Demons in My Driveway

by R. L. Naquin

  I might as well have said I was off to rob a bank the way everyone erupted in panicked pleas to rethink my actions.

  “Relax,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’m going to Aggie’s house. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.” I stepped through the doorway, then turned back, wagging my finger. “If anyone follows me, I’ll have Aggie put a curse on them.” I dispensed a healthy dose of stink-eye at all the worried faces looking back at me.

  Faces of people who loved me and didn’t want me to get hurt. Unfair? Sure. But so was the present situation. And I had to get my head together or I’d say things so much worse. A nice, quiet visit with Aggie might help. It usually did.

  Some time ago, Maurice had overseen the expansion of the fairy ring so it ran through part of the woods near my house, and extended around Aggie’s house on the other side. But I’m not completely foolish. When I got to the edge of my yard, I waited for Tashi before stepping into the trees.

  Since her mate, Iris, died, she’d mostly kept to herself. But I always knew she was there. A flash of white fur between the trees. A haunting yowl in the night. Trees waving as she made her way through the forest.

  Even if she didn’t make herself seen as much as Iris had, I knew she’d taken over the skunk-ape’s self-appointed duties as my bodyguard through the woods. If I wanted to visit Aggie, the yeti would accompany me, whether I saw her doing it or not. But since I hadn’t seen her for awhile, I hoped she’d walk with me, rather than staying in the shadows.

  I didn’t have to wait long before Tashi appeared, a soft smile on her full lips. She loomed over me, her shaggy white hair brushed and shining. To my utter surprise, her belly jutted out before her, round and heavy.

  I widened my eyes. “Tashi! Are you...” I held my hand toward her swollen belly, not quite touching.

  She grunted in self-satisfaction, then took my wrist in her enormous hand, pulling me forward to press my fingers against her. Beneath all that fur, a tiny foot or hand pressed back.

  My eyes blurred with tears. “Oh, Iris,” I whispered. “I so wish you were here for this.”

  We stood like that for some time, Tashi holding my hand against her to feel the baby’s movements, grinning down at me and making cooing and chuffing noises.

  I already felt a hundred percent better than I had—and I wasn’t at Aggie’s house, yet. I wiped my face dry, and Tashi and I made our way through the thin strip of woods to get to Aggie’s house.

  Tashi smacked her lips and made a series of short grunts, then squatted at the edge of the woods, overlooking Aggie’s house. She waved at me and pointed at the ground, indicating that she would keep watch and wait to escort me home.

  Iris had left me in good hands.

  Aggie the Hag stood by the gate of her white picket fence, wrapped in a bright yellow-and-blue crocheted shawl. It never mattered how spontaneous my visits were to me, she always knew I was coming, and she was always outside waiting for me.

  The wonderful aroma drifting through her open kitchen door told me she had cookies in the oven for me too. Knowing Aggie was like having a magic granny.

  “Well, hurry!” She grinned and waved me into the house. “We’re letting all the heat out.”

  She herded me through the door and sat me at the kitchen table where a steaming mug of tea already waited. The sound of hundreds of ticking clocks soothed my nerves. I wrapped my hands around my cup and inhaled the clean, herbal scent rising from it. “Did you know Tashi is pregnant?”

  Aggie’s blue-white curls bobbed. “Of course I did, dear. Didn’t you?” She slid over a plate of cinnamon cookies, still warm from the oven.

  I took a bite and let the buttery treat melt in my mouth before I answered. “I’ve barely seen her. Iris was fairly aloof, but Tashi is downright shy.”

  “I suspect you’ll see more of her after the babies come.” She folded a kitchen towel and set it on the counter.

  I choked on my cookie. “Babies?”

  She tilted her head and gave me a dreamy smile. “Sweetheart, didn’t you know? Yetis always come in twos.”

  I scowled and took another cookie. “I bet my mother knows that.”

  “Well, yes, she probably does.”

  I gulped my tea, burning my mouth. “She’s probably delivered loads of yeti babies, and knows a bunyip from a wolpertinger on sight.” I tore into a third cookie, chewing and swallowing without bothering to taste it.

