by Julie Kenner
Our house boasts a fabulous attic, the kind that you access through a regular door that opens on to regular stairs leading up to a large room. The room is more or less finished (though not painted) and Allie swears she’s going to convince me to let it be her room once she turns sixteen. I haven’t yet committed, as I know the value of holding out in exchange for increased bargaining power in other arenas. Forget lawyers; moms are the best negotiators out there.
We tottered up the stairs, barely able to see over the piles in our arms. Allie dropped hers on the floor, earning a frown from me since more than a few ornaments were not only glass, but sentimental.
“Sorry!” she said, immediately contrite.
“They survived Timmy,” I said. “Let’s see if we can’t make sure they last another year.”
“I know, I know. I said I was sorry.” To her credit, I didn’t have to tell her what to do next. She took her boxes and loaded them up on the set of shelves we have on the far side of the room to hold various holiday accoutrements. And then, as if to prove she deserved a Good Kid award, she finished loading my boxes as well.
“Thanks,” I said. “Now in only eleven short months we can pull everything out again.”
We started back for the stairs, but I soon realized that Allie’ d stopped following me. I turned around and found her kneeling in front of my Hunting trunk. I keep it under a pile of old linens, but that didn’t stop her. She’d already pulled them off, and now she was looking at the brass latch, and the polished leather and oiled wood that formed the trunk itself.
“So what do you really keep in here?” she asked. In the past, I’d casually mentioned that there were various keep-sakes in the trunk. Nothing important. Only a sentimental thing or two.
Considering what she’d recently learned, though, her question was legitimate. Still, I didn’t hear natural curiosity. I heard accusations: Is this your Hunting stuff? You’re still using it, aren’t you? And if you are, why did you lie to me?
I sternly told the voices in my head to shut up, then crossed to her side. “I keep my old Forza tools in there,” I said. And then, because I knew I had to, I added, “Do you want to see?”
Her eyes sparkled, and she nodded.
“Okay, then.” I keep the trunk locked for obvious reasons, and I have the key hidden on a small nail on one of the rafters. I snagged it, then crossed back to Allie, handing her the key so that she could do the honors.
She put the key in the lock almost reverentially, then tugged the heavy brass lock open. She looked at me then, and I nodded. With that silent encouragement, she took hold of the lid and pushed it up.
“Oh, come on, Mom,” she said, her voice full of irritation and accusation. “Are you jerking me around or what?” She reached inside and came out with a recipe card. “Like you’re ever going to make a mango-strawberry soufflé.”
I laughed, because I’d forgotten that she wouldn’t see my tools right away. The trunk is the kind that has a fitted, shallow tray on top, and in a clever attempt at camouflaging, I’d filled the trunk with recipes, decorating tips, and other household hints that I’d ripped from magazines.
“I’m not conning you, Al,” I said, leaning over her to pull the entire tray out, revealing the black velvet cloth I keep over my tools. I grabbed a corner and tugged it aside, too. From inside the trunk, my well-polished tools gleamed in the dim attic light.
“Whoa,” she said, her tone full of astonishment and awe. “Now that’s cool.”
“I know,” I said, kneeling down next to her. Maybe I should have discouraged her enthusiasm, but it is cool. And I could hardly lie to my own daughter.
“So what is all this stuff?”
“Well, let’s see.” I shifted position, then reached in and grabbed up my trusty crossbow. “This little guy saved my life on more than one occasion.”
“Awesome.” She reached out tentatively, then drew her fingers back.
“It’s okay,” I said, passing it to her. “You can hold it.” I almost didn’t let her, fearing that by holding it she’d catch the demon-hunting bug, as if it were a virus spread by contact. But the truth is, I knew better. It wasn’t a virus, it was a gene. And now that her fear was fading, my battle was all about timing.
Surprisingly, she didn’t inspect the crossbow for as long as I expected. She gave it a good look-over, stroked the wood that had been oiled until it gleamed, then set it aside to peer once again into the trunk.
“All of this stuff,” she said, her voice filled with awe. “It’s like you’re fighting in a medieval war or something.”
“In a way we are,” I said. “The war between good and evil has been going on for a long time.”
I expected a patented Alison Crowe eye roll for that, but instead she just nodded sagely, as if she’d been contemplating the character of good and evil her whole life.
“How do you know?” she asked after a moment. “I mean, unless they look like those monsters we saw, how do you know who’s a demon and who isn’t?”
I’d been wondering when she was going to ask that. Wondering if she’d been seeing demons around every corner, in the faces of her friends and the people she passed on the street. Honestly, that’s not all that far from the truth. Demons are around us. All the time.
Fortunately, they’re mostly incorporeal, which means they’re just floating around in the ether, wishing they had a human body.
“But sometimes they do,” Allie said, after I explained all of that. “Have a body, I mean.”
“Right,” I acknowledged. “They can do that a couple of ways. They can go the old-fashioned possession route, but that’s no fun because the whole head-spinning Exorcist schtick doesn’t really blend in with the general population.”
Allie managed a smile. “No, I guess it wouldn’t.”
“Possessions are a priest’s problem. But your dad and I were Hunters. We went after the demons who managed to blend in.”
