"Getting a supply of hair could be a problem, but it could work, once it's spelled we could coil it up and put it in resin, maybe?"

"Hmmm, maybe. We could also give feathers a shot, see if those count to catch fire or not in a controlled setting. They're sturdier than a lock of hair, I would know."

"They still don't hold up all that well, I'd want to put them in something. And finding a supply would be harder."

"True. And I wouldn't exactly find it fun to rip out feathers."

"Which is exactly what I meant. I mean, if we lose one, we can try it, but it'd be way easier to raid my hairbrush and maybe Savannah's - your hair probably isn't long enough to use easily - and Angela's I guess."

He nods. "I could always grow my hair longer, have it flowing in the wind behind me. Pretend to be Fabio."

"Fabio? I'm not seeing it. You're rocking a very different style."

Darren giggles. "I am, aren't I. I would get annoyed with carting around the fan required to properly rock long hair."

"Design a wind spell. Problem solved."

"Cast it when I enter the room, maybe. Have the wind blowing through my hair upon entry and flip it every now and then."

"Sure." Pause. "Is Savannah asleep back there? She has not made one crack about you with respect to Fabio."

"Mmm?" says Savannah. "Oh uh - sorry, I was thinking."

"A wonder of the world."

Savannah grunts in a vaguely disgruntled manner.

"Private stuff, don't worry about it."

Huh.

"Ugh, I'm fine, but I'm getting kind of annoyed that you two keep poking me. Shoo, go back to talking about magic."

"I said I'm fine. Shoo!"

"We haven't been driving long, I can turn around if you wanna go home and sulk or something?"

"No, no, I want to go to the Avalon," sighs Savannah.

Savannah does not break the silence. She doesn't even grouse about the pair up front being silent.

"So," says Darren, after a while. "Where should we go first when we reach the Avalon? Food, I'm guessing?"

"Should collect our prospective employee and buy him lunch and see if we trust him with a great big stack of scrolls and their instruction manuals."

Nod. "Hopefully he's not going to cackle and then go running off with his new found power of invisibility to spy in the girl's showers or something."

"Or pretend to lose the stock in a fire and not give us our money."

"That, too. Sorry, I grew up with Savannah, take a wild guess at what she wanted to use invisibility for."

Savannah flips Darren the bird.

"What, really? Savannah, you are aware that as a lesbian you have the coveted trait of already sharing gym lockers with who you'd want to stare at. Being invisible would make you creepier but not particularly more effective."

She rolls her eyes and doesn't reply. She gives an annoyed sigh, and then looks out the window, obviously not feeling talkative.

"Nothing is up, you keep bugging me, stop it."

"Okay, Savannah, seriously, I am not blind and stupid, something is wrong. Tell me what it is and I promise not to mope or get passive aggressive about you not telling me sooner."

"Auuugh," says Savannah. "Shush. Just - shush, stop talking, that is what's wrong, you keep talking and poking me and it's getting on my nerves!"

"The fact that I am talking is getting on your nerves? That - what, that never happens, what topics are upsetting you so I can avoid them and stop upsetting you? You told me to go back to talking about magic, you think that's the most boring thing ever."

"Then what do you want to go to the Avalon for?"

"Please stop being cagey, Savannah I'm your brother I won't disown you or something if it's terrible - is someone dead, is that what's going on?"

"I'm not fucking scared of you disowning me! I'm pissed off because you are bugging me for no reason and now you are interrogating me!"

"You're acting strange. That's not no reason."

"I'm allowed to be strange if I want to!"

"Yes," says Darren, frustrated. "You are, but I'm allowed to be worried, which I am, because you are my twin and I have never in my life seen you act this way! Please. Please let me in, Savannah."

"Fuck off!" growls Savannah.

"Is it me, I can, like, pull over and wander off for ten minutes if you don't want to talk about it in front of me?"

"Wh- no, it's you guys!"

"... Let's go with pulling over and wandering. Savannah did you suddenly just start hating our relationship? I thought you were supportive?"

"I don't give a fuck about your relationship!"

"Ugh, are you seriously going to make us go get rained on so you can interrogate me some more? This is so stupid, let's just keep going to the Avalon."

"Uh, yes, because you are acting like you are-" Pause. Darren trails off, before adding quietly, "Like you're possessed."

