The apartment felt strangely empty. It was late; the stars would have been burning in the sky if not for the glow of the streetlights. The neighbors were slowly getting ready for bed, lights were going out all around, and the silence was becoming downright unbearable. He was used to it. He should have been used to it by now. After all, he hadn't been around for so long.

  Alice rarely failed to come back to the apartment for the night. She usually gave him a heads-up about her outings. At first, it even amused him. A grand witch informing a measly, bound soul that she wouldn't be back for the night. But then he got to know another side of her, a more… friendly one? He understood that despite her talents, she was just a regular girl. He also realized that those talents weren't innate but hard-earned. Slowly, step by step, he began to see value in her, even a charm he hadn't noticed before. He learned to live with her under one roof, and not just coexist, but create something resembling a sick, pathological relationship. Almost like the bond between siblings; it was hatred mixed with a hint of affection.

  Then he met the black-haired demon, and everything moved so fast that before he knew it, he started to fear for his own soul. If it were up to him, he would never have let Alice move into his old apartment. If he could, he would have run as far away from her as possible. But nobody ever gave him that choice, and when you don't have what you like… you adapt, plain and simple. Time passed until the day came when he, like an idiot, was worried sick about the girl because of whom he was still stuck on this godforsaken earth. What the hell had happened to the world?

  The lock in the door gave a quiet click, announcing a key being inserted and then turning. Marcel's head snapped up at the sound and he looked toward the entrance. Something told him his miserable existence was about to become even more miserable, but for some reason, he refused to believe it. He waited patiently until, a moment later, the door cracked open and Alice walked in, blue-lipped from the cold and shivering.

  "Good God…" he whispered, springing up, if one could even use that term for someone who physically no longer had feet. "What happened to you?"

  The girl didn't answer. She was too frozen to make a sound. She walked inside, and only then did it hit Marcel how she was dressed. Damn it, where was her coat? Her purse? Her shoes? He wanted to ask a million questions at once, but none came to mind as he grasped another fact. When Alice had left the house, she'd been wearing black jeans and something whose name the spirit completely forgot but that looked like a poncho with sleeves, and striped at that. It didn't matter anyway, because the person standing in the doorway wasn't wearing it. No, she didn't even have anything long-sleeved on. It was a stupid tank top, nothing more. No bra… and there were leaves in her hair.

  "Did they rape you?" he asked, though it was more of a confirmation than a question.

  The girl looked at him blankly, then, barely in control of her own body, walked toward the bathroom.

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  "No! You have to go to the hospital! Don't get in the water, you'll wash away the evidence, Alice. They need to collect samples, there might be DNA and…"

  She wasn't listening to him. She turned on the icy water and then stepped under the stream, fully clothed. She stood like that for a moment, then slowly began turning the knob until, after a while, it was nearly scalding water. The girl slid to the floor, pressed herself into the corner, and let the water flow over her body, warming her slowly. It took a while for the shivering to stop.

  "They didn't rape me," she finally said to Marcel. "They didn't get the chance."

  The spirit sat right beside her, wondering if he should believe those words. On one hand, she might be trying to repress it, replacing the truth with her own version, but on the other, would she be able to speak so calmly? Of course, the human psyche works in a twisted but effective way when it wants to suppress trauma, but would Alice go so far as to become that numb?

  "Stop thinking about things like that," Alice snarled. "It's written all over your face that you don't believe me. What do you think, if I wanted to lie, wouldn't it be better to just deny the rape completely? I'm telling you: they didn't get the chance."

  "But…" Marcel couldn't quite figure out what he even wanted to say, but he desperately wanted to say something. The girl, however, didn't give him that luxury.

  "Not-a-Doctor. Not-a-Doctor stopped them."

  For the second time that night, Marcel felt completely torn. The black-haired demon genuinely hadn't crossed his mind, but his presence changed everything drastically. When you added him to the equation, the outcome being Alice's rape became strangely unreal. At the same time, the boy's spirit still reacted to the girl's guardian with something close to a panic attack, so it was hard for him to think of him as a hero saving a damsel in distress.

  "Did he kill them?"

  "No." Alice laughed, almost hysterically, but offered nothing more. The water kept flowing. "He didn't have to. His presence was enough. They did it to themselves."

  "How many?"

  "Five. Three shitheads and two bitches. High. Satanists making a sacrifice in a forest clearing. They knocked me out near the supermarket, then drugged me. I didn't have a chance to defend myself."

  "Damn it!" That was all he managed to muster. He wasn't capable of adding anything more, because this wasn't a situation where any words felt right.

  "You think things like this only happen in movies, or to people with exceptionally bad luck," she said with a laugh that Marcel found deeply unsettling. "To others, to everyone around you, but not to you. It never happens to you. If it weren't for that black-haired son of a bitch, I'd be dead. No one would even be looking for me, no one would report me missing. Would they even find me? Identify me? But fate’s an asshole, Marcel. Never trust it."

  "They're dead, aren't they?" asked the spirit, unable to find a single shred of his own consciousness that could still think logically. No, that would come later, much later.

  "All of them except one. Someone had to answer for it and be charged. But I don't think he's just going to forget about her," the girl said and closed her eyes.

  Marcel watched the person sitting under the hot water. He stared at her, thinking, searching, looking for something in his mind. He searched for a reflection that kept eluding him. As Alice's lips slowly began to turn pink, as her skin was no longer covered in goosebumps and her tense muscles began to slowly relax, the spirit sitting beside her began to understand everything. Whatever had happened to Alice had made her leave the house as a girl playing at being an adult, but she returned as someone completely different. She returned as a woman.