AS IT TURNS out, David has a plan for this. He reveals this as he occupies Hadley's passenger seat, his legs propped up on the dashboard, his hands behind his head. He sits like he's at the beach.

The plan, David explains as Hadley drives, involves David staying at Hadley's room for a week or two—depending on the circumstances—figuring out what the hell's going with Hadley, and luring out whatever big bad demon might be hiding under Hadley's bed. David mentions his address; Hadley starts driving there.

"You're not going to rob me and run off with my money, are you?" Hadley asks, partly-joking, but mostly serious.

"If I was going to, I would've done it a long time ago, don't you think?"

"Can't be too careful."

"I'll keep a tracking chip on me, if you're so concerned," David offers.

David goes onto talk about how he's going to do this, or that, but Hadley's tuning him out. The hows and whys don't matter to Hadley, nor do they interest him. What interests him is staying on the road, not running over little kids at the crossing, and keeping his hands on the wheel. David keeps talking, Hadley keeps driving.

"What happens if it doesn't work?" Hadley asks, interrupting David mid-explanation.

"If what doesn't work?" David asks.

"Your plan. What if whatever thing that got me last night doesn't come back? What if you can't lure it out?"

"Then I go ahead and find it."

"And how are you going to find it?"

"Don't worry about that," David assures. He finally takes his feet off the dashboard. "The problem is me staying over. How are you going to excuse that?"

"I won't have to," Hadley says. They stop at an intersection. "I'm going to sneak you in."

"So nobody checks your room?" David asks, eyebrow raised. "And how am I going to shower and eat and all that stuff?"

"Nobody checks my room," Hadley says. "Nobody except Marzia. And I'll convince her."

"Marzia?"

"My maid and cook."

"Ah," David says. "Light's green."

Hadley starts driving again, and David's lapsed into a silence. Hadley can only imagine how awkward it'll be, living and breathing side by side David, for two weeks. He'd rather be doing this with Vic. What must she think of him? Coward, for not calling her. Bigger coward for not explaining himself.

"Turn right," says David.

Hadley pulls up to a neighborhood he's never seen before, not in the city. It's a shabby neighborhood. Red brick cookie cutter houses, squashed and crammed next to each other, as far as the street goes down. At the far end of the street, a bunch of kids are having a snowball fight. Someone's walking a dog. A few people are outside of their respective homes, shoveling snow.

Compare and contrast with Hadley's neighborhood, where the only times he saw his neighbors were at awkward barbeques, where sometimes it seemed to him that any sign of human activity was something to be hidden and tucked away behind iron-wrought gates and greens hedges.

"You live here?" Hadley asks, once he finds a parking spot and squeezes the car in with some difficulty.

"Where else would I live? A mansion?" David asks, offering a lopsided grin.

Hadley doesn't let the remark sting him. "I don't know. Didn't mean any offense."

"I'm a black boy belonging to the bourgeoisie," says David. "Well, not the bourgeoisie. I belong to the lower classes."

"So why'd you say bourgeoisie?"

"Alliteration's fun. Do you wanna come in?" David asks, gesturing at the house with his head.

Hadley looks at the house across the street. It looks just like every single one of the houses. Unassuming, shabby. Cheap, Hadley's mother would have called it. It's an enticing word. Hadley's life is filled with expensive things, and they're hardly ever interesting.

"Sure," says Hadley. "I'd be glad to."

David's only stretches his grin wider, gets out of the car, and sets off across the street. Hadley follows, glancing up and down the street. He feels another pang of envy—how lucky David is, to live in a place where people are a daily occurrence, while Hadley's stuck in a house filled with shadows and ghosts and people who hardly ever look him in the eye unless it's to hit him.

They're in front of David's house. It doesn't look any better up close than it does from far away. Hadley shifts from foot to foot—now that he's standing, he realizes how badly he needs to pee. Too much hot chocolate back at Li Wei's Tea Parlor. He blames Francis and Jeanne—they'd egged him on, and he, ever the fool, only chugged down cup after cup while Benji watched on with disinterest.

David isn't ringing the bell. Instead, he's looking under the now-dead potted plants. Probably looking for the key.

"Can't you just ring the bell?" Hadley asks. He hops a little. That doesn't help.

"I'm not sure if mom's home," David answers, picking up yet another pot.

"Then call her," Hadley says.

David examines the inside of the pot. He sticks a finger into the soil. "She doesn't use a cellphone."

"Christ. How the hell do you communicate with her?"

David takes a fistful of soil and holds it out in front of him. "I communicate with her telepathically. We share—" emphatic pause— "a bond."

