The homunculus nodded towards the cottage. “You called me in, over there. You opened a portal for me and everything. How was I to know you’d be unfriendly, stick-in-the-mud giants?”
“That damn kitchen,” I muttered. I shoved the pocket watch case into my pocket and we hustled over to Mama Lua’s cottage, dragging the homunculus with us.
When we opened the door, we could see bright red markings scrawled across the white kitchen wall.
The sigils were back.
CHAPTER 11
“I told you so,” the homunculus said, sounding triumphant. “You called me.”
“So much for the patrol car keeping an eye on us,” I said, looking at sigils on the wall and frowning.
“What are you thinking?” Gus asked.
“I’m thinking Nick was right. We’ve been so focused on the sigils magically reappearing, we missed the mundane hand that’s been breaking in at night and putting them there. We should have booby-trapped the kitchen and maybe we could have caught the bastard.”
“Okay, so I was wrong about the sigils. But why would some half-assed witch, who has the ability and the chutzpah to break into Mama Lua’s cottage, call up Little Big Dick here?”
“To show her a good time, of course,” the homunculus said, wiggling his hips so that his oversized junk was flapping around.
“Knock that off,” I said. “That’s just disturbing.”
“Or amusing, depending on your point of view,” Gus said, grinning.
I glared at the homunculus. “Magic up a pair of pants. I’m serious. Not everyone is as in love with your penis as you are.”
He sighed, waved a hand, and a set of clothes appeared on him.
I turned back to Gus. “What if those sigils never were a protection spell? What if they were always a calling? What if that’s how, whoever it is, called up our hungry demon?”
“What demon?” the homunculus asked. “Where’s the demon? No one told me anything about a demon.”
Gus ignored him. “Then it would have shown up here, instead of in Emily’s yard. The portal was in her yard, right? You saw it open?”
He had me there. “Okay…what if…what if someone who knows about the demon problem is putting the bloody sigils on Mama Lua’s wall, to implicate her and the Crooked Pantry? Because they want this place shut down. But since we keep cleaning them off, they have to keep putting them up?”
“You can’t really think one of those sycamore picketers is behind this, do you?” Gus asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Why not? They kept harping on, about Mama Lua calling up demons. And Mrs. Lasio broke into my apartment before, when I used to live here.”
“There’s a big difference between your old apartment and Mama Lua’s cottage. Mama Lua is way more terrifying than you are. Besides, whoever’s behind this had enough ability to call up McPenis here. Sycamores can’t do that. Not even with step-by-step instructions and pictures. You need that special witchy zing to push it through.”
“Witchy Zing? Is that a technical term?”
“Zing, secret sauce, witchy sprinkles, paranormal pizzazz. That certain witchy je ne sais quoi that opens portals. If just following directions could do it, every paranormal TV and movie set would be in big trouble.”
A sudden thought struck me and I gasped. “What if the picketers are being manipulated and the real perpetrator is a witch? Someone who knows what they’re doing?”
“Then why break into her cottage and not the store? That would seem to be the logical place of entry, if they want to shut down the store.”
“Maybe the wards on the store are too strong? Or maybe they have access to the cottage and not the store?”
“Besides, why would a witch want to shut down The Crooked Pantry? This place goes, and it becomes harder to get supplies, the public ritual space goes away, it makes life a hundred times harder for local witches.”
“Revenge? Money? What if it’s a witch who runs one of the other pagan stores? Someone who wants to get rid of the competition?”
Gus nodded. “Okay…but if they’re one of our breed, why wouldn’t they just break in and call up a demon? Why call up the homunculus? That’s like…going to a gourmet restaurant and ordering a Big Mac.”
The homunculus kicked him in the shins. “Hey! I can hear you.”
“Ow! Knock it off, little dude.”
“Everyone wants a homunculus. No one wants a demon. They’re a considerable pain in the ass. Now, if you get a pain in the ass from me, it’s because I’ve got my—”
I put my free hand over his mouth to shut him up and immediately regretted it when he started licking my palm. I let go of him and wiped my hand on a kitchen towel.
