The second time Angelica woke up she was in a hospital. She knew she was in a hospital, head injury or not because she remembered being taken there. She remembered getting poked and prodded and being told that she'd have to be put in the MRI machine to try and gauge if she had something internal to worry about.

That would be when she started freaking out. The panic attack she remembered, the flickering lights that eventually shattered above her that had followed the start of her hyperventilating that told her one of her monsters had followed, Kyle probably. They had pulled her the second the light shattered, they had been refusing before that. She then had to wait while they sorted out the machine and then, when it was time for her to go into it again, they decided to sedate her. She obviously had no idea if anything had happened while she was out but she figured it all stopped, at least... she was hoping it stopped.

She woke up to a completely normal white hospital room. All by herself. She wondered why, briefly, then figured the exploding lights and the general sense of apprehension that followed her paired with the fact that she came from Culverton, had gotten her a private room. She better not have to pay for it though.

Everything seemed normal though. No flickering lights, nothing floating in midair, nothing screaming or chasing people around. She did, however, have something around her wrist that didn't feel like a hospital bracelet. No she could feel that annoying plastic against the skin of her other wrist.

Turning to it she found that it was a little tentacle wrapped around her, no doubt leaving little suction marks from the suckers.

She didn't even care.

Just knowing Chad was there made her feel better. She wasn't in some foreign hospital all alone, she had someone with her.

She spotted a bit of movement out of the corner of her eye as she was closing them again. The room was too bright for her to keep her eyes open and honestly, it wasn't even that bright. Just a symptom of the concussion, she had to guess.

Knowing that Kyle too had followed her to the hospital put a sleepy smile onto her, one that immediately turned into a frown the second she realized the implication of Kyle having followed her here.

"If you're here, who's watching the house? Are they alone with the cops? Are the cops still there?" There was silence in the room other than the rhythmic beeping of her heart monitor, she had no answer from either monster. She didn't know what that meant but it couldn't be good. "Can you go back to the house? I need you to make sure the others are okay until I get back." Again silence, but she felt him, hovering over her. "Please, I'll be okay. Chad will come get you if I need you promise."

She felt a soft whisper of touch, fingers smoothing over her hair and then it was gone. Then, no matter where she looked she couldn't see Kyle. She assumed he had done as she asked.

She took great comfort in Chad's tentacle wrapped around her wrist. She felt safer, not that she really thought that she might be in danger in a hospital, but after getting knocked out in her own home, she felt a little paranoid. But having one of her monsters there with her was soothing, especially since the one she had could apparently knock a man to the ground, drag him under a couch and eat him leaving nothing but a few splatter drops behind. That put her mind at ease. Nothing was going to get her, and if something tried, they'd deal with Chad or Kyle would come back.

Chad held on to her, only letting go of her twice. First when the nurse came in and realized that she was awake. Then again when the doctor came back to look her over.

Then they got to be alone a bit. Angelica had turned on the TV and picked a channel that Chad would like and then promptly went back to sleep. She was so tired she just wanted to sleep a thousand years.

She dozed for a long while before she was woken up by Chad letting go of her wrist.

"Where y'ah going?" she murmured and got a: "Just got here, Miss Foster. Ain't going anywhere yet."

Yeah. That wasn't Chad. She opened her eyes and found Sheriff Campbell in the room, standing by the edge of the bed. Close but not too close. Everyone in this town liked to keep a healthy distance from her, even the Sheriff apparently.

He was wearing that warm smile she usually saw on his face, but didn't trust anymore. That was his work smile.

He wasn't there to see her to see how she was. He was there on official business and she had a feeling it wasn't going to be good for her.

Might as well get in front of it now.

"Did you find my clock?"

"I did," he said with a nod. "But I think that you might have to worry about everything else we found, though, ma'am."

Angelica blinked her eyes. Normally by now she had some sort of witty one liner to throw, a sarcastic quip maybe. But her brain was slow moving with the injury and the medication so nothing pithy came to her.

"I have some follow up questions, I'd like you to be truthful for me," he said and she nodded. Knowing that she could really only be truthful to a certain extent, so if he pulled out a lie-detector machine, she was going to be in some deep shit. "Do you have anyone else living with you?"

Yes. Two boogies, a Krampus, an under monster, a shadow monster and a ghost.

Ha!

If she told him that he'd put her in an asylum.

Beside her, her heart monitor began to beep a little more quickly. Aw fuck. She was attached to a medical lie-detector machine. She turned to it and then back to him and saw that this was by design.

It took all her will power to muscle down that fear that hit her and get her heart rate back to normal. When it was she looked him barefaced in the eye and lied.

"No," she said. "I live by myself."

"All of that space for just you?"

"Yeah. Uh, as I mentioned, the plan was to open up the hotel again... which I'm thinking is going to get harder and harder to do the more bodies show up there..."

"Ma'am, we have a witness saying that a pale man killed Tommy..."

"Which one was that?"