"Jesus. Really?"

"No. Her phone's broken, so I can't call her." He opens his fist, lets the soil fall out of his hand. He looks disappointed. "Why? Did you think I was being serious?"

"Ha ha," Hadley says. "Real funny."

"What are you two imps doing out here?"

Hadley and David both jolt in surprise.

There's a woman standing at the door, wearing a large and furry bathrobe. Her face is just as dangerously angled as David's, her skin the same dark brown as David's, her apparent ease in her body the same as David's. She's probably the same age as Hadley's own mother, but something about her seems youthful and easygoing. Less tense than most women her age, less weathered. David looks like his mother—sharp, quick, all angles and sudden slopes, good-looking in the way of fresh earth and sunlight.

Hadley thinks she's pretty hot.

"Hey, ma," David says, casually. He places the pot back onto the ground. "Didn't think you'd be home."

She squints at Hadley, and he's struck by the impression of how she seems like she's looking at him from a distance, rather than ten feet. "Who's that you have there?"

Hadley and David glance at each other.

"My new client, remember?" David says.

"Oh, yes, the rich and young one. So few of them, these days," says David's mother, a little wistfully. From behind her knees, a snout appears. Then a large, gold, furry head.

"Billy!" David exclaims and Billy yelps back, all but leaping onto David.

David's mother hasn't taken her eyes off of Hadley, and his cheeks warm the longer she looks at him.

"James, right?" she asks. "David mentioned you."

"Did he," says Hadley, glancing at David, who is kneeling in the snow, showering Billy with affection.

"Aren't you freezing out there?" she asks. "Come in, come in. My heart aches to see you out here, freezing like an orphan from some Charles Dickens novel."

She has a lovely voice, Hadley thinks as he trudges up the few steps to David's house. A voice like what coffee smells like.

David's home is, expectedly, small. David's home is, unexpectedly, very normal looking. The floor is made of wood. There's a TV, a medium-sized couch in front of it, a few pictures hanging on the olive green walls. Next to this living room is the kitchen and dining room both combined into one. There are a few plants hanging from the ceiling—fake or not, Hadley can't tell—and there are about a thousand personal touches all around the house—an art print here, a rock band poster there, framed paintings obviously done by a child's hand—and it's all warm and welcoming and worn-out; a house that took the shape of the people that lived in it. Hadley breathes it all in; the warm air, the fresh scent of lavender, the smell of dog, the perfume of a safe home. The air in his own house is septic and lemony—Marzia is relentless when she cleans.

David shrugs off his jacket and throws it onto the coat hanger. He takes off his shoes, too. Hadley does the same, only he keeps on the scarf.

Billy nudges his head at Hadley's knees.

"He likes you," says David's mother. "Of course, he likes everyone."

"He's also handsome and charming and intelligent," David says, rubbing the top of Billy's head. "I'd say he's exactly like his owner, wouldn't you?"

"No, I wouldn't," Hadley says.

"Ouch," says David.

"Excuse me, ma'am," says Hadley, politely. "Where's the bathroom?"

"Ma'am," David says.

"There's one down the hallway," David's mother says. "And no need to call me ma'am, although David could learn some manners from you. You can call me Josephine."

There are three bedrooms, Hadley observes, on his way to the bathroom. One for Josephine and possibly for her partner, if she has one. One for David (door wide open, a complete and utter mess inside), and the other one is a mystery. It's the only bedroom door that's closed. Houses are fascinating to Hadley—any place that's been lived in is fascinating to him. The evidence of a person's presence laid bare, all over physical space, for all to see. How is he not supposed to find that interesting?

Which is why after he takes a piss, he creeps into David's room.

It smells like sweat and deodorant and sweat again. A sandwich of teenage scent. Eau de garçon, Hadley thinks with a snort.

David's room is a mess. Clothes discarded on the floor, sandwich wrappers on his desk, his waste basket overflowing, posters of comic book heroes and bodacious woman pasted on top of each other—and Hadley can't help but think of his own room, his bare, dead and empty room.

He really should stop comparing himself to David.

He approaches David's cluttered desk, careful not to step on anything. There's two framed photographs on the desk. Hadley picks the smaller of the two.

Two boys are in it. The older one—who looks like a lot like David, but only a few years older—is striking a funny pose. Hip cocked to the side, lips all puckered up, chest sticking out. The other boy—it's David, has to be, even at nine he looks like he knows something that others don't—is imitating him. They're at the beach. There's a half decimated sand castle peeking out the corner of the photo. It's such a normal picture.

"What're you smiling at?"

Hadley nearly drops the photograph. "Nothing."

