Samira's entire body was throbbing when she woke the next morning. The wound on her arm in particular felt as if it had a heart beat. Peeling back the gauze, she saw that the skin around it was bright red and angry and a few of the stitches had torn, likely due to her work the night before.

The doctor in the university health center had instructed her to rest for a few days with the practiced apathy of someone used to giving advice that was never followed. Even when they had the time for it, demonologists were hardly wired for r&r. The weekly all nighters and near constant brushes with death had probably fucked Samira's cortisol levels for life. Teeth gritted against the pain, she dabbed on a bit of antibiotic ointment and secured a tight layer of fresh gauze around it before heading downstairs. 

There was no coffee machine to be found in the kitchen, something she figured made sense given the antique status of everything else in the home, but she was surprised to find a French press full of steaming black coffee on the counter beside a wrinkled brown paper bag. She reached inside, and her stomach gave a gnarled growl as her fingers closed around a fresh bagel. She tore into it, demolishing half before finally she finally paused to pour herself some coffee. 

Behind her, she heard a deep grunt. 

"Morning." 

She turned sharply, nearly choking on her mouthful of bagel. "Morning."

Abbot was already dressed for the day, sporting a pair of camo printed cargo pants and a tight fitting thermal shirt. His eyes were bright, and he looked oddly refreshed - especially given the fact that she knew he'd been blasting music in his study until the early hours of the morning. Handsome, she observed for a split second before batting the thought away. 

As he stared at her, she noticed a slight pink flush forming on his cheeks. Samira followed his gaze down to her bare legs, and realized to her extreme embarrassment that she wasn't wearing any pants. She quickly tugged down the fabric of the threadbare T-shirt she'd worn to sleep the night before over her thighs, though it was little use. The damage had already been done. She was half naked in front of her new boss on only her second day of the job. 

"Shower's free," he offered. His gaze was fixed firmly on her face, like he was making a conscious effort to keep it there. 

"Thanks. I'll have my field report on your desk within the hour."

She lifted her coffee to her lips, hoping it would help to distract from the blush still spreading down her neck. If anything, it seemed to command his attention more. His eyes lingered on the pastel pink mug she'd selected - a token from a former apprentice, she'd assumed - for far longer than she would have liked. When she finally lowered the mug, he blinked, the spell broken.

"Any plans for your day off?"

Samira shrugged, shoving another bite of bagel into her mouth. "You?"

He shook his head. His eyes were fixed upon her hands. "There's cream cheese in the fridge."

She looked down at the pieces of shredded bagel in her palm. "Little late for that."

"There should be another one in there." Abbot nodded over his shoulder.

"You don't want it?"

He shook his head once.

"You sure?" she protested, even as her stomach gave a primal growl.

"Already ate."

Something about the rigid set of his shoulders made her doubt that. She pulled out the bagel and severed the halves, keeping the thin top piece for herself and holding out the bottom for him. A muscle in his jaw twitched, but he accepted it. 

She heard him fussing with the toaster as she spread a thick layer of cream cheese on her half. The knife shook. Jason's thin, trembling frame flashed in her mind. 

"What are you thinking about?"

Abbot's hands were braced against the counter top, his head cocked ever so slightly at her. 

"Jason," she confessed, popping the knife into her mouth to lick the cream cheese before continuing. "How does a kid get exposed to something like that?"

He stared at her for a beat before finally giving an apathetic shrug. "Not sure. DCT will figure it out." 

Samira nodded. He was right. The investigators at the university's Demonic Contact Tracing centre were some of the best on the East Coast. Still, her mind was already replaying her interview with Joanne, the mechanisms of her scientific mind pulling her thoughts into a familiar orbit. It was hard to let a case go, to see the carnage and destruction wrought by an entity and not want to unravel where the hell it came from. Cream cheese spilled over her fingers as she tore the bagel into shreds and mindlessly passed them into her mouth.