  Aggie’s brow wrinkled in concern. “What’s this about, Zoey?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing.”

  She folded her hands under her chin, and her jeweled rings caught the light. “It’s not a competition.”

  “I know.” I picked at a loose thread on the cuff of my sweater. “She knows all this stuff. I feel stupid sometimes. And I get the feeling she disapproves of me. She thinks I’m reckless, I guess.”

  Aggie made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Sweetheart, you aren’t your mother. And she isn’t you. You’re different people with different experiences. If you compare yourself to her, you’ll come up short. But you know what?” She touched her fingertips to my chin so I’d look at her. “If she compares herself to you, she’ll come up short too. Do you understand?”

  As if her words had triggered it, all the clocks in her little cottage struck the hour at once, and a cacophony of chirps, cuckoos, buzzers, dings and ringing sounded off. The noise rang in my ears the same way her words rang in my heart. Maybe I was too hard on my mom. Maybe I was too hard on myself.

  We waited through it until the minute had passed, then resumed as if nothing had happened.

  “I get it.” I rubbed my face in an effort to scrub away my crappy mood. “I’m sorry. I’m grumpy today. I meant to leave all that at the house with all the people crowding it. Change of subject. What do you know about the Covenant? I can’t seem to get a solid answer out of anybody.”

  She patted my hand. “Grab your cup and we’ll see what we can find in the library.”

  * * *

  We spent a good hour going through the multitude of books lining the walls of her living room. We found nothing useful. If a copy of the actual Covenant were to be had, it wasn’t likely to be in an old lady’s cottage in the middle of Bolinas, California. Since no one, not even the Board, seemed to know what the exact terms of the Covenant were, it stood to reason nobody had seen it in a very long time.

  If I wanted a definitive answer, I’d probably have to go back in time and talk to the people or creatures who’d originally made the agreement.

  “Aggie?” I sat on the floor in the center of her rag rug, books piled around me. “What’s the oldest Hidden you know of?”

  She scratched her chin and set aside the leather-bound diary she was leafing through. “Dragons are quite old. Bruce, for example, is over two hundred years old.”

  I widened my eyes in surprise. “He’s so small. I always figured he was more like my age.” That was a partial truth. When I’d first met him, I’d thought he was a baby. And a girl because, due to a nasty cold, he was pink.

  “He is, dear. In dragon years.” She shook a piece of aged paper loose from a green book with black letters. After examining the paper, she sniffed it, then put it back.

  “Can we talk to his parents, maybe? Grandparents? If dragons live that long, we might be able to find someone who knows more about the Covenant.”

  Aggie fixed me with a sad look. “Dragons are rare these days. Only the pygmy version survived the Crusades.” She folded her hands in her lap, almost as if in prayer. “Bruce lost his whole family in the name of religion. And his egg stayed dormant for centuries before it hatched. He’s spent most of his life looking for others like him.”

  My throat tightened. “So, he’s alone? He’s never found anyone?”

  “He’s found others. Not very many though.”

  “Oh.” I flipped through the book in my hands, barely looking at the pages while I thought of poor, dog-sized Bruce, spending his days searching for others lik
e him. I’d never asked him about his past. If I hadn’t needed Molly to translate for me every time Bruce came around, I might have had deeper conversations with him—deep enough to share his life, and not just borrow jewelry from his stash.

  The pages fluttered through my fingers. The book’s gold edging left a powder on my skin. I had no idea what the title of the book was, since the cover was too worn to read and the first several pages had fallen out. As I flipped through, heavier cardstock appeared every so often with faded but still beautiful hand-painted watercolors of Hidden creatures—many of which I couldn’t identify.

  Somewhere toward the middle, I spotted a painting of a snarling woman with pointed teeth and wild hair. Blood dripped from her face, and a young boy lay at her feet with his eyes closed. The label at the bottom of the page said Aswaang in Vampirrik Forme. I turned to the front of the chapter and found the title “Aswaangs of the Olde World.”

