“Let me do that,” I say, taking the knife from him and shooing him over to the table. “You know you’re not supposed to exert yourself.”
The doctor instructed him to rest, but—shocker—Uncle Roy isn’t cooperating. He can’t seem to sit still. I caught him trying to work on a painting earlier this morning. I think it was a sunflower, but I can’t be sure, as it mostly just looked like a big yellow blob.
Uncle Roy winces and clutches his side as he lowers himself into his chair. I scrape off half of the butter he slathered on the toast—seriously, he is just asking for clogged arteries—then set the plate in front of him. I offer to get him a glass of prune juice to wash it down with, but instead of thanking me, he just scowls. You would think he’d be a little bit grateful that I care about the health of his bowels; instead he acts like I’m trying to poison him or something.
I pour myself a bowl of bran cereal, just to set a good example, and sit down across from him.
“Did you finish the report?” he asks as soon as my butt hits the chair.
After we got home from the hospital, we were up for most of the night, going over every detail of what happened with Vanessa. I’ve barely had any sleep. I spent most of the morning cleaning up my room, and the second I sit down, he asks me if I’ve written the stupid report?
“I’ll get to it,” I say. I even smile when I say it, like I can’t wait to capture every moment of one of the scariest nights of my life on paper.
“You should write it down while it’s still fresh.”
I grunt. We eat in silence for a few minutes.
I fiddle with the rune around my neck. There’s one part of the story I didn’t tell him, but only because I didn’t remember it until this very minute. “Something weird happened when Vanessa tried to grab me,” I say. “She couldn’t reach me—it was like there was a wall between us.”
Uncle Roy’s eyes flick to the rune. “You got that from the Callaghan boy, I assume,” he says. “I’ve heard that the younger one makes protection charms.”
This is the first time he’s brought up the Callaghans. I did most of the talking last night, filling him in on Vanessa’s exorcism. Uncle Roy did not return the favor by telling me what happened with my mom when he was out with Mark, other than to say that they couldn’t find her. I didn’t want to push him too hard, because he was obviously in a lot of pain.
“Yes.”
He nods begrudgingly. “The workmanship is excellent.”
“I can ask Spencer to make you one.”
“I don’t need a protection charm,” he says gruffly. “I’m much too good at what I do.”
“Says the guy with the fractured elbow.”
He smiles sheepishly. “I admit, I was a bit off my game last night.”
A bit? He didn’t even have the chance to start the incantation before Vanessa took him out.
“You didn’t tell me that the Callaghan boy was tutoring you.” Uncle Roy fixes me with his laser stare, and I shift in my seat. “Or that you were working with them,” he says.
“I was going to tell you.…” Someday.
He sighs. “Well, while I don’t approve of Mark’s methods, I haven’t had much luck exorcising Robin on my own, so I’ve agreed that it’s time we all worked together,” he says. “And as it looks like I’ll be laid up for a while, I shall act as a consultant on the case. Mark will take over your training. Just until I get back on my feet.”
He wants me to train with Mark?
“Wait. I thought you didn’t want me training at all anymore,” I say.
“Yes, well, after what happened with Vanessa last night, I’ve changed my mind. As long as you are still interested in learning and you promise not to miss any more sessions, I think you should continue to train,” he says. “But, Shelby, let me be very clear: You may train with Mark, but you are not to work on your mother’s case.”
“Okay,” I say. I can’t stop from smiling. I’m so relieved that he’s forgiven me. And that he believes in me again. All the tension drains out of my body. I get up and go around the table to give him a hug, but it’s a weak one because I don’t want to hurt his arm. But Uncle Roy pulls me in tighter, like he’s afraid to let me go. And for the first time, it hits me that maybe he needs me just as much as I need him.
Chapter
25
MARK DOESN’T waste any time scheduling my first lesson. He calls the next afternoon when I’m in the middle of doing my history homework after school.
“Be ready in five minutes,” Mark says. “We’re coming to pick you up.”
He hangs up before I can ask him who “we” is or where we’re going.
I feel a fissure of excitement as I stuff my bejeweled spray bottle and crucifix into my messenger bag. For a minute I wonder if he’s bringing Spencer and my heart kicks up, but then I remember what happened with Riley’s brother and that Spencer’s done with training, so he probably wouldn’t be interested in tagging along.
I find Uncle Roy in the living room, reading a paperback in his recliner. He told me earlier that he’s decided to “enjoy his convalescence,” which for him seems to mean reading John le Carré novels and steadily making his way through the cloth-lined basket of baked goods that Klaus dropped off while I was at school today.
“Mark called,” I say, grabbing a giant oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookie from the basket.
He sets his book facedown in his lap. “Yes, he called me, too,” he says. “Now, Shelby, remember—”
I roll my eyes. “I know, I know. I’m there to observe, not participate.” I take a bite of the cookie and a groan escapes me; it’s just that good. Klaus should seriously consider opening a bakery.
Uncle Roy looks like he’s about to say something else—probably to tell me for the billionth time not to get my hopes up that we’ll find my mom—when he’s distracted by thumping music coming from the street. He pulls back one of the filmy white curtains, frowning at the blast of death-metal music emanating from the huge white truck with tinted windows that has just parked in front of our house.
