If asked, Lacey would not be able to answer why she woke up this morning with an itch in her bones, or why that itch brought her to the path leading up to Nefyn Lore's house on the hill, a place akin to a sharp knife pointed at the heavens. What she would be able to say was that she woke up lonely, but to guess where that feeling came from, she wouldn't know. Three texts opened her day, but even now, checking her phone, she notes that Gideon still hasn't opened them.

Lacey: Hey did you eat last night? You looked like you were about to pass out

Lacey: If you didn't I am legally allowed to slaughter you

Lacey: I'll be busy today so don't do anything stupid like usual

The first two were attempts at starting a dialogue; the last, a desperate measure, a lie at first, once she remembered that she was the reason for those marks on his back, for some of the dark weight beneath his eyes. It's better if she keeps him away from her for the day, even better if she can manage to push him off and avoid him for the rest of eternity. The thought bothers her, in a weird way - she remembers pushing Stella off, pushing Erie off, and look where they wound up, yeah? - but she knows the risk isn't worth it, so for now, she'll have to try and ignore it. It's better this way. It's safer this way.

But to bring the demons to Nefyn's doorstep? That's no bother, not at all.

And it's not like she's never distanced herself successfully from someone before. She thinks of Stella, but oh, then comes the disgust, the clenched fists and digging nails. They ruined a good memory. She thinks of Erie, but oh, will they ruin the memory of him too? No. Nope, she owes the universe this much, a karmic duty. She has to find him, fix the distance between them before she loses the chance like she did with Stella. Regret? It doesn't feel good. She doesn't want it to run any deeper than it already is.

Which is why she trudges up the path. This man knows something, she knows it, and if nothing specific to where Erie or Darcy are, then something about Carrick, being an old hermit-y fart. At least, that's how she's choosing to rationalize it. Really, she doesn't know if there's any merit to him, but she has nowhere else to go, no other leads, and to just lay in bed all day, hearing Malevolence pound on her window, no, that'd drive her mad enough to fling it open and invite it in.

So she quickens her pace. Her shoes clomp across the wood of the sloped front porch, the one that wraps around the entire house. But instead of going straight to the door, she finds her path blocked: a tow-headed, baby-faced boy stands in front of it, running a little yellow truck over the splintery rail. What was his name again? Gordon, Gordy? Gordy. When Gordy notices her presence, he shifts his gaze over to her. He stares. Doesn't even blink.

She shifts uncomfortably. "Hi," she says, allowing herself a small, awkward wave. "Is Nefyn home?"

He continues to look at her, saying nothing. She's about to try and squeeze past him when he lets go of the toy truck and turns to her. He holds his arm straight out towards her and makes a gun motion. Then he clicks off an invisible safety, pulls an invisible trigger. "Ching. Pow." The kid even includes some imaginary kickback. It'd be impressive if it didn't make Lacey's hair raise.

The front door opens, leftover rain-water skidding down the warped glass. Nefyn's caretaker, Kathy, sees her son, reaches out to lightly strike the gun symbol out of his hand, but pauses when she catches Lacey out of the corner of her eye. The woman frowns and knits her brows. She clears her throat and straightens her posture, gathering up a rag in her fist and fidgeting with it.

Lacey squints. Well that's not sus at all. "Hi," she tests. "Is Nefyn home?"

She regards Lacey with similar suspicion, watching through the corner of her eye. "Sure," she says, letting it drawl unintentionally. "Would you like me to take you to him?"

Lacey nods and Kathy disappears back into the house. She follows but keeps her distance - after the encounter with Stella, can she really trust that anyone, even this tiny awkward woman, isn't going to rip their skin from their flesh and go full demon on her? The answer is no. No, she cannot. As such, when Kathy stops in the upstairs doorway and gestures into a room down the hall, Lacey waits for her to duck her head and return downstairs before peeking her head beyond the threshold.

