“Do you like my picture?” Chloe pointed to her blue cat with gigantic sad kitten eyes.
“Hmm-hmm.” Vera nodded, swallowing the insults.
She regained her composure as Maxwell sauntered up, his frayed surfer shoes stopping right beneath her line of sight. She didn’t meet his eyes.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t know they were coming.”
Vera nodded, pressing her lips together.
“They have a history of jackassery.”
At that, Vera lifted her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered again, lips downturned.
You weren’t sorry enough not to say it.
Maxwell peered at the drawings on the table, his sister happily scribbling, then he glanced at Vera with honey-brown eyes full of…what? Remorse? Good. He should feel bad.
“Will you still come tonight?” he asked, his voice croaking with fear that she’d change her mind, that she’d no longer be at his beck and call.
Demonic Barbie.
Ghoul.
Frog.
She owed him nothing. She owed no one in her school, in this town, a single thing.
But it wasn’t just about Maxwell, it was about Vera. She wasn’t the type of person who could ever say, “No, let your mother suffer!” It was also about his sister, a seven-year-old currently smiling with a gap where a front tooth should be. And it was about his mom, a woman who had already experienced enough trauma for a lifetime.
Besides, it was just a business arrangement.
“What time?” Vera asked.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Max
Max didn’t know if Vera would show. In fact, she had every reason not to. He scratched his buzzed head, regret coursing through him.
When he’d walked back to the table, her big eyes held the droopy gaze of a girl who heard too much. He’d called her nothing, and she was anything but. Only, he couldn’t explain that to his friends—he just wanted them out of there. Not because he was embarrassed of Vera, but because he didn’t have the energy to pretend to be the guy they wanted him to be, and he didn’t have the words to make sense of this for them.
Vera understood—at least, as much as anyone could understand. His mother was infected. No, afflicted.
Max popped to his feet, pacing alongside a coffee table blotted with water stains, and glanced at the clock on the cable box. Vera said she’d come at midnight, which was when the late-night wanderings and ramblings with Mom seemed to occur. Vera was sneaking out. It was now three minutes after twelve.
What if she decided he wasn’t worth it?
Christ, I am waiting in my house, in the middle of the night, for Vera Martinez to tell me if my mother is possessed by demons. FML…
He reached for the remote, thinking he’d put on music, the TV, anything to fill the too-silent hum of the house, but he dropped it before touching On. His sister still believed their mother was sick (and possibly a genie who could grant wishes). He didn’t want to wake her and shatter her with visions of rolled-back eyes.
Max hung his head, smelling the dried sweat on his skin. He’d run three miles after he left the restaurant, needing to let his legs loose and feel the drum of his feet on the pavement. He thought it would clear his head. It didn’t, but he should have showered.
Now I’m rude, smelly, and possibly delusional.
Headlights beamed from the street, and his gaze shot toward the bay window as decrepit brakes squeaked outside. A white car pulled alongside the curb, its lights flicking off.
He exhaled all the way from his belly. She’s here.
He watched as Vera climbed out of her car and slammed the door (which required some effort). As soon as she marched across the grass that he should have mowed last week, his heartbeat picked up. It was happening.
He opened the door before she could knock.
“Hey,” he said. She might as well have been wearing a superhero cape (black, to match her outfit).
“Hey,” she replied, tone flat and face annoyed.
Okay, fine, he deserved that.
“Come in.” He held open the door.
She was wearing a black cotton tank dress, and her fair skin glowed almost lavender in the moonlight. She tucked her wavy hair behind her ear, and he felt an odd desire to hug hello.
What is wrong with me?
She stepped inside, looking everywhere at once—at family photos, trinkets, vases. Then she rested her bag on the ground.
“How is she?” Her voice was all business.
“Right now? Quiet.” He gestured for Vera to sit, and she plopped onto the khaki sofa, which sank too low from years of overuse.
Max rested on the arm of a rosy wingback chair. “Thanks for coming. Really, I mean it. I wasn’t sure you’d show.”
“Why? I said I would.” She tilted her head, lips pursed.
Oh, that’s right. I’m the asshole here, not you.
“Well, I mean, today…” He bit his thumbnail. “My friends, they don’t know what’s going on…with my mom. I don’t think they’d understand.”
“People rarely do.”
Damn. He’d watched two separate groups be rude to her in a single day, in a single hour. “What happened with Chloe’s friend, her mom—”
“It’s no big deal. Happens all the time.”
Max frowned. But it shouldn’t….
Vera stared at her toes spread wide in her flip-flops. They were painted pink, which made Max pause. He didn’t know the girl who chose pink nail polish, and for the first time he realized that maybe he wanted to, in a way that stretched beyond what was happening with his mother.
“Vera, I’m really sorry.”
She shrugged, maintaining her tough facade. She opened her lips to say something, when a creak echoed from the hallway. Their eyes shot toward the noise. Max’s ranch house featured three bedrooms down a hall right off of the living space. His mother’s room was at the far end, the last one.
He knew the sound of her door opening as well as he knew his ringtone. Lately, it was what woke him up most nights.
