When Holden interrupted her with a nudge, Izzy looked to him exasperatedly, expecting an earful about being the one to mention his issue, or another one of his complaints. Instead, she found him pointing.
“What’s what?” she asked to his question as her gaze followed his finger to the corner. “Oh,” she said when she noticed the familiar sight of the child.
She had not even realized he was in there, not even bothered to think about whether or not he would be. But Holden had, and even had the sense to ask the right question. Her gaze shifted to him, eyeing him without turning her head from the vampire child’s direction.
“Nothing you need to worry about,” she answered with a stiff shrug, glancing toward Riley as if hoping for a hand in giving an answer that would be more satisfactory to Holden. “Just… a ghost, of sorts. He can’t hurt you, even if he wanted to.”

Seeing Izzy begin to flounder for an answer, Riley piped in, "A child without a shadow or a shape. No existence, and -until yesterday- no name." Having caught Izzy's attention with the last part of his explanation, he elaborated, "Yeah I was sitting around yesterday and figured I'd give him a name finally. It'll make him more stable as an aberration, plus we won't have to keep saying 'him,' or 'that,' or 'you over there.'" Riley grinned proudly and puffed out his chest, obviously patting himself on the back for being so clever. "I name him Damien. Damien Riley, specifically. It sounds sort of like Damocles, and sort of like 'demon,' as well. And if I gotta name a kid, the kid ought to have my name after all. I think it works pretty well."

"Well, if it's unimportant, I'll ignore it." Holden said, cutting through Riley's nonsense. For being so tightly-wound, he seemed pretty unconcerned by what would normally be rather perturbing circumstances. "More importantly, Mister Riley, I've been told that you can help me."

"First, Mister Riley is my father. Just Riley, please. And second, I can't help you. Impossible. You can only help yourself."

Holden's eyes narrowed and he glared daggers at Riley upon hearing this. "Five people have said that to me before, and they were all cons. You're the sixth, so are you among their number?"

Riley laughed obliviously. "You sure are energetic. Did something good happen to you?"

Holden's brow furrowed deeper and his lips pursed in a sneer as Riley exacerbated his suspicions with his usual nonsense. Izzy groaned internally, as Riley was making the situation worse by being so dense. There are people that his usual cheap lines worked on, like Trevor, and those that didn't, which clearly included Holden.

In contrast to the tense situation, Riley clicked his tongue and said offhandedly, "Well, in any case, we won't get anything done if we don't know the situation. I'm not much good at reading minds, so why don't you explain to us the heart of the problem. I'm good at keeping secrets, so don't worry."

Holden sat, and as the sun set over the abandoned school, he told Riley his story.

As he concluded, Riley nodded in what was probably supposed to be a sage manner. "Sounds like a folk legend I once heard in the mountains of Kyushu, when I was studying abroad. Some called it the Crab of Burden, others the Heavy Crab, or the Deadweight Crab. In some places it's a god instead of a crab, too. 'Kami' is god and 'kani' is crab, so it's an easy mix-up. Either way, the common thread is that they take away your weight. People that meet them -the wrong way I should say- don't exist the same way they used to."

"Exist?" Holden questioned.

"They become... fragile. More delicate. Perhaps more beautiful in cases. Some cease to exist entirely."

"A crab legend from the mountains?" He still seemed skeptical.

"Well, there's something called the Rock of Burdens in other places, but that's a rock, not a crab. The way I see it, it's easier to make shit up about things you don't know about. So mountain folk made a legend about a crab. The place doesn't really matter, just that the conditions are met. There are other forms it may have taken, maybe a rabbit or a woman or something. But if you say it was a crab, we'll assume it was a crab."

Holden groaned, growing impatient with Riley's rambling. "I really don't give a damn what you call it."

"You should. Because the 'kani' was once a 'kami,' at least according to my theory. The God of Burden became a Crab of Burden, but was still no less a god for it. Most would assume it went the other way around, or the two became one, but not I, sir."

"I don't think I met a god." Holden said flatly.

"Oh but you have," Riley said, and his sly smile spread on his face. "And it's still with you."