The room is dim, lit only by a couple small windows with no blinds or curtains to block out the sparse grey light that manages to make it to Earth. Those and a fireplace between them, built of cobbled stone that houses an abundance of warm flickers, casting illumination on the floorboards. Nefyn's wheelchair casts a shadow in front of it, stretching to Lacey's toes. He sits there, blissfully ignorant of her presence, a plaid blanket drawn over his lap. A sketchpad rests there and he bends over it, face tight with concentration and fingers carefully tracing charcoal along the page. From here, he almost looks like a normal, kind middle-aged man.

Then she makes herself known. She coughs into her elbow and his head snaps to attention. His nose crinkles with distaste at having been interrupted. "Is Gideon-" He clears his hoarse throat. "Is Gideon with you?"

"No."

"Then why are you here?" He purses his lips and shakes his head. "If you're looking to do errands for pay like he does, I'm not looking for any more hands. You're outta luck, kid."

She feels the blood rise to her cheeks, and she wants to blow up on him then and there, but it's only been fifteen seconds of this. To lose her cool now would just be pathetic. So she takes a deep breath and double-knots her "cool" around her chest. "No, I'm here to ask you some questions."

He leans back in his chair, shoulders broader than the backing of it. "What, about little dead girls again? I can hardly keep track of that boy down there," he gestures to the floor with his pencil, "let alone a bunch of kids running around town all the time going who knows where, doing who knows what. Kids I don't know or care to know. You want answers about them? Go ask their parents." He cocks his head and diverts the glint of those sharp green eyes of his to the ceiling, the tip of the pencil tapping against his chin and leaving a dusty mark behind. "Although, I s'pose they'd be just as in the dark, with how secretive kids are nowadays. So really, seems that all around, nobody has anything for you." He says it simply and shrugs, turning his gaze and pencil back to the paper. His strokes are wide now, aggressive. "Go back home. Do your homework. Don't get killed."

For a moment, she's rendered speechless, and the only sounds to fill the room are the crackles of old wood in the fireplace and the light drizzle of rain on the windows starting up again. Fists clench, lumps are swallowed, eyes squeezed. It takes everything in her not to say the first words to pop into her head, but she manages, albeit with strained vocal chords. "Look, I'm not leaving until I get something out of you. You freaked out when I mentioned Darcy last time so I know you know more than just, 'Oh, she died.' You knew her."

"Plenty of people knew her," he says absentmindedly.

"Yeah, well, you're the one who's sitting here in front of me, so you're the one I'm gonna ask."

She gives him time and he takes it, finishing up a few strokes before lifting the sketchpad. He squints at it, shifting it around in the sparse light, and blows away stray specks of lead and eraser. Once satisfied, he rests it upon his lap again and grunts, accompanied with a rude side-eye. "Fine. But if you're gonna be standing here breathing my air, you can at least make yourself useful. Come on."

He wheels himself past her in a flourish, nearly running her foot over - again - in the process. He must be heading straight for the paint room, if she remembers correctly. She follows the grooves in the floor, but not without making a face first, lolling tongue and all.

His workshop is much brighter, the windows bigger, the frames thrown open. Rain droplets collect on the floor but he doesn't seem to care, rolling right over them to a canvas already dusted with more pencil strokes. "I need you to get me a palette with the right colors and my brushes. I put the bottles on the island over there already. Not very easy to fuck it up."

A sigh dies in her throat and she does as he asks. All for a greater purpose, yeah? Sometimes you just gotta...deal with the finicky assholes to get what you want. So she does, and once all is prepared, she meets him at the canvas beside the window. "Is there anywhere you want me to put this down?"

"No. You can hold it."

She rolls her eyes and shifts her weight to one foot. Hopefully she finishes this talk before she has time to get tired - both of holding this crap and his attitude.

He takes a brush a dabs the bristles into a lagoon green, then starts lathering it between the lines on the canvas. His swirls are careful, feathery, and for a while she just watches to see what he's doing, but then he pauses to raise a brow at her. "Well? Are you going to interrogate me or just stand there?"

She wants to start with, Were you always such a douchebag? and Was Darcy always such a little shit? but steels herself. Right into it, then. "You said she was playing by a cliff and fell off. Do you know if anyone was with her?"

