From behind the Juice Man, Sophie frantically shakes her head and makes little shooing motions at Ms. Abbott Jill, damn it.

"Don't leave me alone with her!"

There's a decent chance this won't work, but maybe the old lady hasn't heard the whole story yet, or didn't believe it. It doesn't need to stick. He just needs to stall until the cavalry arrives.

Jill forgot something important about ghosts. Not that they don't exist; she passed that point, psychologically, when she watched the rain dissolve. It's that they mostly show up in horror movies.

A stranger brought an injured boy to her house. Jill was scared, but she pushed forward anyway. You start cutting yourself off from the world because it's too difficult and scary, you end up in the memory care unit. She's seen it happen. So she let them in, the boy and the girl and her bear (and it sure feels different all of a sudden, having a bear in this room with her!). It was scary, but it felt right. Like she was embracing a spirit of adventure

Now she feels like one of those people who says, "We should split up and search for her, it'll be faster."

The girl knew what the boy (Kyle) would say, when he woke up. She wanted Jill out of the picture as soon as he stirred. What did he even think she could do for him? There must have been something, if she could only think. The phone doesn't work, and if it did the police are probably busy. She's not really religious; she probably has a Bible in the house somewhere, but what do you do with it? Or do you need salt? What with salt? Do you just throw it at them?

Jill might have killed herself, just by answering the door and trying to help a stranger.

It doesn't seem fair.

And Sophie somehow already forgot her first rule of magical combat: don't let your opponent do anything, ever! There's no way it works out for you if the other guy gets to do things!

Well, she can't fix her mistake but she doesn't have to keep making it, does she? She'll hop off the 2 by 4s onto the Juice Man and (carefully!) start strangling him again. It really hurts to do this with Jill watching; is there maybe something she can think of to say to make all this seem less insane?

Nico will try to fight her off, just out of instinct, but he can't imagine it'll work any better than it did the first two times. And he'll try to blurt out "She kidnapped me! I'm Kyle Merrill, it was on the news - "

You're still wrapped up in blankets; by the time you can even get an arm free it's all over. But you do get as far as "She kidnapped me!"

Jill's youngest has been out of the house for ten years, but there are some reflexes you never lose. Despite herself she steps toward the melee. "You let him go right this instant!" And then freezes, because what if it turns on her instead?

Oh this looks so bad. "He's possessed by a demon," she says, trying to sound matter-of-fact. "We're working on it. I don - " she chokes, tries again " - I don't know what to do about it yet."

Jill hesitates. She sounds so sincere. But then again, so did he. Do demons get scared, the way that boy was scared?

Possessed by a demon!?

It's possible that Nico may have misunderstood some things about his adversary.

Ah, Nico, all while this is going on you're being strangled, how's that going?

Nico has a plan of sorts for that, this time.

A human body at rest breathes about every four seconds, and takes in maybe half a liter of air each time. The oxygen their lungs take in is spread around by the heart, beating maybe once per second and circulating the whole volume of blood once per minute. For a human body locked in struggle with a powerful, mysterious adversary those figures are much higher.

But who says the metabolism has to go that fast? Who says the heart has to beat that often? This stuff all runs on ancient, ancient reflexes, from far before humans were humans. It was made to solve problems Nico does not currently have. If you don't need to run or fight, it's possible to do better.

I know this situation feels like a crisis, but it's not. Nico tells Kyle's heart and lungs. All we have to do is kill a little time, and then we win. There's no emergency here. He spreads his energies through those nerves like floodwater, settling and settling on top of itself. This will cause problems later if he has to move fast or react quickly, but there's no possible way for him to win by being stronger or faster than the thief is, and his best defense is that she doesn't want him to die.

Everything is fine. There's no danger. Slow down. Slow down. Slow down.

Sophie's focus is still on Jill, trying to make her understand this incomprehensible situation by sheer force of need. "This worked once. I don't really know why. I'm just hoping it works again, because - " she swallows. "He's important to me."

...oh.

Jill thinks maybe she gets it now. Oh no. These poor children.

"I know you do," she says softly. "I believe that. I see that. You've been protecting him for a long time, haven't you?"

Nooooot really? It feels like a long time, granted. Sophie shakes her head a little, not sure where Jill is going with this.

Jill takes a breath, praying to a God she mostly stopped believing years ago in to give her the words to persuade this poor lost ghost to let her boyfriend live on his own -

- when there's a CRASH! at the garage door!

Huh?

Eek!

Now what?!?

Finally.

Jill turns her flashlight to the door. What's going on?

Something heavy hit the garage door at about waist height, and damaged the wood without quite breaking through. But it's a little out of frame now, and water is rapidly seeping through the bottom.

...how rapidly? Like, accumulated rainfall rapidly?

Much more rapidly than that.