"Ma'am, do you know why I pulled you over?"

I braced my hands against the wheel and silently begged Blaire not to start anything. It was as optimal as the situation could be: blonde hair, a pretty face, and a male cop. If she just left this be, we could get off with a warning.

"I dunno, does my extended family accept my blatant homosexual tendencies?"

The cop opened his mouth before closing it again. He started again, "Pardon?"

"Not one bit. So, what can I do you for?" Blaire asked, smiling widely.

At any other point in time, I would have slapped my dumbass of a roommate across the head, but that would come off as very odd in the current situation, so I maintain some restraint. Instead, I drum my fingers against the wheel and try not to look suspicious. A guy in a bar a few miles back told us we came off as 'suspicious', and we were just eating waffles, so playing it cool might be easier said than done.

"You were speeding," the officer said slowly.

Blaire nodded. "That's a good reason for pulling me over. I'll give you that."

The cop's name badge glimmered against the car's fluorescent lights. Officer Preston frowned. "You do understand that's not something we allow..."

"Of course, sir. That's a completely solid rule."

"Oh... Okay. Well, um, don't do it again," the officer muttered before looking at us one last time and shuffling back towards his car.

As soon as he's out of sight, I reach up and smack Blaire on the forehead. I have to fight to get control of my arm enough to do it, and my thoughts spin a bit at the impact, but it's worth it. In return, Blaire pulls down the vanity mirror so she can properly glare at me before flipping me off.

"What was that for?" she asks, brows furrowed. "He left, didn't he?"

"Yeah, in spite of your conversation, not because of it!"

"Oh, boo hoo. He's gone now, and it's not like you could have made him leave!"

I let out a huff of indignation and raise my eyebrows. "I don't know all the rules of your voodoo nonsense, but I feel like it probably isn't a sure bet either!"

"Too bad, I choose spells. My body, my rules!" Blaire shouts in response, slamming the mirror closed and moving the sun visor out of the way again. It's almost sunset, so it won't give us much shade anyway.

"And where would my body be, Blaire? Huh?" It's a low blow, and I know it.

"We'll get to that," she hisses, putting the car into drive and pulling out onto the highway again.

"Blaire—"

"Kate, look, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, but could you just, shut up for a bit?" I can't see Blaire's face anymore, but she sounds pissed.

"As long as we're going to be roommates, I don't see why—"

"We're not roommates, stop calling us that! You're living in my mind against my express wishes. I would call that the behavior a demon."

I scoff. "I would call it a parasite, you know, like a normal person. What is your obsession with the paranormal and demons and stuff?"

"More like what's their obsession with us?"

Blaire doesn't say anything else after that, so I stop talking as well. It takes too much energy to get words out when she doesn't want me to. I really don't see why we couldn't have been shoved into my body. It's a perfectly fine body with perfectly fine assets, the foremost of which being that I would have primary control of it instead of watching Blaire confuse cops and almost rob waffle restaurants.

It was another hour before we find someplace we can stop without looking like we're facilitating a drug trade. It's a small motel, clearly designed to hold no more than maybe a dozen or so cars of people, with a dilapidated neon sign signaling a vacancy. Blaire turns off the radio as we pull into the parking lot, apparently listening for something she doesn't hear before turning off the car and walking towards the front office.

"Don't you dare do anything," she mutters.

I huff, "Or say anything, I know. Go get us food and shelter. Maslow would be very disappointed with the state of things right now." Then I shut up, because she's right. With all the things going against us at the moment, adding 'looking like someone with dissociative identity disorder' would not be a good way to help our situation.

The man working the front desk has the appearance of someone who would overlook just about anything for the right amount of money, blinking uninterestedly at Blaire when she requests a room. "How many?"

"Just me," Blaire tell him, and he digs a key out of a bucket of ropes and wood chips.

"Fifty dollars."

"It's not that nice of a motel," Blaire says, crossing her arms.

"Forty-five."

"Whatever."

Apparently our room is on the second floor, so we head straight up. We left in a hurry, no personal belongings. Not even the skin on our backs, at least both of ours. I'll be figuring out how in the hell that happened, just as soon as we have a bit of privacy. Not that the motel looks like anyone has stepped through its doors since the eighties, but the desk manager looks shady.