Izzy almost sighed in relief when Riley chimed in with a better explanation, watching Holden’s reaction until Riley mentioned the child having a name.
Her attention snapped to him. “Wait, what?”
Her head cocked at the concept of the child being ‘more stable as an aberration.’ She had not thought about that, that he might be ‘unstable’ without the power of a name. All the same, she could not help but snigger at the one Riley chose.
“Damien Riley,” she tried out the name and looked to the child’s corner, incapable of saying it without a small grin, wondering what, if anything, the child thought of it. It sounded so odd, so normal, referring to him by it, but naming the child was something she had refused to do, as if he really was little more than a pet, so Damien would have do.
Holden interrupted her contemplation, reminding her of why they had come there in the first place.
She rolled her eyes at Riley’s usual statement of only helping yourself, realizing she had forgotten to warn Holden about that. Holden's reaction made her shift her weight awkwardly, glancing between the two males.
When Riley gave another of his favorite sayings, she groaned lightly, resisting the urge to slap a palm to her forehead. She was suddenly quite glad she had Holden’s weapons safely tucked away in her backpack. But, of course, Riley was Riley. There was nothing she could do about that. At least he seemed to win Holden over enough to get his story out of him.
Izzy stayed standing, looking to the child—to Damien as Holden spoke. When he finished, she turned her head toward Riley expectantly.
She was not disappointed.
Her eyes widened slightly at the concept of the crab causing someone to ‘cease to exist.’ She glanced to Holden, wondering if that was still a possibility if what it had done was not reversed.
“Hey,” she interrupted at Holden’s skeptical tone, “it sounds about as plausible as a crab that sucked out your weight. But here we are. So.”
She listened silently, until Riley finished.
“Say what now?” Izzy stepped slightly away from Holden, turning to fully face him as she looked him over, then around him as if perhaps she would see some sort of spectral creature hovering about, now that its existence had been brought to light. But he looked the same as he had thirty seconds ago. “So, how does he get rid of it? Because I have the feeling a restraining order won’t work very well.”

"It's with me," Holden echoed, intrigued. "Can you see it?"

"No, of course not." Riley said, and then laughed pleasantly. A tone that obviously rubbed Holden the wrong way. He was mocking him, Izzy realized, much the same as he had done to herself when she was in this sort of situation.

"How do you know it's there?" Holden was growing impatient.

"Gods are everywhere," Riley began, spreading his arms out for dramatic effect, "They're everywhere, and everything. You can't see them, you can't touch them, and you can't prove them scientifically. Everywhere, and nowhere. You could even say it was with you before you ever met it, but at the same time it wasn't."

"What is that? Zen? Tao?" Holden was humoring him, but in a sort of sarcastic, agitated sense.

"Actually it's Shinto. Shugendo, specifically, as taught to me by a good friend of mine. I just want you to understand that you didn't wind up like this because of something else. It was just a change of your point of view. Izzy, for instance. She didn't just meet a vampire, she was attacked by one. You need to stop acting like a victim." His last sentence came out low and steady, almost like a snarl. Izzy had almost forgotten that Riley hated people who he thought acted like they were victimized.

Izzy couldn't quite anticipate how Holden would react, but he said calmly, "Fine. I'll stop."

Riley almost seemed impressed, pursing his lips. "Well done. I guess you aren't the selfish little boy I thought you were."

"What made you think that?"

"Most people who meet the Crab of Burdens are like that. You don't meet it just by wanting to, and it isn't harmful like vampires. They don't possess you, either. They just... exist. Unless you want a change, nothing will change. I won't pry into your business; I don't want to help you, after all." Of course, he had to help himself. "But, I've talked enough. If you want your weight back, I'll do what I can. Izzy introduced you to me after all."

"So you'll help me."

"I will not." He ended the last syllable sharply, as Holden was seemingly not getting his point. "I'll just do what I can." He looked at his watch, and looked back at Holden. "Time's not right just yet, so head on home. Take a cold shower, put on some clean clothes. I'll make some preparations on my end. Will you be able to meet me back here at the stoke of midnight?"

"Yes. What do I owe you?"

"Hmm?"

"Don't play dumb," Holden said, not pleasantly but not hostile either. "You're not doing this on a volunteer basis."

"Ah, hmm." Riley looked at Izzy, examining her as though he was appraising her. "If it makes you feel better, let's call it at a thousand dollars."

"One thousand." Holden repeated back, as though confirming it.

"That's a month or two working part-time at minimum wage I figure. Good enough, right? Can you pay?"

"Of course."

