But still, as I followed her into the kitchen, I couldn’t let it go, couldn’t put the letter—or what it would mean to my grandmother and me, if it was true—out of my mind. But I couldn’t bring it up either, couldn’t ask her if we were at risk of losing our home.
This house had been in our family for generations. It was where I’d grown up; it was my entire history.
But it was more than that. It was where my mother had disappeared, where she would reappear...if she could.
Fiddling with a stray strand of yarn that dangled from the side of the hat, I pulled open the silverware drawer and picked out two spoons.
“Do we have savings?” I asked, hoping I was being casual.
Nana, busy sliding a can of tomato soup under the can opener’s blade, stilled. “We have the house. That’s enough.”
“But what if...?”
She plopped the open can onto the counter and turned. The lid slipped into the can, and soup slopped onto her hand. “What’s going on, Lucinda? Why are you asking me this?”
I couldn’t tell her about the letter. She would have known I’d been snooping. “Someone called, from the bank.”
“The bank...” She shook her head and reached for a towel. “It’s nothing.”
I swallowed. “They said we owed taxes, and that the house was getting run down. They said they could take it from us if we didn’t take care of things.”
She waved the towel in the air, but not before I caught the flash of worry in her eyes. “Nonsense. They can’t do that.” She turned back to the can and poked her finger into the soup to retrieve the lid.
Her hands were shaking. “Forget about the bank, and get bowls. Get yourself a TV tray too. You can eat in front of the TV.”
We never ate in front of the TV.
“Where are you eating?” I asked.
Busy dumping the soup into a saucepan, she looked up. “I’ll eat later. There’s something I need to do. Something I forgot at the store.”
After turning the burner to medium, she hobbled from the room. A few minutes later she had on her coat and was headed out the front door. She didn’t say anything as she left, and I didn’t either.
Nana and I had a long history of pretending bad things didn’t happen.
Unfortunately, pretending never made them go away. Not really.
2
The next day, Nana didn’t bring up the bank and neither did I. She’d come back the day before looking drawn and worried. She’d spent the rest of the day in the attic, rummaging through boxes.
This morning, I’d found the phone book lying open. An ad for an auctioneer popped off the page at me, and there was a stack of boxes by the front door.
When I stopped to stare at it, she made a shooing motion with her hands. “Spring cleaning. There’ll be men coming this afternoon. Don’t get in their way.”
I didn’t mention spring was long over.
She walked past, her cane making a solid, determined sound as it struck the wood floor. At the piano, she stopped. She laid a hand on the lid.
Nana didn’t play. I didn’t either, but my mother had and so had Nana’s.
My grandmother stroked the old wood like she was smoothing a child’s hair. “Your great grandmother taught your mother to play on this piano. You know that?”
I hadn’t, but it made sense.
“Don’t guess we have much use for it now though.” Her voice cracked. She picked up her hand.
“I can learn.” I’d never wanted to play. I had actually fought the suggestion more than once.
She turned, her fingers folding into her palm and her cane landing on the floor with a thump. “Not who you are, Lucinda. Not who you are.” Then she hobbled into the kitchen.
Not who I was.
I wasn’t sure Nana knew who I was as well as she thought, or maybe I wanted to believe there were parts of me she hadn’t seen. That there was more to come from me.
And maybe it was time I stepped out of my box and found that something more.
o0o
I waited until the men had left and Nana too. She’d gone to the store. We’d run out of peanut butter. Nana couldn’t last a day without a PB and J. She’d taken the bus, instead of our unreliable car, which meant I had at least an hour and a half until she got back.
I went to the closet first.
The book was still there, and my hand still tingled when I touched the leather, but the feeling passed. In fact, after only a few moments, my fingers seemed to curve around the spine naturally, like they’d been meant to hold the book, and the tingle switched to warmth.
Comforting, like when you hold a cup of hot cocoa after being out in the cold. I didn’t want to set the book down. I tucked it under my arm; the warmth spread to my body.
It wasn’t a good thing. I had enough sense to know that. A book about demons...any good feelings it brought couldn’t truly be good.
But instead of setting the volume down, I hugged it tighter.
Nana was selling her things, but her things were limited. I had to do my part. It was time, past time.
I’d lived with Nana all my life. She was the only person who had never left me. My mother left. I wasn’t even sure she didn’t choose to leave. No, correct that. She did choose to leave, by choosing to call demons, constantly.
My grandmother had warned Mum about calling them as much as she did. She told her it could be addictive, but I think Mum was lost from the beginning.
The rush she got from that circle was impossible to miss, even for a 6 year old.
After she’d spent time in the basement calling, she would glow for days afterward. But eventually the rush would wear off. Then she’d crash, get the shakes—show all the classic signs of withdrawal. And she’d be back in the basement, inside her circle, chanting.
Times would be perfect then, for a while. I’d get gifts; Mum would be happy and kind. Life in general would be good—for months, weeks... days. The time kept getting shorter, until one day she went down into the basement and never came back.
Calling demons was stupid. No doubt about it.
But sometimes, stupid is all you got.
I wedged my body behind the old furnace. It was made of iron and huge. Behind it was a door my grandmother thought was hidden. And it was—if you didn’t know it existed. But I’d watched my mother go in and out of it on too many occasions.