It was a long few minutes before she noticed Abbot eyeing her over the rim of his mug as he sipped his coffee.

Her cheeks warmed. Again. 

"Better get started on my field report," she announced, brushing her hands off. 

She tugged her shirt down and prayed Abbot wasn't getting a full view of her ass cheeks as she left the kitchen. 

In her bedroom, she opened a new document on her computer to begin her field report. Immediately, the screen froze, and the fans of her laptop began to whir agitatedly as the application struggled to load.

She remembered what Abbot had said about the Wi-Fi, and she tried connecting to the hotspot on her phone. It worked, but the connection was weak, causing the document to reload enough times to make her head spin. After practically forty-eight hours without a proper meal, the meager bagel and a half had done little to satisfy her. Spots hovered in her periphery each time she tried to move, and her thoughts felt like molasses each time she was forced to re-type her report.

Finally, she gave up, scrawling a short summary in a leftover notebook from undergrad that she hoped would satisfy Abbot. In the notes app of her phone, she drafted a more detailed copy, lingering in a way that was more petty than professional on Abbot's deviations from procedure. Each time she recalled the dismissive way that he'd handed her complete control of the investigation, her anger reignited. 

Most of all, she hated that Abbot had made her realize Robby was right. She no longer felt emboldened enough to advocate for completely casting procedure out the window. It may have been problematic in many places, but the presence of rules was one of the only things capable of providing her with any sense of safety in this profession.

Clearly, his last apprentice had had a worse experience than she did, given the fact that it had caused them to quit the program entirely. Apprenticeships weren’t easy to come by, and the years of study and student loans that went into obtaining one meant no one in their right mind would give it up easily. She wondered whether Abbot had looked into the case before handing the other apprentice total control, or if that was a new development. 

Hoping to avoid another awkward encounter, Samira slipped on a pair of sweatpants before heading downstairs. The door to Abbot's study was shut when she arrived, which felt oddly personal. She slipped her report under the door and trudged back upstairs for a shower. 

The steam did little to help her dizziness. By the time she finally cranked the water off, she was forced to brace her good arm against the wall to keep herself upright. 

Her phone buzzed with an incoming call as she towel dried her hair. 

Shit. She'd missed her weekly check in with her mother the night before. Samira flopped onto the bed, already bracing herself as she raised the phone to her ear. 

"Hey mo-"

"Oh thank god!" Her mother's voice broke on the final syllable, and she felt her insides curl up like a dying spider. 

"I'm so sorry, I completely forgot about our call last night."

"Forgot? I thought you were dead."

Guilt wrestled with irritation in her gut, leaving her on edge. 

"Ah - yeah, I was busy." 

She winced at herself. Busy was the wrong word. Since moving to Boston seven years ago, Samira had learned that the best way to appease her mother's endless anxiety was specificity. Paint a detailed enough picture and her mind wouldn't have to fill in the blanks with worst case scenarios, totaled cars and charred buildings, and always Samira's lifeless form at the center. 

Now that she had left an opening, her mother didn't hesitate to close in on it.

"Must have been very important if it was worth making your mother worry. Worth forcing her to spend the night debating whether to call the police to come check on you."

Samira pinched the bridge of her nose as she weighed her options. Telling her mother that she'd been kicked off of Robby's team would open up the Pandora's box of maternal inquisitions. What did you do? How could you be so reckless? Are you not sleeping enough - not eating enough? (For what it's worth, the answer was always no, but Samira would stand by this as simply a badge of her trade.) Are you sure that demonology is the right path for you?

And, of course - tell me about your new boss. 

Him? Oh he's wonderful. Reprimanded by the university so many times that they sent little old me to get him in line - and oh, yeah, forgot to mention, my entire future depends on it. Now we live alone in an actual haunted house. And he may have seen my ass. 

