Those Who Are Dead : Beating a ghost

[x-adrienne.livejournal.com]

Amanda, Lil, and Wanda visit Adrienne's penthouse and after dinner and copious amounts of vodka, stage a seance/exorcism in attempt to purge the place of Adrienne's unpleasant memories of her dead husband. No one told the ghost it was supposed to be a joke.



"Alright, I think we should get down to business," Adrienne announced over the noise of three chatty, possibly inebriated women as she surveyed the mess of bottles and remnants of food around the main room of the penthouse. She wasn't sure if the others were in the same boat as herself, but the alcohol was beginning to give her a hard time focusing on much of anything that didn't involve clothing, or giggling over or cursing men. Best to remind them of the reason they were here, she figured.


"We have an important task tonight, ladies!" she continued, stabbing her wine glass into the air like an historical general leading a charge, sloshing a little onto the carpet. "We're here to banish the evil spirit of one Steven du Clos, who despite his name being very cool because who wouldn't want to be named 'do clothes', is a first-rate asshat and his spirit needs to go away from this penthouse so I can live here far, far away from Garrison Kane- until the fall when school starts again- without thinking about Steven the asshat and how I had the bastard killed." They all knew that already, right? Oops. Oh well. "So you're here tonight for a seance-slash-exorcism-slash-witchy banishment and I think maybe we should start because I'm getting sleepy. How do we start?" She turned to Amanda. "Do we have to sit on the floor or in the kitchen or can we stay where we are?" She was quite comfortable on the couch.


The witch was already on the floor, sitting cross-legged with her head against Wanda's knee, half-asleep - clothing talk did that. At Adrienne's clarion call, she stirred herself, blinking. "Nah, you're all right," she said, reaching for the book bag she'd brought over and beginning to pull out various bottles and jars and bundles of herbs. Left overs from her previous magical incarnation - they were old and she didn't really need them but since this was more of a symbolic thing, she figured she'd go for the show. "I might make a bit of a mess on the carpet, tho'. That all right?"


Adrienne slunk onto the floor anyway when Amanda pulled things out of her bag so she could investigate the stuff, mostly by sniffing at it and making faces. "I hear the landlady can be bought off with Italian shoes," she assured the young woman with a smirk. There were advantages to owning property, after all. "I will gladly buy a new carpet if we can banish Steven's stupid memory to hell. I will buy you all a very lovely carpet if we can do that. Where's the crosses and holy water?"


Lil pushed herself up into a sitting position from where she'd been lounging on the floor and crawled a few feet to wear she'd dropped her bag at the beginning of the evening. "Hold on. I got them here somewhere," she muttered with her blonde head half in the purse. From inside, the giantess removed an arsenal of weapons she'd found on the internet - everything from the requested holy water and crucifixes to salt, garlic, a wooden chopstick, sand; a veritable supernatural hunting kit that would have included a silver bullet if Lil could have found one on such short notice. With a tipsy but proud grin, she put the tools on the table then leaned back on her elbows. "I thought I was gonna get a lightning bolt to the head when I went into the church to get the God juice."


Carefully, Wanda leaned forward with her elbows on her knees to inspect the religious haul. "I probably do not want to know how you managed to convince them to give this to you," she laughed. "As for what I brought, well, you all have been partaking of it since I arrived."


Though there were still plenty of bottles left. Wanda had gone a slightly different route than what Amanda and Lil had brought. She'd explained to Adrienne when she'd arrived that there were some cultures and religions that gave offerings to spirits in order to send them on their way. No one had complained about the slightly different approach when she'd produced a number of high quality vodka bottles from her bag.


"Anyone would think we were rogue demon hunters with this lot," Amanda snickered. She nabbed the salt off the table and clumsily began pouring it in a circle in the middle of the group. "Protective circle," she explained, for the non-adept. "Well, protective oval-ish blobby thing, any way." She peered at her handiwork - not in anyone's right mind could what she'd done be called a 'circle'. "So's the bad spirits don't get out."


"Out?" Adrienne's eyes went wide. She'd been trying some of Lil's holy water to see how it went with vodka, but she set the bottle down and frowned at the salt circle. "Wait, I thought we wanted them to go out? We don't want them to stay here!" Not that there really were any spirits, of course. She brandished a crucifix like a sword at the other women. "Don't trap them in this little oval thingy with us!"