“This is only until I’m back on my feet,” he says, letting the curtain drop.
I lean over and give him a kiss on the cheek. “Be home in a few hours.”
“Shelby?”
I turn around.
“Be careful.”
I nod. I know it must be killing him to have to sit on the sidelines.
The death metal abruptly stops as I walk out of the house. Mark gets out of the passenger side of the truck. He’s in jeans and a fisherman’s vest, a black beanie pulled low over his forehead. A plain wooden cross sticks out of the side pocket of his vest. The cross looks crudely made, nothing like the ornate silver crucifix I carry.
“Afternoon,” Mark says. He’s wearing mirrored sunglasses, even though the sky is overcast, and I can see myself reflected in the lenses. I look nervous. Probably because I am nervous.
He folds down the seat so I can climb into the back. Nora gives me a sunny smile from the driver’s seat. “Hi, Shelby.”
“Hi,” I say. And then I spot Spencer sitting in the back seat. I’m surprised to see him, even though I’d wondered if he’d come.
“Hey,” he says.
“What are you doing here?”
“I asked him to join us,” Mark says. “It’s about time he started training again.”
Spencer shakes his head. “I didn’t agree to this.”
Okay, wait. If he’s not going to train, then why is he here?
Before I can ask him, Mark turns around to look at us. “The number-one rule is that we always work in pairs,” he says. “Shelby, you’re with me today. Spencer, you and Nora need to stick together.”
“Mark, I told you, I’m not going to—”
“This is for safety reasons,” Mark interrupts. “You just can’t predict what a demon will do. It never hurts to have backup.”
Spencer gives Mark a dirty look. Maybe he takes this as an admonishment for the time he tried to
exorcise Riley’s brother on his own. But I think Mark means it as a warning for me—Uncle Roy probably told him that I went rogue and tried to take care of Ms. C by myself.
“Normally I would ease you into things, Shelby—start you off with the history of exorcism and all the theory behind what we do,” Mark says. “But I understand that Father Roy has already taught you most of that.”
I nod.
“Now, I should explain that I have some unorthodox methods for hunting demons,” he says. He whips off his sunglasses. His eyes are completely black, thanks to contact lenses. He gives me a twisted smile that shows all his teeth. Combined with his shark eyes, it’s hard to believe that he’s not possessed.
I shudder. “That’s creepy.”
Mark laughs. “But effective,” he says. “When I wear these babies, I can get up close and personal with demons.”
“Like with your tattoo?”
He holds up his arm to show me the ink on his wrist. “Exactly.”
“So where are we going, anyway?” I ask as Nora pulls on to the freeway.
“Fremont,” she says, merging into traffic. “It’s a hotbed of demonic activity. And we got a tip that your mom’s been hanging out there recently.”
Spencer reaches over and squeezes my hand, a show of support, and my heart melts a little. I’m still upset with him for not telling me that he’s an exorcist, too, and for befriending me just so he could find out information about my mom. But he’s making it very hard to hang on to my anger.
“We’re hoping that if we get the two of you in the same area, we can draw her out,” Mark says.
It’s the same plan Lucas had on the rooftop garden. I hope it works this time.
Nora swerves into a parking spot in front of a coffee shop, deftly squeezing the truck into a space between two cars. We get out of the truck, and Mark pulls out his phone. His eyebrows fly up into his hairline. “Well, folks, we’ve got our work cut out for us today,” he says, turning his phone around to show us the screen. Lucas’s demon app is showing at least twenty cartoon demons on the map.
“There’s one right behind you,” Spencer says.
Mark turns. I look over his shoulder at the guy leaning against the brick wall of the coffee shop. He’s not much older than I am. He looks like a frat boy, dressed in khaki shorts and a faded gray T-shirt with I Don’t Get Drunk, I Get Awesome written in red letters across the chest. His hair is tucked under a Seattle Mariners ball cap. Oh, and he has the telltale blank stare of the possessed.
“All right, Shelby,” Mark says, gesturing at the guy. “Let’s see what you can do.”
Um, what?
“You want me to perform this exorcism?”
Mark nods. “Yup.”
“But we’re in the middle of the street,” I say. “Someone’s going to see.”
“We’ll block you.” Nora gently nudges me forward. “Just be quick about it.”
I take my crucifix out of my bag. I slowly walk forward, and Nora, Spencer, and Mark form a circle behind me. The sidewalk is narrow, and I’m standing uncomfortably close to the guy. My skin prickles.
Okay, I managed to exorcise Vanessa on my own; I should be able to take care of this dude. The difference today is that I have an audience. I’m very aware of Spencer and the others standing behind me. Watching me.
“Deus, audi oratiónem meam; áuribus pércipe verba oris mei,” I say.
The demon snaps to attention. Frat boy focuses his black eyes on me, his expression eerily blank as he starts to claw at his face, leaving livid red scratches down his cheeks.
“Nam supérbi insurréxerunt contra me, et violénti quæsierunt vitam meam.”
Suddenly, he starts to retch. He hunches over and throws up on the sidewalk, and I jump back to avoid getting vomit on me. Spencer is right behind me, and he puts a steadying hand on my back.
