Flying Books

who: Dorian and Michael
where: Nevermore
when: morning

It was surprisingly easy to lose track of time when you were dead. Michael had popped back into existence sometime after midnight (which never failed to be disorienting) in Lullaby's room (also very disorienting; he'd fallen through the damned floor!). After a quick check on her, and then a dash over to his own house to make sure Journey and Lee were safe, he'd wandered until he'd found Nevermore. It was the first bookstore he'd come across, and thankfully, it seemed to have exactly what he'd needed.

It was surprisingly easy to forget about such things as organization when you were dead, too. He'd been haphazardly pulling books from shelves all night, on demons and vampires and lycanthropes... and fae. A good thirty books were strewn about the store, on tables and chairs, the counter and the floor, open to pages he'd found interesting or potentially useful. Apparently, the book his father had left had been inaccurate. Michael never had reason to worry about the supernatural when he'd been alive, so he'd done all right, but now that he was dead and it seemed his son was getting involved in a mess of supernatural trouble without even trying... Well, whatever. He'd just have to remember which books had had the most useful information and send Lee out to buy them for Journey and Lullaby. What else could he do?

Being dead sucked.

It was this mess that Dorian found when he entered Nevermore that morning at ten till nine and he immediately knew someone had been searching for something. Not a break-in type search, but an information type search, though he suspected it had occurred before the shop had closed on Sunday. Harper was usually pretty good about setting things back in order though, which was why it struck him as odd that things were such a mess. Sighing, he walked over to the first book and checked the cover. Lycanthropes. With a glance towards that section of the store, he sent the book flying over to it's destination even as he picked up the next book. Vampires. "Are you kidding me?" he said to himself, then sent that one back as well. Whomever was searching through things obviously didn't have the faintest idea what they were looking for.

When the door opened, Michael muttered a curse. Damnit! How had he lost so much track of time!? When the hell had the sun come up? ...when did humans learn to make books fly across the room?! ...okay, he wasn't going to think about that right now. He was focusing! Damnit, damnit, damnit. The spirit didn't move from his spot in the corner, hovering in a circle of open books on demons. That was what he'd really come to research, after all. He manifested the tips of his fingers to flip rapidly through a book with illustrations, keeping his eyes locked on the different claws. Have to figure out what attacked Lullaby. Damnit! "Don't come over here! I'm busy!" he snapped, frustrated, knowing the weird book-moving store owner wouldn't hear him. It made him feel a little better to say it out loud, and that was all that counted.

While Dorian couldn't hear him, he could see the pages flip through, and movement at all put him on edge. He immediately stopped what he was doing, staring in the direction of the book as he slowly moved to that side of the table. "Who's there?" he said, looking down the rows of books, then crouching to look under the table. Another TK user could have done what he'd just seen, or a spirit. Or the wind, but there wasn't wind in the store. He could also just be seeing things, but Dorian wasn't ready to admit that fact to himself. As he stood next to the book that had moved, he looked down at the page and the following illustration. Demons. And all the other books around it were on demons as well. "Shit," he muttered under his breath. This was never a good sign.

He bit back a snicker when the man looked under a table. Okay, so occasionally messing people by doing poltergeist shit was fun. Sometimes. He just had to make sure he didn't indulge too much. "Talking to yourself is a sure sign of insanity," Michael noted with amusement, looking back down at the pictures. This? Wasn't working. He'd been able to rule out any sort of lycanthrope quickly enough--the claws were wrong. But he wasn't having any luck with demons, either... He stopped turning pages, reaching up instead to run a hand through his hair in frustration. "Now what?"

Dorian looked down at the page the book was open to and sighed. There were so many types of demons and none of them seemed to fit the profile he was looking for. He turned the page, scanning it, then turned it again before taking a seat at the table. "Rakshasa," he said to himself and closed that book. "Wrong skin color." Dorian drummed his fingers on the table, contemplating that. Maybe they weren't looking this up right at all. Maybe he wasn't focusing on what mattered. As he sent the book on Rakshasa back to it's place on the shelf, he slid another over and looked at the cover. Scrios. Dorian laughed aloud. "I'd have known if it was that," he said, then sent that book off as well. "Give me something to work with," he said to the room at large. If there was a spirit, that was even better. If not, then maybe he just needed to run his thoughts aloud and see where they took him.

"Whoa!" Michael yelped angrily, only barely managing to dodge the first flying book. This put him directly in the line of the second one, however. Damn! Even if he was dead, having a book sent through his chest? Not pleasant! "Watch where you're sending those!" he snapped, putting a little energy into it this time so his voice could be heard, though it would sound washed out and faintly distorted.

