by Ward Parker
Missy drove back to Jellyfish Beach, putting yet more miles on her much-abused car. She couldn’t demand the former priest drive all the way to San Marcos.
She also needed to use her home to host the demon encounter. She didn’t know what else to call it. It wasn’t exactly a seance. Nor was it a summoning using magic. It was more of a demonic meet-and-greet.
Did she need to serve hors d’oeuvres for this?
When Matt found out about it, he insisted on being invited. He offered to bring craft beer and pretzels. It truly was turning into a demon party.
Ex-Father Marco showed up at 8:30 p.m. on a night Missy didn’t have any patient home visits. The former priest, who had a trimmed beard and looked like a Spanish nobleman from a Renaissance painting, had a troubled look on his face.
“I can’t guarantee my demon will cooperate. Or even show up at all. His primary purpose seems to be to embarrass me and ruin my life.”
Marco’s face went blank.
“You really think my purpose has anything to do with you?” he spoke in a nasal, high-pitched voice as if he’d just inhaled helium. It was his demon speaking. “A ruined priest with no career is my main focus? Get out of here. I’ve got my fingers in a lot of pies bigger than you.”
“What is your name?” Matt asked.
“Clarence.”
“That’s not a typical demon name.”
“Exactly. It’s not a typical, overused, boring name like Matt.”
“Clarence, can you help us by speaking to another demon?” Missy asked. “A specific one?”
“It’s not like I have every demon in my contacts list.” Now he had a deep voice like a 1950s TV announcer. “There are a whole lot of demons in Hell and on earth. Way more than Lucifer’s army. There are new ones created every day. Some people going to Hell lately are so evil they get promoted almost immediately to demons.”
“The demon we wish to contact is one of the old-school ones. Asmodeus is his name.”
“You’re right. He’s way old school. And even if I found him, I don’t know if I’d be allowed to speak with him. Exactly why should I even entertain the idea of helping you?”
“To impress us with how powerful you are,” Matt said.
Good one, Missy thought.
“Very true,” the demon said.
Life returned to Marco’s face.
“Did the demon take me over?” he asked.
Missy and Matt nodded.
“It sounds like he’s going to look for Asmodeus,” Missy said.
“We’ll see about that. Never trust him. I would—”
Marco’s face went blank again.
“I’m back!” Clarence announced flamboyantly. “I spoke to Asmodeus’ assistant. I need to tell him what this is in reference to. He won’t answer any questions about tax fraud.”
“We want to know who summoned him forty-three years ago when he killed a powerful witch named Ted Lawthorne.”
“Okey-dokey.”
The ex-priest’s cognitive abilities returned. “Anything?”
“No,” Missy said. “Not yet. Clarence is trying to get through Hell’s bureaucracy.”
“Good luck with that. This is making me very uncomfortable, by the way, with the demon repeatedly entering me and then leaving.”
“I’m sorry,” Missy said.
“Want a beer?” Matt asked.
Marco nodded. After Matt handed him an uncapped bottle, he took a long drink.
And spit the beer on Matt.
A fiendish giggling came from the now slack-faced Marco.
“I thought demons were evil,” Matt said. “This one’s just childish.”
“Depends on your definition of evil,” the demon said in his helium voice. “Good news: Asmodeus has agreed to speak with me. Looks like I still got some juice in Hell, baby.”
“Please ask who summoned him to kill Ted Lawthorne,” Missy said.
All the lights in the house went out. The walls rumbled like a freight train was passing through. Lightning flashes appeared in the windows.
“I was summoned,” said a voice in a hoarse whisper that was deafeningly loud for a whisper, “by the black-magic sorceress Ophelia.”
“My mother,” Missy said. “I was actually hoping it hadn’t been her.”
“But I was not summoned to kill her husband,” Asmodeus’ voice said. “Ophelia commanded me to steal something from the house and return it to her.”
“Ask him what it was,” Missy said.
