Halfway to their destination, the sky knits itself together with storm clouds and pours water atop them, soaking through and flying down to wet the world below. Lacey releases a string of expletives and rides faster, but Gideon's laughter echoes into the dark night and races past her. While she yanks the hood over her head, he turns his face to welcome the rain. Two types of people, and yet they ride for the same destination, for the same goal. When they put the brakes on the pedals, they're side by side in the open road, gravel crunching under them while they stare at the mini-warehouses the Moth Girl had lead them before.

They share a look (it's time) and dismount their bikes, wheeling them over to the side of the building. Once that's taken care of, Lacey runs to the busted window, Gideon throws a towel from her pack over the sill, and they jump through, taking refuge from the storm.

"It's crazy out there," Lacey says, though she's taken aback by the echo in the small room. The rain patters against the wall and nearly drowns it out. "D'you think they'll send out another flood warning tonight?"

"Probably. My mom's holed up somewhere safe though, and we're here, so let's not worry about it now. We might find Erie tonight, so that has to be our main focus."

He starts down the hall. Easy enough for him; all he sees is the blurred windows, so covered in grime all he can see is the glow of lightning and the dark streams of water running down the glass in front of the streetlight outside. Lacey is more hesitant. The ghosts are still there, smacking their hands against the surface, moaning with their mouths to the glass, agonized in what the Moth Girl had called purgatory. A smaller silhouette wails outside, and Lacey releases a shivering exhale before picking up the pace.

This has to be our main focus. Just get to the room and we're golden. So she does, they do. The stairs creak underfoot and the floorboards of the second floor feel less than stable but eventually they enter the main room, untouched since last time. The faded heavy drapes still hang from the walls, the wax circle still sticks to the floor with its moth and herb carcasses, and it still smells like musty ass. She crinkles her nose and, promising herself she'll get used to it (with doubt, rest assured), she unslings the pack from her shoulder and flips to the proper page in Ro's notebook.

Without taking her eyes off the page, she dips a hand back into the bag for the proper materials. It calls for candles, but she didn't trust the longevity of these, so she brings out a few more and intersperses them between the ones stuck to the floor that still have enough wax and intact wicks to last them the night. Gideon is beside her next, a coil of Christmas lights in hand. The instructions had called for energy, but unlike the fresh leaves Ro had clearly gone with - those have been in short supply these days - they have this. He lays one end on the ground and unravels it in a circle around the wax, twice. At the end, his hands find a small box of batteries and he flips the switch. Their warm white glow fills the room.

"Nice. The personal items now?" She holds her hand out, and Gideon smacks the open notebook into her hand, which she lays near the inner edge of the circle; then two silver bells tied together by a ribbon, which she gently sets down at the opposite end. She thinks they're done there, but then Gideon presents a watch. He clears his throat, uncomfortable.

"Erie's. Just in case." He pushes the notebook aside so when he sets the watch down, the objects make a triangle within the circle.

Lacey kneels in the center, and him with her. She sighs. "Now the shitty part. Can I see your pocket-knife?"

Cringing, he obliges, and they hover over a small wooden bowl in the middle of the circle, which already has a thick layer of coagulated blood at the bottom. She presses a button and the blade flips out with a whoosh. She holds her palm out. Hesitation wrestles against the instructions, but eventually she just closes her eyes and breaks the skin, and then she squeezes the initial rush into the bowl. It plunks in. She hands it to Gideon and while he follows suite, she retrieves bandaging from the bag and wraps her hand.

Once all is safely wrapped and all that's left is a stinging throb in their hands, they join them together, one sitting on either side of the bowl. The scent of copper floats up, but she staunches her disgust and begins. "By the authority my clairvoyance grants, I summon the deceased to speak with me, namely Ro-Anne Foster."

The air is still, and dust floats above the candles, the lights. She waits, then tries again. "By the authority my clairvoyance grants, I summon the deceased to speak with me, namely Stella de Almeida."

Another pause, longer. Even the dust is allowed to settle, and still, nothing. Last ditch effort, then. If this doesn't work, nothing will, but a huge part of her begs the universe for it to fail. "By the authority my clairvoyance grants, I summon the deceased to speak with me, namely Erie Mott."

Again, nothing, but at least this one comes with a sigh of relief from both parties. Still, the faint ache of frustration tickles her chest. "Nothing's happening. At least we can say we tried."

Her hand slips from Gideon's and she stands, fully prepared to collect their things and go. She reaches for the pack with one hand and the bells with another.

They roll the smallest bit away, tinkling. Her breath catches in her throat.

All at once, the stillness in the air breaks. Gusts of stolid air rush at her and overwhelm her nostrils with must. The heavy drapes that once hung on the walls are either yanked aside all at once or torn from their places, left to fall limp to the ground. In place of them she sees...herself. Dozens and dozens of her own face staring back at her in mirrors, nearly polished from their time hidden away. No wall lacks them, and there's no bare space.

