by L. C. Davis
“It’s not. I’m not...look, I was just angsting, I wasn’t serious,” I said, forcing a smile.
He kept watching me and I could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t buy it. “Look, I know I’m not the warmest person, but if you ever wanted to talk…”
“I appreciate that. Really,” I said, pulling the book into my lap for something to do with my hands. How had this already awkward encounter turned into such a clusterfuck? “But I swear, I’m fine. I -- ow, fuck.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, moving to stand beside me.
“Just a papercut,” I said, sucking on my bleeding fingertip.
“You get cut a lot, don’t you?”
“Hazard of the job,” I said dryly.
Daniel looked paler than usual all of a sudden. I followed his gaze to the book in my lap just as it started to rise off of me. It floated and hovered a few feet off the ground for a second before the cover peeled back on its own and the pages began to flutter like someone was leafing through them.
“Shit!” I cried, scrambling back until I hit the Great Wall of Daniel. He settled his hands on my shoulders, but I had a feeling he was using me as a shield more than trying to steady me.
“How are you doing that?”
“I’m not!”
“Fuck. we should leave.”
He dragged me to my feet before I could agree, but the door slammed shut and I heard the lock turn in its tumbler. I grabbed the doorknob anyway, jiggling it to no avail.
“Holden, look,” Daniel called, taking a step back toward me.
Pages were starting to peel themselves out from the spine of the book, one by one at first, then in droves. The pages all started swirling around the book in an orderly spiral. “What the fuck is that?” he demanded.
“I don’t know, but I think my blood activated it. It’s some kind of spell, or a--a trap.”
The pages kept spinning until the empty cover dropped to the ground. The spiral of paper formed a whirlwind that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, but at least it was staying in one place. I took out my phone and tried to dial Nick’s number, but it shut off before the second ring. When I looked up, Daniel was trying his but after bashing the 3D buttons desperately, he gave up and shook his head.
I could no longer see through the whirlwind, which had caught up strips of fabric from Locke’s canopy. Soon, the pages began to pull in, forming a tighter funnel. Like clay on a potter’s wheel, the shredded book shrunk in some places and expanded in others until it took on a decidedly curvaceous shape. Paper twisted and lengthened, forming long tendrils of near-black hair that flowed around a woman’s shoulders. The smooth parchment darkened and flattened, taking on the texture of flesh. Daniel and I watched, transfixed as the woman standing before us opened her eyes, the same rich sapphire hue that seemed to emanate from her brown skin. She looked between us and a benevolent, strangely familiar smile curved her dainty lips.
“Well, aren’t you a delicious little pair of bookworms?”
Seventeen
DANIEL
I’d been forced to accept a lot of things that shouldn’t exist ever since waking up from the dead. Angels, demons, the fairies who ate people alive. Book Lady was the final chip in my veneer of skepticism.
I just had to walk into that house. I couldn’t have just gone home, popped open a beer I couldn’t taste and drowned my sorrows in trash TV like every other normal person. I had to keep an eye on Holden. Well, what good was keeping an eye on someone if you couldn’t do shit about the chaos that followed them like a stray puppy?
And now I was about to die of papercuts, which sounded like just about the worst possible way to go, because Holden’s blood had unleashed a book demon. At least she was kind of hot…
“Where is he?” she asked, looking around the room. The silks that had been hanging over the canopy were now draped over the woman’s body, leaving the soft curve of her waist exposed. “Where’s the one who bound me in dead trees and flesh for all this time?”
I looked at Holden and he gulped. “He’s...not here at the moment.”
“How rude. I suppose at least he was considerate enough to leave me a snack,” she said, tilting her head invitingly. “Tell me, little witch, do you taste as sweet as you look?”
I reached out to grab Holden and pulled him back behind me even though I was pretty sure that whatever this chick was, I didn’t stand a chance against her if Locke thought it necessary to keep her so well hidden. “He’s not just a witch, he’s the Whore of Babylon and if you touch him, Locke’s gonna do more than put you back in a book.”
“The Whore?” she mused, pressing a finger to her lips as she studied Holden more closely. “My, he’s been a busy boy. What century is it?” she demanded, looking up at the overhead light in disapproval.
“Uh, twenty-first,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “Ungrateful little brat.”
“Who are you?” Holden asked, surprisingly calm for someone who was on the menu for not one but two demons. At least, I was reasonably sure that’s what she was.
“You opened my book,” she said, planting her hands on her full hips. “I’m sure you saw my sigil. Surely your master has taught you of the old ones.”
“I, uh, don’t always pay attention,” Holden said sheepishly.
She rolled her eyes. “I am Lilith,” she said, pressing a hand to her breasts. They were wrapped so tightly in that red silk band that every time she moved…
Her eyes met mine and I knew from the glint in them I’d been caught gawking. I felt like a horny idiot asking for help in algebra I didn’t need just to get a peek at Ms. Kruger’s cleavage. What the fuck was wrong with me?
“Like what you see, dead boy?” she purred.
“Lilith,” Holden echoed. “You’re the Lilith? Adam’s ex-wife?”