Amanda poked her tongue out at Adri. "Who's the witch here? Do I tell you what shoes go with what?" Considering Amanda's habit of wearing her Docs almost everywhere, it was a good thing she didn't. "We're outside the protection blob. Ghost gets called into the blob and then we give it the bum's rush. See?"


The non-magical blonde shook her head. "Protection blob? That somekinda technical term?" Lil laughed, taking a final shot of the vodka before running the back of her hand over her mouth to wipe away any excess. "I don't wanna be trapped with any fucking spooks, 'specially one that may or may not be that one's dead husband," she said with a nod at Adrienne. "Husbands are enough trouble when they're alive so pfft. Get him outta here."


"Amanda, take note," Wanda said in her best 'I am teaching you something, please ignore the copious amounts of drink I have had' voice. "This is why you have a harem and not a husband."


"Yes'm," Amanda said mock-meekly, her eyes dancing with mischief. "Tho' I think I went about it the wrong way, since I'm sharing mine with his boss. Then again..." She fluttered her eyelashes at Wanda. "How about it, Boss Lady?"


There was no response beyond a sudden pillow walloping Amanda in the face as Wanda tipped back the rest of her drink almost desperately at the thought.



"Lil said she wouldn't stay if this turned into an all-girl orgy," Adrienne pointed out, remembering her conversation with the blonde when the idea for this get-together had been proposed. "How much do we want Lil around right now?" She tried some more of the holy water, holding a pillow up like a shield. "This doesn't taste very special to me..."



"No lesbian orgies!" the taller blonde declared, picking up the other bottle of blessed water and squirting it at Adrienne's knee. "That starts up and I'm outta here and I'm taking the holy shit with me which means you're stuck with the ghost," she said with a pointed nod. "So, let's keep going with this exorcism stuff, eh?"


"Bah, you lot are no fun," Amanda mock-complained, picking herself up after her pillowing. "All right, let's get this show on the road. Wanda, sit there." She pointed at a spot outside her "protection blob" that corresponded with north. "Adri and Lil, there and there." East and west. "And I get the driver's seat." She picked up an empty vodka bottle and stuffed a bunch of dead-looking herbs in it and pulled her lighter out of her pocket. "First, we cleanse the atmosphere," she announced, setting the bunch on fire. A not-unpleasant waft of herbal smoke drifted up.



"Right; no one dirty the atmosphere anymore til we have this thing all wrapped up" Adrienne ordered, pointing a figure at each of them in turn. "Lil, I'm looking at you. If you're hiding bean burritos in your bag, you'll have to wait to eat them til after, got it?"


At that, Wanda's face scrunched up and she muttered something about Americans as she dropped into her position. "You might wish to try to cleanse your minds as well," she suggested before shaking her head. "Though with this group..."


"My mind's as blank as it's gonna be. Clean? You're pushing your luck on that one." Still, Lil crossed her legs and closed her eyes, the tipsy smirk still on her lips as she played along with the whole set up. For free alcohol, the blonde had no problem playing ghost hunter with the three other women in whatever weird sleepover-esque situation it would turn out to be.


"Quiet from the peanut gallery," Amanda instructed, poking her tongue out at Lil and Adrienne. "Right, relatively clean atmosphere, check." She waved the burning herbs around a little more and coughed as the smoke got up her nose. "Next, we all hold hands and concentrate on the middle of the circle. Blob. Whatever. Concentrate on pushing all the negative energy in this place into the middle." She didn't really expect it to work - after all, one, there weren't any ghosts; two, she wasn't really trying and three, she doubted this particular group could concentrate on anything more than men or shoes for more than five seconds in this state.


Wanda looked comfortable, having spent many an hour in the position as she did her meditation. She held out her hands to Lil and Adri, curling her fingers around theirs as they all settled. She was comfortably drunk, loose and relaxed enough to easily slip into a half-meditative state. After this, after the "banishment", there was ice cream and more drinking involved, a pleasant way to spend the evening.