He sighs without taking his eyes off his work. "I was. So were a couple of others. As I said before, she just got too close and fell. We didn't see it, but one second she was there, the next, she wasn't. We'll all attest to that. Me and Nicholas and Dusty, but they all moved town years ago. Gave their statements, though."

Bet Dusty is better company than you. Might be worth it to track him down instead. "What sort of day was it? Was she acting weird that day, out of the ordinary?"

"Sunny, humid. Typical summer day. She had a lot of energy, but nothing too off from what you'd expect from a bunch of kids running around outside."

"Where were her parents?"

"You think I kept track of her parents at, what, seven years old?"

She crinkles her nose. "Whatever. Was there anyone lurking around where you guys were playing? A car that sat close or someone who kept walking by, anything?" This girl is convinced someone killed her. I've at least got to see if eyewitness testimony lines up with that.

"Not that I know of." He surveys his work before switching brushes and colors, a rich blue. "Well, actually, I remember us all chucking pebbles at the window of the building we were playing by to see if the odd man inside would come out, but he never did anything."

Finally, something to latch onto. "What was that guy's name?"

"Couldn't tell ya."

Of course not.

With that sparse lead, she circles back to her initial idea, but carefully rephrases. If she was a brat, there'd be motive to shove her off that cliff - God knows Lacey would've. If not, perhaps it was all just a poor accident and she's caught in a misunderstanding that unfortunately leaves Lacey in the worst of positions. For the first time, she actually finds herself hoping the girl was murdered so there's at least a sliver of a chance she can get Darcy to drop the barrier. "What was she like?"

He continues painting away, but the corner of his mouth wobbles, twitches, and he bites down on his lip. She catches his eyes drift off to the corner of the canvas while the bristles glide. Then, he switches colors, daffodil. "Lots of energy, like I said. Always laughing about something. Very sweet, exceptionally sweet. She always came and asked me if it was okay if she picked flowers from my mother's garden to take to our teacher the next day and to her parents to decorate the table. Technically it wasn't, but I always let her take them anyways and took the blame when the garden came up missing a patch. But anyways, yes, very nice girl. It's a shame the world took her from us. I imagine she'd have done good things."

Her heart almost pangs with sympathy for him. Oh, if only you knew what she is now. Bound to a demonic contract so she can throw beds at poor undeserving mediums skulls.

"And why did you react so much when I mentioned her if you didn't see her fall or push her down yourself?"

Nefyn Lore turns to her, brush suspended in the air, and gives her a look like she's the stupidest girl on the planet. Although he's significantly mellowed out in tone, his face says it all. "She was my friend, a long time ago. I haven't thought of her in years." He shakes his head and delivers a quick splatter of red to the mess of swirling colors. "Brought back good memories I can't stand anymore is all. I imagine the same happened to you when you learned about that other girl, yes? Unless you carry on criminal investigations for everyone that dies in small towns, in which case you are one busy, busy girl. Get a new hobby. Photography or something."

He makes a fair point at first, but his latter statements put a boil in her blood. She quickly switches gears - something of deeper importance. "You know Isaac Boone, too. I want to know how."

Nefyn scoffs as he, too, switches gears, trading red for purple to shadow the edges. "You want to know how I know Isaac Boone. Maybe I want to know how you know Isaac Boone, eh? But I digress. He works in real estate, kid. Buys out old houses to take what resources can be salvaged and builds new things on whatever foundations stay or tears the whole thing down and builds fresh on that land. Lore's Hill is land he wants, house and everything it stands on. At first he kept bothering my parents about buying it from them - they had it built, y'see, and they only died a few years back - but once they did pass he started harassing me to sell it to him. And he hasn't been nearly as nice with me. Patience running thin, I s'pose."

"Sounds like a dick move," Lacey adds, nearly salivating at the mouth to get as much dirt on this man as possible.

"Compensating for a lack thereof, I'd say. But anyways, I kept saying no, and little Isaac didn't like that, so what'd he do?"

"Upped his price-"

"Conducted a series of progressively worse harassments to try and get his way," he interrupts. "Paid a bunch of neighborhood kids to come up and egg the property. Had someone break apart my ramp while I was away, made it a bitch to get inside for the next week. Even staged someone trying to break in, thinking it'd scare me out. Just fear tactics."

