Seriously? I’ve recited the incantation ten times in the past hour. I’ve also spent two hours practicing my handcuffing technique. Uncle Roy may be seventy years old, but he’s very strong. He fights as hard as any demon.
“But I just did it perfectly!”
He shrugs. “Then you should have no trouble doing it perfectly again.”
Fine. He wants to hear the incantation again? I’ll do it again.
“Deus … in … nómine … tuo … salvum…” I speak as slowly as possible. In a bad Cockney accent.
Uncle Roy sighs, exasperated. “Shelby, if you’re not going to take this seriously, then we can—”
He’s interrupted by a knock on the door. A tiny, owlish-looking woman pokes her head into the office. “Father Roy?”
“Mrs. Harris, come in. We’ve been expecting you.”
We have?
“Come in, come in.” He waves her inside.
Mrs. Harris crosses the carpet and settles into the armchair across from Uncle Roy’s desk, clutching her black patent-leather purse to her chest. Her dark hair is pulled back with a wide red headband, and she’s wearing a floral dress that is really doing nothing for her.
“You wanted to speak to me about your son, Shane? You believe he’s under an evil influence?” Uncle Roy asks.
“Um … well, yes, but…” Mrs. Harris glances at me. “Maybe it would be best if we spoke in private. I don’t want anyone to know about my son’s … problem.”
“No need to worry about Shelby,” he says. “She’s my apprentice. There’s nothing she hasn’t heard before.”
I give Mrs. Harris a reassuring smile, but she does not seem to be reassured.
“It’s not something I want getting around the school,” she says, giving me the once-over.
Wait, what? Just because I’m a teenager, she assumes I’m not a professional? That I can’t keep a secret?
Rude.
“Lydia, I assure you, your case will be kept completely confidential,” Uncle Roy says. “I trust Shelby implicitly.”
Mrs. Harris takes a minute to consider this before giving him a curt nod. I guess she figures she can’t argue with a priest. Not when she needs his help.
“So.” Uncle Roy uncaps his fountain pen. “What makes you think your son is possessed?”
The word makes Mrs. Harris flinch. “He’s not himself lately. He never leaves his bedroom. He’s up all night playing violent video games, and when he does come out, he won’t talk to me.” She lowers her eyes and fiddles with the clasp on her purse. “He’s belligerent and rude. The language he uses is just awful. He only wears black. And his eyes…”
Uncle Roy looks up from his yellow legal pad. “What about them?”
“They’re very red. I’ve tried to get him to see an optometrist, but he insists it’s just allergies.” She shakes her head. “I have allergies. My eyes never look like that.”
“Tell me, have you noticed a particular smell?” he asks her.
“Now that you mention it, yes,” she says, sitting up straighter. “He does sort of smell.”
Is she for real? Her son isn’t possessed—he’s a teenager. One who likes to get stoned, I’ll bet. I steal a glance at Uncle Roy. He shakes his head slightly, warning me to keep quiet.
“What about his voice? Any changes?”
“It’s deeper. And sort of … growly.”
I wait for Uncle Roy to tell her about puberty, but instead he just nods thoughtfully. “When did this all start?”
“Well, he’s been quite depressed since we moved here a few months ago, so at first I thought that’s all it was. I thought he was just adjusting to his new life,” she says. “But in the last few weeks things have gotten worse. And then last Sunday…” Her eyes fill with tears. She grabs a wad of tissues out of the box Uncle Roy keeps on his desk.
“He wouldn’t come with me to church. He says he’ll never set foot in church again.” She dabs at her eyes. “He used to be an altar boy.”
Uncle Roy puts the cap back on his pen. “I think we should take a look at him. Shelby, would you mind paying a visit to Shane?”
I narrow my eyes at him, but he just smiles. He knows as well as I do that Mrs. Harris’s son isn’t possessed. What I can’t figure out is why he’s not telling her that.
Mrs. Harris is alarmed. “Father, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but are you sure…?” She glances at me, frowning. “I mean, she’s so young.”