"Well, if I could see you, I might!" Dorian responded angrily before realizing that he was responding to a voice that had more certainly not been in his head. Which meant the wasn't alone. Dorian looked around again, this time certain that he was the only one in the store, which meant he was either speaking with a ghost, or he was going insane. Hopefully it was the first. "So... I'm Dorian, and I own the shop. Mind telling me who I'm talking to?" he asked, not quite in the mood to be polite.

If there was one thing he hated, it was when people tried to put the blame on him because he was dead. Ugh. "Excuse me for being dead," Michael snapped. "It's not exactly easy to make myself visible, you know." It was hard enough to talk. He hesitated after that. Just leaving was very tempting, but... if he owned this place, maybe he could help. Damnit. Talking to the living sucked. "I'm Michael," he added grudgingly. He tapped into his energy reserves a tiny bit, just enough that Dorian would be able to see a faint blue-green flicker of light where he stood. "Now you can see me. Happy?"

"Thank you," Dorian said with a small smile. Overall, he was pleased. It was his first meeting with a ghost, and though he'd never wish the guy dead, it was a touch exciting for someone that studied supernatural issues as he did. "I don't need to see you, but I'll try not to send books your direction," he said, thinking that there really was no reason to worry about a ghost seeing him use his TK. "So you're looking for a demon," he said, looking at the books remaining on the table. "Can you give me a description? I'm familiar with some. I might be able to help." It gave him a reason to think, at least, which was better than shelving books and would put him on the right track for finding Ten's attacker.

Michael sighed, nearly inaudibly, shifting to cross his arms across his chest. "Not a very good one. Obviously, it wasn't me that was attacked, and I wasn't there when it happened. All I could get out of... the victim" like Hell he was telling some guy he just 'met' who could magically move books about his Lullaby! "was that... they" better to go gender neutral here, "thought it looked sort of like a dog. I don't think that's enough to go on."

"That's not a lot to work with," Dorian said, frowning. "And you already ruled out werewolves?" he asked, now understanding why that book had been out in the first place. Michael had obviously moved on to demons. "I have a friend that was attacked," he said, thinking maybe this might help, at least for him. "The demon had a tail and claws, but it wasn't a wolf. I just don't know what it was."

"The size is wrong," he explained, shaking his head. "'Not very big, but bigger than a dog,'" Michael repeated Lullaby's words. "With a garbled voice, and claws on it's feet." He pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. "Marquette's a small town. How many things could possibly be running around attacking people?" he sighed. "Do I even want to know?" Maybe I can talk Lee into taking the kids and moving south.

"Werewolves can't talk in their wolf form, last I checked," Dorian said, now nodding in agreement with Michael's decision to rule out werewolves. "I'd say demon, since nothing else I know of takes other forms." Vampires, fae, spirits, even the witches he knew didn't turn into monsters. That pretty much narrowed it down to demons. "You'd be surprised, around here. My brother got bitten by a vampire a few weeks ago, if you believe in those. Marquette's odder than you think."

So he was right. It was (most likely) a demon. Knowing that did little to soothe his worries; it just made them worse. Michael chuckled wryly. "I'm a ghost. It'd be hypocritical of me to rule out vampires, wouldn't it?" One more thing to worry about, when it came to his kids... and the ditz-in-law. "How annoying. Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep your family safe when you're dead?" the spirit complained.

"Probably just as hard and when you're alive," Dorian said with a wry smile. "At least you can follow them around. I can't exactly lock my brother up, so I've just gotta hope he deals with things well when he crosses them." Which, knowing Caleb, would be more often than he liked. "You can give them tips though, to keep them safe. Certain types of demons are warded off by different things. Vampires too. Course, it's not all the same thing."

"So I read," Michael noted. "My family was apparently once a little wiser when it came to demons, but passing things down through word of mouth after several generations of no supernatural contact shot what we know to Hell." He hesitated. Dorian had mentioned his own family, so maybe... "I'm worried about my son. It was his friend who got attacked, and he's still in that overconfident stage of the teenage years. Thinks he's invincible, wants to kick some demon ass. He doesn't stand a chance," he stated bluntly.

"I know demons. I don't know all of them, but I know more than the average person. I just don't know what this one was," he said, flipping through the pages of the book in front of him. He tried to recall what Tensiel had told him, what she'd said that could be important. That's right! It had been eating human flesh! Dorian began to scan the pages with renewed interest. "Sounds like Caleb," Dorian muttered, "He thinks he knows what's out there, and that he can kill it all. I can't stop him, but maybe I can at least quip him, or help him..." Another page, then another. Dorian knew what he was looking for now. It just took so much time to find it.