"The one in your kitchen," he said quickly. "And apparently your couch ate Dan..."

Well that part was true, but she couldn't exactly confirm that, could she? Beside her, the monitor spiked a bit, she wondered why the nurses weren't coming in. Had he told them to stay out, cause if so... smart man.

She struggled to get it under control as quickly as she could.

"My couch... you think my couch ate a person?" she asked and he frowned.

"Obviously not, but if there was someone else in your house... someone who say... saw this go down... I mean... it would be self-defence, right? These men broke into your home, they attacked you, it'd make sense if you... or your roommate, attacked them back..."

Angelica blinked her eyes slowly trying to catch up. "So... is there a second body? Is it under my couch?"

"We have not found a second body, there was blood under the couch, it did belong to Dan, but it seems to be splatter. We have not found any other splatter anywhere else, so we're thinking someone killed him, moved him and then hid his body."

Oh wow, wonderful. So he didn't know her couch actually ate someone... more aptly that the monster under her couch ate someone. She was going to have to play this off, make him think that he was the crazy one, not her, the girl living with six supernatural entities.

She actually felt a little bad, but she was definitely going to have to gaslight the poor man.

"Wait a second... are you suggesting that I killed one of the burglars and hid his body and then cleaned up the living room? Only the living room?" she asked.

"Well... no..."

"Okay good, because that wouldn't make sense considering I was perfectly fine letting you find the other body. Why would I hide one and not the other?"

"Miss Foster," he said quickly and Angelica froze under his disapproving tone. "It's clear to me that you're hiding something. Now... I may not know what it is, but believe me when I say I will find out."

She could see on his face that he meant it. That he would stop at nothing to suss out her secrets. But her secrets were monsters and ghosts. He probably wouldn't survive finding out about her secrets, no one else seemed to have so far. Either ripped to pieces, flattened, eaten or driven crazy.

She wondered which way he'd go?

Angelica put on her most innocent of smiles but it must not have worked because it made his eyes wrinkled around the edges. He was a man used to hiding his emotions but her smile had made him crack a bit.

"I'm not hiding anything. Trust me."

But she could see, just by the look in his eyes alone, that he didn't trust her at all.

And honestly... that was fair.

"Well, Miss. Foster. Something other than you squeezed Tommy until his innards became his outards and if it wasn't you, then it was someone else... in that house."

"I keep telling you that I don't live with anyone else," she said. She tried to sound honest, but the fact of the matter was that she was lying. And he knew that.

"Then you wouldn't mind letting us take a look... to verify that."

"Didn't you already do that?"

"We were looking for Dan and Sloan. Sloan we've found, Dan is still missing. Now we have a missing body and probably a roommate to find. That's a different kind of search."

See, if she said no, come back with a warrant, she'd look guilty. If she said come back with a warrant, there was no chance that she could delay the inevitable search for when she came back. A murder happened in her house, they suspected a second murder had gone down and the body was missing, and there was one survivor who, she was guessing, probably sounded crazy, if he hadn't actually gone crazy.

Yeah, that didn't look good.

He'd get that search warrant in a heartbeat.

She'd still be in the hospital. She wouldn't be able to get home to make her monsters promise to behave. So the whole point of saying no and making herself look guilty would have the same result as if she agreed.

She had no choice.

But what if she wasn't there, who was going to keep her monsters in check while they went in to search again?

The monitor beside her had sudden began to beep wildly. She couldn't keep her heart still anymore, the worry was loudly beeping in her ears. She longed to put her hands to her ears, to rip the nodes off of her skin. Her hands went to her chest, and he lifted a hand to stop her.

Before any of that could be done the monitor suddenly crashed to the ground.

Angelica jumped. Campbell jumped too and together they just stared at it.

They were silent for a moment, the beeping dying off. She didn't know if it had been broken or if Chad had unplugged it, but he had definitely tossed it to the ground.

She turned her eyes up to Campbell and said: "I don't like people going through my stuff. I've already had a break in, haven't I been violated enough?"

"Ma'am," Campbell said patiently. "If you don't have anyone living with you, there's a good chance that whatever killed Tommy and probably Dan, might be in that house without you knowing. I'd feel better about sending you home if I was 100 percent certain nothing else was in there with you."

Angelica stared at him, trying to establish if he was being sincere. She wasn't sure he was, she was sure he cared more about the murders then her safety.

"Alright, fine. Knock yourself out I guess," she said and then shot him the most confident smirk she could muster. "But be careful. Last time I found a hidden room there were bodies in it."

She had meant it as a joke, but considering it was true, it probably came off more as a threat. Either way Sheriff Campbell didn't laugh.

He thanked her for her cooperation and then just walked away. The second he left her room, Angelica dropped a hand towards the floor.

"Chad,you still there?" she whispered. Right away there was a soft gurgle and atentacle wrapped around her wrist again. "Good... Chad... I need you to take amessage to Kyle..."