Izzy frowned at Riley’s pleasant, yet mocking laugh, then looked to Holden uncertainty, watching for any signs of hostility in him at the action. Not that she thought she could do much if he actually did brandish a knife or other weapon he had not handed over.
She listened and watched the two exchange words, glancing around once at the prospect of gods being everywhere.
“Huh?” She looked to Riley at her name, expecting him to use her in a mocking example, but she caught no such derision. Well, not exactly what happened, but… Her thought cut off when his voice changed to a near snarl. She shuddered. It had been so long since she had been on the receiving end of that, since she had first met him, she had forgotten how intimidating and exactly how infuriating he could be when he wanted.
She blinked in surprise at Holden’s reaction, and could only stare at him. He would stop, just like that? She shook her head lightly, the two leaving her time only to listen once more.
“He’ll help you help yourself,” she elaborated after Riley’s denial of helping Holden.
At Riley’s statement about it being the wrong time, her shoulders sunk with an inward groan at the thought of having to ride back with Holden only to return again, then smirked at Holden’s correct guess that Riley did not work for free.
When Riley looked to her, she automatically returned his gaze. Her brows rose in an unspoken, “What? Don’t bring me into this.”
She glared at him for a short second at the price he gave, before sighing; after all, vampires were messy business, while apparently, as he made it sound, the Crab was a bit more passive, less dangerous.
“Alright, Complainy McComplainerson,” Izzy said to Holden through a sigh once the two had come to a solid agreement. She stepped slowly toward the door. “Let’s get you home, shall we?”

With that, the two left the abandoned school and headed back to Holden's home. He apparently lived quite a ways from Izzy, as she had barely ever been in the part of town in which he lived. Unlike on the ride there, he barely spoke except to give her directions to where he lived. It was most likely that something Riley had said to him was affecting him, or he was otherwise in rumination over something. They soon enough reached what Holden had declared to be his home, and it was... an apartment complex. Not a particularly nice one, either. It looked at least thirty years old, and there was a row of tin mailboxes lined up outside of it. A far cry from the mansion he was rumored to live in.

Izzy's surprise must have shown on her face, as without prompting Holden said, "My mother joined a cult. She handed all of our money over to them, and racked up a huge debt, too. My parents finally got divorced last year, my father got custody, and we live here. I do, anyway. All the debt is in my father's name, so he works day and night. I basically live alone, which can be convenient I suppose."

Without another word Izzy locked up her bike and they climbed the steps to his apartment. It had one bedroom, one bathroom, and a kitchenette that seemed almost grudgingly included. The roll-out couch that Holden presumably slept in took up the majority of the living room, along with a chest of drawers, a sort of desk one set over their lap, and a little bookshelf. A thousand dollars hadn't seemed like much to Izzy, compared to her own debt, but it was probably quite a bit to Holden.

Holden wordlessly stepped into the bathroom, and the sound of running water soon followed. Izzy couldn't help but notice that he didn't take any clothes in with him. Was it possible that despite his intelligence and his insight that he was a bit scatterbrained? It wouldn't be surprising if he had a lot on his mind. Even so, that left Izzy alone in the cramped room with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company.

To Izzy’s relief, Holden said little on their way back from the decrepit school. She silently followed his directions when he gave them, occasionally giving a nod to show she had heard when he directed her well before a turn. She occasionally glanced back at him, trying to be as discrete about it as possible, both making sure he was there during longer silences and wondering what part about the evening consumed his thoughts.
When they at last came to a stop at a rundown apartment complex, she could not help but blink in surprise and give a gentle, “Huh” she did not think he would hear. But, alas, he apparently heard.
“Well… that… sucks,” she offered, not sure what to say to his story snippet. Instead, she busied herself with pulling her bike lock from her backpack and locking it up.
She followed him silently up the stairs to his rather modest apartment. She paused just inside, taking in the almost cramped space, then fully entered, closing the door behind her. She glanced toward Holden, who had neglected any usual courtesies when letting someone into your home before stalking off to the bathroom.
She stood there awkwardly for a moment, then, as the sound of the shower reached her, she sighed and opted to deposit her backpack on the couch. She opened it, pulled out a small plastic water bottle she usually kept in there when she did not forget it at home, and went to the kitchenette to fill it up.
She turned the water on, letting it run a couple moments on cold as she looked around the small place again. She was quite suddenly glad Riley had not asked a higher price for his assistance. If you used it right, a thousand dollars could go a fairly long way. Judging by the state of things, that was a long way she imagined could not be easy for Holden to part with.
She unscrewed the top of the bottle, quickly filled it up, and moseyed back to the couch.
Riley had expected Holden to be a ‘selfish little boy.’ For all she knew, he still was, just in a different way than he had thought, especially if the Crab had that consistent of a pattern. Wondering what had attracted the Crab, or what Holden had done to perhaps somehow provoke it, she took a swig from the bottle, screwed the cap back on, then placed it on the floor in front of the couch. She plopped down beside her bag and pulled out her phone.
While Holden may not have anyone he needed to report to, she did. She sent a quick text to her parents, telling them she was going to study with a friend, so would be home rather late, if that was okay by them. Replacing the phone, she stretched, then rested her arms on the back of the couch and leaned her head back. She closed her eyes, listening to the splash of the running water and hoping Holden would not take much longer in his shower.