Adrienne was the last one to close her eyes. Meditating had gotten easy to her after beginning to practice with Nathan, but since moving to the penthouse she'd been having difficulty getting to a state where her mind was absolutely clear and untroubled. Despite the friends, the pleasant chatter, and the wine, this still seemed like Steven's place to her, even though it was in Adrienne's office building. It had been the place they'd lived most frequently while they'd been married, the place where she'd foreseen her own death numerous times via her powers. She tried to think of patterns Nathan had taught her, but she couldn't get the thought of Steven out of her head, due to the nature of the joking excuse that had brought them here tonight, banishing his evil ghost. "Goodbye, negative energy," she muttered aloud through gritted teeth, forcefully, wanting to succeed at this. The psychometrist focused relentlessly on her task of clearing her mind, feeling Wanda's hand and Lil's in her own. She shivered as the temperature in the room seemed to drop twenty degrees. "What the fuck?"


Amanda frowned, opening her eyes. She'd felt the temperature change too, but not the accompanying energy signature that ought to have accompanied any kind of actual manifestation. "That shouldn't be happening," she muttered, letting go of Lil and Adrienne's hands and reached into the centre of the circle. Nothing, except that biting cold. "Hello?" she said, poking the empty space. "Anyone there?"

"Of course I'm here," replied Steven du Clos. "I may be dead, but it doesn't mean I don't still live here." He smiled at Adrienne's horrified look. "Hello Adrienne. Miss me?"

***




Brought about by various powers, energy, and magic, Steven du Clos materializes to teach Adrienne some lessons. Some are old and familiar, some are new.

The fear that flooded Adrienne's body like a slimy, black sickness was made all the worse for being so familiar. She'd begun to forget as the years passed what it felt like to feel this afraid. Fighting the urge to curl into a ball, she left her friends sitting on the floor and groped blindly behind her for the wall to support herself since her knees felt suddenly weak, head whipping around to where her dead husband stood. "What the fuck is this?" the psychometrist hissed, staring at the figure before her. He looked exactly as he had the last time she'd seen him; tall, angular features, solid, powerful build encased in a French-tailored suit instead of the Armani she'd suggested for his dinner with clients. But it couldn't be him. It couldn't be Steven. She'd arranged for his death eight years ago. She'd seen the body. He couldn't be standing in front of her.

"You're not real," she told the vision in front of her. "It's the alcohol. You can't be here." What had they done? How was this happening? "I'm hallucinating." It was said with conviction, as if saying it would make it true. "You're dead."

"You always were spectacularly good at stating the blindingly obvious, Adrienne" replied Steven, contemplating the back of his hand. He knew he was dead. He remembered being killed for that matter. But the back of his hand looked solid to his eyes and when he reached out and pushed against the back of a chair, it moved beneath his hand. His gaze moved back to Adrienne, who seemed to shine more clearly in his vision than anything else. "One of your little flaws," he added and decided that he still enjoyed watching her flinch.

His voice had her giving a start, her mouth going dry. It was a struggle not to curl up into a ball in front of him when he adopted that tone. But how was he speaking to her? How had he come to be here in front of her, more solid than any nightmare she'd seen him in before? Some sort of magic; something to do with Amanda's and Wanda's powers?

She tried to take a step forward, to go to her friends so they could figure out what the hell was going on together, but her head spun and she had to grip the wall again, feeling weak. From the fear?

"So you know you're dead," she said to the figure of Steven, frowning as she tried to puzzle out what exactly was going on and how to make him go away. "What is this, then? A haunting? Do you have some last message for me before you go back to hell?" He wasn't real. He couldn't hurt her. Not anymore.


Steven patted down his body, a gentle run of hands. He felt quite real, even though he was aware that he was dead. Time had passed, he knew, and some things swam into the front of his memory, things that had happened since he'd died. It was a distinctly odd sensation to know things that happened after your death and he wondered where the knowledge came from. "Apparently hell doesn't want me," he responded, grinning suddenly at Adrienne. "What have you been doing since I've been gone, my darling sugartits? Bad things? Stupid things? Maybe I'm back here to teach you your lesson." The first flinch had tasted sweet in his mouth; the explosion of emotion Adrienne threw out at his words was like the finest of wine, tingling in his veins.


