by Angie Fox
“Lizzie, do you hear that? It sounds like a man’s voice, only…only far away. But I’m sure I locked the front door…”
“Cover your ears,” I pleaded. “Try not to breathe too deep.”
The phone line went crackly. For a moment I was sure I’d lost her, but then I heard movement. “Get out of there, Mom. Go!”
“I think…” Her voice was so soft I had to strain to make it out. “I think…”
A second later, the phone went dead.
2
I stared at my phone in shock, vaguely aware of voices around me—the murmur of Dimitri’s low, intense concern, Grandma’s questions getting closer and closer—but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t believe something like this was happening.
Only, I could.
I’d feared it from the beginning.
It was the reason I’d left town in the first place—to protect my family, to protect the kids I used to teach, heck, to protect the non-magical people in my life from any evil power or demented spooks or—
It was Pirate who snapped me out of it, prancing over from the QuikTrip with his tail held high. “Lizzie! Lizzie! They had a special, buy one get one free on Road Warrior Beefy Sticks!”
I cleared my throat. “That’s great, buddy, but we’ve got to go.”
I could fix this. I had to.
Pirate danced on his front two legs. “Aw, but, Lizzie, I haven’t even watered the trees yet.”
I raised my voice to the group. “Change of plans. We’re heading to my condo. My mom is there, and she’s in big trouble.”
Dimitri put a hand on my shoulder, sharing a little of the pure goodness and light of his griffin power with me. “Demon trouble?”
I placed my hand over his. “I don’t know, but we don’t have time to waste.”
Grandma got to us in time to catch the last part of our conversation. “Hillary’s at your old condo?” She groaned. “I knew we should have come back and burned that place down after last time. Damn it.” She turned to the rest of the witches. “Saddle up, people! We’ve got places to be five minutes ago!”
“I’ll ride with Flappy!” Pirate announced, then turned and shouted at the dragon, “Hey! Noble steed! Get down here; we’ve got a damsel in distress to rescue!” Flappy looked up from his impromptu scratching post, whuffled excitedly, and heaved himself into a glide down to the parking lot. The T he’d been rubbing against creaked ominously, then fell to the pavement below.
“No riding the dragon,” I said, striding for my bike.
“Aw, Lizzie, why not?” Pirate asked, following.
“Because he doesn’t know the way.” I scooped Pirate up.
The last thing I needed right now was for people to look up in the air and see a levitating terrier speeding across the sky. Besides, I had a doggie carrier in my saddlebag. When Pirate was strapped to me, he got all the excitement and wind of the open road, and I knew he was safe.
Once I’d buckled him in, I swung my leg over my Harley.
We had better find my mom safe and sound. If we didn’t…
I kicked the starter and my bike rumbled to life. My relationship with Mom had always been touchy, and I knew she wasn’t enthusiastic about my new lifestyle, but when push came to shove, she always came through for me. And I needed to come through for her.
“Stay close to me,” I murmured to Dimitri. He was my rock. My best friend.
“Just try to shake me.” He leaned over and kissed me quickly, leaving me warmed down to my soul and almost breathless.
We surged onto the road like we’d been hit by a Bat out of Hell spell, going so far over the speed limit that I hoped we didn’t run into any cops, because I wasn’t stopping for anything.
Listening to my mother get pulled into something beyond her control had been horrifying. She didn’t deserve that. No one did.
I mean, I was a demon slayer, I thrived on danger. I’d chosen this life. My mom had only chosen to care for me.
We’d better not find anything terrible at that condo.
We made it in record speed, roaring down my old street, noisy enough to wake the dead. We surrounded my mother’s champagne-colored Mercedes S-Class parked demurely in the drive.
I rushed past it and up the stairs to the porch and tried the handle.
Locked.
“I’ve got a Lock Eater in my pocket, hang—” Grandma began as I leaned back for leverage and hammered my heel into the door, slamming it open “—or you could do that.”