The water shut off after what seemed like a brisk shower, and the door opened shortly after that. Holden's voice immediately called out, "If you're modest you'll probably want to turn around," before stepping out with only a towel held loosely around his waist. Given the natural tendency for human beings to look in the direction which they hear noise, Izzy couldn't help but get an eyeful. Holden was very lean, very lithe. Not like Trevor who kept in shape purely as part of his "perfect student" persona (he said something before about a healthy body and a healthy mind). Holden had been an athlete, trained trained as one, and the difference was readily apparent in the sharp definition of his muscles. The glisten of the water still clinging to him added to the ethereal of his presence. Izzy remembered a bit of what Riley had said earlier. More beautiful. More fragile.

Still, Izzy whipped around to face the opposite direction of Holden, and the path she assumed he would take to get to his clothes. Holden stepped gingerly around the bed, and Izzy heard his towel drop as he rummaged through one of his drawers. "Riley said clean clothes. You think he means white clothes? All of my boxers are plaid." Another excruciating moment passed before he said, "You can turn around now."

Despite saying so, he was still only in his boxer shorts, and Izzy turned back to the wall. He must have been having difficulty picking out what to wear, as she heard him pull out an article of clothing, put it on, and then take it back off several times. Eventually Holden broke the silence with what he considered to be smalltalk.

"Trevor... You have a crush on him right? Unrequited love?"

Thankfully, Holden did not take long. After unintentionally getting the opportunity to take in his bare-chested appearance, her eyes widened slightly.
“Oh!” She looked away as she grabbed her water bottle, then stood and turned from him. Seeing her brothers walk around in a towel was one thing, but Holden was another.
She shrugged at his question, and cleared her throat awkwardly. “No idea. Didn’t even think about that. Maybe pick the lightest colored ones you have, just in case?”
When, at last, he said she could turn around, she did so. Regrettably, his version of being covered enough for his present company involved just a pair of boxer shorts, and she spun back around.
In the silence that followed, broken only by the sounds of him rummaging through the drawers and the gentle swish of him changing out repeatedly, she fidgeted with her water bottle, wishing he would hurry up.
At Trevor’s name, she turned her head just far enough to make out some of Holden’s movements in her peripheral vision.
She blinked at his question. “What? No. Well, okay. I did,” she amended, looking down to the bottle as she turned it. She shook her head. “But not anymore. He’s just a friend who’s helping me with school. Is that the rumor that’s going around about us, or something?”
Maybe she really should start listening to the rumors that plagued the school more often.

Holden paused after Izzy's answer, possibly mulling it over. "No, it's nothing that I heard. You spend so much time together I merely assumed. Hence the leading question." He paused again to put on a shirt, fidgeted, and took it back off. "Why does he help you? Do you think he has a crush on you? Maybe you're leading him on in some way."

“Ah.” Izzy nodded upward at how Holden had come to his conclusion of her and Trevor. Makes sense.
She sat on the arm of the couch, careful to keep herself angled so Holden remained out of her view.
Her brows furrowed at his next question. She had not thought about that, about the possibility that he may have a crush on her.
Is something like that even possible? she wondered, trying to think of any occasions when he may have shown any signs of such an affection.
After a moment, she shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. At least, not that I’ve noticed. We… went through some crazy stuff together this summer. He’s just trying to be nice, I think. Or maybe he feels obligated or something.” She shrugged.