Nana had boarded the door up after Mum disappeared, but I knew her calling tools still lay somewhere behind it. I knew, because Nana wouldn’t have touched them. She was afraid of them.
I slid the tip of a crowbar under the top board and leaned. The wood creaked. I stopped and checked the damage.
No cracks. That was good. I’d need to board the door back up when I was through, so Nana wouldn’t know what I’d done. I wouldn’t need to get in here again. I just needed Mum’s tools. I’d be doing my demon calling outside the house.
That was an important part of my plan—calling places outside of this house. Mum had used the space too often, weakened the veil here. I figured that’s how she’d got caught: something nasty, maybe even a demon lord, had got through and snatched her.
Secure my work so far would be easy to cover, I continued sliding the bar under the wood and leaning until the first board popped loose. I continued working on the remaining two until the door wiggled under my hand.
The door stuck a few inches in, but I put my shoulder against it and pushed. It scraped over dirt as it inched inward. The basement had a cement floor, but this little room was still dirt, walls and floors. Cobwebs grabbed onto my hair and face as I stepped inside.
The space was tiny, probably originally meant as a root cellar, or maybe not. Demon calling was in the blood. Generations of Dents may have used this space for the same purpose my mother had. Nana might know, but I sure wasn’t asking her.
I pulled the string on the lone light bulb that hung from the ceiling. Amazingly, it worked. I’d brought a flashlight just in case, but was pretty
happy I wouldn’t need it. The glare of the stark bulb felt warm, gave me a tiny sense of security. Enough that when the door creaked closed behind me I didn’t jump, at least not visibly. Feeling stronger than I’d thought I would, I left the door closed and turned to face the room.
A circle drawn with white paint dominated the floor. It was impossible to miss. I knew it was paint without touching it. My mother had made a lot of jokes about people who drew their circles with chalk—said they were one smudge away from “home.” Most people thought of home as a good place, but I’d known by how she’d said the word, it wasn’t.
Mum must be “home” now too. I drew in a breath and let my body adjust to the cold clamminess that had suddenly formed on my skin. There was moisture in the corner of my eyes too. I blinked that away. Even when I was six, Mum hadn’t hid the dangers of what she did from me. She’d raised me to be pragmatic.
Mum was gone. Nana and I were here... in this house. I needed to keep it that way.
I stepped closer to the white line. I let my foot break the circle. My feet were bare. I didn’t like wearing shoes when I didn’t have to. My toes looked strange poking into that circle, made the whole demon thing seem like something I’d dreamed, but then I looked up and saw my mother’s leather pouch lying open on the other side of the room. It was flat, empty.
I looked in the circle then. An athame and stone bowl lay near the center. The athame was shoved hilt to dirt into the floor, but the bowl was turned over. The dirt was darker around it. I didn’t want to think about what had been in that bowl that the stain was still there 10 years later. So I shoved that question into a little box in my head where I kept my grief, shut it off too, and concentrated on finding the rest of Mum’s tools instead.
They were all there, but they were scattered—as if a big wind had exploded from the center of the room... the circle... and blown them to the four corners.
I didn’t think about that, either. I just went about picking everything up and shoving the items into Mum’s leather pouch.
When the bag was bulging, I turned to leave. I got as far as the door before I stumbled. My bare toes made contact with something hard and cold. A shiver shot through me, and it took all the courage I could muster to look down and see what had stopped my step.
It was a statue, about six inches tall and carved out of something white: bone. Had to be from a big animal—or a human. I gripped the bag tighter. My hands were sweating now. If Mum had been there, she would have laughed. Here I was wanting to call demons, and the sight of a little bone statue almost sent me running.
Not just the sight, I corrected mentally, the touch too. It had been... slimy. Crawled up my leg and wrapped around my calf. I could still feel it, even though the object was no longer in contact with my skin. I picked up my foot and shook my leg.
It was a silly thing to do, but it made me feel better, broke the tension somehow.
I managed a chuckle at myself then, and ordered my knees to bend so I could get a closer look at the figure. It was one of Mum’s tools. I might need it.
I should take it.
I reached out, thinking if I grabbed the thing fast, I’d get past the part of my brain that was screaming no, but it didn’t work. My hand stopped three inches above the small statue and hovered there, shaking.
I started humming, a bad habit I was trying to break. I managed to stop the sound, but gave up on picking up the figurine. I lowered my hand to the ground beside the thing instead and stared at it.
I knew instantly I was looking into the face of my mother’s killer. Horns sprouted from his forehead and curled down the back of his head, ending at his shoulders. His face was long and angular, but strangely attractive... aristocratic.
A demon lord. Where had my mother found the object? And more important, why had she called him up?
His eyes seemed to glimmer, to watch me. Something urged me to pick up the statue. My hand even moved toward it. I curled my fingers into the dirt. A nail broke off into the packed earth, and pain shot through my finger. I winced and glanced at my hand.
Blood beaded where the nail had been; it mixed with the dirt.
Someone exhaled, sighed. I thought for a second it was me, like my humming, but then the statue turned his head and his tongue, skinny and white, flicked from between his teeth and lapped at the blood-stained earth.
I picked up the bag and ran like hell—from hell or “home” or whatever lived in my basement.
Excerpt from Demon High by Lori Devoti, available now.
Table of Contents
Title Page
BY THE PALE MOONLIGHT
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
By the Pale Moonlight (Book One of the Moonlight Series) Page 27