More rumbling in the walls.
“I was commanded to steal an infant girl from her crib and deliver her to Ophelia. But the male witch tried to intervene. He tried to stop me with magic. I am too powerful to be stopped by a mere mortal who plays at magic. And once I am summoned, I obey only my summoner.”
“What happened to my father?”
“I killed him because he annoyed me. I used a dishwasher so it would look like an accident.”
“No one gets killed in household dishwasher accidents,” Matt said.
He screamed when a bolt of electricity hit him, leaving his hair standing on end.
“When I killed the witch, I lost my focus,” Asmodeus said. “I’m easily distracted. The summoning was broken, and I returned to Hell. I did not complete the task I had been assigned. But I did kill someone, so all in all, it was a good night.”
“Thanks, for the info,” Missy said in a soft voice.
She was stunned. It was as if her world had been turned upside down again, after it had been upended when she first learned about her adoption and losing her birth parents.
Now her mother didn’t seem quite as evil as before. Still evil, but not as bad.
She wanted me with her, Missy thought. She had the tiniest trace of a motherly instinct after all.
She reminded herself that her mother had been willing to kill her since then. But adult children aren’t as adorable as when they were babies, so maybe it was understandable.
“Did you get an answer?” Marco asked, back in control of his body and mind.
“Yes. Not the one I was expecting, though.”
“Maybe you should get your mom something for Mother’s Day this year,” Matt said.
“Do we know if Asmodeus was telling the truth?” she asked the ex-priest after she explained what she had learned.
“You never know for sure with a demon,” Marco said. “In my experience as an exorcist, I found the older demons didn’t lie as much as the younger ones. When they lied, it was for a purpose, like getting me to stop the exorcism. Not misleading to no end.”
“Why hasn’t she told me the truth about this?” Missy asked. “She wanted me to donate a kidney. Wouldn’t telling me this help her case?”
“She didn’t want to accept any blame for your father’s death, I guess,” Matt said. “Even if she didn’t order it, it happened because of her.”
“I bet the investigator for the Magic Guild knew this, but covered it up, because he was into black magic, as well. I need to tell the Arch-Mage.”
Missy hoped her car would survive yet another long trip back to San Marcos.
Arch-Mage Bob never took phone calls. At least not from someone as unimportant to him as Missy. She found him surfing, and she waited on the beach until he was done. He carried his mid-length board across the sand to where his Jeep was parked. He grabbed a towel from the back and dried himself off.
“Dude, what can I do for you?” he asked.
Missy told him what she had learned from the demon Asmodeus.
“Whoa, I can’t believe you communicated with him. The Magic Guild forbids summoning demons.”
“Yes, but I didn’t summon him. You know that I’m strictly a white-magick witch. But I happen to know a former exorcist who’s possessed by a demon. His demon spoke to Asmodeus. It was a demon-to-demon talk. No summoning involved.”
“Way clever, dude. But, you know, I’m going to have to do something about your mother.”
“Birth mother
. Not the mother who brought me up.”
“Yeah, I know,” he waved away her correction. “She didn’t summon the demon to murder your father, but that’s what happened. And, like, she tried to kidnap you after we forbade her from keeping you. That means she’s guilty. She’s got to be held accountable, dude. Being banished isn’t gonna cut it.”
“You’re not going to kill her or anything, are you?”
“No way. If the Guild’s council votes to, we’re gonna neutralize her.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a magical procedure that strips away her powers. She won’t be able to do magic again, except the simplest potions any regular human could do.”
“Wow.” Missy believed her mother deserved this, but she was taken aback by the idea. As a witch herself, she knew how devastating that would be. It would be like taking away an artist’s ability to draw.
“Ophelia Lawthorne, or Ruth Bent, or whatever name she goes by, has been trouble ever since we banished her. She’s constantly doing evil magic for her clients. You know this, dude. You’ve almost been killed by her.”
“Yeah. You’re right.”