"Hmm," Holden merely hummed in response to Izzy's answer.

He seemed to have finally settled on what shirt to wear, thought he options now littering the floor and bed around him seemed barely different. Now he was painstakingly deciding on what trousers to wear, with no less level of needless deliberation. The light colors were more like Trevor's dress sense, while Holden seemed to usually dress in darker tones. That aside, they had a rather similar sense of style. Different results, though, as Trevor's clothes emphasized his masculine physique, and Holden's complemented his more slender form.

"And this Riley guy... He helped Trevor, too?" He seemed distrusting of Riley, and in need of further confirmation from Izzy.

Izzy glanced to Holden’s most recent wardrobe discard as it slipped from the edge of the bed to the floor fairly near her. Her fingers drummed against her bottle, one after the other in no particular rhythm.
She had to take a moment before answering his next question.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “But Trevor's situation was a bit different from yours or mine, as far as I can tell. Riley pushed himself to his limits doing everything he could. Helped me help him in the end, and… took care of the aftermath.” She suppressed a shudder at the blurry memory of that night, an arm draping over her waist.
She quickly returned her thoughts to Holden and the situation at hand: Holden’s wariness of Riley.
How many fakes has he gone to be this suspicious? she wondered. But, then again, ‘suspicious’ was putting the whole situation lightly from the perspective of an outsider. Riley had prevented her from getting slaughtered the first time she met him, which had been proof enough for her to at least open that door, but Holden had no such first encounter.
“Riley’s for real, Holden. Obnoxious at times and definitely not without his quirks,” she added with a slightly exasperated tone as she glanced up toward the ceiling, “but, at the end of the day, he's always come through. He wouldn’t have agreed to anything if he didn’t think he could do it. I’ve seen him do what I thought was impossible. Can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have on my side when things get hairy or crazy-strange.”
She sighed, turning her water bottle over in her hands again.
“Look.” She dared a glance toward him, her shoulder blocking part of her view. “I know you have no reason to take my word for it, but I swear. Riley’s legit. There’s nothing in it for me to lie about this.”

Holden managed to decide on trousers as Izzy spoke, saying nothing to interrupt her, and was rolling on his socks as she finished. Without looking over at her, he replied, "I don't think you're lying, but there is something I need you to understand. I've been through too much to believe you out of hand. Honestly, at this point I had just about given up, as my hopes have led to disappointment every time I've seen one of these so-called experts, without fail. It's very difficult for me to accept that I happened to slip down the stairs into you, who happened to have been bitten by a vampire, and happened to then meet an expert who cured you, who also happened to solve the same issue for our class president." Looking back at Izzy with a rather tired expression, he simply finished by saying, "No offense to you personally."

After he finished dressing, the two departed back to the abandoned school. The roads were completely unlit by this time of night, as the outskirts the school resided in lacked any sort of streetlamps. Holden didn't complain about having to ride on the back of Izzy's bike again, but did express concerns about the possibility of her hitting an unseen obstacle and flinging them both to the ground, thus soiling his clean clothes and purified body. Despite this, though, the two made it to the school without difficulty, and were met by Riley just inside of the entrance. He had cleaned himself as well, and changed into the first set of clothes Izzy had ever seen him in besides his usual getup. They seemed to be some sort of priestly vestments; a black, floor-length robe covered mostly by a white smock over top of it, a black collar, and a long, black scarf of some kind that hung almost to the ground from his neck. The outfit aside, it was staggering to see him clean-shaven, and with his hair slicked and combed back. He nearly looked like an entirely different person.

"Good, you made it. Have we been purified?" Holden nodded. "No colognes or deodorants?" Holden shook his head. "Good. Good intuition. Just follow me upstairs and we can begin."

