The Hitwoman and the Exorcism

by J. B. Lynn

  25

  We got into my car, and I just froze for a moment, trying to absorb everything that had just happened.

  “We need a plan,” RV suggested gently.

  “I can get the gorilla poo, I think.” I pulled out my phone.

  “Don’t call Ian in front of her,” God piped up from his hiding spot in my bra.

  “Well, she just heard you tell me not to call Ian,” I said, not bothering to mask my irritation. “So now she’s going to know I’m calling Ian.”

  RV gave me a sidelong look. “Why are you calling your brother? We already have the skull.”

  “He can help with the gorilla,” I said.

  A disbelieving expression crossed her face, but then she shook her head and shrugged. “Why am I not surprised that your family member can get gorilla poo?”

  “Just be quiet,” I implored her. “I think he might be embarrassed if he knew you were listening to this conversation.”

  She pressed her lips together and sat back in her seat, folding her hands in her lap and staring straight ahead.

  I dialed Ian’s number, hoping that he’d answer. Unfortunately, either because he’s ignoring me or he’s annoyed with me, or he’s legitimately doing something else, it went to voicemail.

  “Hey, Ian,” I said. “It’s me. I need a favor. An important favor. A favor that’s kind of time sensitive.”

  “Just tell him already,” God said.

  “He can understand you, too,” I muttered at him. “Why do you keep forgetting these things?”

  I heard the lizard let out an exasperated sigh.

  “Anyway, Ian,” I continued, “I need gorilla poo.”

  I saw RV smirk, but she remained silent.

  “Specifically,” I said, realizing how ridiculous I sounded, “I need five cups of it. Could you go get that for me?”

  I waited, as though expecting him to answer, even though I was leaving a voicemail message.

  “I know it’s a big imposition, and I know that you’re annoyed with me,” I said. “And I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t really, really important. If you’re not going to do it, at least call me back and let me know as soon as possible, okay?”

  I moved my thumb to disconnect the call, and then hesitated, “Please tell the gorillas that I said hi.”

  I ended the call and started the car. “Where to?” I asked RV.

  “We’re going to need supplies,” she said. “So I guess back to my place.”

  “That’s the difference between you,” God said. “She’s always thinking ahead.”

  I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, wishing I was squeezing his little neck. RV had the good grace to look out the side window, pretending she hadn’t heard.

  We drove back to the compound and as we pulled down the driveway, I spotted Armani.

  She was lying on the ground.

  “Oh no!” I said, slamming on the brakes. I jumped out of the car and ran toward her.

  “Oh no, what?” God asked, unable to see what was going on from his place in my bra.

  Annoyed with him, I didn’t bother to answer. I fell to my knees by Armani’s side. “Armani,” I whispered. “What happened?”

  Her eyes snapped open and she blinked at me. “Hey, chica.”

  “Are you hurt?” I asked. “Did you fall? Did somebody attack you?”

  I heard RV’s footsteps approaching from behind me.

  “Is she okay?” RV asked.

  “I was making dirt angels,” Armani said.

  “What?”

  “Dirt angels,” Armani said. “It’s what you do when there’s no snow around.”

  “So you’re not hurt?” RV asked.

  “You’re lying on the ground intentionally?” I asked, not bothering to hide my disbelief.

  Armani sat up suddenly, startling me. I fell down on my rear end.

  “Sensitive skin!” God complained as he was jostled by the impact.

  “Did you meet with the witch?” Armani said, struggling to get to her feet.

  Scrambling, RV and I both grabbed her under a shoulder and hauled her upwards.

  “We met with her,” I admitted.

  She squinted at me, hearing my unhappiness. “Is something wrong?” She grabbed my arm and gave me a shake. “Is the exorcism not taking place?”

  I frowned at her. Her disappointment at the prospect of missing an exorcism was obvious.

  “She’s demanding a list of supplies,” RV told her.

  “Magical supplies?” Armani’s eyes grew wide and she beamed expectantly.

  “She says she needs them in order to do it,” RV said. “I can’t tell if they’re necessary ingredients to a spell, or some sort of payment.”

  “I will help you gather them,” Armani declared, puffing out her chest and throwing a hand into the air.

  RV shot me a doubtful look.

  “Awesome,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Behind Armani, RV raised her eyebrows, signaling she didn’t think that she’d be much help.

  “I need pumpkin spice coffee,” I told Armani.

  Armani cocked her head to the side and looked at me like I was speaking another language. “Huh?”

  “That’s one of the things on her list,” I said quickly, trying to impress upon her how important the job was that I was giving her. “Six ounces of pumpkin spice coffee. Now, I don’t know if that means brewed or the ground, so I need both. Do you think you can handle that?”

  “Are you messing with me?” Armani asked suspiciously.

  “She’s not,” RV said. “It was really one of the things that Ann requested.”

  “Then I will be happy to help,” Armani said. “I’m on it.” She looked down at the ground. “You trampled all over my dirt angel.”

  I shrugged helplessly. “Sorry?”

  Shaking her head, giving her commercial worthy mane of hair an indignant toss, she started limping back toward the compound. Having moved a few yards away, she turned back to face us. “Don’t forget, the face, the ugly face.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  She moved further away and RV muttered under her breath, “What ugly face?”