Adrienne pressed against the wall more forcefully, as if trying to escape through it, crouching to make herself smaller. The old nickname, especially, had her blinking back inky spots of fear that were clouding her vision. The fear preoccupied her thoughts to the degree that wondering how this had happened, and how to fix it, flew out of her head. She could think of nothing more than avoiding the pain she knew was going to come. "I haven't been doing anything bad, or stupid," she found herself saying before she could think about it. A thought, a very small thought, was pushing against the fear, questioning why she was trying to placate him even knowing that he was dead and couldn't hurt her. But this question was quickly submerged by the too-familiar feelings and all the memories that went along with the sight of Steven; that if she assured him she was doing everything she was supposed to, maybe he would leave her alone. Maybe it wouldn't hurt as much as the times she tried to fight him. "I don't need any lesson, really," she murmured. "I'm a teacher now. Nothing bad." But she knew it was a lie. She'd been angling for power in the Black Court of the Hellfire Club. She'd been contemplating playing Jason Wyngarde's game, allowing him to do whatever he wanted with her for the chance to move up within the ranks. She had been doing and thinking stupid, bad things, and the realization of it hit her with immense clarity.


"Do you know how I can tell you're lying?" grinned Steven. "You're talking."


It was too easy to fall into the familiar pattern- Adrienne didn't even think about it. "I'm not lying," she answered, straightening up a little as she attempted to reason with him, plead with him. Dizziness and the overwhelming feeling of weakness had her gripping the wall with one hand. She didn't think she was strong enough to make it back to her friends. "Really, darling. There's absolutely nothing to be concerned about. No lesson necessary. Can't we just forget about it? Talk about something else? Like why the fuck you're here and how I get hell to take you back?" she spat, temper getting the better of her, as it usually did with Steven.


"Why would I be going anywhere?" asked Steven, stepping closer to the defiant Adrienne, enjoying it as her posture slumped back into her usual cower. "I have a beautiful house and a loving wife to keep it for me. If she can stop boozing and bitching and running some pathetic little department store supply-chain for long enough to fulfil her wifely duties." His hand closed on her upper arm, enjoying the sensation of solid contact, the energy that seemed to flow from her to him. The pinch looked almost flirtatious as first, until he tightened his grasp and twisted flesh until it bruised. "And you thought 'until death do us part' might work for you." His smile was vicious as he pinched harder.


Adrienne didn't cry out- the pinch hurt, but she knew it would only feed his violence if she made more noise. It was difficult to keep quiet, though, not because of the pain but because of the sheer frustration of it- she knew somewhere in her mind that this wasn't right. "It's not a pathetic department-store supply chain," she mumbled, her standard response to this complaint. "It's a modeling agency, and it's doing very well, which is a good thing for both of us."

"For us? I don't think so," replied Steven and released his grip. He turned around and seemed, almost for the first time, to notice that there were other people in the room. "Well, well, well, what have we here? Don't tell me you've managed to make some friends, dearest? Did you buy them with money, sex or unlimited supplies of booze? It's not like they'd be attracted to what little personality you have."


"No, they're not my friends," Adrienne answered immediately. Without any idea of why Steven's ghost was here or what it could do, she feared he might try to hurt Wanda, Lil, and Amanda the way he hurt her. Steven had always wanted to be the most important person in her life, disliking any acquaintances she made. "Just some associates from the school. We were just having a meeting, but they're going to leave now." She put emphasis on her last line, addressing them rather than Steven. If Steven could hurt them too, Adrienne had to make sure they left.

Amanda had been confused when Adrienne had first reacted, then as the woman continued speaking, apparently arguing with thin air and flinching from contact they couldn't see, she'd put two and two together. Or at least, part-way - there was no way her mock-spell, which hadn't even been finished, had summoned up an actual spirit. But the way Adrienne was reacting, it wasn't hard to tell who it was she believed was there.

"Yeah, well, that's the problem, Adri. We're here, and you're stuck with us until this is sorted." Amanda climbed to her feet, only staggering slightly from the amount she'd drunk. "So, whoever it is that's pestering you better get bloody hence, or I'll have to bring out the big guns. New York doesn't like it when my friends are hurt."

There was a long silence, and a smug grin crossed Amanda's face. It was quickly wiped away as an easy chair suddenly raced across the floor of its own volition, scooping up the young witch and carrying her towards the kitchen at a rapid pace.

"Well, fuck," Wanda groaned, forcing herself up. She'd been trying to study the lines - there'd been a flicker of red earlier and she couldn't tell if that had been her or the drink - but it had been hard to focus. If there was something actually about, it could be, somehow, screwing with everything. But now she had to hustle after Amanda, half afraid that the chair would eat her or she'd get shoved into the oven.