"Oh...that's interesting," Gideon says. His Adams' apple bobs; he's uneasy. He's not alone: Lacey furrows her brows and crouches back down, a finger to Ro's handwriting. She squints until she finds a note in the margins she'd skimmed over before because, well, it was in the margins and meant nothing to her at the time because important things are never in the margins, and yet,

"This building is an Iowan vortex, smack in the middle of Carrick. We will be conducting the seance in the center of this vortex in hopes that it will deliver unto us a high success rate. I've no doubt we'll have it. I just hope the energy in this room isn't too much for us."

She sits back on her rear and huffs. Her hands fly up into the air and then smack back onto her lap. "This is a hotspot. We needed those open. Something must've been calling us out. C'mon, let's try again." They link hands again and she straightens her posture, more confident in the words this time. "By the authority my clairvoyance grants, I summon the deceased to speak with me, namely three. Ro-Anne Foster, Stella de Almeida, and Erie Mott. Obey these summons. Hear me."

The Christmas lights coiled around the outside of the circle begin to blink, small and slight at first, and then from dark to bright again, a constant flicker. With every blink, malicious shadows cross in front of the various mirrors, hunched and fast. There's more movement on the floor. She looks to the ground. Moths, dozens of them, crawl along the floor. Crawl, not fly. They all encroach on the wax circle, attracted by the candlelight, the electric spasms. Instead of finding mesmerizing satisfaction, their little legs get caught in the freshly melted wax. They thrash and flutter and bake and die. One manages to get unstuck just to fly straight into a flame and burn alive. Its wings char and curl. She can't tear her eyes away.

Then there's a sound. A sound like a wet finger running along the rim of a wine glass. The mirrors sing. Thunder claps and shakes the house and oh, wretched cacophony. Gideon's hands tighten on Lacey's. She looks at him, and he's visibly shaking. "I don't like this."

She squeezes back. "Whatever you do, don't let go until we're done."

He nods sharply, then gasps. The lights increase their wild flicker, but he's not looking at those. No, where he looks, he sees a misty apparition emerging from the shadows.

Where Lacey looks, in the exact same place, she sees a girl come forth, dark-haired and bronze-skinned, with big brown doe eyes and a sharp nose and warmth all about her. Those eyes catch sight of her and then widen with recognition, and something deep inside of them triggers something deep inside of Lacey that says, "This is her. It's really her this time."

"Stella."

Upon hearing her own name, Stella rushes forward, bare feet bouncing over the wax and into the circle. She lands on her knees clumsily at Lacey's side, and no sooner are they sharing the same breath is the former throwing her arms around the latter's shoulders, gripping hard. A pang sits in Lacey's chest and she wants so badly to hug her back, to try and urge warmth back into her cold bones...but she can't let go of Gideon's hands. Just to be sure, though, Lacey takes a sharp breath near Stella's cheek. Benevolence, through and through. Fuck. Christ. My. Ah.

Too soon, Stella pulls away, her hands tight on Lacey's shoulders. The chill of her fingers sinks clear through the fabric. "There's not a lot of time. They'll know contact was opened here. You poked a hole in the barrier and now you're not safe." Her brows are furrowed with worry, and her eyes search, search, search. For what?

Lacey swallows. "Stel-"

Stella stops her by cupping her cheeks in her cold hands, and in the way she'd always worked in extremes before, she works in extremes now, and her worried frown slips into a sad smile. "I missed you."

Her still-beating heart melts and as a result, her features soften and the grip on Gideon's hands loosen. "Are you okay? I mean, I know you're not, since you're...here, but I mean here, are you okay?"

Stella tilts her head and bites her lip. "As well as I can be. It's...weird. I didn't think it'd be like this. Or that you'd be here...Or that I'd, well, you know. It's a different world." Her gaze lifts and meets Lacey's again, and when that happens, she perks. "Oh! I want to show you something!"

"Stella, I really-"

"Sh!" She reaches for the bowl in the middle, the one with all those bloods mixed together, and holds it out in front of her face, real close. With a playful glint in her eyes, a glint that never leaves Lacey's, she parts her lips. A small breath slips between them. Salt plinks against the wooden edges of the bowl and sinks into the blood, stained crimson.

She pauses, and her dust-speckled lips smile. "I breathe salt."

It's a simple, sweet statement, full of its own wonder, and she doesn't know why, but it makes Lacey smile bright, makes her chuckle, makes her eyes water. She nods, slow at first, then more vigorously. "You do." She keeps nodding, and something hot and wet races down her cheek. "You do. I'm sorry."

"Hey, hey." A cold forehead brushes her cheek. "Don't apologize for the way things are."