This is the point where I should jump in and tell her that this is all just a big waste of time. But it really bugs me that she doesn’t think I can do it, so I don’t bother telling her that there’s nothing wrong with her son.
“Shelby is perfectly qualified to help Shane, Mrs. Harris. I wouldn’t send her if I didn’t think she was capable of getting to the bottom of this. Please don’t worry,” he says. “If she runs into any trouble, she knows she can call me and I’ll come right over.”
The only trouble I’m going to have is convincing Shane to drop the attitude. My crucifix and holy water won’t work on that.
“Well, if you’re sure,” Mrs. Harris says reluctantly.
“I couldn’t be more sure,” he says. “Now, how does tomorrow afternoon after school sound?”
Her face sags with relief. “That’s perfect. Thank you, Father.”
I wait until the door closes behind her before rounding on Uncle Roy. “Why are you making me do this?”
He rips the page off his legal pad and hands it to me. He’s written the Harris’s address at the top. “Just because her son isn’t possessed doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a problem, Shelby,” he says. “We help people. That’s the job.”
“I thought the job was getting rid of demons.”
He shrugs. “Who says Shane doesn’t have demons?” he says, settling back into his chair. “Now, I believe you were going to do the incantation one more time.”
Chapter
5
SPENCER IS waiting at my locker after school. Unfortunately, I can’t study with him today because I have an appointment.
With the devil.
Okay, not really. But paying a friendly visit to Mrs. Harris’s son instead of spending time with Spencer certainly feels like hell. Uncle Roy has no idea what I’m giving up in order to do this.
“Sorry, I meant to text you,” I say, opening my locker and grabbing my messenger bag. The truth is, I didn’t forget to text him. I just wanted to see him, even if it was only for a few minutes. “Tomorrow?”
“You do know we have a geometry test in first period tomorrow, right?” he says, frowning. “And you also know you can’t afford to fail this test.”
“I’m not going to fail,” I say. There’s always a chance I’ll scrape by. My grades have suffered ever since my mom left, which is why I was so happy when Spencer offered to tutor me a couple months ago. Not only because he’s helping me get my grade point average up, but also because I’d been crushing on him for weeks and I didn’t think he even knew my name.
But even at the risk of failing geometry, there’s no way I’m going to flake out on Mrs. Harris this afternoon and prove to her that a teenager can’t handle an exorcism. Even a fake exorcism.
“I have something I need to take care of that just can’t wait. It’s important.” I slide my bag over my shoulder and close my locker door.
“More important than thirty percent of your grade?” he says.
“Definitely not. But I have to do it anyway.”
He sighs, exasperated, but he’s fighting a smile. “All right, what about later tonight? I’m running a study session in the library.”
“It’s a date,” I say. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, my face starts to burn. Following our afterschool study sessions, Spencer runs study sessions every Wednesday evening for St. Joseph’s underperforming students. I know this, and yet I said “date” anyway. I’ve basically just declared my feelings for him right to his face.
His smile widens, and the t
ips of his ears turn red. I’m not sure how to read his response—is it a good sign, one that means he’s embarrassed because he likes me, too? Or is it a bad sign because he’s embarrassed for me?
“Um, I should get going,” I say. “See you tonight.”
* * *
Parking near the Harris’s house is nothing short of a nightmare. By the time I finally wedge Uncle Roy’s Honda between two SUVs and jog the half mile to their front door, I’m sweaty and aggravated and twenty minutes late. And in no mood to spend the afternoon trying to convince some spoiled kid to be nicer to his mother.
I speed-walk up the driveway. The curtains twitch, and a second later Mrs. Harris opens the door, making a point to frown at her watch. For someone who’s expecting me to chase the evil spirits out of her son, she doesn’t seem particularly grateful. I’d turn around and leave if I didn’t think that Uncle Roy would just make me come right back.
“Couldn’t find parking,” I say.
Mrs. Harris gives me a tight smile but doesn’t move to let me inside. I can’t figure out why she’s blocking the door, so we just stare at each other until finally she cracks and asks me to remove my shoes.