“Hey, if she wants to do magic again, she’ll have to learn white magick. Start over from scratch and develop new powers, except for good, not for evil. She’s got magic in her blood. We’re not taking that away.”
Bob pulled a T-shirt over his wide shoulders and beer belly.
“How do you do a neutralization?” Missy asked.
“Get her in a room with five magicians who simultaneously perform the spell. It’s sort of like an exorcism, without the spinning heads and barfing.”
Missy shuddered. “Good luck trying to catch her.”
“Remember Jack, the ogre who tracked her down before?”
Missy nodded.
“He wants revenge for what she did to him. This time, though, he’ll bring the cavalry with him.”
19
Jack Is Back
Jack the Ogre knew where Ruth Bent lived. The sorceress, who was really Ophelia Lawthorne, had a decrepit brick home in the woods of North-Central Florida. Jack had tracked her there, but he was captured with her magic and kept as a zombie-like slave until Missy Mindle freed him.
It had been humiliating, having to do her yard work and give her foot massages. He cringed at the thought of her groaning in pleasure, puffing on a cigarette, while he knelt on the floor, rubbing her smelly old feet.
A short scouting trip told him she wasn’t staying at home. That would have been stupid of her to allow herself to be so easily found. She was hiding out somewhere while waiting for her kidnap victims to yield a usable kidney. Or two.
Missy had given him the location of the macabre operating room in the former orange-packing warehouse. It was a little over one hundred miles southwest of San Marcos, not in the same county, but awfully close to the territory she had been banned from.
Plenty of Bent’s black magic still lingered on the property.
Jack sniffed the magic extensively. Ogres are like supernatural bloodhounds. No other creature smells magic as well as an ogre can. Or so Jack claimed.
In the back of the warehouse, out of view of the rest of his team waiting in the van, he stripped off his cheap sport coat and slacks. Then he performed a magic ritual Arch-Mage Bob had taught him that borrowed some elements from a Spanish Inquisition witch-hunting ceremony. Ogres have only a small amount of magic, but, combined with this spell and a few drops of his blood, it gave him a psychic link to the black magic he had scented here.
His olfactory glands created a target of the scent. It wasn’t sulfur or brimstone. It was more like boiled cabbage. And unwashed sorceress feet. He shuddered at the memory of the foot massages. It was time to get his revenge.
He dressed and returned to the van. Inside was what Bob called “the cavalry,” but was more accurately described as a ragtag crew of magic ne’er-do-wells.
Burt was an ogre, not too bright, but absolutely ruthless. Like Jack, he was a tracker/enforcer for the Magic Guild. Jessie was a Sin Eater, practicing a traditional magic from folk tales in which she took away the sins of mortal humans so they wouldn’t go to Hell. This ability was also handy in taking the evil out of black magic. Tim, an elderly wizard, rounded out the team. Tim was meaner than a rattlesnake and the worst possible travelling companion. But his magic was powerful, specializing in combating black magic.
The two ogres were the muscle. The two others were the magic. This time, Jack wouldn’t be a sitting duck when Ruth Bent, aka Ophelia Lawthorne, blasted him with her sorcery.
Jack drove through the dirty lot to the edge of the two-lane rural road. He opened the window and sniffed.
The boiled-cabbage and smelly-foot scent came in a tiny burst floating in the wind. It came from the north. They rolled northward, Jack driving with his head half out of the window like a dog. The more frequent the bursts of scent came, the closer his target was.
They drove for thirty-five minutes until they came to a small town where another rural road bisected the one they were on. He sniffed heavily, then turned onto the other road leading east. Twenty minutes later, they approached the overpass of the interstate highway. On the right was a chain motel.
The scent-bursts were overpowering now. He pulled into the motel’s parking lot. This was where the black-magic sorceress was staying. The ragtag team piled out of the van.
Jack pulled a crowbar from the rear of the van to wrench open Lawthorne’s door. The motel’s manager could call the police on them, but they would be gone before any cop arrived.