“How?”
“By taking over the shell of a newly vacated body. The soul goes out, the demon goes in.”
A combination of fear and disgust filled her eyes. “Wait, wait, wait. Are you saying that after I die, my body could be—”
“No, no,” I assured her. “A demon can’t inhabit the body of the faithful. Our souls fight. There’s only a tiny window of opportunity for the demon to slip in. Miss it, and the body is just a body. Nothing more.”
That, actually, was why demon infestations tended to concentrate on places where their odds increase. Hospitals are number one. And in San Diablo, the demons have laid a serious stake to the nursing home.
“But if they do slip into a body,” I continued, “then they can walk around like you and me, and nobody’s the wiser. Or, at least, nobody except a Demon Hunter.”
“Which is exactly what I asked in the first place,” she said. “How come you can tell but nobody else can?”
I gave her the CliffsNotes version of Demon Spotting 101, running through the various tests on which a Hunter relies, with breath being first on the list.
A demon’s breath is beyond putrid. But in this day of Listerine strips and Trident White gum, even the nastiest breath can be masked.
A better test is holy water, but it can be awkward trying to douse a potential demon to see if the water burns. And, of course, a demon can’t walk on holy ground. But like the saying goes, you can lead a demon to church, but you can’t make him walk inside.
Or something like that.
“So once you’re sure,” Allie asked, “then what? You get ’em with the crossbow?”
“That’s one way,” I said. “But to kill a demon you have to get him right in the eye.”
“Ewwww.” She scrunched up her face, appropriately grossed out. “And then they’re dead?”
I shook my head. “No. But then they don’t have a body anymore.” The only way to truly kill a demon was to cut it down while in its true form. But once encased in a human shell, demons very rarely revealed their true natu
re. Allie, in fact, was one of the few who had seen a true demon and lived to tell about it.
She turned her attention back to my trunk. “So to kill the demon, you have to get close enough to jam that through its eye?” she asked, pointing to my stiletto.
“Or learn how to throw it accurately.”
She looked at me with respect. “You can do that?”
“Yeah,” I said with a small laugh. “I can’t make a chocolate cake from scratch, but I can nail a demon from twenty paces.”
“Pretty cool,” she said.
Indeed.
I was grinning when I took the knife from the trunk, explaining how Eric had given it to me for our third anniversary. He’d had it custom made, and it boasted a double-action release system. What I didn’t tell her was how much of a workout the blade had gotten lately. I can’t traipse around San Diablo with a crossbow, but the stiletto fits nicely in the sleeve of my favorite leather jacket.
She took a bit more interest in the knife than she had in the crossbow, even going so far as to slash it through the air one or two times. “Pretty cool,” she repeated. “And romantic,” she added, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Well, it was romantic,” I said, laughing at her expression. “Thoughtful and useful. What more could a woman ask for?”
“Stuart usually gives you flowers and jewelry.”
“Which I also love,” I said.
“They’re not useful.”
“But they’re thoughtful,” I retorted. “And considering I don’t have nearly enough jewelry to wear to all these various parties he and I go to, the pieces come in handy as well.”
“I guess,” she said, but she was looking at the knife, and I couldn’t help but think that she was mentally comparing her father to Stuart. I couldn’t blame her; at the moment, so was I.
My love life, though, wasn’t nearly enough to hold her attention, and she started pawing through the trunk again. She carefully lifted various items out—glass bottles for holding holy water, crucifixes, dangerous knives with ornate handles. She examined each, then inevitably moved on to something else.
At one point, she pulled out a tiny velvet bag. She looked at it curiously, then started to untie the strings that firmly sealed it at the top. I gently tugged it out of her hand with a quick shake of my head. “Careful with that.”
“What is it?”
I hesitated.
“Oh, come on, Mom. Either you’re telling me the truth or you’re not. I mean you can’t just—”
I held up a hand to ward off her diatribe—not to mention my guilt. “Fine. You win. Take a peek, but open it carefully.”
She did, moving slowly and reverentially. As she peered into the bag, I saw her forehead crinkle, and when she looked up at me there was no mistaking the confusion on her face. “It’s dust,” she said.
“Powerful dust,” I countered, a small sampling of the relic that Goramesh had come to San Diablo this past summer to find. I’d managed to foil him, but it hadn’t been easy.
I’m not entirely sure why I kept the dust. Superstition, maybe. A memento from my defeat of a High Demon even when I was out of shape and out of practice. And, more, a reminder of why I was willing to come out of retirement in the first place. To keep my kids—my family—safe.
“So what’s the big deal about the dust?” she asked. “It’s not like you couldn’t find twenty bags’ worth under the living room sofa.”
“Very funny, Miss I’m-About-to-Get-More-Chores.”
“Seriously,” she said, closing the bag and holding it up. “What’s it do?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “Nothing except bring the dead back to life.”
Her eyes widened. “Whoa. No sh— No kidding?”
“No kidding,” I said. At least, that was my understanding.
I never actually got to see the dust in action, and now the bulk of it was safely tucked away in the Vatican.
“Where’d you get it?” she asked, staring in wonderment at the little bag.