  “This might help.” I snapped the book shut. “It won’t explain the Covenant, but it might give me tips on defending myself.”

  Aggie made no sign of having heard me. Her lips moved without sound, and her eyes stared over my shoulder, as if the bookshelf behind me held some deep, startling secret.

  “Aggie?” I wasn’t sure if I should disturb her. The longer I watched, the more I was convinced she was in some sort of trance. She didn’t seem to be in any distress, so maybe this was how she got all the crazy information she always had. Maybe this was normal for her, and I hadn’t seen it before.

  Or maybe she was having a stroke and I was sitting there like an idiot, marveling at her ability to focus on the spine of a handmade book on making alpaca cheese.

  “Aggie, are you okay?” I crawled across the floor and touched her leg. My voice was higher than I’d expected it to be, revealing more worry than I tried to let on.

  The movement of her mouth stopped, then her gaze cleared and she looked at me sitting at her feet.

  Her eyes looked so sad they made my heart hurt. She made an attempt at a smile, but it wasn’t convincing. “I’m fine. Did you find something?”

  I scrambled to where I’d been and recovered the watercolor book. “I found a chapter about aswangs.”

  “That’s wonderful, dear.” She didn’t sound like she thought anything was wonderful. More than anything, she sounded distracted. “I could use a fresh cup of tea.”

  I followed her into the kitchen and refilled the kettle, ignoring the goosebumps along my arms. We sat at the table to wait for the water to boil.

  I took her hand in both of mine. “Where did you go in there, Aggie?”

  She pressed a finger against her lower lip and took a deep breath. “I was... I watched my own death.” She paused. “Again.”

  She’d told me some time ago that she’d seen her death, and then had reassured me that her demise remained some time off in the future. She’d seemed almost chipper about it then. Now, not so much.

  “We still have time, right?” I frowned when she didn’t answer immediately.

  Finally, she shook her head, sending all those small ringlets jiggling on her head. “Not as much as I’d thought.”

  My stomach dropped like I’d been shoved off a skyscraper. “How soon?”

  She shrugged. “We can never be too sure of these things.” She patted my hands then went to make the tea.

  “You’re usually pretty sure of things you shouldn’t already know. You said something was coming last year, and it came.”

  She measured tealeaves into each cup. “I also said you’d take care of it, and you did.” The kettle made a low hum on its way to a higher pitch. She took it off the burner before it started screeching. “But something worse is on its way. Something I can’t see.”

  She poured water into the cups and brought them to the table.

  I pulled my cup close to me, but it couldn’t warm the icy dread running through me, making me shiver. “Is it an aswang?”

  “No.” She bent her head and inhaled the steam. “It’s something very old yet, at the same time, something very new.” Her gaze rose to meet mine and pinned me with its weight. “And it’s going to be the end of me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Tashi walked me home with a solemn face, as if she sensed my sadness. At the edge of my property, she turned to go but I stopped her.

  “Do you need anything, Tashi? For you? For the babies? You know if you want anything at all, you just need to tell Molly so she can let me know, right?”

  Tashi smiled and shook her shaggy head. She ruffled my hair, then loped off into the trees.

  “I guess she doesn’t need anything.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and faced the house. Nothing moved through the windows, but the calm was deceptive. Six more people might have shown up in the time I was gone. I released a melodramatic sigh, braced myself, and marched.

  Inside, the deceptive calm was even more convincing.

  “Hello?” I moved through the silent house, poking my head through doors, calling out to the missing people. “Anybody?”

  There weren’t that many rooms to go through. I came in through the living room, checked all three bedrooms, both bathrooms and the kitchen. Not a soul.

  Frowning—and more than a little worried, since Mom shouldn’t have left the protection of the house—I stepped through the kitchen door and into the magical invisi-bubble surrounding my back yard.

  Somehow, with my head ducked and my own voice grumbling in my ears, I’d missed the smell of roasting meat and the sound of people’s voices when I’d come through the edge of the bubble on the side of the house.

  Mom, Sara and Kam sat in folding chairs around a campfire, chatting and poking long sticks at an array of roasting food spread on a grate above the fire.