He had parked in a discrete spot behind the building next to the dumpster. As they walked around the side of the building toward the entrance, Jack stopped in his tracks.
He hadn’t expected Lawthorne to be lounging at the pool. But there she was, lying on a chair, chain-smoking cigarettes, and using an empty beer car as an ashtray. She drank from a fresh can of beer and glanced at a magazine.
Two small kids, wearing floats on their arms, jumped in and out of the pool, running around screaming. Lawthorne fixed them with a baleful stare.
The two kids rose in the air, flew over the pool, and landed in the lap of their mother, who had been too busy scrolling on her phone.
Lawthorne returned her attention to the magazine.
“Okay,” Jack said. “You guys know what do to.”
Jessie spread her arms and began eating the evil. There was plenty to consume. Tim set about launching magic attacks. And the two ogres waited for the moment to snatch their prey.
The first spell Tim cast froze the mother and her two kids. They sat there like chubby mannequins, safely out of the way. He immediately followed by lobbing softball-sized glowing balls at Lawthorne.
She dove to the pool deck, trying to hide behind her lounge chair. A black-magic spell hit Jack’s team, making Jack feel sleepy. But Tim had already protected them with a warding spell, so Lawthorne’s effort was minimized. Tim continued lobbing the balls of magic, trying to disable his opponent.
“Good job, Jessie,” the wizard said. “You’ve almost drained her.”
It was rare for the mean wizard to give a compliment.
By draining Lawthorne of evil, it deprived her of the key ingredient to her black magic. Without it, she needed the assistance of supernatural creatures like demons. And there was no time to summon them.
“Go away! Leave me alone!” Lawthorne shouted as she crouched behind the chair, getting pounded with Tim’s magic. “It’s not fair. I did nothing to you.”
“By the authority of the Magic Guild of San Marcos, we’re putting you out of business,” Jack said.
Ophelia’s counterattacks had stopped completely. Tim cast a spell that made all her muscles go limp except those that controlled her vital functions. And the brief battle was won.
Jack walked through the gate into the pool area, picked up Ophelia, and threw her over his shoulder. It turned out he didn’t need any extra muscle to bring her in.
Just extra magic.
Missy received the phone call from Arch-Mage Bob, while Darla was serving wine and cheese to guests at the Esperanza Inn.
“Hey, I thought I should let you know, like because you’re family, that we got her,” Bob said. “We’re going to do the neutralization tonight.”
“I want to be there,” Missy said.
“Wow. Are you sure? It’s not a lot of fun to watch.”
“I’m not there to take pleasure in her punishment. I want to be there because it feels like the right thing to do.”
“Cool. I get it. You’re not a Guild member, but I guess you can come because of your relationship. You need to come with a member, though. The location is secret. I’ll have Wendall drive you there, but you’ll have to wear a blindfold before you arrive. Are you okay with that?”
“It’s kind of weird, but I’m okay.”
“Righteous. Wendall will pick you up around eight-ish tonight.”
“Thank you.”
Missy told Darla what was going to happen to Ophelia. “Do you think your mother should know, since she’s her sister?”
“I’ll let her know after it’s done,” Darla said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes. It’s the only way I’ll feel closure.”
Missy made sure to be waiting outside the inn before 8:00 p.m. She didn’t know when Wendall would arrive, since the travel time to the secret location wasn’t known to her.
She stood on the sidewalk outside of the inn in the balmy night air. It smelled of saltwater from the nearby bay, laced with garlic from a corner restaurant. Even though it was a pleasant evening, she felt dread. Her mother was going to endure an awful experience, and it was Missy’s fault. No, make that her own fault. Missy was simply bringing the justice that had been long denied.
A giant Cadillac pulled up. The passenger window rolled down to reveal Wendall leaning toward her.
“Hop in. Your taxi is here.”
She slid into the leather seat.