"The idea was that I would get... rained... um."

"... Oh my god, are you actually some person impersonating my sister?! - Thing we swore when we were eleven, what was it?!"

"Wh- ... Why does that matter, that shouldn't matter, I'm fine!"

Bella reaches for one of hers too. "How the fuck do we get it out," she mutters.

"-Stop that," hisses Savannah, and then she grabs the back of Darren's collar and slams his head into the dashboard.

"Fucking bastards you should have just stopped poking at it," growls not-Savannah, getting out of the car to try and tackle Bella.

Bella opens Darren's door. "Are you okay?" She dials her dad. "I'm calling Charlie -"

"Ow," says Darren, rubbing his head and fumbling to get out of the seatbelt. "Yeah, mostly, ow."

"Fly?" asks Bella, scanning the highway. It is for the moment empty. "C'mon, Charlie..."

"Yeah, it probably can't -"

And then not-Savannah is there. This time she doesn't rush the wind-shield, she stops at its edge and glowers. "Think I don't know anything, little magicians? This won't last long."

Darren does the same, looking at not-Savannah nervously. Flap, flap, away from the safety of the wind-shield but also into the safety of the air.

Darren makes a little sound before he is slammed into the ground with a painful sounding crunch.

Bella's good in the air. She'll lead not-Savannah on a bit of a chase. While waiting for her dad to pick up the phone and for Darren to get in the sky and distract his not-sister.

Not-sister is scary good in the air too. She gets extremely close to Bella, swooping in from the left to rearrange Bella's face -

- but Darren has recovered enough to repeat an earlier phrase. He carries two shield scrolls.

"Arg!" says the imposter, slamming into a shield for the second time and barely correcting mid-air to avoid crashing into the ground. "Fucking cheating magic..." she hisses.

Darren hisses a curseword, flapping to get away from his not-sister while trying to rattle off the spell for invisibility -

The imposter lets out a cry of pain, and releases Darren.

And then Bella is on her own with an angry not-Savannah. She twists around, and starts kicking at her attacker.

Ow ow ow. Okay, more-claws time, claws meet not-Savannah. Bella's not carrying a whole lot of scrolls...

Claws do nicely to really piss off not-Savannah. Another kick, then she shakes Bella off. She swoops around to work up some momentum -

That's just upsetting. She gives up trying to find Bella, that's pointless, she could be anywhere. Back to trying to attack Darren.

Bella trails not-Savannah, using her wake, gliding rather than making flapping noises, so she can pounce if she catches up to Darren. She's gone fullform since she's conveniently invisible.

Dance away, dance dance - whoo that was a close call he almost got punched - dance dance.

Bella doesn't want to blow her invisibility when presumably Mrs. Adams can identify the demon's host and even tell where Bella is if she has to. So she doesn't say anything.

Bella, reasonably confident that Mrs. Adams knows what she's doing, alights next to Darren, close enough for him to hear her breathing.

"What," laughs not-Savannah. "Going to set me back to Dis? Good fucking luck managing that without killing the girl."

Application of sharp, sharp claws to Savannah's throat. "Try me, demon. I've met you demons before, if you think I won't kill someone to get you gone you are mistaken," growls Mrs. Adams.

Darren makes a little sound in his throat. "What, no, Mrs. Adams - my sister-"

"Now that won't be my first option," assures Mrs. Adams. "I am reasonable. But, demon," the bugbear leans in close. "Look me in the eye and say that I haven't done this song and dance before. Say I'm not a murderer."

"Get out," purrs the bugbear, "and I will make it quick. But you are not staying. You are never staying."

Bella lopes up to Savannah, goes human-form enough to get at the scrolls on her person, pulls a healing one, recites its incantation from memory.

Darren notices Bella's attentions towards Savannah (by sound, not by sight) and smiles a little. He is perfectly happy to go help with taking out the demon that possessed his sister, now that it is firmly out of her...

Bella goes back to invisibly leaning on Darren. She doesn't return to fullform; the invisibility will wear off any minute now.

Darren would try to take her hand, but - invisibility. "Thanks," he murmurs to her, instead. He checks over his sister with worry, occasionally giving Mrs. Adams nervous looks.

