Belief In The Occult

Twenty Three

Cobalt had been slightly panicked when Kodiak wasn't in his room when he came to check on him in the morning, but it was quickly alleviated when he poked his head into Maci's room and saw that the both of them were asleep on a pair of bean bag chairs underneath a bunch of blankets, some movie from the eighties still playing on the TV.

Over the next few days, Kodiak healed remarkably well, and strangely enough, Maci seemed to be having a... well what appeared to be an overall positive effect. Though it had only been a few days, even Varick noticed the change when he came to visit his charge at the end of the week. Kodiak looked a little less gray. His game was still gaining traction. The incident in the subway station did nothing but add a morbid, death-defying allure to the age bracket that thought themselves immortal.

He was still a bit strained with the others, but spent more time in the communal spaces, usually trailing after Maci, who reveled in having somebody who wanted to spend a bunch of time around her. Fable nearly tripped and fell when she was past the living room, glanced to the side and saw Kodiak smiling at something Maci had said.

When Cobalt finally declared Kodiak fully healed, he appeared in Maci's doorway, a chilling smile on his face.

"You're... a spirit of revenge... right?"

Sasha Vance. Daughter of a notorious monster hunter, suspected but cleared in the death of her acquaintances, moved schools since the incident, and possessing a new distrust of mirrors. Since the incident, her father, Chet Vance, doubled down on the monster hunting and hatred. He kept the house warded, he and his daughter armed to the teeth against the diabolical every time they left.

Kodiak remembered what it felt like to possess that boy. Like wearing a heavy set of clothes. It was the most solid, most alive the poltergeist had felt yet. He didn't quite like it, but he understood its use.

But that instance had mostly been on instinct, Kodiak hadn't been thinking. He was honestly pretty sure if he tried it again on purpose, something bad would happen or it just flat-out wouldn't work, so he put the idea away for a later endeavor, after he'd done more lessons with Varick.

Fortunately, he had a new friend now, who was really good at getting back at somebody. Like him, she'd been conjured through Belief. Not through a game, like he had, but through an urban legend. Lots of cracks in sanity and blood and revenge. If someone was holding a particularly deep grudge, she could be summoned.

This would just be helping out a friend. Maci was a spirit of emotion, and though Kodiak was much less so, they made a surprisingly tight friendship, and her obsessive personality made her extremely loyal and protective of her closest friend.

All she needed to do was help him get into the house.

The Chaperones thought Kodiak had forgotten about his little grudge as he made friends with Maci, and if they found out they'd never let him go into that lion's den of Chet Vance's house, so the two left in the middle of the night.

Usually, the thought alone of sneaking, breaking rules set by other entities, or doing something that could potentially anger his mentor sent Kodiak into an internal anxious fit, but he was angry, and technically, already had permission.

"If you still feel you would like some retribution, then you shall have it. It's no good letting mortals think they can get away with slights." Varick's exact words.

That, and he was a Mirror Ghost. He reflected his surroundings in subtle ways, and Maci's aura definitely made him a little bolder with prolonged exposure.

Kodiak already knew he was skilled in maneuvering his incorporeal form. He and Maci just needed to find a crack in the house's protective wards that something ever so slightly thicker than smoke could slip through. After that, he just had to hope to high hell that there was a mirror inside. If not, he'd have to use a black mirror, and he wasn't very good at those.

It was incredibly lucky, but Maci found a half-faded ward painted below a cracked window that, though neither of them could touch or harm the ward directly, the both of them could look out of the corners of their eyes and throw little rocks or stones in the general direction of it. It took time, but they managed to chip the flaking paint until it was broken, and the moment it was Kodiak discorporated with a sound like a distant, inverted scream and poured through the window as smoke.

There was only one mirror in the house, in the bathroom, hidden under a towel when not in use. The incident with him had made both Sasha and her father cautious. As a tendril of smoke slipped underneath the towel, they would learn that sometimes,

Spirits just don't quit.