"Did he ever stop?" Lacey asks. Nefyn nods. "What made him quit?"

A chilling smile crosses over his lips. "What got him to stop?" He chuckles to himself, a low, rumbling kind. "I hired Kathy. I said, 'If you can get this man to stop bothering me, I'll hire ya and pay your son's education to boot.' And I tell ya, she didn't disappoint. First night she stayed here she sat right around the side of the house with her shotgun. Guy came up to my door trying to stuff crack cocaine in my mailbox and she came wheeling 'round the corner of the porch, thing pointed right at him. Fired a warning shot. Now I tell you that man took off running and hasn't bothered me since, aside from a couple e-mails trying to play friendly, but they all go to spam now anyways."

His mild enthusiasm is enough to brighten her spirits, and she allows a brief laugh at the thought of that man scrambling away after getting the bejeezus scared out of him by some little lady. I hope he pissed himself. "Does he have any friends, d'you know? Anyone out here he trusts to keep his...tactics, like, secret?"

"Isaac? Friends? Nah, lonely man. Can't hold onto anyone long enough. I guess you could say the people he pays off, hookers and contractors alike, they're his friends, but only for a short time and only 'cause they have to be. Why? Thinking of teaming up with him against me? Because I assure you, Kathy still has her shotgun locked up in this house somewhere."

"No," she stresses, exasperated. "I just still think he did...the thing that happened to Stella. And I think he had an accomplice. No- no, I know it. I know he did."

"Pft," he says, shoulders bouncing with the noise. "And how might you 'know' that?" His sarcasm runs thick, testing her.

She doesn't let it make her bitter. She shrugs. "A hunch." Simply put.

Again, he scoffs. "Right. A hunch. That'll get 'em, then."

She huffs to herself, sucking on the inside of her cheek. The worst part about knowing things like this is that nobody will believe you, and it becomes the norm to have to lie about it. Even if she did take her suspicions about Isaac to the police, one person still gets off free - and she'll be damned if she ruins the chances of making things right for Stella due to impatience.

Nefyn's impatience must flare, though, because his hand strikes out and snatches the palette out of her hands. In this swift move, she sees the back of his hand, makes a brief mental note about the barrenness of it. He clears his throat. "Alright. I'm tired of this. You can go now."

Of all the other things he's said and done, none offend her more than this. Maybe it's the fact that he's established they're done here, or maybe it's just that this is one prod too many, but this time, she doesn't bite back the rush of frustration that crawls up her throat. "Why are you so mean? All I did was come here to ask you a couple things and you're being such a cranky old fart. Did your mother never teach you any manners?"

He looks at her, and the glossy chartreuse disappears a few times as he blinks rapidly. He spins his wheels so his blanketed legs face her. "I don't know, did your mother never teach you about boundaries and personal space and privacy? Because last time I checked, I don't owe you anything."

Her face scrunches of its own accord and she can feel the smoke fuming out of her ears. She crosses her arms over her chest. There's something in Nefyn's face she sees, then, something like mischievous youth, a test and a challenge. A game that he's winning. Her arms tighten. It is then that she stoops to grasping at straws to gain the upper hand, lifting her chin at his artwork so far. "Your painting looks dumb. What even is it, anyways? A blue rat?"

"It's abstract," he says, clearly peeved. He lets his eyes dart over her, looking for something to pick apart. They land on the ground. "Are those shoes s'posed to look like they've been dyed in liquid shit? Why are you tracking that through my house?"

She glances down at her mud-covered shoes, the original yellow peeking through in a spot here and there. A frown slips onto her lips - she liked these shoes before she had to flee demons in them. It's upsetting enough to keep her going. "Your house smells like an old lady. Are you aware that it smells like grandmother in here? It's, like, rank. I think it's wafting off of that blanket. Or you. You smell like my grandmother."

"You dress like my grandmother," Nefyn fires back, raising a brow. Movement bobs in his throat and the corner of his lip twitches; he's having fun with this. "The kids today have those skinny jeans and the Gucci. Those look like disco jeans and I think I buried my mom in a shirt like that."