Realizing Holden had, at last, gotten fully dressed, Izzy shifted on the arm of the couch so she better faced him as he spoke.
She could not help but smirk as he finished. “Welcome to my world. I'll admit, though, most of those didn’t occur thanks just to happenstance. And who knows? Maybe you slipping was more than just coincidence. No idea how, but I wouldn’t rule that out quite yet.”
With the batteries in the flashlight she usually kept strapped to her bike dead, the ride to the school was a dark one. The entire way, between concentrating on not sending them both flying over the handlebars, she kept thinking about that concept of coincidence; of all times for Holden to have stumbled and fallen, it was when she, of all people, was right behind him. Could Riley or even someone—or something—else have orchestrated that? Or had it, in fact, been just a well-timed act of fate? She had no way to tell. Not yet, at least.
When Riley met them at the door, Izzy could not help but gawk at how different he looked. At first, she was unsure if it even was Riley. As the man addressed Holden, she glanced between the two, Holden in his clean clothes and Riley in his vestments. She suddenly felt rather underdressed.
“Uh,” she began, following Riley to the stairs, “I wasn’t supposed to go home and change, too, right? Or does this mean I’ll have to wait outside or something?”
She hoped the answer was ‘no.’ Whatever the Crab was to warrant such dress, she wanted to see what Riley planned on doing, and what Holden had to do in turn.

Riley looked back at Izzy as he walked further into the school. "Huh? Nah, it should be fine. I mean I think so. Probably." About as typical a response as Izzy could have expected from Riley. While she couldn't see at first due to the length of his robe, but he was wearing his usual hippy-like sandals under his priestly vestments. She got the sneaking suspicion that he wasn't actually taking this as seriously as he first appeared to be.

As the trio took the stairs into the school, Holden piped up, "Riley, are you a priest, or a minister, or something?"

"Hmm?" Riley seemed to have to think about his answer. "Well, I suppose I'm a vicar if you want to be specific. That's what I went to college for, anyway." He looked back at the two of them and elaborated with a goofy smile, "No church would hire me! Could you believe that?"

To that end, as they entered the room that Riley had prepared for... whatever he was planning, Izzy was somewhat taken aback by what she found. The room was not one they used often, as it was mostly empty, but it seemed to be among the least decrepit in the building. She had perhaps slept in this one for a day or two over the summer. A dozen long, white candles scattered about bathed the room in soft, orange light. A wooden cross, half as tall as Izzy, was mounted to a desk at the far end of the room, drawing the eye. However, strange fetishes and paper talismans were hanging from the limbs of the cross, and similar items were strewn about the room as Izzy looked around.

Riley stepped over to a corner of the room, where he seemed to have prepared some supplies. Izzy watched him pour what seemed to be red wine into a paper cup, and knocked it back with a single swig. He prepared two more cups of wine, and walked over to Izzy and Holden with them.

"Here, drink this. A little sacramental wine usually helps before a ritual; I never leave home without it."

Holden took the cup, but merely looked at Riley and said, "I'm seventeen."

Riley laughed. "So you say. I'm reasoning that you're also not Italian. Just a sip, I'm not asking you to get wasted, here."

Glancing at Izzy, Holden shrugged before steadily drinking the wine, and handing his empty cup back to Riley.

Izzy exhaled, her mouth pursing to the side at Riley’s uncertain answer. As unpromising as it was, her shoulder rose a fraction in a shrug. ‘Probably’ was good enough for her curiosity. Placing a thumb under a strap of her backpack, which she had taken with her, just in case, she looked down to the stairs.
Noticing Riley’s footwear as his sandaled feet slipped out from beneath the robe, she just managed to suppress a snigger. She glanced up to him, wondering how much of this was just a game for him, if he had put on his priestly garments just for show, or if they were actually required. Perhaps he really had had a hand in all of this.
“Really?” She looked at him, surprised at his chosen study, meeting his gaze when he looked back at her and Holden. “No!” she exclaimed with an airy, overexaggerated sense of shock, a grin pulling at her lips as she made a tisking sound and shook her head. “Their loss.”
When Riley led them into one of the classrooms, Izzy stopped just inside the doorway.
“Whoa.” She looked around at the setup Riley had prepared, shifting her gaze from the cross to the fetishes and talismans on the floor, some casting long shadows that danced to the silent music of the candlelight.
It all looked rather… mysterious.
Her attention drew to the corner as Riley downed the wine. She took the cup he offered her a bit more tentatively than Holden. She swished the contents around as Holden voiced her own thought about being underaged, and shared his glance at Riley’s response.
As Holden drank his, Izzy took a little more than a cautious sip of hers. She tried to hide a cough at the slight sensation somewhere between a burn and a tingle of the alcohol that accompanied it down. Trying to make it sound like she was just clearing her throat, she looked into the cup as if its contents had deeply offended her.
“So,” she began as Holden handed over his drained cup, “what’s this ‘ritual,’ then? What’s he,” she jerked her head toward Holden, “supposed to do? And where should I be so I don’t get in the way?” She glanced around the room, seeking out the best possible spot to potentially not get mixed up in or ruin anything, while being capable of still seeing everything there would be to see.