Her lip curled back in a distasteful snarl. “You humans do have your version of the story. Yes, I’m the Lilith, mother of all incubi.” Her sneer turned to a sultry smile and she was in front of me without seeming to have moved at all, just like Locke, her long fingers weaving their way through my hair, stroking, caressing. She smelled like cloves and honey and my mouth watered, my hands instinctively settling on her plush waist, my fingertips digging into her softness, hungry to touch and taste. Her breath was cool and sweet against my lips as hers hovered over them. “My son’s scent is in your pores. I see his type hasn’t changed.”
Her words made no damn sense, but I was too strung out on her beauty to care. I’d all but forgotten Holden’s presence in the room until he spoke up with, “Locke is your son?”
She turned away from me and I felt a loss before she released me from whatever trance she had me in. At least, I hoped it was a trance. I’d always been a bit of a manwhore, but it usually at least took a combination of emotional connection and physical attraction for me to abandon my dignity entirely.
“Locke?” she grimaced. “Is he still wearing that ridiculous moniker?”
“Locke is a demon,” I said firmly. It was no profound revelation, but at least the first words out of my mouth weren’t you smell pretty. “How does he even have a mother?”
She watched me with an all-too-familiar expression of boredom that made me consider that she was actually telling the truth. “You mortals didn’t invent fucking, you know. And you certainly didn’t perfect it.”
Okay, this was definitely Locke’s mom. So he was just albino. Or the demonic equivalent.
“Why did he trap you?” Holden asked.
“Children,” Lilith said with a bewildered shrug. “You give birth to them, you put the souls of the damned on the table, you hold them the first time they have their heart broken and then they fall for the enemy and bind your spirit to an enochian vessel. Motherhood is not for the faint of heart.”
“Enemy?” I asked. “You mean Adam?”
Lilith’s eyes narrowed dangerously. There was a fire inside of those cool blue gems, and in that moment, I had a bit less
trouble believing there was a literal Hell. “Even worse as a son-in-law than he was as a lover, and that’s saying something.”
Holden grimaced. “Ew.”
Lilith turned her ire on him. “Mortals have no place to question the ways of the gods. But tell you what, since you little idiots have been so convenient, I’ll repay your kindness,” she said, giving Holden’s cheek a maternal caress. “You were hoping for a genie in a bottle, little witch? A panacea for all that troubles you? I’ll grant your wish,” she said with a smile that turned from soft to wicked in an instant. Holden stood frozen in her trance as I had been a moment earlier, but it was horror contorting his face rather than lust as Lilith’s lips whispered against his. “My son should have taught you this a long time ago, but what you think, you speak and what you speak, you manifest. Be careful with your words.”
“Hey!” I cried, rushing forward to grab Holden as she pressed her lips to his. The same green energy of Locke’s enchantment exploded around us with a plume of smoke, blinding me. I held fast to Holden’s arm, clutching him as the floor bottomed out below us and sent us sprawling to the ground. I wound up doing more harm than good, landing on top of him. The smoke cleared around us, but Lilith was gone.
So was the house.
“The fuck?” I murmured, looking around the untouched forest that stretched out around us on all sides.
“Get off,” Holden wheezed beneath me.
I scrambled off of him, helping him sit up. “Sorry.”
“God, you’re fucking heavy,” he muttered, rubbing the ribs I’d crushed.
I grunted, staggering to my feet. “Where the hell did she send us?”
Holden looked around in a daze, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
I reached down to help him up. “You okay?” He didn’t look hurt, but being kissed by an incubus--or succubus, in this case--could yield unexpected results.
“Yeah, I think so. I don’t know if I would have been if you hadn’t grabbed me.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I hesitated. “Speaking of worrying, you’re the Bible expert. Lilith being released is a bad thing, right?”
“Probably,” he sighed. “We have to call Locke.”
“How? Is there a summoning ritual or something?”
“Yeah, it’s called a phone call.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and frowned down at the screen. “The battery was half full when we left the basement.”
I reached for mine only to find it was missing. It was only in that moment that I realized I wasn’t wearing the clothes I’d been wearing earlier. I’d traded my work slacks and sweater for a T-shirt I had tossed in my closet purge a few months earlier since Locke’s cat form had clawed holes in it and a pair of old jeans. Holden wasn’t wearing the same outfit, either, and the moment our eyes met, I knew we were having the same realization.
“We have to get back into town,” he said, taking off into the forest.
“Wait! That’s not the right direction.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I hear the stream up there,” I said, nodding east. “Town’s that way.”
Holden froze and looked over his shoulder. I followed his gaze to the patch of wildflowers growing between the trees. “Daniel, I think something’s wrong. Really, really wrong.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“No, I mean I think this is where the house was.”
I blinked. “That’s not possible.”
“These flowers only grow in one spot,” he murmured, walking toward them. He knelt to pick one and twirled the stem between his thumb and forefinger. “Locke was angsting about having to build over the spot, but he said the house had to be in exactly the right position, so he made me gather some so we could transplant them in the garden.”
“Maybe they just look similar.”
He tilted his head impatiently. “Witch here, remember? Plants are kind of my thing.”
“Right. Okay, so...maybe Lilith got rid of the house for some reason.”