He looked at Vera. “It’s her.”
She nodded and they both stood, then she waved for him to lead the way. This was what she came for.
Max stepped in front, right arm outstretched like a protective crossing guard as they inched silently into the long hallway, sidestepping the floorboards he knew always groaned. His grandmother’s pendulum clock ticked on the wall behind them, the sound oddly deafening. A fly buzzed past, skimming his nose. Then his mother slid out of her room in the same alabaster nightgown, lace hem ruffling by her ankles. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d bathed, yet her tight black curls flowed down her back in perfect ringlets and her tan skin gleamed like she’d spent the day at the beach. She looked healthy and beautiful, and Max feared Vera would think he exaggerated his stories. Then he noticed his mom’s eyes. They were open too wide, not rolled back this time; instead, all the chocolatey warmth was replaced by charcoal bricks.
Max stopped, he and Vera hovering beside a pair of never-lit candle wall sconces so thick with dust he could smell it. He felt Vera’s breath on his shoulder as they watched his mother glide dreamily, her gaze pointed in their direction, but she showed no signs of awareness. Instead, she peered with pupils dilated more than should be possible. She lifted a graceful arm toward her daughter’s door and pushed down on the handle. It opened with the drag of wood against carpet.
Max turned to Vera, looking for instruction, but her cheeks were bleached and her mouth hung open. He inched to the doorway. Vera followed. His mother stood in the rainbow glow of a Hello Kitty night-light, swaying with limbs flowing, hair swishing, and her head awkwardly bent like a severed branch. She was watching Chloe sleep.
His sister rolled over, sighing in dreamland.
&nb
sp; Max shifted to his toes, flexing his muscles all the way to his clenched fists. He craned his neck to whisper to Vera, but a sudden stench of lilies gripped him by the throat.
He gagged, reaching for the neckline of his T-shirt, but Vera grabbed his forearm.
“Lizards…Mankind is a cesspool of lizards. Humanity is an artifice.” The voice scraped at Max’s ears, his mother’s arms spread wide, her chest wrenching with the words. “I bring a revolution! Salvation! Shed your bodies!”
Max’s face twisted, and he shook his head. No. This isn’t her. No way…He pressed his hands to his ears, trying to block out the guttural sounds gnawing the woman who raised him.
Slowly, a slender black shadow crept from her bare toes, skinny as a sapling tree, its branches stretching all the way to Max’s feet. He stepped back in time with Vera, and the fear he saw in her face, from a girl who lived with those parents in that house, sent a rush of heat through him that dried the moisture in his mouth.
“Remove the bonds of suffering. Embrace the self beyond the mortal flesh,” his mother moaned in a hollow voice, her neck bent toward Max. Her hair puffed wildly, all shiny curls now burned to brittle black coils. Her stiff fingers clenched the air near her shoulders as tendons painfully protruded from her taut neck.
“Maaaxweeelll, heeelp meeee!” it screeched.
No, she screeched. That was his mother, with the voice of a woman tied to the stake as the flames licked her calves.
Max blinked rapidly, his chest collapsing, the room blistering, and his feet locked. She needed his help. Why couldn’t he move?
Her body contorted, spine arching violently as her murderous gaze shot at Vera.
“Show your claws! Bare your fangs! Unleash your true selves and finally awaken!” The baritone returned.
Bloody spots danced before him. What was happening?
A hand slinked down his arm. Fingers interlaced with his, the grip tight.
“Breathe,” Vera whispered.
The stench of rotting flowers grew more intense as his mother’s face began to morph. Her skin cracked like packed desert sand, lips peeling back from her gums to reveal green dumpster-tinted teeth. Wrinkles spread to her squinted eyes, and a snarling gaze aimed straight at Vera with such rage that Max stepped between them.
Then he heard the strike of a match. No, the strike of a matchbook, the multiple crackles of flint popping in quick succession.
Vera shifted first; she knew what it meant. Max didn’t. He followed her line of sight and saw that the wall sconces were lit. The two ivory cylindrical candles in the hall flickered with golden flames, the heat emanating off them so hot it scorched Max’s cheeks from twenty feet away. Or maybe the heat was coming from his mother, the woman who braided Chloe’s hair, who taught him how to drive a car, and who sang lullabies in Spanish.
But that wasn’t the person in front of him now.
Sweat dripped down his face. “Is she sleepwalking?” he asked Vera.
“She is definitely not asleep.” She squeezed his hand.
“Drunk?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
“No.”
“What do we do?”
“I’m gonna leave.”
“What?” he yelped. Is she freakin’ serious? She’s abandoning me!
“I’m making her mad,” Vera explained. “She doesn’t want me here. Can’t you feel it?”
Well, yes, he could. The rage in the room practically wiggled in the air around Vera, but that didn’t mean he wanted her to leave.
“The past few nights, you’ve walked her back to her room, right?”
“It wasn’t like this.”
“I know, that’s because I’m here,” Vera said through her teeth, as if moving her lips too much might make the room explode. “You can’t leave her here with Chloe.”
No shit. But he couldn’t do this alone.