“Mom?” I stepped up to the foyer of my former home, one hand dropping to the switch stars on my utility belt. They were similar to Chinese throwing stars, only bigger, sharper, and way deadlier. They’d served me well in a lot of different ways since becoming a demon slayer, and I held one at the ready. Dimitri stood right behind me. He always had my back. I took a deep breath then stepped inside.
I felt…nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. That was weird in and of itself.
Beige tile, beige walls. The welcome sign I’d bought at HomeGoods.
I’d expected the mist my mom had described.
Perhaps the smell of sulfur.
“Mom? Where are you?” I ventured farther into the condo, past the little table where I used to keep my purse and keys, which was now decorated with a bouquet of my mother’s prized Black Dragon roses. They looked good.
On my right side, the door to the hallway bathroom lay open. I peered inside, almost afraid of what I would find, but again—there was nothing strange in there. No clinging fog, no blue smoke, not even my own charred handprints. Whoever Hillary had gotten to clean the place up, they’d been thorough.
Leave it to my mom.
Darn it, where was she? I checked out the living room as I walked by, but saw nothing. When I hit the kitchen, though—
“Mom!” I lowered my switch star and dropped to my knees beside her on the linoleum. She lay sprawled on the cold floor. I’d never seen her appear so still, so…dead.
A familiar strand of pink pearls wound around her neck, a gift from my dad on their thirtieth anniversary. I slipped two fingers under. She had a pulse.
I touched her chest.
She was breathing.
Thank God.
I grabbed her shoulder and shook her gently. “Mom?”
With her pale, straight hair and cream-colored complexion, she looked a little like an elegant ghost passed out on the floor.
“Hillary?” I tried, because nothing annoyed her faster than me using her first name. Not a stir, just strangely steady breaths.
I clung to that. If she was breathing, she was alive.
Pirate arrived, Frieda just a step behind him. “Oh no! Bacon-wrapped oyster woman!” At times, Pirate had trouble remembering people’s names, but he never forgot the last thing they’d fed him. He licked her closest hand. “She doesn’t look so good.”
Frieda got down beside me, her silver bracelets jangling musically. “Let me take a look, sugar.” Frieda was the closest thing the coven had to a healing witch these days. She felt for Mom’s pulse, checked beneath her eyelids, and then drew a purple crystal from her pocket. “Mild diagnostic spell,” she said by way of explanation, never taking her eyes off my mom.
She ran the crystal over my mom, who wore what I called one of her “after Labor Day cheat suits,” a tailored pantsuit of such a pale lavender that it just barely avoided being white. Mom would never be caught dead on the floor wearing a parka much less a designer pantsuit. I tried to steady my breath. It was no secret that we hadn’t ever really gotten along, but she was still my mom and she loved me and she’d accepted me, and I needed her to wake up now.
Frieda shot me an apologetic look. “I’m not detecting anything abnormal.”
Well, she was wrong. “I’ll take a look.” My slayer powers could be used to search out evil, whether it was hiding in a person, place, or thing. I’d used it to illuminate dark souls and help me grapple with demons of all sorts. Now I had to use it on my own mother. I was afraid
of what I’d find.
I felt Dimitri close behind me, all his warmth and power ready to bolster mine. I could do this. We could do this. Heaven knew we’d done harder things.
I let my demon-slayer energy build inside me, growing from a tiny spark to an inferno. I fed it my worry, my fear for my mom, my love for the woman who’d raised me like her own; I let it build, fed the flames until my whole body felt on the verge of combustion. When I felt full to the point that I either had to release it or let it explode on its own, I focused my sight on Hillary and poured my energy into her body, scouring her soul for the reason behind her collapse.
There was definitely something, but it was faint, subtle…
I had no room to fail. I peered closer at it, but even as I focused my sight on one part of it, another bit faded away.
“No.” I slammed my hand onto the floor. “There’s something dark in there for sure, but I can’t pin it down.” I sat back on my heels. “It’s too faint. It’s almost like it’s wearing camouflage.” It didn’t make sense. Demons were a lot of things, but covert really wasn’t in their playbook.