It was just one of those nights.

Steven laughed out loud as he pushed the small blonde woman towards the kitchen. It had been frustrating at first as he found his fingers drifting straight through her flesh and it became obvious that she couldn't hear his vicious words. It had all become much easier after he remembered the solid feel of the chair beneath his hand and what that meant he could do. The dark-haired woman obviously could neither see nor hear him, so it was easy to slip past her after shoving the blonde away, tumbling her against the central island in the kitchen.

He laughed at Adrienne's expression and the sweet surge of energy that ran through his veins at the sight of her fear. "Isn't it lucky we're rich, darling?" he said. "And can afford such excellent security?" he added as he went to the security panel and pressed the buttons that slammed the kitchen door closed and locked it in the startled faces of the two women. "Now what shall we do about the freak?" he said, looking at the giantess still standing, amusingly befuddled in the centre of the room.

"Adrienne, whatever fucking tricks you rigged this place with to play on us, they aren't fucking funny anymore," Lil said, scooping up a crucifix with one hand and a bottle of holy water with the other - both of which she pointed in the psychometrist's direction. It was getting too far past 'creepy' for the Canadian's vodka-soaked brain to process, especially after both Amanda and Wanda disappeared. "So, you can just stop them, eh? And let the girls out 'cause it's not funny."

She certainly wasn't laughing when the couch skidded across the room, sending her crashing through the French doors into the connecting bedroom before being joined by two chairs and the coffee table, effectively trapping the cursing giantess.

Adrienne couldn't manage to stifle the sobs that choked her throat as she watched Steven trap the other women away. Amanda's words about staying until this was sorted, and hearing herself counted as a friend had given her a small grain of hope that they would help her make Steven go away again. But now she was alone. "Let them out," she begged Steven, trying to make it across the room herself to engage the security door but stumbling as nausea and weakness washed over her. "Let them go. Don't hurt them. Please, Steven. I'll do whatever you want."

"But now it's just you and I," said Steven. "It's always just you and I, in the end." He caught up with Adrienne, corralling her against the wall. His hand cupped her face, even as she tried to turn away from him. He caressed her skin lightly with his thumb, skimming it along the edges of her cheekbone, pressing it just too hard and just too close to her eye. "You have the advantage, Adrienne. You have something I don't have. You know what it feels like to kill me." His hand pinched tighter again on her cheek and his mouth was so close to her ear that, had he still been alive, his breath would have left hot trails on her neck. "I wonder what it will feel like to kill you."

Whimpering at the touch, Adrienne felt a tear escape down her cheek. "That's why you're here," she mumbled, unable to look at his face. "You're going to kill me. Of all the ways I saw you kill me, I never saw this one coming." Her laugh was just a little hysterical, as if she'd resigned herself to what was about to happen and was enjoying the irony of it. At least it would all be over, she told herself. No more Hellfire Club, Wyngarde, irritating powers, dangerous stupid mansion, disapproving Garrison...

Blinking back more tears, her eyes sought another place to focus rather than on Steven, and she spotted the security door to the kitchen, and noticed Lil trying to bust her way through the french doors in the bedroom where she'd been trapped by the furniture. Adrienne blinked again, through the pain and despair she was feeling, allowing herself another sob, wondering if Wanda and Amanda could manage to open the door after Steven killed her and let themselves out or if they'd be trapped in there.

They wouldn't be trapped, she told herself. They would fight. They would get out of the room any way they could. They wouldn't die here. Not the way she was going to.

She didn't want to die. Not like this. "I didn't kill you," she said to Steven then, as if that would make any difference. It wouldn't, but she wanted him to know before he ended her own life. "I had to get someone else to do it. I couldn't do it myself, even though you were going to do it to me. I wanted to live, but I couldn't get away, and you were going to kill me. So I got to you first. I didn't want to die. I still don't want to die."

"Such a shame then," smiled Steven. "That you're going to. If it's any consolation, nobody much will miss you. Even the freaks and weirdos who you think are your friends won't mourn for longer than it takes to finish off your booze. Admit it, sugartits. I'm the only one that ever loved you. No one else could be bothered to forgive you so often after all the times you fucked up."