"I'm sorry, still. For everything else." She shakes her head, then thinks - she'll still have one hand attached to Gideon even if she takes one away, won't she? Taking one away won't hurt. So she does, and cups it around Stella's icy fingers. "Who hurt you, Stella? Tell me now. So we can still save Erie. So we can put the bastard who did this away for life."

Stella leans back and her brows furrow. She lets her thumb rub the back of Lacey's hand, exhaling salt into the tiny bowl with every breath all the while. "I just went there for help and it all went downhill from there. I thought I was safe but I wasn't. They took me to a man and...and tied me up. They strangled me."

Lacey closes her eyes. "I know, Stella, but who? Who?"

Their hands tremble in one another's grasps. "He was gonna hurt me and I thought I'd be okay going away to that other man's house but it wasn't okay and it wasn't safe. I was lied to. You've gotta understand, I trusted them."

"Who were the men, Stella? You need to tell me, right now, c'mon, you can get their names out or a description or something for me to work with, you can do it, you gotta."

"I-"

Another blast of thunder shakes the warehouse, and with it, rain begins to leak through the roof. It patters on the floorboards and extinguishes a candle. The three watch the smoke curl up and rise to the ceiling, but Stella is the first to tear her gaze away and return it to Lacey's, wide-eyed. "They're here. They've found us. I have to go or I'll be gone forever. You need to go too, or you'll die with-" She stops herself short to throw a timid glance over her shoulder at Gideon. No. She sets the bowl down and pulls her hand out of Lacey's.

"Wait. Wait!"

It's not enough. Stella delivers a swift kiss to Lacey's forehead and not a second later does she detach and run back into the darkness. In a moment of panic Lacey lets go of Gideon's hands in an attempt to grab at Stella's wrist, but she's too slow. In the pitch black, she disappears. It's just them again.

Lacey rapidly collects Gideon's hands again, refocusing and remembering Stella's words. "We need to end this. Say goodbye with me, Gideon. Now."

He doesn't need to be told twice. "Goodbye," they say in unison, and she adds, "And close-" but she doesn't get to finish.

"Don't say goodbye before I even get here!" a shrill voice exclaims.

A small face emerges from the shadows, shrouded in dark, wet hair. Darcy. Pissed, clearly. "Oh, fuck," Lacey announces, and in the same breath tries to pull Gideon to a stand. As they rise, Darcy unhinges her jaw and out comes a bloodcurdling scream so sharp it makes the mirrors sing again. Sing they do, and shatter.

The two fall back to a crouch and Gideon lets go to protect his ears and head from the sound and glass. The moment the break apart, everything inside of her falls away to a shaking, curling sickness. We said goodbye already. It'll be fine. We should be fine. "Don't leave the circle!" she yells. Just in case.

"Why would you do that?!" Darcy cries, fists clenched at her sides. Her face is twisted up in pain and her face is wet, like it'll never be dry again. Lacey could almost feel sorry for her, if she wasn't fucking screaming. "You said you didn't want to help me but you'll go and help everyone else! It's not fair! It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair!" She stomps and her little nose twitches like a bull ready to charge. "Now the other girl who tried to help me is about to be at peace but I'm not! And it's not fair because she almost gave it to me, it's not fair!"

Wait, Lacey needs to wring this out. "You mean Ro? She almost gave you peace?"

"Yes, she almost found who made me dead! And now she's gonna be buried and I'm gonna be walking around this shithole forever!" she wails. The building wails with her. Then sadness builds into rage and her eyes alight with the fire of righteous conviction. "It's all your fault."

She refuses to make the same mistakes she'd made the first few times, and she chooses her words carefully, delivered soft but fast, all in defense, full of please, understand. "No, no, listen, nothing is anybody's fault. We had to find Ro because there's another boy out there who might die soon if we don't figure out who took him. You're already dead. It's ah, priorities, y'know? Can't you understand that?"

Darcy screams again (clearly not), and more of the mirrors shatter under the pressure of her shrieks. The raging bull within this tiny entity finally breaks, and she charges them. The Christmas lights flicker, spasmic, as she harnesses the energy from them - and eventually, they can't take it anymore and explode in a spray of sparks and glass.

"Holy shit," Gideon says, small and frozen, staring forward.

Realization dawns on her. Darcy harnessed enough energy from those lights to be seen. Seen. The nearer she comes, the larger she grows, larger and larger, larger than life! Her feet drive into the floorboards and she stomps, the world shakes, and with her eyes set on him, she opens her mouth and out comes a demonic roar from the very back of her throat. It's enough to make Lacey nearly piss her pants right then and there, but Gideon is of better sense.

He sees her, all right. He sees her. He screams. And he runs, clear out of the room and down the stairs. No sooner is he gone is Darcy gone too, gone with him.