“We’ll root it out,” Grandma promised, more confident than I felt. “Possession can happen to the best of us. Budge over, Frieda.” She joined us with a groan and an audible creaking in her knees. “We got this,” she assured me as she reached into her leather satchel and pulled out a Smucker’s jar.
This one was filled with a brackish green and brown liquid, and when she opened it up, my nose promptly staged a revolt and stopped working completely. My stomach sloshed warningly, and I had to shut my eyes for a moment. “Strong stuff,” she said, “my favorite anti-demonic spell.” She poured the liquid around my mother like a halo, then splashed a little on her jacket for good measure.
That should have woken her more than anything. I could almost hear Hillary’s cry of “Not my Dior!”
A thin purple haze rose up from the sludge.
“Is it working?” I demanded, even as it dissipated into the air a moment later. It should have turned blue. “Where did it go?” I pressed. Blue would have confirmed the presence of a demon.
Grandma scowled and shook the jar. “What the hell? Is this spell a dud?”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. The Red Skulls’ spells always worked. Someone could die if they didn’t. Like my mother could right now.
Grandma craned her head over her shoulder. “Ant Eater, were you drunk when you put this one together?”
“Watch it, Gertie,” Ant Eater snapped. “I could make this spell drunk, high, blindfolded and with one hand tied behind my back, and it would still turn out perfect.”
I grabbed Grandma’s jacket. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Get another one.”
She gave a hard nod and gently removed my hand. “Easy now,” she instructed. Grandma reached into her satchel and grabbed another jar. “Everybody here cares about your mom,” she said, unscrewing the lid.
Not as much as I did.
The spell hissed as she poured it out over the last one.
Purple smoke rose and dissipated the same as it did before. There was no flash of blue. No nothing.
“Sweet Jesus.” Frieda whistled.
Ant Eater slapped her leg. “That doesn’t make any sense. What kind of possession can beat one of our spells and keep Lizzie from nailing it down?”
Grandma glanced at me. “The strong kind.” She sounded grim. “We need to get it under control before it’s too late. I need fresh raccoon liver, stat.”
“I’ve got some on my bike, let me go get it.” Frieda pushed to her feet with more elegance than should be possible for a sixty-five-year-old woman in six-inch platform heels.
Dimitri stirred against my back. “I’m going to go run crowd control,” he murmured. “We got a lot of stares from your old neighbors when we arrived. The last thing we need right now is civilians poking their noses in while the witches are working.”
“Thanks,” I said, squeezing his arm. Dimitri didn’t have any ability with, or interest in witchcraft. He’d be more useful outside. “Try to keep Pirate and Flappy occupied too if you can.” They didn’t need to see this.
“It’s going to be okay,” he assured me.
I nodded. I really wanted to believe that.
He left, and Frieda returned a minute later with a bag full of ingredients.
“Raccoon liver,” she said, pulling out a plastic baggie filled with a soft gray sludge. “I’ve got rattler gizzard in here too.”
“Rattlesnakes don’t have gizzards,” I informed her.
“Oh, they do if you dig deep enough,” she said blithely. “Now, let me see…”
She’d better know what she was doing.
Mom hadn’t moved. Hadn’t done so much as draw a deep breath. She looked small and helpless laid out on the floor. She’d lost a shoe, a satiny ballet-style flat that matched the suit.
I let the biker witches work, and as the concoction of various bits and pieces got more elaborate, I scooted back out of the way. I had to trust them. I mean, I always did.
My mom’s shoe lay under the breakfast bar.
I drew it out. The witches would do better without me, I reasoned, clinging to the delicate ballet flat. It wasn’t that I was a bad witch myself, it was just that—okay, fine, I was pretty bad at witchcraft. I had tried my hand at a few spells, but they never worked the way I intended. The last Lock Eater spell I’d made not only attacked the lock; it went after the whole door.
The biker witches’ heads bobbed over my mom’s prone form.
