find?"
Landon seemed nearly too happy that Malik had asked him that. Because once those words flew out of Malik's mouth; Landon began to explain everything that he read and found out about their new Malivore monster. Apparently, this wasn't a Night Hag that they had been dealing with. It was instead something called an Oneiroi. A black-winged shapeshifting dream demon.
The two boys were quick to go find Doctor Saltzman and Hope and explain to them what Landon had discovered. And after telling them, they went to go tell MG, Kaleb, and Rafael.
"A black-winged what?"
"Shapeshifting dream demon." Both Hope and Malik say in unison.
Hope sighs. "I know it sounds bad, but now that we know what the creature is, we can fight it."
Rafael looks at the two as if they had both just gone insane. "How the hell are we supposed to kill a dream demon?"
"Leave that part to me." Hope answers. "But since I can't fall asleep without compromising the location of the urn, I need someone else to pull it out of the dream plane and into our waking reality. And by that someone else— I mean hybrid boy over here."
