"Okay, so, how long are we going to keep doing this? Have you made any progress, or are we going to be doing this for another four hours, or are we going to postpone it until tomorrow if it takes too long, or…?"

"Well, I have a spell to prepare," Sadde says, looking up from her book. "If we don't find any info on the demon I suppose we're gonna go to the morgue and cast on the librarian, or maybe to his place to see if he was the one who got the book, or maybe we should check on the gym teacher..."

Theo shrugs.

He doesn't really know how they'd typically handle weird demon scenarios, so he thinks he'll leave it up to the others.

However they'd typically do it, the way they're doing it now is by researching a lot, apparently.

He will return to research if they're continuing to do it, then.

This can go on for a while.

It indeed can.

… Eventually, he might get a bit hungry.

By then Sadde has found the appropriate spell and is gathering ingredients.

And Willow has been hunched over the same page of her book for half an hour now, but seems to be actually looking at one of the magic books, given the way she oh-so-casually turns a page every now and then when she thinks no one's looking.

He raises an eyebrow at Willow and then asks Sadde if there's anything he can do to help speed up… whatever, the magic, since he doesn't seem to be having much luck finding the demon type so far.

"Well, it's a pretty simple spell, I'm just preparing it in advance in case we need to be quick, but sure, help's appreciated. Can you get me the sage?"

"Sure," he says, then fetches it.

Presumably it's in some easily-locatable place, such as on a spice shelf with a nice label?

She accepts it, ties it with a few more herbs and a piece of paper with a word on it, sets fire to them while she says a word in Latin, then they don't catch fire, and that's that.

Theo stands there watching the process.

"So, no luck with demonology?"

"Literally just that weird parasitic egg demon that I mentioned. But it doesn't explain the gym teacher's actions unless the eggs also secrete some weird thing that does that. The book, however, didn't mention this."

"Yeah," she sighs. "We might have to go pay the morgue a visit anyway."

He nods. "Are we gonna do that first, then, with the spell?"

"It's... probably best if we wait until the evening, but yes."

He nods. "Makes sense."

The spell being all done and ready, she returns to her living room, where Willow has abandoned all pretense of actually looking through demonology books, and sighs. "So, uh, how about we catch something to eat and then go look at a dead body?"

"Sounds like fun," says Theo, getting out his phone to send a quick text to his dad. "Any good food places around?"

"Ooh, there's a sushi place I really like a couple of blocks from here," Willow says, raising her head from the book.

"Uh, okay," says Theo.

Sure, sushi, why not.

"You all have your stakes?"