“Sorry we’re late!” Bell says brightly. “We had to stop by the drive-thru for an exorcism and a Happy Mien!”
“What,” Sarah says.
“It’s fine!” Bell says. “We’re here now!”
“Go back to the part about the drive-thru?” Sarah says dryly, pushing her goggles up her forehead.
“For a—” Bell falters. “Hang on.” She turns to the half-open door of the garage they use as Sarah’s workshop, and yells out of it. “Moiré! Help! She’s not distracted by my Happy Mien at all!”
“Did you give her the coffee?” Moiré yells back from the direction of the living room. There’s a distant crash, and muffled swearing.
“Oh, we got you a small black coffee,” Bell says sheepishly, and holds out a styrofoam cup.
Sarah sighs and takes it. “Why did you stop for an exorcism,” she says, and Bell wilts.
“Moiré heard there was a fairy ring open downtown,” she says. “We thought if we did a run through and tricked a fairy into passing off fairy gold to us, we could sell it to the wizard commune on the East Side so they can set up an apparatus to observe gold transmuting into compost without a nuclear explosion and run their electric cars on the paradox, and then we’d be able to help with this month’s rent—”
“I’ve told you not to worry about that,” Sarah says, shaking her head a little.
“Yeah but,” Bell says, and pauses. “Anyway, we got out mostly okay but Erin got possessed by, like, some kind of free-floating logic problem? So we took her to get XOR’d because only one of ‘em can stay in there—”
There’s another crash from down the hall.
“Going well?” Sarah says, raising an eyebrow.
“It’s being a little bitch,” Bell says. “Changed its story, says we can’t prove it’s possessing her, maybe it’s just like an alter? So Moiré and Southbridge are playing it, you know, good cop/cop who only knows plurality from bad horror movies, trying to annoy it into leaving.”
“So what’s all the noise,” Sarah says, and Bell looks at her all puppy-eyed and earnest.
“Nnnnnnothing?” she says, in such a heartfelt tone that Sarah immediately abandons her work to get out of her chair. “Oh no, no, you don’t need to — aw no you’re busy, I’ll tell ‘em to keep down any, uh, any, uh…roughhousing?”
“And is the roughhousing the good cop?” Sarah says.
“Aw,” Bell says glumly as Sarah firmly moves her aside from the door to go investigate.
“The fuck’s happening in here?”
“Aaaaaaah!” Erin wails, trying to claw her way out of one of the armchairs. Southbridge, behind the chair, is straining over the back of it to keep her in a headlock; Moiré, in front of it, is juggling a baseball bat and a set of jumper cables attached to a car battery.
“Do any of you know what you’re doing?” Sarah demands.
“It’s not even here any more!” Erin wails. “I rebooted twenty minutes ago and it didn’t persist! They’re just being mean for fun!”
“She likes it!” Moiré protests instantly. “We took the jumper cables off her tits nearly straight away when she called yellow and that’s not even her safeword—”
They all look at each other.
“YOUR MOTHER NOP SLIDES IN HELL,” the logic problem yells at them.
“Ah, motherfucker,” Moiré says crossly, and menacingly sparks the cable alligator clips off each other.
“Just try to keep the noise down,” Sarah says resignedly, turning back to the doorway. “I’m working back there.”
“You were supposed to keep her distracted!” Southbridge hisses at Bell, behind Sarah’s back.
“I tried!” Bell protests, equally audibly.
“It doesn’t look like you made out with her at all!”
“Oh!” Bell squeaks. “Oh! You think that would have worked?”
“The fuck are you, heterodecimal?”
“Can I borrow your bat,” Bell is saying to Moiré, as Sarah lets herself back out into the garage, sighing and rolling her eyes. “I just wanna talk. To Southbridge’s face—”
“I need it for the exorcism!”
“Well let’s just reset Erin with a paperclip—”