“Touch me inappropriately one more time, I’ll put you in a cauldron and seal the lid for eternity,” I said, growling at him.
“Anyone ever tell you, you have anger issues?” he said, then he stomped hard on Gus’s foot and twisted, trying to pull his arm out of Gus’s grip.
“That’s it. I’m done.” I jumped on the homunculus and, with Gus’s help, shoved him into the pocket watch case and snapped on the brass backing. He looked out at us, very much squished, but perfectly visible through the glass front.
“Fae abuse!” he yelled in a tiny voice. “Don’t think I won’t report you.”
“Shut it,” I said, panting. I turned to Gus and wiped the sweat off my brow, before it dripped into my eyes. “Maybe they meant to call the homunculus.”
The homunculus’s tiny voice piped up. “Of course, they meant to. I’m the bomb. Everyone loves spending time with me. I’m the life of the party. Did you see the size of my joystick?”
“Shut it, pipsqueak,” Gus said.
Hey, that’s a good name for it. Pip Squeak,” I said.
“I agree. Pip Squeak. Or Handsy McDickster. Ear-phee McBigEars. Or, how about Dick Head, the phallic wanderer.”
I rolled my eyes. “Pip Squeak, it is.”
Pip Squeak harrumphed. “That’s Mr. Pip, to the two of you.”
I looked at the wall again. Then I pulled out my phone and compared it with the picture I had taken of the sigil when we arrived.
“Look there,” I said. “It looks like the sigil got smudged and redrawn. And that piece is a lot sloppier. And over here, it angles down instead of up. And these two symbols are…weirdly dripping and forming a new sigil instead.”
Gus took the phone, magnified the image and compared it to the wall. “Well, how about that. I’ll bet the sigils got screwed up because the paint on the wall was still wet. It must have been making it difficult to do them correctly, especially if our witch was in a hurry.”
“So much for magickally reappearing sigils. When the sigil’s affected by wet paint…that proves Nick right. Human interference.”
Gus started laughing. “Can you imagine? Breaking into Mama Lua’s home, intending to call up a scary demon, and a big-eared troll doll with a giant penis shows up? How lame a witch would you have to be?”
That enraged Pip. “Bigoted much? Just wait until I get out of this prison. I’ll show you just how scary I can be.”
I shoved the watch case in my back pocket to shut him up.
“Let me out! It’s dark in here!” Pip squeaked, trying to roll the watch case.
“Knock it off or I’ll drop you in a volcano,” I said. He immediately quieted down. Which was a good thing, because it felt a little weird to have something in my pocket that kept moving on its own.
I turned to Gus as another thought struck me. “Mama Lua’s got wards all over the place. Even if they’re not as strong here, as they are in the store, they’re still here. Why didn’t they clamp down on whoever it was, and squeeze their head like a lemon?”
“Maybe the wards aren’t being activated because they recognize the person. There’s never any sign of a break-in, so it could be someone with a key.”
I took my phone back from Gus.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Ni
ck. I’m going to tell him our intruder has a key. Maybe they can dust the door lock and see if any fingerprints got left behind.”
“There weren’t any last time,” Gus said.
I shrugged. “There weren’t any homunculuses last time either. Maybe we’ll luck out this time.”
AFTER NICK TOOK OUR REPORT, his crew finished dusting for fingerprints, and we finally went into the store, Aunt Tillie was sizzling mad.
“You need to wrap up this demon thing soon. I have places to go.”
Gus and I looked at each other, then at Aunt Tillie.
“Where in the world would you need to go?” I asked.
“Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Saturday night.”
“So?” Gus asked. “Why can’t you just take yourself there?”
“I’ll bet I know why,” I said, smug.
Aunt Tillie finally exploded. “Fine. You were right, okay? Are you happy now?”
“What are you two talking about?” Gus asked.