  I quickly explained to her about Armani’s vision. “She’s not usually wrong,” I said. “Sometimes, it’s not exactly on the nose, but usually when she tells me something like that, it ends up being very helpful.”

  RV nodded. “Okay, I’ll get some tools. Can we go as soon as I’ve got them?”

  I nodded. I was avoiding seeing Griswald after our talk, and Marlene had taken Katie to the library so she wasn’t home for me to visit.

  “I just want to talk to the animals,” I said.

  RV nodded her understanding and headed into her camper.

  I began to hurry down the driveway. About halfway to the house, I caught up with Armani.

  “You’re worried,” she remarked.

  “I don’t even know if I should believe in all of this stuff,” I said. “But if this exorcism does need to take place, yeah, I’m worried.”

  We walked back the rest of the way to the main house in silence.

  I hurried over to where Zippy was being held. The little dog was frothing at the mouth and began screaming obscenities at me through the cage when he saw me.

  I ignored his drama show. “I need one of you,” I said to DeeDee and Piss, who were guarding the cage.

  “Take the dog,” Piss urged. “The white ball of fluff gets under her skin.”

  I nodded.

  “Help me?” DeeDee panted excitedly.

  “You’ll be okay?” I asked Piss.

  She licked her paw before responding. “Sugar, I’m a cat. Nobody gets under my skin.”

  With DeeDee following me, I headed back toward my car.

  “Going are we where?” DeeDee asked.

  “On a quest to find magical ingredients,” I told her dryly.

  “A quest!” God yelled from his hiding spot. He pulled himself from my bra strap and settled on my shoulder.
“I like that idea. It gives it the weight that it deserves.”

  26

  RV had already loaded everything into the car by the time we returned.

  The moment DeeDee saw her, she barked, “Shotgun!”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “But you’re going to have to sit in the back.”

  “You cretinous canine,” God scoffed. “You can’t call shotgun over a human.”

  Seeing the dog’s dejected look, I told her gently, “But you did a really good job trying.”

  Her ears perked up and she happily leapt into the back of the car the moment RV opened the door.

  “Be nice to the dog,” I muttered to God.

  “You are too nice to her,” he retorted.

  RV raised her eyebrows at our bickering but said nothing. She settled into the passenger seat.

  I got behind the wheel. “What do you want to go for first?”

  “Well,” she said. “We do need three dog teeth.”

  “No!” DeeDee barked loudly. Her volume made the windows shake. “Teeth pull no,” she whined.

  “We’re not going to pull your teeth out,” I told her.

  “I don’t know,” God said from his place on my shoulder. “It would make it easy.”

  “Shut up,” I told him firmly.

  Insulted, he dove into my bra.

  “Pull no,” DeeDee whined again.

  I turned around so that I could look at her in the back seat. “Nobody is going to touch your teeth, DeeDee, I promise.”

  “But we do need to find some,” RV reminded me.

  “I have an idea about that,” I said.

  “A vet’s office?” RV asked.

  Sure, that would have been the logical place to find dog teeth, but it wasn’t what I was thinking.

  “I know somebody who used to be a dog catcher,” I said. “She might be able to help us.”

  “Tara?” God asked from his hiding spot in my bra. “The one that hooked up with your old boss, Harry? The one who just judged the dancing contest at the lingerie shop? The one who runs the interior design company with Armani?”

  “Yes,” I muttered, wondering if he was going to provide her social security number next.

  “That’s actually a good idea,” God muttered resentfully.

  “Even I have one once in a while,” I snapped back.

  “Fighting no,” DeeDee panted from the back seat.

  I drove over to the office that Armani had leased for her interior decorating business with Tara. Armani was never there, she was just a figurehead for the business, the one who paid the bills. Tara did all the work.

  “You wait here,” I told RV and DeeDee when we got to the office.

  “Idea good,” DeeDee said.

  Glancing in the back seat, I realized she was cowered down on the floor, as though she was hiding from the former dog catcher.

  “You okay waiting?” I asked RV.

  She nodded.

  “I’ll be as quick as I can,” I said.

  I hurried inside and took a look around. It was actually quite beautiful.

  Because I was an unexpected visitor, the couple making out on top of the desk wasn’t paying attention and didn’t hear my entrance. I turned away, feeling like my eyeballs had been seared. My old boss, Harry, the scourge of my former job at Insuring the Future, had his tongue down the throat of Tara. Thankfully, they were both still fully clothed, so there was a chance I could recover from this trauma.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and cleared my throat. Loudly.

  I heard them jump away from one another.

  After a moment, I turned back to face them. Harry was smoothing his tie.

  “Maggie,” Harry said. “How nice to see you.”

  I didn’t feel the same way, so I just nodded at him.

  “Is Armani okay?” Tara asked with concern. I wasn’t sure if that was because she considered Armani a friend, or if she was worried that her cash cow had dried up.

  “She‘s fine,” I told her. “But I need a favor.”

  “Well,” Harry said, moving toward the door, “I have to be going anyway. It was nice to see you, Maggie.”