  “Finally,” Sara said. “We thought someone would have to go get you.”

  Maurice unfolded another chair and pushed me into it. “Sit, sit, sit. I’ll get you a drink.”

  Kam leaned into me from the chair next to mine. “Andrew and Daniel are coming soon.” She lowered her voice, as if sharing a shocking secret. “They’re bringing cake.”

  I considered pinching myself. The scenario held a sort of dreamlike quality, as if I’d dozed off and currently lay facedown in a plate of spaghetti. I’d left a crowded house full of tense people and came home to a camping trip in my backyard.

  In November.

  Break out the marshmallows and the plastic margarita glasses. Zoey’s gone over the edge and they’re staging an old-fashioned, backyard-barbeque intervention.

  As if he were reading my thoughts, Maurice reappeared by my side and handed me a margarita.

  I took a grateful sip. “Where did Riley and Darius go?”

  Mom held up her glass and smirked. “Tequila run. You got the last of it.”

  I frowned. Was everyone insane? Two of our heavy hitters went on an alcohol run, leaving a closet monster whose threat was largely illusion and a djinn who was trying to save her magic. Yes, we were inside the bubble, so probably couldn’t be found—but if we were, I’d rather have a mothman and a reaper there as muscle. I’d seen them fight. We were all safer with those two around.

  Maurice hummed to himself while he painted sauce on a rack of ribs. Sara and my Mom struck up a debate over kitten heels versus wedges. Kam—who for some odd reason was dressed in cutoffs, work boots and a flannel shirt and had to be freezing—pulled her hair to one side and braided it.

  Maybe it was me who had lost her mind. I was twitchy and stressed, but everyone else acted as though it were a perfectly normal day.

  No. Not a normal day.

  A great day.

  A day to celebrate, have some fun, and spend time together.

  I narrowed my eyes and watched everyone more carefully. The dark circles under Sara’s eyes were more pronounced than a few days before. Mom’s hand shook a little as she raised her glass to sip her margarita. Kam’s foot tapped at a fast pace, as if all the calm she showed had forced her tension into one foot
that had to release the tension or shoot off her ankle from the built-up pressure.

  There was so much food on that grill, an army couldn’t finish it all.

  And that was the biggest giveaway of all—Maurice cooked when he was nervous or upset.

  This wasn’t a picnic. This was an end-of-the-world party.

  The realization of what was really going on should have made me nervous, but it had the opposite effect. My friends weren’t trying to talk me down from a nervous breakdown, and I wasn’t in a ditch somewhere suffering from head trauma after hitting a moose. This was how we coped with the possibility of death in my family—we celebrated life.

  I sank deeper into my chair and sipped my drink.

  My position faced the house, so when Andrew and his partner, Daniel, showed up, I saw them coming—and the little ball of fluff they’d brought with them. Once the men had stepped inside the bubble, Andrew bent down and released his squirming charge.

  Milo streaked across the grass, tongue hanging to the side, and threw himself at me as soon as he was close enough to make the leap. The excited fennec fox was my biggest fan, and he covered my face in foxy licks and kisses, darting back and forth across my lap as if he could barely contain his exuberance. I handed my drink to Kam and wrapped both arms around Milo, to force him to be still and to hug the stuffing out of him. I planted a firm kiss of my own between his ears—one ear enormous and tall, the other cut short in a terrible accident—then released him. He hopped down, then ran around the circle, greeting everyone.

  I rose, grinning, to give the guys hugs. “Milo was exactly what I needed.” I kissed Andrew’s freckled cheek. “Thanks for bringing him.”

  “He can only go a few days before he starts pining for you. You know that.” Andrew squeezed me hard with one arm, then pulled back without releasing me so he could look me in the eyes. “How are you holding up? Are you okay?”

  I shrugged. “I’m fine. Just a little stir crazy.” I pointed at his other arm wrapped around a blue plastic box. “Is that cake?”

  His blue eyes sparkled. “My girl needs cake. I bring her cake.” He released me, and Maurice dragged him into the house with the dessert.