Rome opened his mouth to speak, but it hung open for almost a full minute before he closed it again. He sort of felt like Hooper in
JAWS during the
showing-off contest, where Brody points to that one scar Quint clearly doesn't want to talk about, but Hooper's drunk and teasing and makes him talk until Quint tells them he served on the freaking
Indianapolis and it's like, whoa, buzz kill.
Everything else was kind of been a blur, all except--
"You...
died?" Rome couldn't believe he was saying it, couldn't believe he was repeating it, but it was somehow the only thing that mattered. Tex looked like she was about to smack him for his insolence, but she refrained, barely.
Richard only nodded, and didn't look at anyone.
And Rome thought
he had problems.
No, in fact, he was being stupidly selfish about this whole thing. He was definitely
not the only to whom freaky things happened. Why did the world revolve around him and his own problems? That would be a pretty frakking stupid solar system.
"Well," Rome said, stepping forward. "It doesn't matter." He got a few sharp looks for that until he explained, "It looks like these SWORD people are after
all of us, indiscriminately, and that's a giant problem if these guys are as nasty as Tex says they are. Speaking of, Texie, if these guys are so good, how'd you get all this intel?"
Tex snorted. "You kids think you invented the internet!" she said, by way of explanation. "And I know some people. Good people. Let's leave it at that."
Rome shrugged. "Okay, fair enough. So. First order of business: Tex, can we stay here? We need to lay low, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want all this on your doorstep. I'm sure we can find other places--"
"Here's as safe as you'll be," Tex said, folding her arms, and that was clearly the end of that discussion.
Rome nodded, wanted to thank her, but she'd probably just roll her eyes at him, so he continued. "Okay. Also, we need to come clean with each other as much as possible. So if anyone's unclear about anything, we should--"
"I have a question," Richard said, giving Rome a hard look. "Who's this 'Andre' character?"
When he'd made his gallant speech, Rome hadn't quite expected it to come back and bite him in the ass so immediately. But he tried his best, though he was sure he was telegraphing all the signs of please-not-this-I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it-I'm-scared-and-embarrassed-and-please-can-we-talk-about-something-else:
"A demon, we guess--"
"We know," Lenna jumped in.
"We know," Rome corrected. "Like, from hell, possession,
The Exorcist type of demon. He's the reason the Feebs are after me, because he was--I was possessed for, I think, about eight months, and he--I think he killed a lot of people. I don't remember everything," Rome concluded.
"And he visited me," Lenna said. "Gave me the spell book." Rome reached out and took her hand, and squeezed it, apologizing for his harsh words before.
"And me," Georgie said, as all eyes turned back to her.