The threat nullified, Mrs. Adams returns to human form, nonchalantly retrieving her cellphone to inform all parents that the threat has been handled. Charlie first.

"Yeah, demon's - gone. Sort of dissolved after she tore it up. Love you too. Don't know yet, I guess. Darren, do you still want to go to the Avalon? And if so should we take Savannah home or...?"

Mrs. Adams calls Veron, and updates him on the situation. She confirms that Savannah is okay.

"Admittedly, I kind of want to go home and curl up under a blanket now. Possibly while force-feeding Savannah chicken noodle soup."

"Okay. I can call - whatshisface, griffin kid, I have his name and phone number written down. We can go home."

"We'll say family emergency. Do - you want to come to my house, or go to yours? Is your dad at work, I can't remember."

"He's at work. I can come over to yours if you want but it would be reasonable for this to be Twins Time."

Hug. "Okay."

Awkward return hug because she's still invisible, but he obviously tries. Snuggle snuggle.

"Or wait for her to wake up. Um. Mrs. Adams? Do you know how long it'll be until she -"

"Unghh," says Savannah.

"Now," drawls Mrs. Adams dryly.

"Hey, Savannah," says Bella. Oh, she's fading back into visibility now.

Savannah sits up and curls around herself in one single motion. "Is it gone?" she hisses.

"It's been banished back to Dis."

"That is not the same thing as gone, did you make the - did it suffer?!"

"Very briefly," informs Mrs. Adams.

"Good enough." She then wraps her arms around her legs and proceeds to not say anything else.

Savannah snorts. "Pfff, he would. Home's good, being fed chicken noodle soup, nah. He can make it and I feed myself, though."

Bella nods and walks around to the driver's side door.

(Mrs. Adams returns to her own car, bids them goodbye, and heads back to her house. She's got essays to grade.)

Bella drives, silent unless addressed, back to the Sanders house.

"Mostly," agrees Darren.

Savannah nods. "Yeah. Bit scratched up, and I need like a pint of ice cream, but I'll live."

"I can stay or go, whichever."

"Eh, stay, Darren needs cuddles and that is an auxiliary use of a girlfriend," snorts Savannah.

Savannah, not being the snuggling type, retrieves an entire carton of ice cream from the freezer, plops onto a nearby couch, and then starts working her way through it. Nom. Nom nom. The best part about horrific trauma is the license to eat lots of ice cream after.

"I vote Darren's is snugglebunny."

"He is not a bunny."

"Pssssh, details."

Darren snorts. "What do you get, then? Ice cream tree frog?"

"I'm claiming my own long random password before somebody invents one for me. Uuuum. Euphrates potato Poughkeepsie."

Giggle. "There is no way I'm remembering that."

"This is a substantial disadvantage to the passwords, I guess, we'd all have to memorize them. I suppose we can continue going with quizzing each other about events from our shared history."

"Sure, that works all right. Passwords as a backup, though?"

"Euphrates potato Poughkeepsie." Snuggle.

He giggles, then snuggles her back. "I am also not going with snugglebunny, Bella, you get to pick because I can't think of anything."

"Chocolate raindrop spider."

"Okay. I'll memorize that and that will be my password."

"Meh. I'll go with ice cream tree frog, it's already embedded into my head because it was pretty funny."

"That's why the charmingly random words. Conveniently, each password is also consistent in its poetic feet."

"The what now?"

"All your words are one emphasized syllable. Mine all go dah-DAH-dah. And Darren's go DAH-dah."

"... Huh! Okay, that's weird jargon but now I understand what you're talking about."

"If you've ever heard about 'iambic pentameter' as in the thing Shakespeare does, similar deal - dah-DAH dah-DAH dah-DAH dah-DAH dah-DAH end of line."

"Huh! Okay. Cool. That sounds like it's super hard to do, props to Shakespeare."

Bella giggles. "He didn't do it all the time. But yes."

"I think she just learned more from that than she has in several years of English class," marvels Darren.

Savannah sticks her tongue out at him, and then goes back to eating lots of ice cream.

"Well, I am planning to major in education, if not specifically literature education."

"And now if you ever need to apply for a job in education if not-Hogwarts falls through, just tell them you taught my sister about iambic pentameter. They'll hire you on the spot."