The room is gross, but the bed has what appear to be clean sheets, so Blaire flops down on it. I disapprove, it still seems unsanitary, but there are bigger things to argue with her about.

"Blaire," I start, before being immediately interrupted.

"Oh, damn, you're still in there. I was starting to think you might have left."

"And gone where? It's been less than ten minutes!"

Blaire shrugs. "Whatever, a girl can dream."

"Cut it out, what's going on?"

"Well, you seem to be living in my head," Blaire snorts, jumping up from the bed to check the bathroom and kitchen for anything sitting around. There is nothing but an old toothbrush and an overripe apple in the refrigerator. And no, I'm not phrasing that incorrectly: the toothbrush is in the fridge.

"And you don't seem to have any sort of alarm at that."

Blaire hums. "At least I didn't scream for five solid minutes while you tried to keep us from getting killed."

"Well, I didn't exactly know what was going on... still don't. So spill."

"It's pretty obvious, in my opinion. They took your body, and dumped you in here. So instead of leaving me alone, you are living all up in my mind space," Blaire says.

"Who did? How? Why?" I try to not shout. Again, drawing attention wouldn't strengthen our cover, and though I'm not sure what's happening exactly, Blaire seems pretty intent on staying on the down low.

"What a great I-don't-know sandwich."

I roll my eyes. "I swear to god, Blaire, I will take that old apple and shove it in your mouth."

"You'd taste it too, dumbass. And if you'd give me a moment, I'd tell you stuff. Chill out, sweetheart, if you get me an ulcer from all your pent-up crazy, I will exorcise you."

"I'm not a demon!"

Blaire snorts again. "Yeah, well, the ritual might still work. Never know until you try. Speaking of, that's the 'who' part of your question, I'm pretty sure."

"Seriously, would you cut it out and tell me what's going on. I don't have time for you to séance with the devil or something. I need my body back!" I tell her.

"And to get it back, we need to find the demons who took it."

"Christ! Blaire, cut it out. Demons and ghosts and shit? Not real," I shoot back, continuing more for my own benefit than hers. "Something goes wrong at a medical trial, and it's gotta be demons. Why couldn't something have happened that stuck me in a body with someone rational?"

"Because you'd be dead already. You asked for answers, here they are. Who? Demons. Or ghosts, maybe. Possibly even some humans working for one of those two, but agenda's the same. Why? Need bodies, duh. How? I've not a clue."

"You're positively unstable."

"You believed in the magic I did!"

"Well, I wasn't in a good mental state. I'm retracting my belief," I inform her.

"You're... Kate, humor me. I'll tell you stuff, you pretend it's all stories, we can move on with this and you can stop asking questions?"

I frowned. "I still don't believe—"

"That's all fine and dandy. You can believe me later. There are ghosts and demons and people with powers. The demons, they never had an original form. The ghosts, they had forms but their forms died while they lived on. And the people, they have their original forms."

"So I would be a ghost?"

"Your body is fine, Kate, god. Right now, you're just a human pain in my ass. But these demons, they feel they got the short end of the stick, see? No bodies, no fun arms to swing guns around and punch stuff. So they find bodies to take for themselves, but the problem is that it takes a bit of effort to push the human out in order to take their place. So they choose the prettiest and the most fit and they hold onto those bodies for a long time.

"Except that's a hassle, so now we've got a bunch of dumbasses running around collecting bodies for them. Usually dumbass college students they snared in a contract or bribed with promises. Whatever they do, once a place is crawling with them, there starts to be a danger, obviously. They have enough hold to come snatching up people right and left."

Blaire pauses for a moment, looking in the bathroom mirror and raising her eyebrows expectantly. I don't particularly like this assumption that I always have something to ask, but in this case, who wouldn't?

"So most of the prettiest people..."

"Demons. Yeah, sorry to break it to you," Blaire says, sounding almost a bit bored.

Then something clicks and I turn to face the mirror again, scanning the reflection of Blaire's body in the reflection. "Does that mean you..."

"What?"

"Are you a demon?"