"Well, this is a god we're dealing with," Riley started to answer Izzy, "We can't banish it or destroy it. We're going to ask it for a favor. Beg for mercy, really. The thing with gods is that they see the bigger picture. Japanese gods are like that especially. They recognize humanity, but not so much individual humans. Between the three of us, the Heavy Crab probably can't tell us apart. So we'll just have to hope for the best and see what works." He scratched his chin, now free of stubble. "I don't think you'll be in the way, but if things go south, I'll need you to protect Holden. What's that immortal body of yours good for, after all?"

Riley continued his preparations. He retrieved a small jar of what seemed to be salt, and stood over Izzy and Holden as he sprinkled it into their hair. He next produced a small censer on a rope, and with a match ignited the incense within. He blew on it a few times to get it burning steadily, and swung it around the room to spread the thick, cloying smoke. He particularly waved it around Holden, who coughed lightly. Between the wine, the smoke, and the general strangeness of the ritual. Holden seemed a bit out of it. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his eyes seemed unfocused. After a while of parading around with his censer, Riley stopped suddenly, and his usual sort of strange smile appeared on his face.

"Bow your heads, children," He said, sounding particularly pleased with himself, "You're in the presence of a god."

Izzy’s brows rose at Riley’s answer, her expression silently asking, ‘Are you serious?’
“‘Hope for the best,’” she injected as he scratched at his chin. “I think I’m starting to see a trend here in dealing with aberrations.”
When he went on to what he needed her for, she hesitated a heartbeat, then nodded. Though not ecstatic at the idea of potentially going against something powerful enough to, at the least, gain the title of a god, or to test exactly how immortal her body was, she saw his point.
When Riley went back to his preparations, she moved from Holden to place her cup, still with most of its wine, outside the circle of candles, careful to avoid disrupting the arrangement of charms. If she did have to protect him, she wanted her hands free.
She returned quickly to Holden’s side as Riley came to them with his salt. Wondering where he had stored everything, she watched him curiously as he lit the incense, smoke spiraling into the air and filling the room with its strong odor. It made her sneeze just before Holden coughed.
She glanced to Holden, then did a double take. He did not look like he was doing too well. She wanted to ask if he was okay, but talking now did not feel appropriate. Instead, she shot him more frequent looks as Riley continued swinging his censer around the room, filling the space with a light haze.
When at last Riley spoke, Izzy blinked in surprise and quickly looked the room over, searching for the Heavy Crab. But she saw nothing. Felt nothing unusual. How he knew the Crab was there, was anyone’s guess.
All the same, she lowered her head and looked sideways at Holden, worried about how he would react to the lack of an obvious presence, expecting him to go on a tangent about Riley being a quack.

As Izzy glanced over to Holden, she saw that his situation seemed to be vastly different from hers. Rather than reacting with skepticism, he stood wide-eyed and shivering, sweat running down his temples in rivulets. While he had lowered his head as well as Izzy, he did not seem to do it out of mere obligation. With the intensity that he was staring down at the floor, it seemed very much like he was trying desperately to avoid looking at something. Unless he had suddenly taken ill from something in the wine, it seemed as likely as anything else that the Crab God was perceptible to him. Izzy couldn't know what it was like to perceive a god, but she could imagine it was something like witness Cerasus at his full power. Humbling and overwhelming, to the point of dehumanizing you.

"Alright, Holden. Step up here, and we'll kneel and pray together." Riley beckoned Holden to join him in front of the strange altar.

As though in a trance, Holden stumbled forward and joined Riley, and the both of them settled into a kneeling position in front of the altar. They didn't clasp their hands together as one did in Christian prayer, but folded their hands in the laps. Well, Riley did at first, and Holden followed suit in imitation of him.

Though she could only just hear him, Izzy could hear Riley praying quietly. "May the Lord hear you in the day of trouble, the name of the God of Jacob defend you. Send you help from His sanctuary, and strengthen you out of Zion. Remember all your offerings, and accept your sacrifices. Grant you your heart's desire, and fulfill your mind." Rather than cross himself, Riley bowed to lower his head to the floor before the altar. "Amen."