"Creep," says David. He doesn't sound the least bit angry.

"You have a brother?" Hadley asks.

"Yep," David replies, making his way toward Hadley. Billy follows close on his heels, tongue lolling out of his head.

"What's his name?"

David gently takes the photograph from Hadley's hand, his gaze soft and distant. "His name's Carter. He isn't here, though."

"Where's he now?"

"San Francisco," David says, setting the photograph down on the desk. "He's like me, too. Magician. Taught me everything I knew."

The way David says all this—with awe and fondness and nostalgia—tugs at something in Hadley. He wants David to talk about Carter, if only to hear David's voice change into something different than its usual timbre; into something thoughtful and gentle and soothing.

"Has he been gone long?"

"Kind of," David says. After a pause, he adds, "He shows up, time to time. We still talk. About the good old days. What nonsense he gets up to. Stuff like that."

Billy whines around David's legs. It occurs to Hadley he might've been staring at the photograph for too long.

"Your mom's nice. Is she a magician, too?" Hadley asks.

"She used to be," says David. "She can still do all that magic stuff. But she doesn't care to."

"Is she single?"

David glances at Hadley from the corner of his eye. "Why're you asking?"

"Because she's hot."

David makes a sound that sounds a lot like Billy's whining. "I wish you wouldn't say that. I really wish you wouldn't say anything like that ever again."

"I'm just saying," Hadley says, smiling, unable to help himself, "your mom could get it."

David makes a face. "You wanna die? Cause I'm happy to oblige."

"Don't you have some bags to pack?"

David grumbles some more about how Hadley's a hack with no morals, grabs a duffel bag from some corner of the room, picks up whatever clothes he can find, and shoves them into the bag. Pajamas. Ratty t-shirts. Socks. There's a week's worth of clothes in there. How long has it been since he met David? A month? And already wedged into Hadley's life like a nuisance. Spending the week in Hadley's room. What a joke.

Hadley seats himself on David's bed and watches David flit around the room, stuffing everything of use into his bag. Billy gives up on trying to catch David's attention and places himself at Hadley's feet.

"How'd you meet Vic?" Hadley asks, more out of boredom than curiosity.

"How else? Curse club," David says, holding a candle in his hand. He crams that into the bag as well. "She found Molly, she found me sitting inside, and first thing she said to me was, 'I had no idea there'd be other people.'"

Billy, not content to let himself go unpetted, paws at Hadley's knees. Hadley resists.

"What did she mean by that?"

"Molly's a liminal space," David says. He zips up the bag. Tries to, anyway. "She attracts the unusual. People, animals, things. Makes her a great place for a hideout."

"And she attracted Vic?"

"Like a magnet," David says. He tries, again, to zip up his bag. "Also, pet my dog. He's starving for love."

Hadley scratches Billy's chin, and Billy—disappointed by this unenthusiastic scratching, but not one to be deterred—nuzzles his head into Hadley's palm. Hadley's heart melts, sufficiently enough that the quality of his petting increases.

"What do you think of me?" David asks.

Hadley, who's been admiring Billy's beautiful golden head, is taken by surprise. "What?"

"First thing you think when you look at me?" David rephrases. He zips up the bag for a third time. This time, he's successful.

"What kind of a question is that?" Hadley asks. "I can't answer that."

"Come on," David prompts. "First thing you thought when you saw me."

"Well," Hadley says, and shifts around, tries to recall whatever he felt when he first met David. "I looked at you and thought, this guy needs to get off my lawn."

David laughs, a short burst of laughter. "Okay, let me try again. And answer me seriously. What do you think when you look at me?"

Billy pushes his wet snout onto Hadley's hand, as if pushing him to answer.

"Serious, deep, philosophical answer?" Hadley says. "Okay. Here it is. I look at you, and I think, that's the guy that's going to save my life."

David tilts his head to the side. It's a bird-like, curious, almost innocent gesture.

"Really," says David.

Billy gets off of Hadley and pads out of the room. Hadley can hear Josephine coo-ing over the dog.

"I shouldn't have reason to believe I'm wrong, right?" Hadley asks.

"No," says David. His voice is gentle. "You shouldn't."

***

a/n: oh hum this was going to be much longer but that part's going to come next week or something because like. who wants that shit.

so what is this chapter, you are asking. drew, you fucking buffoon. what is this sappy nonsense. this bonding. where is the curse. the gore. the nightmares. the curse club. the francis. what is this low quality shit

well, i say, inhaling yet another chips packet and injecting chocolate milk right into my veins. well, i say, shit's going to get even more low quality