Caleb? Oh hell, surely not. Michael groaned faintly. "I think my kid might be hanging out with your brother, if it's the same Caleb I saw last week. Great. They can get themselves killed together." Wonderful. Now he had another crazy teenager to worry about, and one he couldn't do shit to keep safe from his own stupidity. At least with Journey, he could hijack the boy's body and run from the trouble...

Dorian laughed faintly. "It's a small town. I shouldn't be surprised," he said, then stopped dead, reading the page he was on again. "I think I found something," he said, then proceeded to read out loud. "One of the most difficult demons to pinpoint is the fiend, known first for it's multiple forms, and second for it's love of human flesh. While each fiend's form varies from the next, there are a few things that remain the same. A fiend is most comfortable in it's original form and must transform to it on a regular basis. The longest recorded time without change is 72 hours, after which the fiend remained it it's true form for 6 hours solid. Injuries received in one form will transfer to the other form, as there is no healing offered through the transformation. The fiend's other form is human. A human form is chosen for life and-- blah, blah, I'm skipping ahead. All fiends are flesh eaters. They prefer human flesh and will only resort to that of another animal at a last resort." Dorian looked up from the book to where he thought Michael still might be, juding by the last time he spoke. "My friend that got hurt? She said the demon was feeding off human flesh when she ran into it. This could be it, at least for me. Does any of that match up?" he asked Michael.

Michael hesitated. "She mentioned that whatever it was had killed a deer, but she didn't say if it was eating the deer," he muttered. "She wandered up on it because she heard a noise, and when it saw her, it chased her." It was a miracle, come to think of it, that she'd gotten away at all. He wished he could ask her more about it, without risking upsetting her further. He wasn't sure how long he'd been gone, but it was quite possible that it had been long enough for her to move past it. Repress. Even if that was horribly dangerous to do, if a demon was involved.

"Well, even if it is a fiend... that doesn't really get us anywhere. Knowing it's eating habits won't lead us to it... him," he said, remembering that it was a male. "I think the best thing they can do is try to be safe. And you, if you're wandering about, watch for anything that's eating humans or animals, cause that's just not right. Watch for demon tells. Things that look wrong on a normal human being. It'll take time to track this thing down," Dorian said, setting the book on fiends aside. The rest of the store still needed to be cleaned up. Michael had gotten out more than he could ever need in one sitting.

"I can look around at night. Better me than someone who can actually get themselves eaten." Michael shrugged, though it did little more than cause the green-blue flicker of light to shimmer oddly. He faded completely out of human-sight afterwards, deciding he needed to start conserving his energy. Bad to fade out again; he'd only just gotten back. "Sorry about the mess. I might swing by again, but I'll clean up after myself if I do. I lost track of time," he explained, tone mildly apologetic. But hey, at least Dorian could clean up more easily than a normal human, so he didn't feel nearly as bad as he normally would. "If I see anything eating a person, I'll swing by. Give you a head's up."

"Don't worry about it. They're just books," Dorian smiled, amused at how they'd come to polite terms by the end of their conversation when they'd started off shouting. "You're welcome any time." He couldn't see how it would hurt, having his bookstore occasionally haunted. He made it look that way himself sometimes anyways. Books floating around tended to scare people. Apparently it didn't scare ghosts. "Thanks," Dorian smiled. "And if I see your son, I'll watch out for him. Maybe he can keep Caleb out of trouble." Doubtful, but it was a thought. Hard to do when he didn't even know his name.

"Doubtful," the spirit snorted. Michael hesitated again, debating with himself as he headed for the door. Old habits died hard, and he still had trouble exiting a house or room except through the door. Sixteen years had done little to break the natural habit. "His name is Journey," he finally called out faintly. "Easily excitable, bubbly brat," he added grumpily, though there was an obvious undertone of fondness. "He doesn't know I'm hanging around him. If I see Caleb acting stupid, I can't do much, but I'll keep my eyes open." He stopped at the door, and turned back to give Dorian a considering look. "See you around. I'll try not to randomly scare the shit out of you next time with the poltergeist routine."

"Journey," Dorian said, hoping that repeating the name would help him remember. He didn't know any of Caleb's friends except for Tensiel, but that wasn't unusual considering their situation. He was getting better though, or so he thought. "Thanks. Then I'll do my best not to throw books at you," Dorian grinned. Well, that had been productive and entertaining. Not bad for his first meeting with a ghost.