I took it gently from her hands and placed it back in the trunk. “Long story,” I said. “One of these days, I’ll tell you.”
I expected her to press me on the point, but I guess the lure of the trunk was too strong because she was off and running again.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“What?” I leaned forward, trying to see what she’d found under a pile of old Forza reports that had spilled out of a leather folio near the bottom of the trunk. She shifted, and I saw the brown paper bag in her hand. My heart gave a little stutter, and I think I made a soft sound, because Allie looked at me, a question in her eyes. “That’s your daddy’s stuff,” I said, my voice thick. “The things that were with him when he died.”
“Oh.” Just one small word, but it hung between us. She looked at me, and I saw the storm start in her eyes.
I scooted over and pulled her close to me. We sat that way for a while, both of us thinking about Eric. Finally, I looked at her, my hand on the bag. “Do you want to open it?”
She gave only a tiny nod in reply.
“Go ahead, then.”
She carefully opened the sack and peered inside. I knew the contents by heart. His wallet. A blank postcard showing the Golden Gate Bridge emerging triumphant from the fog. A man’s gold ring with a ruby surrounded by tiny diamonds, one of the many rings Eric collected and wore, although this one was a bit bigger and gaudier than his usual style.
When the police had sent me the bag, I’d stared at the contents daily, my heart aching for the man who’d been going about his business, oblivious to his killer until it was too late. At the time, I’d cried myself to sleep wondering if we were his last thoughts, and pitying the man who wouldn’t see his daughter grow up.
Lately, though, I’d cried for a different reason. Because Allie and I had recently learned that Eric’s death hadn’t been the random mugging we’d once believed. It had been deliberate. It had been murder.
And, undoubtedly, it had been the result of his demon-hunting past.
She slipped on the ring then held her hand up, the stones glimmering in the attic’s dim light. “I remember this,” she said.
“You do?” I frowned, surprised by that. After all, I barely remembered the thing. Eric had always had a thing for rings, something I found amusing since I rarely wore jewelry. He’d owned at least three dozen rings, collected at various places across the globe, and he would wear a different one each day.
“I was looking for my birthday present and I found it in his sock drawer. I thought it was cool.”
There were so many things wrong with that statement, I didn’t even know where to begin. “You were looking in your father’s drawers for presents?”
“Come on, Mom. It wasn’t like I was snooping around yesterday.”
Good point. “Yes, but how can I ever trust your judgment again. I mean, you’ve just admitted to thinking that is cool.”
“Yeah, well, like I said. I was a little kid.” She took the ring off and put it back in the bag, then pulled out Eric’s wallet. I knew what she’d see when she opened it—his driver’s license was still in the little plastic envelope, although his money had been taken.
I watched as my little girl swallowed, then pressed her fingertips over her father’s photo. A single tear snaked down her face, hung tenaciously to the end of her nose, and then finally landed with a plop on the wallet. Only then did she look up at me.
“Do you think he’s still watching me?”
“Oh, baby. I know he is.”
“I can’t even think up his face anymore. When I close my eyes, all I can see is that picture of us in my room. It’s not a memory of the past, you know? It’s just the memory of a picture, and that’s not the same.”
“You remember him, sweetheart. Who he was and how much he loved you. If you can keep that in your heart, it doesn’t really matter what he looks like.” I tapped her nose. “All this is just a shell anyway, right? It was the man inside you l
oved.”
My voice cracked a little as I spoke, and it hit me again how much I’d lost with David’s announcement last night. For weeks, I’d been entertaining the fantasy that while Eric’s form had changed, the man himself was still around. Still watching over Allie.
Now, I knew there was only me.
My chest seemed to fill with lead, the weight of loss and the unknown pulling me down. I hugged Allie close, and we sat that way for a long time, just the two of us, lost in memories.
After a while, she shifted a little, then lifted the bag and toyed with it. “So how come you kept it all up here? Daddy was retired when he was killed, right? So why keep his stuff with your demon-hunting things?”
I started to answer, but she got there first, her head cocking to one side. “He wasn’t retired,” she announced triumphantly. “Daddy was still hunting demons, right up to the day he was killed.”
“I think he might have been,” I admitted, though that wasn’t why I kept his stuff in the trunk. That was simply because it seemed to belong there, with the things from my past that were special to me.
“You think?”
“Because of the notes we found,” I explained. “My best guess is that your dad was hunting again.” Right before Christmas, Allie and I had found two cryptic notes from Eric. To both of us, it had been clear that Eric had been purposefully killed. From the subtext, though, I’d gleaned that he’d stuck his toe back in the Forza waters. Whether he’d gone so far as to hunt again, though...
That I wasn’t sure about, and that one simple question had weighed on me for weeks. I’d lived for years with the belief that I knew Eric inside and out, just like he knew me. And then, with one cryptic note, everything changed. Suddenly, I’d learned that Eric had secrets. Big secrets.
Reality had slapped me hard across the face and I was still reeling.
“When we moved to San Diablo,” I began, in response to Allie’s querying look, “it was because we’d retired. We were done with hunting. It’s not exactly a career you want long term. There’s a pretty high mortality rate, and we were starting a family.”