“Smart girl,” said Stone. “She was protecting Danny.”

“I haven’t told you the important part yet,” said Pat.

They fell silent again.

“Nicki said that it happened at Danny’s house. She went there in the middle of the night. It was the same night after he made the gate in … that place. Remember how tired he was?”

“No,” said Laurette, “which makes me think you were over there pestering him the same night.”

“Well, you’d be correct,” said Pat.

The other girls made a show of being shocked.

Pat looked Stone straight in the eyes. “Danny and I are in love,” she told him. “I wanted to spend the night with him. To move in with him if I could. He said—and demonstrated—how willing he was. Eager. But he still wouldn’t do it. For the same reason as always. He said he wasn’t going to be a typical god.”

“That’s how he turned us all down,” said Xena.

“But that same night, Nicki says she walked there at two a.m. and just opened his door and went in and there he was, mostly undressed, lying on top of his bed, and … she said he was ready for her. Sexually.” Pat blushed, knowing why Danny was in that state, and then hated herself for blushing, and blushed all the more because of that. Thank heaven the attic was so dark.

“So she was, like, a succubus,” said Wheeler.

“You don’t get pregnant from that,” said Xena.

“A succubus is a female demon that comes and has sex with you in the night,” said Hal. “According to ancient lore. The male equivalent is ‘incubus.’”

“Sounds like a medieval attempt to explain wet dreams,” said Wheeler.

“And single girls’ babies,” said Hal.

“Well, she wasn’t mythical,” said Pat. “She undressed him the rest of the way and she was all over him before he even woke up.”

“How much did she tell you?” asked Stone. “Was she trying to cause you pain?”

“No,” said Pat. “She was apologizing. She was explaining. Because it wasn’t really her.”

They all looked at her blankly.

“OK, then why is she pregnant?” asked Laurette.

Stone knew. He was looking at the floor instead of at her.

“It wasn’t her making the decisions,” said Pat. “That’s the whole reason we’re having this meeting. Nicki has never heard Danny talk about the Belgod and how he possesses people, and how he can jump from one person to another and live forever and all that. But what she tells me, out of the blue, is that she was controlled, her body was controlled by something else. It would sometimes talk to her, using her own voice. And it would make her do things, strange things, stupid things. Then let her have control of her body for hours. Then make her do something bizarre again.”

“Wheeler does that and he isn’t possessed,” said Xena.