Aunt Tillie gave a big sigh. “Mama Lua is a bit more accomplished at warding than either of you two morons are.”
“Okay…” Gus said, looking confused.
“Why do you think I’ve been stuck in this godawful store the entire time we’ve been here? I can’t leave,” she sulked. “The wards Mama Lua’s set up are too strong. I can’t get past them, unless you physically take my skull with you. You might not feel all the wards she has in place, but I sure as hell do.”
Gus started laughing. “I never thought I’d see the day when a human neutralized Tillie.”
“Yup, she is stuck, but good.” I hung a Closed for Inventory sign in the window, so we wouldn’t have to deal with customers.
“Yuk it up all you want. But you need to wrap this demon thing up, chop, chop. I have places to be.”
“More like chomp, chomp,” Gus muttered. “Don’t worry, Tillie, we’re on it. We need to figure this out before the demon gets peckish for its next snack anyway.”
Pip Squeak knocked against the watch glass until I took him out of my pocket. “What do you want?” I asked.
“I don’t particularly want to be around when your demon gets peckish. Especially trapped in here. Can you let me out? I just want to go home.”
“What is that?” Aunt Tillie asked.
“We trapped a homunculus,” I said.
“That doesn’t look at all comfortable,” Aunt Tillie said.
“It’s not,” Pip squeaked.
“Why don’t you let him out?”
“Because I don’t want to let him go just yet,” I said. “He may come in handy.”
“So get him out of that watch case and put a torc on him. It’s making my head hurt just looking at him, all smashed up like that.”
“What torc…” I started, then I saw the torc display in the glass case under the counter and cleared my throat. “I mean, why torc? Not what torc.”
“Don’t listen to her, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Pip Squeak said.
“Torcs are made of brass for a reason. They’re slave collars for the Fae folk.”
I looked at Aunt Tillie doubtfully. “But he’d still be able to walk around, wouldn’t he? I can’t have him wandering off and scaring people. Or jumping back to the Otherworld and warning the demon’s friends.”
“If I tell you how to do it, will you take me to Hollywood Forever cemetery on Saturday night, regardless of where you are with this demon thing?” she asked, her eyes flashing.
“Forget it, she’s just messing with you. Don’t fall for it.” Pip Squeak was so agitated, his eyes were bulging and the watch case was moving on its own.
I blew out a sigh. It would be nice to not have a rolling watch case in my pocket. “But what if we need him to be small and portable?” I asked. “I can’t keep smashing him like a piece of clay.”
“I can tell you how to do that the easy way too. Do we have a deal?”
“Would you shut the hell up, woman! Before I make you regret the day you died?” Pip Squeak said, shaking the watch case in a miniature fit of rage.
“It’s a deal,” I said to Aunt Tillie.
“Take out the torc and blood it. He’ll be bound to you as long as he has it on. And before you ask, he can’t take it off. Only you can take it off of him and release him. While it’s on, he’ll have to do what you say. He’ll be able to wander, but only in a limited radius, and only if you allow him.”
Wow. I was really impressed with how forthcoming Aunt Tillie was. I’d never seen this side of her before. She must really want to go to that cemetery. “And when we need him small?” I asked.
“You don’t need to smash him.” Aunt Tillie shrugged. “Just tell him to go invisible, or go tiny. When you want him back, tell him to be visible or go back to his normal size. But if you want him to leave the store, you’ll have to physically move him out of here with the torc, because he’ll be attached to it, the way I am to this skull right now.
“Traitor!” Pip Squeak yelled at Aunt Tillie, his eyes narrowing.
“You’ll thank me later,” Aunt Tillie calmly told him. “When you don’t have to get your spine realigned after being squashed in a pocket watch case for a month.”
I opened the display and got one of the torcs. “Does it matter what size?”
“No, he’ll grow or shrink to fit whatever you have.”
“I want in on this too,” Gus said.
Mama Lua kept a box of lancets behind the counter. I got them out, gave one to Gus, and took one for myself, and we both blooded the torc.