“Keep going,” he says. “You’ve almost got him.”
This little bit of encouragement convinces me to continue. I lift the cross a bit higher, preparing to say the incantation again.
“What’s going on here?” I hear someone say. I whip around, and there’s a policeman standing beside Mark. He grimaces at the sight of the frat boy puking his guts out. Then his gaze flicks to the crucifix in my hands, and his expression hardens.
“Officer,” Mark says. “We’re trying to help this gentleman.” He moves to shield me so that I can finish the exorcism. I quickly say the last few words of the incantation, and frat boy groans and slumps against the brick wall. My holy water is in my bag, but I don’t dare reach into it while the policeman is here, so I stretch and touch the arm of my crucifix to the guy’s bare leg. When his skin doesn’t bubble or burn, I relax.
I smile. Either that demon was particularly easy to expel, or I’m getting better at this. I can’t wait to tell Uncle Roy.
I turn to join the others, and that’s when I spot my mom, who’s watching us from the other side of the street. I gasp. She’s no longer wearing a plastic bag on her head, but she still has that ratty old raincoat on. She takes off as soon as she realizes that I’ve seen her.
Mark and Nora are preoccupied with talking to the policeman. I can’t let my mom get away again, so I immediately start running after her.
“Shelby, wait!” Spencer calls.
But I’m already halfway down the street. I can hear Spencer running to catch up with me.
“We have to wait for Mark and Nora,” he says.
“We don’t have time!” How does he not understand that? My lungs feel like they’re about to burst, but I run faster because we have to catch up to her.
We run down Fremont Avenue. When she turns left onto 36th Street, I suddenly know exactly where she’s headed.
“She’s going to the troll.” My mom used to bring me to the Fremont Troll when I was a kid. I loved climbing on the massive stone troll underneath the Aurora Bridge. A bunch of local artists built him in the early nineties.
It’s beginning to get dark out, so that works in our favor—it means that there probably won’t be many other people down there. I don’t want to get stopped again.
“Okay, just let me tell Mark where we’re at,” Spencer says, panting. He pulls out his phone and shoots Mark a quick text.
We head underneath the bridge. I can hear the clatter of cars rushing overhead. The sculpture is just as I remember it—the huge troll pushing up through the ground, his shiny hubcap eye, the real VW Beetle he’s crushing in one of his giant hands.
My mom is nowhere in sight.
“She’s behind the troll,” I say.
“We need to wait for Mark and Nora,” he says. “They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
But we don’t have a few minutes. If she’s not behind the troll, then it means she’s taken off and we’ve lost her. “Do you have a flashlight?”
He sighs and turns on the flashlight app on his phone. “I’ll check, okay? Just stay here,” he says. He starts to slowly walk up the troll’s arm. That’s when I see something move out of the corner of my eye. Something that shouldn’t be moving.
My stomach drops. “Spencer? Can a demon animate a nonliving thing?” Uncle Roy has never mentioned this, not once in all the time I’ve trained with him, so maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.
“I’m pretty sure that’s just an urban legend,” Spencer says. But as he walks up the troll’s arm toward its shoulder, one of its long stone fingers begins to twitch.
“Not an urban legend,” I say, my eyes widening.
The troll’s shoulders start to roll, knocking Spencer off his feet. He scrambles on his hands and knees the rest of the way down the sculpture, crawling on all fours all the way over to me as the troll starts to hoist itself out of the ground.
I’m frozen to the spot as the troll’s mouth opens like a gaping canyon, sending sand particles swirling through the air. It roars and its hubcap eye pops out. It pushes down on the VW Beetle as it tries to work itself free, and I hear the crunch of metal. Th
e troll is only built from the waist up_____there is no lower body to raise out of the ground_____so how much damage can it really do?
The thought is barely in my head when the troll gives up on trying to stand up and lifts its long, long arms instead. Up toward the bridge. The bridge that hundreds of unsuspecting people are currently driving over.
“We have to get out of here,” Spencer says, pulling me toward the street.
“We can’t just leave! It’s going to upend the bridge. There are people up there!”
Spencer shakes his head. “Shelby, this is dangerous,” he says. “And we don’t know what we’re doing.”
“Rule number one: Always work in pairs,” I say. “There’re two of us. We can handle it until the others get here. We have to.”
Spencer glances at the troll, which is still roaring, its hands bracing against the steel beams of the bridge. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Okay, fine.”
My hands are shaking as I hold my crucifix in front of me. Spencer stands beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.
“Deus, in nómine tuo salvum me fac—”
“Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered—”
Our voices overlap, rising together.
“—and let them that hate Him flee from before His face—”
The troll roars with anger. It folds its fingers into a fist and then slams its fist into the ground a few feet from where we’re standing, sending shockwaves through the earth. I reach for Spencer’s hand.
“—as smoke vanishes, so let them vanish away—”
“—et virtúte tua age causam meam—”
I stop mid-incantation as my crucifix is suddenly ripped from my hands by some invisible force. The crucifix hovers in front of me just within reach, then bends in half and drops to the ground at my feet.
When Life Gives You Demons Page 15