Adja let the Rowling reference alone, reacting only by rubbing the bridge of her large nose, then moved on from there. "Yaoke, I want you to focus, please. What your parents look like is insignificant. We're trying to find out what your purpose on Earth is. Its kind of important." There was weight to what Lixi had said: a demon with a human soul... what would that mean? Something that she had said, or that she had come across. The basic definition of a soul was 'free will,' to move about in the world with no alignment or obligation to anything but the Earth, and even that was questionable. When had they mentioned that? It was with Rithe... yes... they had said that angels and demons couldn't be reincarnated because their souls could not be reborn. Was that right? Her mind was mentally twisting string around thumbtacks, trying to call forth the research that lie across the Atlantic. So a demon that had a soul... could be reborn again if it died. Someone with a very definite alignment that could be reborn over and over again: a replenishable resource to the demons who simply died when vanquished.

But not now. Now she needed to find the demon that the doctor had been talking to. She gazed upon the book, wondering how old, how invaluable this tome must be if it held all the encounters of one centuries-old man's frequent encounters with the Unknown. She fought the urge to want it, but still found herself lusting after the knowledge within it. She shook her head, trying to force herself to focus.

It had looked like a man: a tall man, a dark man that cast no shadow and was almost a shadow unto itself. The doctor had addressed him... called him by name. What had it been? She carefully flipped through the pages, being particularly ginger with the more aged paper, which were somewhat in alphabetical order (although not quite, much to her personal frustration) until she came to "Chu." The image on the page was not the tall, dark man that she had seen, but Yaoke had said that they often took a humanoid form when they were around her. The image was, instead, simply a shadow; easily mistaken for a black splotch on the page. "Chu Kwai," she said. "The doctor had called the demon 'Chu Kwai.'" She scanned the page for information, but all that it said of the demon Chu Kwai was that he was the creator of freaks. She turned to Yaoke. "Have you ever seen anything like this... but somewhat like a man, casting no shadow?"


Martin was lead out into the warm air of the night, feeling a bit less like he was intruding on some sacred ritual now that he was away from the voodoo or whatever it was they were doing. Even with all the evidence present and laid out for him to see, it was hard to believe half the things that were going on in there. The odd light from the water, sure he believed that that was real. But Adja said weird things all the time. If he believed all of them, he probably would have been sent away, too.

Between a half-skeptic and what the spirits probably saw as an interloper, he was glad to have the reprieve from the tension in the room. After a moment, he noted that this would be a good time to smoke. He padded himself down in the usual places in search for a cigarette, only to disappoint himself when he realized that he was still wearing the green tunic. He sighed. "Damn."

But he smiled. He wasn't used to girls taking his little perverted jokes as compliments and the openness that she had with him was more than great. "I'm a simple guy," he said. "I like to take things one step at a time."