"I don't want your forgiveness," she spat out. "I'd rather stop fucking up so I don't need so much forgiveness in the first place." She didn't want to die. Even if it meant dealing with Wyngarde, with Garrison, she wanted to live. She didn't want to believe that Steven was the only one who gave her forgiveness, but more importantly, she didn't want to do the sorts of things that needed forgiveness. The things she'd done before Steven, and with Steven. "I'd rather stop being the person I was with you." She wanted to continue to live, and to do that she would have to change. No. She already had changed. And that tiny realization, the same self-preservationist streak that had driven her to have him killed in the first place, cleared some of the dizziness from her thoughts and gave her some clarity. She'd stopped him once. She'd had more time then, and resources she couldn't- wouldn't- use now. But she didn't have to let him kill her.

Looking up at his face, meeting his eyes through her own tears, Adrienne raised her chin defiantly as she heard her friends across the room trying to get out. She wanted to keep fighting, the way she knew they would. "You couldn't touch them," she said with a sudden realization, eyes going wide. "You're dead. However this happened, however it is you can hurt me, you're not flesh and blood. You're not really here. You died years ago. Before I met them." Amanda, Wanda, Lil, they were part of the life she had now, not the life she'd had with Steven. Their friendships were part of the person she was now, not the person she'd been as Steven's wife. Steven wasn't in her life anymore. She was a different person now. In almost every way it mattered, she was different.


She was strong now. Enough to stand up to him, anyway. "If you try to hurt me again," she said to Steven in a low, defiant voice, "I will hurt you. Fair warning. I wonder if I can cut off your finger?" she murmured with a sudden grin. She wouldn't be cruel, not like him, but the joke added to her strength.

"And how are you going to hurt me, bitch?" replied Steven, frowning as he felt his legs shake beneath him for just a moment. "You've already killed me; it's not like you can do worse. And the good part about being dead is that I don't have to make sure no-one can see the bruises this time." With that, he wrapped his left hand tightly around her throat as his right hand swept back and then forward, a short vicious jolting punch that nearly broke Adrienne's cheekbone, splitting the skin along the ridge of it so her cheek was suddenly stained with blood.


Her ears rang as he hit her, but her knee had already come up between her legs before Adrienne even realized what she'd done. She hadn't even thought about it. Hadn't needed to think about it. All the hours training with Jennie, with Ororo, with Morgan had made the move instinctual in her head. After kneeing him in the groin, she twisted back the thumb of the hand that was around her throat, trying to dislodge his grip as she wound up for another kick.


"Bitch," gasped Steven as the kick jolted through his body. Apparently being undead wasn't enough to stop you feeling the usual traumatising pain of being kicked in the balls. But worse than that was the sudden wave of weakness that swept through him. Adrienne, clear and almost shining in his eyes up until now, suddenly wavered in his vision, taking on the same look as the other women, as if he was seeing her through thick glass.

Adrienne pulled back, surprised when the ghostly form wavered in front of her. She no longer felt as weak as she'd been feeling since the weekend she'd left the mansion. She appeared to be gaining her strength back, and the ghost seemed to be losing his. Shit. Had he been in the penthouse the entire time she'd been living there? Draining her energy to feed himself? It was just the sort of fucked up thing she would expect to happen since she'd started working at Xavier's.

"How does it feel to be in pain, darling?" she asked in a mocking tone. Adrienne reminded herself that she wasn't going to be cruel, she wasn't going to stoop to his level. But she couldn't resist confronting him. "I should have done that years ago. I almost understand why you took such pleasure in it. Watching someone else growing weaker in front of you? It makes you feel powerful. I never realized how like you I'd gotten," she admitted, and the words burned her throat. "I let you make me weak- I could never stand up to you- but then I did the same thing to others as you did to me. But I'm finished with that. No more taking power by hurting people and taking theirs away. I'm not like you anymore."


It was like the last tie that held him to the earthly plane, the tie of Adrienne's fear and guilt and long-ago dried up love turned to hate, was cut in two. His hand suddenly slipped through Adrienne's throat and he found himself falling, falling back into the oblivion that he did not want. With everything left to him, everything he was made of, old hate and Adrienne's energy and chaos lines and the beat of the city and magic, Steven lashed out, reaching for anything that could hold him here and now and nearly alive. He grasped at anything holding tight and pulling as all that made him pulled inwards compressing him imploding a ripping of power inwards that swirled chaos and energy and magic and fear and pulled him away. Pillows burst as chaos lashed them, doors ripping inwards off their hinges, fabric swirling as air rushed into a single point.

