Natalie opened the door.
"Oh hey Zac," she said cheerfully. "Early again, huh?"
"Yeah," Zac replied, stepping inside.
Natalie looked him over briefly, frowned and studied him further with her power.
"Zac? Are you okay?" she asked as she closed the door.
Zac tensed and looked at her. He chewed his bottom lip and finally nodded.
"Julie?"
"Who else?"
Natalie gave him a slight smile.
"Wanna talk to me for a bit?"
"Yeah..." then Zac stopped. "Actually... maybe you could talk to Julie."
"Oh?"
"She's really screwed up, and now she's got a beauty spell on her."
"Beauty spell?" Natalie repeated, sounding dubious.
"Yeah, I know," Zac nodded. "Sounds crazy right? But y'know she leaves for this party and she looks like Julie. She comes back and she's Julie but she's glammed-up Aphrodite beautiful. I mean please-excuse-me-while-I-pick-my-jaw-up-off-the-floor beautiful and I swear I wasn't drinking kero at the time."
Natalie chuckled.
"Really?"
"Yes really," Zac nodded woefully. "And worse, I keep looking at her all the time. I feel like a school boy with a crush. I mean, I know it's all shallow and stuff, but she is really beautiful. On the outside anyway. She's still ignoring her kids and being hard to get along with, when she's not busy trying to come onto me and I know that sleeping with her again is a bad idea but..."
Natalie frowned with alarm as she saw a wound reopen in Zac with these words. She grabbed his hand and looked deeper seeing more and more of these reopened wounds. Zac stopped to stare at her.
"Natalie?" Zac asked nervously.
She said nothing for a moment, and then slowly his mind seemed to clear.
"Sorry about that," Natalie said, letting go of his hand and looking serious. "You had wounds reopening all over the place and they were all near an addiction centre. I wanted to heal them up for you."
"Oh..."
"They were only little ones, like scratches," Natalie went on. "Normally for scratches I'd let you deal with them on your own - kind of like how you don't go and see a doctor everytime you get a paper cut. But there were lots of them, and being near an addiction centre they could make the addiction worse - or in your case reactivate it."
"Oh. Oh!" Zac looked alarmed. "You mean I could... I might..."
"That's the problem with addictions. Once you've been addicted to something, you never really recover, because you will always be faced with the temptation to return to it," Natalie replied seriously. "Especially in trying times."
"Or trying housemates. Or trying housemates."
"Yes," Natalie smiled. "I'll try to keep those reopened wounds in check for you."
"Thanks. I think I've done enough breeding."
Natalie chuckled, then sobering.
"However, we're going to have to deal with the root cause, which I'm guessing is Julie."
Zac's face also sobered.
"Yeah. She's really, really messed up. Worse than I was."
Natalie nodded thoughtfully.
"When should I come over?"