“Maybe.” The way he said it, I could tell he didn’t believe me.
“Come on. We’ll go back to my place and call Locke from there.”
Holden fell into step beside me and neither of us said a word for the half-mile hike back into town. The streets were desolate, which was weird for that time of night on a Friday. Usually, the high schoolers were loitering around the ice cream shop or the bookstore, and the market was always packed. I didn’t think too much of it until we left the thick cover of the forest and Holden stopped in the street, staring straight up at the moon. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s full,” he said flatly.
“Yeah, so? Are demons more powerful on a full moon or something?”
“Everything is more powerful on a full moon, including me, but that’s not what’s weird,” he said, rushing across the street. I followed him because apparently, that was just what I did now.
“Holden!”
He stopped at the front porch of the house on the outskirts of town that the Andersons had bought a few months ago after the original owner, Martha Rivers, moved to live with her kids in the city. I cringed as Holden pounded on the door. “You know, they’re probably eating dinner…” When Martha answered the door, I hesitated.
“What’s all the fuss?” the older woman asked, looking between me and Holden. She gave me a dirty look, but I couldn’t be sure if it was because she and Julia Marrin had been feuding for years and I was on Julia’s side by default or because I had politely suggested that the cause of her Shih Tzu’s anxiety might be all the idiotic sweaters she stuffed the poor, quivering thing into every damn day before dragging it around in her purse. “What do you want?”
“Where are the Andersons?” Holden demanded, his voice panicked.
She frowned. “Andersons? I don’t know any Andersons.”
“They’re the family that bought your house,” I said, glancing at the driveway. The Andersons’ SUV wasn’t there, but Martha’s old station wagon was.
“No one’s bought this house! Are you on drugs?” she asked, squinting at us both. “I told the mayor what would happen when they decriminalized marijuana. Now I got meth heads on my damn doorstep.”
“We were just leaving,” I said, pulling Holden back by the arm before Martha could call the sheriff on us. Given that I was undead, I tried to avoid the rest of Nick’s family as much as possible.
“Wait,” Holden hissed, struggling. I dragged him with me, walking as quickly toward my place as I could. “The Andersons are gone! Doesn’t that strike you as weird?”
“Very, but I’d rather not spend the rest of the night in a cage being watched by werewolves,” I shot back. “Whatever the fuck is going on, our first priority has to be finding Locke. We have to warn him about Lilith.”
He scowled and pulled away, but he kept walking toward my building. I was relieved to find that at least my keys were still in my pocket, but something caught my eye on the way past the foyer that separated the clinic’s side entrance from the stairs that led up to my apartment. “Hang on.”
“What is it?” Holden asked.
I pulled the paper off the bulletin board in the hall and frowned. It was a flyer for the equinox festival. Carla had asked if she could put it up and I’d said yes just so she would leave me alone. “I took these down as soon as Locke let me go.”
Holden took the flyer from me, his eyes widening in fear as they met mine. We both rushed up the stairs and I flung the door open, looking around to find my place relatively the same. Given that my idea of seasonal decorating was opening a window during the summer, that wasn’t terribly comforting.
Holden picked up my cordless phone and his hands trembled as he dialed a number. I heard the shrill “out of service” sound before he hung up, but the phone dangled limp in his hand for a second before I took it and put it back in the cradle. “It says the number doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“Okay, so Locke flaked out and forgot to pay his bill.
There’s gotta be some other way you can contact him, right?”
“Yeah, his sigil, but…” He trailed off and I could feel him burrowing deeper in his own thoughts.
“Holden?”
“You have a computer, right?”
“Yeah, in the bedroom,” I said, motioning toward the door.
He rushed inside and sat down at my desktop, clicking wildly until the screen came to life. His gasp startled me, but not quite as much as realizing the cause of it. I checked the corner of the screen and saw the date. September 22nd, 2016. “Jesus Christ.”
“Let’s not bring him into this, I’ve got enough Biblical characters to contend with,” Holden muttered, standing from the chair to grab me by the shoulders. “You get what this means, right?”
“That I should let my computer install updates?”
“Daniel, we went back! You heard what Lilith said right before she kissed me, that cryptic shit about granting my wish.”
“Yeah, what wish was that again?”
“When we were talking before she appeared, I said I wished I could go back to this night,” he said, growing animated.
“Yeah, uh, demons aren’t like cartoon genies. If Lilith did grant your wish, I’m pretty sure that’s not a good thing.”
“It doesn’t matter! We’re here. This is the night you died,” he said, taking my hands in his. “This is the night everything went to hell, and I mean really went to hell. The night Brent died, the night I contracted with Locke, the night you became a zombie. We’re here, which means we can change it.”
I hesitated. “Even if that’s true, I’ve listened to Nick ramble about enough sci-fi movies to know that changing the past? Not a great idea. What if we make things even worse?”
“They can’t get worse, Daniel!” he laughed. “You’re dead, I’m damned, the people we love most are miserable. We could change this night for you, for Nick, for everyone. Maybe Lilith just wanted to get us out of the way, maybe she was just fucking with me, but at least now we have a chance to do something instead of always reacting to everything, always making the best of impossible situations.”