“But I might’ve been!” A medium, that was. “Didn’t know I was any kind of psychic at all ‘til I got adopted.” Briony stared around, trying to think of people her professed parents might be mourning when she wasn’t paying attention. It really wasn’t the kind of think they liked to bring up around her. She liked to twist it around and play it against them. Why they thought that should be discouraged at all, she didn’t care. “Um.” She hunched her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Don’t think anyone’s gone missing.” Although it wasn’t like she would ever notice unless someone pointed it out to her. “No one I didn’t make go missing.” Her head tilted in a curious manner. She didn’t think it counted if she did it herself. She hadn’t done that for a long time anyway. Like a whole… few months. That one was still on the milk carton at breakfast. “They should be cursed and everything! Some icky pretty pastel colour that all the normals would buy.” She paused. “Or! Huge and black and big as my head and have the ability to eat your face off!” Best. Idea. Ever.
Watching the one-sided conversation between Persephone and some ghost, Briony blinked then started snickering. “That’s just silly,” she declared, shaking her head. “I don’t know how to be scared.” Stupid ghost. She was a demon of Fear, not a regular school-kid. “Freddy Krueger’s my favourite movie character even, and he likes little kids too much. Y’know?” That was the kind of thing that should bother what was otherwise a little kid. What should bother the people she told was that she actually seemed to understand what she was talking about. She was half-tempted to get Daddy to find her a music museum and take her, though. Maybe when she caught him in a good mood and if she pretended to be all nice to him the way Airla and Hayden were when they wanted something. Although they usually meant it. But if he agreed then he would take her and he would look at all the pictures with her so she could find demons. “I can control electric stuff. And…” She unfurled her wings, beating them until her feet were off the floor. This didn’t work if she was earthed. “I can, um…” For a second she seemed to deliberate, then her hand stretched out and a small bolt of electricity targeted a nearby Eurynome. With a wicked grin spreading across her face at the way it leapt from the shock she gave it, Briony swung her legs a few times in mid-air before dropping herself onto her toes again. “I do that. But I can do it better too.” She still had enough spark left in her to at least injure someone. “I have to go to school like all the other kids. Usually they stay away from me, but Bubbles got me to sit with her and Kristen to see what happened. Kristen’s big sister is the Aussie off of the news. That missing one?” Was she still missing? Briony hadn’t been paying attention. “But then I could only keep it… three days. Four if Paul wrote down all of his magic first.” She pouted. “I don’t think he would… But if he did then it could just have the neighbours.” It’d be like demonic dominos. Cool. Following out of habit, the little demon put her wings away when she realised there were people ahead – it’d be weird if someone said something because she hadn’t ever been caught with wings before – she craned her neck to look at Persephone properly. “No, that’s just a thing they do sometimes. They do it a whole lot on holy ground and stuff. One time I went all the way through the Lord’s Prayer just to freak out a boy in class with them.” It’d given her a headache for three hours. But now that she’d thought about it? “Wish I could, though. Could make zombies and lead the Eury—Eur—legionaries into town!” Another best idea ever. Today was a day for best ideas.
It still wasn’t the best idea to grab Persephone’s hands, no matter how much her fingers were beginning to itch. So she knotted them behind her.