  I nodded again. The man had spent way too much time breathing his pepperoni breath down my neck for me to indulge in polite small talk.

  When he was gone, I turned back to the former dog catcher. “How can I help?” she asked.

  “I need dog teeth,” I told her.

  Her eyes widened, and then she squinted at me suspiciously. “Why?”

  I shrugged. “It’s for my niece’s science project for school.”

  I crossed my fingers behind my back as I told the lie, feeling terrible for involving Katie in my deceit, but not having another decent explanation as to why I needed teeth.

  Tara nodded like that somehow made sense. “Does she want to be a vet when she grows up?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “You know, kids at that age,” I said slowly. “They want to be something different every day. An astronaut. A back-up dancer for Beyoncé. A wizard.”

  She chuckled. “How many do you need?”

  “Three,” I told her.

  “From any specific breed?”

  I shook my head. “As long as they’re from dogs, I don’t think so.”

  She waved for me to follow her and moved toward another room.

  “So, do you have any idea where I can find some?” I asked, following her.

  “Oh, I’ve got some here,” she said.

  I stumbled a little.

  “Okay,” God murmured. “That’s not creepy or anything.”

  I was starting to think more and more that Tara and Harry were probably a perfect couple.

  She led me into her office and sat down in the seat behind the desk, opening the bottom drawer and rifling through it. “I know they’re in here somewhere.”

  I really wanted to ask her why she kept dog teeth in her desk drawer, but I didn’t think the question would go over well, and I was desperate to get them.

  “Here they are!” She pulled out a small glass jar with a cork stopper in it. It was only about an inch and a half long, but I could see that it contained multiple teeth.

  She reached over the desk to hand it to me.

  I tried not to shake as I took it from her, really freaked out. Even for my life, this was a new level of weirdness. “Ah, thanks,” I muttered. I tried not to stare at the jar, but my morbid curiosity got the best of me, and I raised it to eye level. There were at least five teeth in it, as far as I could tell.

  “Do you need the extras back?” I asked.

  “Nope,” she said cheerily. “I’ve got plenty.”

  Pasting on a fake smile, I nodded. “I really appreciate this,” I said, beginning to back out of the office.

  “No problem.” She stood up to follow me to the front door. “Anytime you need anything, Maggie, just let me know.”

  She beamed at me, like she was quite proud of herself for being able to provide the teeth to me.

  Smiling and nodding like an idiot, I moved out the door. The jar, clutched in my hand, grew warm from my body heat as I squeezed it. I hustled back to the car.

  “What’s wrong?” RV asked as I climbed in.

  I handed her the jar. “What kind of person keeps dog teeth in their desk?”

  In the back seat, DeeDee whined pitifully.

  “What’s next?” I asked RV.

  27

  “I’ve got to run a personal errand,” RV said. “It won’t take long, but it’s important.”

  Though I was eager to finish gathering the ingredients for Ann, I nodded my agreement. RV had gone out of her way to help me. It wasn’t my place to stop her from doing whatever it was she needed to do. “Where to?”

  “Do you know Washington Street?” she asked.

  “Washington Street? Washington Ave.? Washington Trail? Or Washington Boulevard?” I asked her.

  She blinked. “Are you telling me that they’re all in this town?”

&n
bsp; I lectured in my best school teacher voice, “New Jersey played an important role in the Revolutionary War. We overflow with history.”

  Shaking her head, RV reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. “Three seven seven one Washington Trail,” she said.

  I nodded. “See? You thought I was being a pain for asking, but it’s really confusing, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to the wrong Washington.”

  “That’s because you don’t think ahead,” God piped up.

  I seriously considered just crashing the car so that the air bag would deploy and crush his freaking sensitive skin. Instead, I drove over to the address she requested. It was a strip mall, with a dry cleaner, a coffee shop, a carpenter, a CPA, a bakery, and a jeweler.

  I parked at the first available space that I found.

  “I hope this won’t take long,” RV said. She jumped out of the car.

  I climbed out of my side. “Hang on,” I said.

  “What?” she said, suddenly tense.

  “I’m going to grab a cup of coffee. Do you want a water?”

  “Please,” she said, and began jogging to the other end of the strip mall, in the direction of the jewelry shop.

  “Hungry!” DeeDee barked. “Hungry!”

  “The furry beast is always starving,” God complained.

  “I’ll get you something, sweetheart,” I told the dog.

  “And people are always feeding her,” God griped.

  I ignored him. I went into the coffee shop and ordered a coffee for myself, got a bottle of water for RV, and ordered a couple of pastries. I was hopeful that DeeDee would allow me to at least have one of them before devouring the rest.

  I was waiting in line for my coffee order to be prepared when I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned around and saw a familiar face.

  He grinned.

  “Are you following me?” I asked.

  Gino shrugged. “It’s not so much that I follow you,” he said. “I track you. Where you are. How long you’re there for.”

  I frowned at him. “I can’t go see your boss,” I told him. “I’m in the middle of something really important.”

  The bodyguard tilted his head to the side. “Did I mention the boss?”

  I shook my head. “So what are you doing here?”