"A truly impressive line item on my resume."

"People might not believe you about it, actually, it's so unheard of. You might need to drag Savannah along to confirm it."

"Ah, too much hassle, I will just become a truck driver."

Darren laughs. "All right. Too bad, now no one will know your abilities." Snuggle, snuggle.

Snuggle!

Snuggle. "Mmm?"

Yaaaay snuggly kisses.

"I have no such excuse, I have been since April and was waiting for you to say something first."

Darren sporfles. "Have you really? You weren't afraid of how I was going to react, were you?"

"A little? I mean, even the very sweetest possible reaction that did not include the same sentiment would have been demoralizing."

"Awwww," says Darren. And then Bella is snuggled. "Well, good news, I do happen to love you, I am just a dork and didn't realize it for a while."

Snuggle! "Very good news."

"Sorry that I'm a dork and took so long. I would have said it sooner if I'd realized."

"It's okay." Nuzzle.

"If you do something like fall in love with me and not notice, communicate with me on the subject, or otherwise do anything that would let me know it was time to report to your sister?"

"No," laughs Darren. "I meant if I'm being annoyingly dense, tell my sister, and she will tell me to stop it and I will."

"Aha. I will keep that in mind." Nuzzle.

Cuddle, cuddle. "Good, it now retroactively bothers me that I didn't notice sooner."

"Because it betrays a lack of self-examination or because of retroactive impatience to get on with mentioning it or what?"

"First one, kind of. It's like I missed a variable and now I'm annoyed at myself for missing it because for a long stretch of time the rest of the problem was wrong."

"Are you a math problem?"

"... If I am I am the most ambulatory one of all time," laughs Darren. "It's an easy way to think about my head? I guess?"

"How peculiar. What kind of math problem?"

"It's... Hmmm. A really complicated giant math problem? Where I weigh things that I have and their uses and how important they are to me or my goals. Then I combine certain parts of it to get what something is worth to me both resource and emotional wise and then I file it into mental priorities. So I guess it's also like a spreadsheet? And a math problem?"

"Huh. I mean, I do that, but it's all extremely verbal and felt out, not numerical at all."

Nod. "Mine's numerical. I mean there are - non-numerical parts of it, but I do tend to look over those and give them a value in comparison to other things. With numbers."

"Can I have examples?"

"Okay, well, what sorts of examples do you want me to give? Like - what do you want me to aim for? A lot of the time it's with a goal in mind, but once I've worked out the values for those I reuse them later."

"Mostly I want an idea what sort of scale you're working with, since I imagine it's relative value and not absolute that makes the Darren-spreadsheet behave. If I am very important does that make me worth fifty points or fifty million or what?"

"Ooooh yes. Why am I thirty seven point four, do tell."

"Well there's math and reasoning behind all of these numbers, but - seven point six for intelligence and general sense-making. A solid ten for aiming it in the right direction, as in, fixing the world. Three and a half because you are systematic about it and things in general. Six point eight because I am dating you and there are reasons for that and they are good ones. Six point five because you are a super magic fairy princess and that has proven to be very, very useful. Two because you do not go about the sorts of things that you want in an immoral way. Then the last is the token point I give every sentient being ever just for being alive."

"You have all this memorized? And morality is only two points compared to nearly seven for dating you?"

"I would not be dating you if you were not moral," points out Darren. "It's not actually just because I am dating you, it's because you are the sort of person I would date, and am, in fact, dating. I'm kind of picky. The numbers are kind of memorized, I was approximating them a bit, in my head they're more fluid. Besides, yours are pretty easy, I think about you a lot. If you wanted me to spit out the numbers for say, Mike, I would need time to think because I don't think about him very much."

Nuzzle. "Awwww."

Darren smiles and nuzzles back. "Also, your boyfriend is a nerd. I hope you're not surprised by this development."

"Not a bit. It's great."

He snickers. "Was it the math problems that made you think so?"

"Nope. I already thought it."

"Awww. Thanks." Snuggle.

Snuggle. "I am extremely fond of you, you may have noticed. And you are a huge nerd, so if it was a minus, I could not be nearly so fond of you."

He giggles and nuzzles her. "Thank you for loving me and my nerdy, nerdy ways."

"You are welcome."