“How do we get him in it?” I asked. It was so much bigger than the watch case.
“I have an idea,” Gus said. “I’ll hold the torc, You open the watch case inside it, and when he pops out, the torc will already be in place.”
“Does it matter if it’s around his neck or his waist?” I asked.
“Law of Magick,” Aunt Tillie said, looking annoyed. “Don’t you two know anything? The torc knows where to go. It will automatically lock in.”
“Okay,” I shrugged. “Here goes nothing.”
Gus held out the torc, I got a case knife from the drawer and opened the back of the pocket watch case. There was a pop and a big green cloud engulfed us.
By the time we were all done coughing and the green fog had cleared, we had a green-skinned, big-eared, red-headed homunculus, with enormous feet, standing between us, wearing a torc around his neck and looking both angry and resigned. At least he still had his clothes on.
“Sit,” I said, pointing at a stool.
He sat, grumbling to himself and glaring at Aunt Tillie’s skull. Aunt Tillie smiled back at him, baring all her teeth, and that, in itself, was disconcerting. Pip Squeak turned his back on her and looked the wall, instead, where I’m sure he was plotting his revenge.
I looked at my watch. “We need to get a move on. We’re running out of time.”
GUS and I read demonology books until our vision got blurry. I showed the photo of the sigils on the wall to Aunt Tillie, in case she had seen them before, but she drew a blank.
I even asked Pip Squeak to take a look at the photo of what the sigils were supposed to be, which he did. (Apparently, he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He was like a pissed-off genie who had to do what you asked. Too bad he didn’t have the ability to grant wishes).
Pip claimed he had no idea which demon it was supposed to call up. Apparently, he was functionally illiterate in Fae language, all he knew was his own address/portal. But that didn’t stop him from treating me to another round of why homunculi were superior to demons and why every house should have a homunculus, until I commanded him to be silent.
So, he stood there and kept waggling his hips at me, every time I looked at him, until I snapped, “Go invisible!” and he did. I swear, it was like having a creature around that had the manners of an over-sexed porn star with the self-control of a toddler. Come to think of it, he was a lot like a mini-Gus on steroids.
When we w
ere done with this demon hunt, we were definitely going to have to send Pip Squeak back to wherever he came from.
WHILE GUS WAS FLIPPING BACK through the books, to see if there was anything he had missed, I booted up his computer. I had just typed in the password, when he noticed what I was up to.
“What are you doing with my laptop?”
“I want to see those photos again.”
“Here, let me. You’re hell on electronics.”
He pulled up the photos and increased the magnification. “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know,” I said, scrolling through them. “Emily said that whatever bones she finds, that animal keeps getting drawn to her yard. Like, she sees snakes after finding the snake bones. She sees possums…”
My voice trailed away as I looked at a series of photos. There was the dog, standing where Emily would find the bones later. Then there was a few photos of nothing. Then there was the dog again. You are what you eat, and I want to be pure energy…what if it wasn’t just baby vampires who thought that way?
“Are these photos in order?” I asked Gus.
“Should be. I didn’t mess with the download. Why? What’s up?”
“It’s just a feeling…what were the other bones again?”
“Rat, Snake, Possum, Fox, and now Dog.”
I thought about the order. “Snakes eat rats. Possums eat snakes. Foxes eat possums. Could this be a wolf instead of a dog? Something that could eat a fox?”
Gus went and got the bones, and looked them over. “Wolf skulls, in ratio to the rest of their body, are bigger than dog skulls are to their bodies. It’s definitely not pure wolf, but it could be a hybrid. I mean, I don’t know enough about wolf-dog hybrids to rule that out as a possibility.”
“Seriously? There’s something about bones you don’t know?”
“Very funny. Where are you going with this?”
“What if the demon is working its way up the food chain? We kept thinking the animals were a snack. But look at the pictures. After the dog vanishes, the dog’s back again. What if the demon is taking on the shape of whatever it eats?”
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