Whatever. I’m not about to argue with her, I just want to get this whole thing over with, so I kick off my loafers, hoping she doesn’t notice the quarter-size hole in the toe of my tights.
You can tell a lot about a person by their house. The Harris’s place is very formal—all overstuffed chairs, heavy swag curtains, and ballerina figurines that probably cost more than Uncle Roy’s car. And it’s obsessively clean. Like vacuum-tracks-in-the-carpet clean.
No wonder her son won’t come out of his room. This whole place screams “don’t touch anything.” Definitely not somewhere a fourteen-year-old boy would hang out.
Mrs. Harris leads me down the hall, past a wide picture window with a distant view of the Space Needle. She stops in front of a white door with a glow-in-the-dark skull and crossbones sticker crookedly pasted on it.
“He went right in after school,” she says, rapping her knuckles against the wood.
No answer.
“Shane, honey? There’s someone here to see you. A friend.” Mrs. Harris twists the brass knob, but, of course, the door is locked. She gives me a see what I have to deal with? look before withdrawing a silver letter opener from her dress pocket. When she slides it into the keyhole, the door pops open.
The first thing that hits me is the smell.
Demons usually give off a disgusting rotten-egg odor. Smell alone isn’t a foolproof way to diagnose demonic possession, though, especially in a room that belongs to a teenage boy. Kind of hard to know whether there’s an actual demon presence or if someone just had one too many bean burritos for lunch.
I’m guessing in this case that it’s the latter. Mostly because of the mounds of fast-food wrappers littered everywhere, but also because I can tell, just by the way Shane’s eyes are glued to his computer, that he’s not possessed. Demons tend to be more interested in wreaking havoc and spreading evil in real life than in computer games.
Shane’s so engrossed in whatever end-of-the-world game he’s playing that he doesn’t notice we’ve entered his lair. The volume on his headphones is turned up so loud that I can hear the rapid-fire sound of his virtual machine gun.
“Shane, honey? This is Shelby.”
When Shane honey doesn’t answer, Mrs. Harris marches over and shakes his shoulder. He stiffens, then yanks off his headphones and spins around in his black leather gaming chair with the built-in joysticks.
“What the hell, Mom?” he says. “I just about had him! You ruined my mission. Thanks a lot. Do you know how long it took me to—” He glances at me through the limp strands of his dyed-black hair. “Who are you?”
“I’ll take it from here, Mrs. Harris,” I say.
Mrs. Harris’s eyes dart nervously to her son. He gives her such an evil glare that I can see why she thinks he’s possessed. “Are you sure…?”
I nod. “We’ll be okay.”
She leaves, and I push the door shut behind her.
Shane crosses his arms. “What’s going on? Who are you?”
“I’m Shelby. I’m here because your mom’s worried about you. She says you’ve been acting weird, and she thought it would help if you talked to someone.”
He snorts. “So you’re, like, what? Some kind of teen counselor or something?”
“Or something.” I start to set my messenger bag down on his unmade bed, but then think better of it. God knows when he last washed those sheets.
“I don’t need to talk to anyone. What I need is to be left alone,” he says.
“Really? I guess if all you want from your freshman year is a high score on some stupid alien game, then—”
“Demons, not aliens,” he mumbles. “I’m killing demons.”
Oh, come on.…
“Step aside.” I hang my bag on the back of Shane’s chair before nudging him out of the seat. I sink into the soft, damp indent made by his butt—blech!—and wrap my hand around the joystick.
And then I kick some serious demon ass.
“Are you sure you’ve never played this before?” Shane asks, awestruck, once I’ve handed a few of the dark spirits a one-way ticket back to hell.
“Nope.” At least, not on a computer. Okay, not in real life, either, but my training has to count for something.
After I’ve killed the last demon and earned Shane’s respect, I swivel around to face him. He’s staring at me like I’m Lara Croft or something.
I roll the chair back a few inches to put a bit more space between us. “So are you going to tell me what’s going on with you?”