I didn’t need to be good at witchcraft, not when I had my kickass demon-slaying powers going for me, but I worked on it anyway because I wanted every advantage I could get. I maintained my lack of spell casting finesse was part Grandma’s fault, because what kind of recipe called for “a pinch of graveyard dirt” or “a dash of demon ash”?
She assured me I’d get better at it with practice. Therefore, I practiced. Dimitri and Pirate had learned to join Flappy outside back home during these sessions. It was safer for everyone that way.
“Here we go,” Grandma announced.
I drew close, keeping to the outside of the circle. Mom still looked the same, only the witches had definitely made their mark. That suit was never going to be saved, and at this rate, I wasn’t too sure about her hair, either. Hillary would be horrified if she could see herself.
I desperately wanted to see her horrified. I wanted her to wake up. I needed her to.
Grandma, Frieda, Ant Eater and a few others knelt around my mom, laced their hands together and began to chant. The words weren’t Latin—I didn’t know what they meant—but they focused the coven’s power on Hillary, exerting their control over whatever was possessing her.
I felt the rising power like static electricity against my skin, building up in the air until my hair had to be floating.
Bright blue sparks arced from witch to witch, like a Tesla coil gone into overdrive, then shot down into the center of my mom’s body. She glowed with borrowed power, the sigils drawn on her skin and clothes lighting up like neon signs. It was beautiful magic and so powerful it almost took my breath away.
A few seconds later the sparks began to die down. After another minute, the light had faded entirely, and the sigils that had been painted wet and heavy on her were as dry as dust.
“Well…” I prodded.
Grandma sighed and leaned back, putting her weight onto her hands with a groan. “Well, that’s shitty.”
My heart sank. “It didn’t work?”
“Oh, it worked, all right.” She slapped the linoleum with one callused palm. “That’s our strongest warding spell; it always works.” She glanced around my kitchen, as if she could spot the trouble hovering over the breakfast bar or hiding next to the stove. “Trouble is, this ward’s not gonna do the trick for long. Whatever the entity is that’s possessing Hillary, it’s dark, and it’s incredibly powerful.”
“How did we not spot this before?” I de
manded.
“We were gone,” Grandma shot back. She sighed. “I’m sorry, kid. I’m just frustrated.” She leaned back on her heels. “Truth is it would have been easy for another demon to follow Xerxes over from the other side. We didn’t exactly check before we left.” She shot me an apologetic glance. “There are a dozen different kinds of hell spawn, but we were running, and we couldn’t catch the dog or get you on a bike, and we were flat out of time. I was a little off my game.” She sighed. “Xerxes was the only baddie I warded against on the way out.”
I felt cold. “You mean it’s been here all that time? Why not go after my mom sooner?”
“I can’t say, but I can tell you this.” She sighed tiredly. “Even with our strongest spell, we’ve got a max of three days to get whatever it is out of Hillary before it takes her over completely. After that, she’s gone.”
3
When I was a kid and objecting for one reason or another about having to do my homework or practicing the piano, Hillary would tell me, “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.”
I didn’t know whether that was meant to be motivational or scary—at the time it was neither, since I didn’t realize that devils were real back then—but if she could see all the activity going on around her now, she’d be impressed. The witches weren’t taking any prisoners when it came to securing the condo or my mom.
It was the least they could do, considering Grandma’s failure to ward the place when we left. I tamped down my anger as Ant Eater barked out orders and the witches scurried to follow them. It would do no good to point fingers now. Grandma had done the best she could at the time. Heaven knew I hadn’t always been the ideal kick-ass demon slayer, especially when under life-and-death pressure.
We just couldn’t afford to make any mistakes now.
Ant Eater organized the witches into squads, each one handling a different room and festooning them with colorful and occasionally noisy defensive spells. Creely was looking at ceiling angles and taking measurements and muttering about “overspill,” whatever that was—maybe she was trying to make sure the neighbors on either side didn’t end up accidentally whiffing any spell residue.