Somehow, she knew it was this last bit that would set her mother off the most. Can't manage the time to go meet nice boys, but can flaunt her body for a grown man who was probably a secret serial killer carving her initials into the tombstone he'd picked out for her at this very moment. The sound of her mother's voice was so visceral in her mind, it took her a moment to notice the silence on the other side of the line as her mother awaited her answer. 

"Actually, I..." she began, her tongue grasping for purchase on the thoughts flitting about her mind. "I had a date last night."

Well, that was that. Before her mother could completely go off the rails, she continued. "With a boy from school. A few years older than me, on the PhD track, wants to be a professor, of neuroscience, his family's from Canada but he spent most of his life in Massachusetts." 

The lies flew out in a fragmented rush, practically tripping over one another. Samira had no idea where any of them had came from, and she struggled to hold each one in her memory lest her mother grill her about them later on. 

Finally, a sigh. 

"Why didn't you say so?"

Her mother made a noise that was half yelp, half cheer. 

"Wait until I tell your Aunties. You know, ever since her daughter got engaged I can hardly stand to listen to Karina talk anymore. Now it'll be her turn to listen to me yap about my beautiful, successful girl."

Samira's stomach knotted. She looked at her reflection in the window opposite her bed, the wild curls already beginning to form in the humid air, the bruise-like flush beneath her eyes, the sharp edges of her body where the constant hunger and exertion of apprentice life had carved the youthful softness of her undergrad days away. She didn't feel beautiful, and she sure as hell didn't feel successful. But the praise lit a small ember in her chest, and she couldn't help clinging to that small trace of warmth. 

"I gotta go - we're grabbing coffee before work tonight," she said quickly. 

Her mother forced her to commit to two phone calls next week to make up for this one before she was finally able to hang up.  

Samira's hand fell limply against her side. Shadows danced across the ceiling above her head. There were things to do. Research to complete, a new room to decorate, a new boss to impress. The old Samira would have sprang up from the bed, mustered the energy to battle through an hour or two in the library, and devised some sort of strategy to convince Abbot that she was the best apprentice Boston College had ever seen. This Samira did not even fight to keep her eyes open another second before surrendering to sleep. 

The room was dark when she woke to the pressure of a calloused hand against her forehead. Samira's eyelids fluttered lazily as she squinted up at Abbot's silhouette. Even the tiniest movements felt hampered with a leaden resistance, like trying to tread water in ten layers of clothing.

"Time is it?" she mumbled, swiping a finger over her mouth to make sure she hadn't drooled. She had. 

"Just after six. On Saturday."

Saturday? No, that couldn't be right. Today was Friday, she was sure of it, could conjure the image of the date on her phone when she'd answered her mother's call. Her fingers fumbled blindly for her phone on her nightstand, and she blinked against the harsh blue light. But, to her alarm, Saturday was the date that flashed over her lock screen. 

She was on duty tonight - on duty now, and she hadn't even begun her equipment checks. 

"Shit," she muttered, beginning to peel the sheets from her sweat-soaked body. "I'm so late."

A pair of firm hands pressed her back into the bed. Samira blinked up at Abbot. His brow was knit with tension. 

"You're off tonight."

"But you said-"

"I know what I said." His jaw flexed. 

A pair of white pills were deposited in her palm, a glass of cool water pressed against her lips. Fingertips brushed her forehead, drawing her hair behind her ears, pulling her sheets over her chest. Samira scarcely had time to linger on any of this before sleep laid claim to her once more. 

She didn't stir again until the following morning. In the daylight, she couldn't discern whether Abbot had really been in her room that night or if her feverish mind had conjured it up. 

There was a glass of water beside her bed, along with an assortment of pill bottles. She plucked one of the bottles off of the nightstand and held it close to her face, squinting groggily at the label. Penicillin, but the name on the prescription wasn't hers - it was Abbot's. There was a sticky note beside it. 

Take two.

Real, then. 

Her body did not protest as much as she anticipated when she forced it out of bed. In fact, the throbbing had altogether ceased. When she pried back the gauze on her arm, she found that the angry redness had faded to a much gentler flush just around the edges of her wound. 