With a faint wail, barely heard, Steven du Clos vanished from the face of the earth.

Adrienne had been knocked back against the wall with the expulsion of the energy, rapping her head so that she saw stars rather than seeing Steven vanish. When her head cleared she climbed to her feet carefully. She felt more awake, more alive than she had in weeks, yet already her body was beginning to ache from being knocked into the wall. Her face throbbed hotly, and she pressed the fingers of one hand to the cut on her cheekbone as she made her way across the destroyed front room to the security door. When the door wooshed open she felt tears threaten to well again. "Are you two alright?" she asked Wanda and Amanda tentatively, worried they would blame her for everything that had happened. "Can you help me get Lil out of the bedroom?" She didn't think she could move the furniture on her own.

Amanda took in Adrienne's condition and immediately moved to grab some paper towel, dampening it under the faucet and pressing it to the cut. "I'm pretty sure the Boss Lady can manage," she said with a small smile. "Sent whatever it was on its way, did you? Maybe I should get you a pointy hat of your very own."

"With Amanda about to take care of Adrienne's bleeding, Wanda immediately moved out of the kitchen to get Lil. She paused though, to gently squeeze Adri's shoulder. "Thank god we've still got that drink left," she commented before heading towards the other door. The pieces of furniture were heavy but it didn't take long for Wanda to heave them out of the way and step out out of the way, not knowing exactly how the giantess might react when the doors were open.

"What the fuck was that?" Lil asked as she came barreling out of the room, bottle of holy water raised high and the cross sticking out of her back pocket. No matter how hard she'd tried to break down the doors, they hadn't so much as budged. "Seriously, what the fuck was that?" she demanded again, looking from Wanda to the kitchen and after spying Adrienne and Amanda there, trotted over; a little annoyed and a lot confused. "Does anyone wanna give me explanation for what the hell just happened here?"

Swatting halfheartedly against Amanda's ministrations to her face, Adrienne winced at Lil's question. "I don't know technically what happened- Wanda and Amanda probably know more than me there- but however it happened, we had a visit from my dead husband. I was the only one who could see him. And the only one he could get his hands on, thank Christ," she spat. "He wanted to kill me. When I stood up to him, kneed him in the junk, and told him I would never be who I was with him again, he sort of... exploded?" She turned to Wanda and Amanda. "I have a lot more energy now that he's gone than I've had in weeks - was... whatever he really was... was it able to appear because it had been stealing my energy?"

"That is certainly a possibility," Wanda said, coming over to help Amanda lead Adrienne over to a piece of furniture that was mostly in its original position. "There are plenty of actual sightings and dealings with apparitions to collaborate with it. There was something screwy going on that I could see with my powers while it was happening, as well. We can do some actual checking tomorrow, if you would like. Though..."

Wanda's face lit up in a bright, and proud, smile. "You kneed him in the balls? Adri, I believe you may be the first to exorcise your ghost quite that way. Congratulations."

"Could even be a crossover of your powers and Adri's," Amanda replied to Wanda, ignoring Adrienne's attempts to bat her away as she tended to the cut and surveyed the rest of the damage. "With a bit of magical energy thrown in to give it the oomph to do this sort of damage. Since it didn't feel like the usual sort of ghost." She grinned at her 'patient'.

"Either way, you kicked its arse well and proper. Feels good, doesn't it, doing a number on your own personal boogeyman?"

Adrienne was positively beaming at the praise, which hurt her face, but she felt wonderful anyway. "It really, really does, yes. I didn't do much. I think the personal boogeyman was as much myself as it was Steven," she admitted. "I just had to decide some things about myself that I hadn't wanted to face, about wanting to change, wanting to be more like you ladies- except for you, you're a freak-" she grinned at Lil, "worthy of peoples friendships and all that heartwrenching tripe, and then I felt strong enough to stand up to him, and he went away. Blowing up most of my penthouse as he went." She frowned as she surveyed the damage. "Thank Christ I still have the number of a cleaning crew who works weekends. I think I need ice cream."

"Sweetie, after what the hell you've been through tonight - and us, too - I think ice cream is the perfect thing to go with our vodka," Lil chuckled softly before offering the former model a smile. "And after we get fat on those, maybe I'll show you just how freakish I can be."