He flops onto his bed, stares up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. It’s just … my mom drives me crazy. She’s always hovering. You know?”
I don’t, actually. My mom hasn’t hovered over me in months. Because she can’t. Because she’s a million miles away in Italy.
“Maybe she would back off a bit if you came out of your cave and talked to her sometimes,” I say. “She’s lonely.”
Shane’s face darkens. “She wouldn’t be lonely if she’d stayed with my dad.”
And there it is. The real reason he’s so angry.
“She left him?”
“She thinks he drinks too much. She didn’t even give him the chance to try and change; we just left,” he says. “She didn’t ask me how I felt about it. Now I’m stuck in a new school and I hate it. Literally everyone at St. Joseph’s sucks.”
“Aw, come on. St. Joseph’s isn’t so bad,” I say. “Give it a chance.”
He rolls his eyes. “Right. Like everyone has given me a chance.”
Shane’s weird, there’s no getting around it, but he could obviously use a friend. It occurs to me that maybe this is why Uncle Roy wanted me to come over here. I know what it’s like to feel alone—I’ve certainly felt that way a lot, especially since my mom left—and if all it takes to help Shane is to be his friend, then I can do that.
“I’ll introduce you to some people,” I say. “And I’ll even come by and kick your ass at Demon Souls again.”
A shadow of a smile crosses Shane’s face. “Promise?”
“Promise,” I say, smiling back at him. “Now do your mom a favor and clean up your room.” I glance around at the mess and shudder. “Seriously, you’re going to single-handedly bring back the black plague.”
He blushes. “I guess I can do that.”
I stand up and grab my bag from the back of the chair. “I have to get going. But come find me tomorrow at school, okay?”
Shane nods.
I’m about to pull the door open when he says, “Shelby?”
I turn around.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
As soon as I’m in the hall, Mrs. Harris hustles toward me.
“Demon’s gone,” I say. “He’ll be fine. Just make sure he drinks lots of water.”
Mrs. Harris is so happy s
he actually hugs me.
Maybe I’m better at this bedside manner thing than I thought.
Chapter
6
EVERYONE IN the study group has already left by the time I get to the library. Everyone except Spencer.
“Sorry I’m so late,” I say. Uncle Roy made me write the report on Shane’s “exorcism” before he’d let me leave the house. I’m still not clear on why I had to document something that didn’t even happen, but I know better than to argue with Uncle Roy about paperwork. That stupid report set me back almost an hour. When I told him that he’d probably just cost me a passing grade in geometry, Uncle Roy countered by pointing out that if my entire grade rested on the outcome of one test, then perhaps I should dedicate the afternoons when I’m not training to studying instead of “gallivanting around.”
I pretty much have zero afternoons off from training—and no time for fun, ever—and he knows it, so I’m not sure how he could even say that to me with a straight face. But somehow he managed it.
I sit down beside Spencer. “Thanks for sticking around.”
“Not a problem,” he says, giving me a smile. He’s still wearing his uniform, even though it’s after six o’clock, which means he’s been here since the bell rang. I bounce a little in my seat. This proves he likes me. Why else would he wait around after all the other students left?
Then Spencer hands me a sheet of practice questions and my happiness dims a little. Two months of studying and geometry still looks like hieroglyphics to me.
I sag in my chair. “There’s no way I’m going to pass this test.”
“You can, and you will,” he replies as his phone starts to buzz. He picks it up and glances at the screen. From the storm cloud that drifts across his face, it’s clear that whoever is on the other end is not someone he wants to hear from.
He ignores the call and sets his phone back on the table, but it starts to vibrate again almost immediately. Whoever it is isn’t taking no for an answer.
Spencer sighs. “Sorry,” he says, pushing his chair back. “I have to take this.” He stands up and stalks off to the other end of the library, so there’s no chance I can overhear his conversation. This leaves me to assume that the reason he isn’t taking the call in front of me is because he doesn’t want me to know who he’s talking to.
When Life Gives You Demons Page 3