She found Abbot in the study, bent over his type writer.

"Hey."

His eyes leapt to hers, then quickly traced over her frame. "Hey."

In the morning light, his skin had a slight grey pallor. For the first time since she'd been assigned to him, Samira noted the marks of exhaustion every other demonologist on campus bore, deep shadows lurking behind the thin lenses of his glasses, wrinkles stretching across his shirt, a bit of untamed stubble collecting on his cheeks. Although, she was well aware that she was the last person who should have been judging someone else's appearance. She knew she must have looked much worse than the last time she checked, and probably smelled a lot worse after nearly two days in bed. 

"There's bagels in the kitchen. Got you two this time."

"Thank you. For everything," she added.

He shrugged. "Feeling better?"

"Loads. Think doctors might be right about the whole sleep thing. Turns out you do need it to live."

The joke ricocheted off him, and Samira winced at herself. 

"Anyhow. I'm fine now, so feel free to resume your hazing bright and early tomorrow."

His brow wrinkled. "Hazing?"

Samira's fingernails dug into her palms. There were probably smoother ways to broach the subject, but it was bound to come up eventually. Things would probably be a lot easier if they got it all out in the open.

"I know you don't like having to work with apprentices." 

"I don't?" Abbot's lips curled ever so slightly. "Please, tell me more."

Her lingering anger sprang up at his words, and she struggled to tame it.

"This isn't a joke to me. I need this job. I've sacrificed my health, my sanity, and gone into a truly staggering amount of student debt to get it, so you can do your worst, but I am not leaving."

Instinctively, she punctuated her words with a smile, as if it was capable of softening what was possibly the harshest tone she'd ever taken with an authority figure. The deep furrow of Abbot's brow confirmed that it wasn't.

"I don't want you to quit." 

His voice took on an unfamiliar texture, no higher than a murmur but with an intensity that made her stomach tense in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant. Samira was so fixated on this that it took her a moment to register his words.  

"But what about your last apprentice?" 

A muscle ticked in his jaw.

"I knew that he didn't have what it takes to do this job," he finally confessed. "I'd known it for a while. Just wanted to help him to realize that on his own."

There was a softness to his gaze now, something more tender lurking behind it. She believed him, though she couldn't quite accept that leaving an inept apprentice in charge of a potentially dangerous exorcism was any kinder than firing them. 

If testing the merit of his apprentices was a common occurrence, Samira wondered how she measured up. Since her work had left her nearly comatose for two days, she knew that his doubts about her were probably already beginning to fester, but she still found herself asking, "And what about me?"

A sharp burst of air escaped Abbot's lips, whether scoff, sigh, or chuckle, she couldn't tell.

"You are not him. What you did - not many people could have handled that."

"I thought you said any good apprentice should have been able to do it." 

He shook his head. "Not Jason. Your last case, with Robby."

Samira recalled the strange energy he'd had the day that she met him outside the dean's office, the inexplicable glimmer in his eye.

"I told him that if he wanted to get rid of anyone who could stare down that kind of evil and still want to do this job, he was an idiot."

The slight curve of Abbot's lips suggested that he didn't regret it. 

Maybe she'd gotten it all wrong. So, you're stuck with me, was what he'd asked her - not the other way around. Maybe he'd never been displeased to be working together, maybe he'd just sensed that she was. Shame burned the back of her throat. 

"But, I appreciate the sentiment."

Samira blinked. "What?"

"Being willing to tell your boss to back the fuck off, that's impressive."

"I did not say it like that."

His lips spread into a full grin, and her shame and anger melted into something softer. "You're a fighter. Own it."

A fighter. The words lingered in Samira's mind as she devoured her breakfast. Maybe she wasn't so successful anymore, and maybe whatever beauty she'd had had gone into hibernation, but she agreed with Abbot. At her core, she was a fighter. She'd keep this job or die trying.