Unsure of what to do, Holden did likewise, bowing to the altar. As both sat back up into their kneeling position, Riley spoke to Holden softly, "Holden, when have you last taken communion?"

Waveringly, he answered, "N-never before tonight."

"Given confession?"

"Never."

Riley paused, thinking, before asking, "When was the last time that you called to God for help?"

"I... I don't remember."

"Think for me. Was there a test you need to pass? Did one of your friends get in a wreck? Was one of your parents very sick?"

"I..." He started, and then jolted as he sat, as though shocked with electricity. "When I was thirteen. My father was in Minneapolis on business, and my mother brought another man to our house. I thought she was having an affair, so I stayed away. But they... they came up to my room to speak to me. He was the leader of the cult that she had joined. I tried to be polite and introduce myself but..." Holden breathed in deeply, and exhaled what was almost a sob. "He started touching me. He tried to..." He choked, and began to truly cry. "That's when I called to God, and I remembered. There was a knife at my bedside. My father gave it to me for my birthday, and he tried to teach me to whittle. I missed him, so I had it with me. I took the knife, and I... I..." He began to stutter, his sobs overtaking his speech.

"What happened, Holden?" Riley spurred him on, his tone soft but neither comforting nor hostile.

"I stabbed him in the arm. His blood got all over me and my clothes. He shouted and cursed, at me and my mother. He left me alone, but he hit my mother before he stormed out. The way she looked at me then, it was like I hit her. The whole time she never tried to help me. She barely even spoke to me after that. She was... censured, by her cult. They punished her, and she blamed me. My... my mother..."

As Holden broke down into further hysterics, he seemed to be rising back to his feet. However, this very quickly proved not to be the case, as even as he stood fully up he continued to rise, levitating inches off of the ground. That was when Izzy noticed that Holden was clutching at his neck, choking and coughing. He wasn't floating, the Crab God was lifting him off his feet. Then with speed and force that blew Izzy's hair back, Holden flew to the back of the classroom and slammed against the wall with enough force to crack the drywall. He hung against the wall, as though nailed there, and continued to scrabble fruitlessly at his neck.

Riley cursed under his breath, and gave Izzy a brief, tired look, before rolling up the sleeves of his robe and stomping over to where Holden was pinned to the wall. He took hold of something unseen just in front of Holden, ostensibly the Crab, and with a motion that seemed much like a baseball swing, rotated his hips while pulling at the invisible Crab. Evidently this was enough to rip the Crab away from Holden, who then dropped to the floor, and Riley released his grip on the Crab, which seemed to fly to the opposite side of the room, destroying the altar and slamming into the far wall.

"Guess we're doing this the hard way," Riley grumbled as he stepped confidently to where it seemed that the Crab had landed.

"No!" Holden called out, coughing. His eyes were bloodshot and there was a bruise already forming on his neck, but from where he stood on his hands and knees he called out to Riley. "Wait! I understand now. You were right all along, I was being selfish. I didn't want my memories. I didn't want to be burdened and tainted by them. I wanted my life to be free of pain. But my memories are mine, to have and to bear." He dropped down from his hands, pressing his forehead to the floor. "Please, give me my memories back. I'll accept them, I'll accept everything. Please, give my mother back to me."

Moment after agonizing moment passed in the room. With Riley standing tensely in the middle of the room, next to Izzy, and Holden with his face to the floor in prostration. The pressure in the room was immense, and Izzy could scarcely tell if minutes or hours were passing as they stayed like that. Each unsure of what to do, or if they could move. A scene frozen in time. But at last, the tension broke. A sea-scented gale, like the wind over the ocean during a storm, blew through the room, fluttering Izzy's hair, and Riley's robes and talismans. The candle flames were whipped out by this, plunging the room into darkness, but only for the barest moment before the faintest light of dawn appeared over the horizon, and began to stream in through the dusty, broken window.

Holden began to cry again, his sobs interspersed with laughter. He sat back up, trying to wipe the tears and grime from the floor away from his face, but only succeeding in making dirty smears across his face. He sputtered from the tears running into his mouth as he laughed, and eventually stood unsteadily up from the floor.

"Kneeling like that hurts my knees," He said, eventually, "I just feel so awfully heavy."