He slumped forward, hands on his knees, a sudden urge to vomit rushing through him. Vera placed a hand on his back; there was a gentleness to her touch.
“I’ll be right outside. Trust me. It’ll work.”
She better hope it would. That was his sister in that bed!
But before he could reply, Vera turned for the door and left.
Max was alone, with Chloe, and with whoever, whatever, that was.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Vera
What. The. Literal. Hell!
That was not sleepwalking and definitely not a sloppy drunk. Holy Mother of Hades. How long has this been happening?
Vera collapsed against the side of her car with the breathlessness of the mental marathon she’d raced inside. The texture of the air in that house, she felt it. As soon as Maxwell’s mother left her bedroom, Vera didn’t hear it—she sensed it, with the force of a hand shoving her shoulder. I’m here. I see you.
And the woman did see her, though not the teenage girl who was supporting a classmate—she saw inside her. She saw her parents. She saw what they could do. That woman wanted Vera out. Vera didn’t know how she knew that, but she did.
She looked toward the front door, a coil of energy surging beneath her skin. Vera could hear the crispy rustle of leaves swaying in the trees. She could smell the mossy stench of algae from the creek a mile away. She could feel every prickling speck of rust on the car beneath her fingertips.
The adrenaline made her feel electrified, bouncing on her toes with her skin tingling.
Come on, Maxwell, get out of there….
Vera didn’t know how to help him, but that creature thought she did, and that alone put them in danger. Those candles it lit, throughout the entire house, were not a warning but a demonstration. To Vera. Of what it could do. Somehow Vera’s mind cleared of all clutter, and that truth was implanted in her very cells.
The demon believed Vera possessed her parents’ gifts, and right now, she wished it were true. Vera reached for her phone, fumbling inside her purse with quavering fingers.
What time was it in Barcelona? Morning—early morning, but still morning. She could call them.
Where was Maxwell?
Breathe, just breathe….
Gusts puffed out audibly as she peered at the modest ranch house, bopping on her toes, her phone gripped in prayer position at her lips. “Please, God, let him come out safe….”
Moments passed. The trees stopped moving. Not a bird cawed.
Silence. It had a weight, and she felt it climb onto her back and hold on.
Finally, a shadow shifted. A curtain twitched. Her heart leapt to her throat.
The door creaked open, and a silhouette emerged.
Maxwell.
“Thank God! Thank you! Thank you!”
It took all of her mental focus not to sprint across the lawn and risk upsetting the beast more. She stayed put and he bounded toward her.
“She went back to her room. As soon as you left, she went back to her room,” he explained before even reaching her.
He was panting, his fear so thick she could reach out and grab a fistful. He stepped within range, and she flung her arms around him until they crossed on the other side. Maxwell gripped her just as tight.
“We’ll figure this out. I swear,” she promised in his ear.
Their arms locked so fiercely that the heat of their bodies, the smell of their sweat, almost fused them together.
She heard him sniffle. Oh God, he’s crying.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she whispered. “I’ll call my parents. I promise. It’ll be okay.”
She knew she couldn’t really promise that. She didn’t know when her parents would be home, and that left Maxwell and his sister sleeping down the hall from whatever that was.
“She…she lit those candles. They were everywhere,” he stuttered.
“I know.”
“And the lilies. Did you smell the lilies?”
“Yes.”
“It was like she was burning. It was so hot in there.”
“I know. I felt it.” Vera’s lips practically touched his ear.
“How did her voice go normal? For a second, I heard her. Did you?”
Vera nodded.
“She was in so much pain.” The crack in his voice nearly shriveled Vera’s insides.
“I’m sorry. I know. But it’s a good thing. It means she’s fighting.”
“Fighting what?”
“I don’t know.”
Maxwell sniffed and shuddered against her; a drop fell on Vera’s bare shoulder. Then he took a big inhale, snorting back the last of his tears, and slowly loosened his grip. He shifted back a step, wiping his eye on his sleeve. Reluctantly, Vera let go.
“What…what do we do?” he stuttered.
She lifted her phone; it was one in the morning here, which meant seven a.m. there. “My parents should be awake, if not now, then soon. I’ll tell them what happened and see what they say. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.”
“Good. That’s good.” He shook his head stiffly.
“Maxwell, I don’t think you and your sister are safe here. Do you have somewhere you can go? Maybe to your grandparents?”
He shook his head, running his hand along his neck, so tense she could trace the tendons with her fingers. “My grandfather, my mom’s dad, he died. And my grandma, she moved back to Sweden.”
“You’re Swedish?” Vera didn’t mean to sound shocked, but she was.
“Yeah, I’m pretty much what you get when you mix everything in a pot and stir.”
She smiled slightly, and he seemed to like the distraction. For a moment, the expression on his face lightened.
“What about your dad’s parents?”
“That’s…complicated.”
“Well, you’re in complicated territory now.”
“So you believe me?” he asked, shoving his hands in the pockets of his tattered khaki shorts. “This isn’t just some medical condition?”
“No.” Her voice was definitive. “Something is wrong. Maxwell, I’m so sorry.”
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