“Tess . . . “ He reached for me, but I shook my head and moved away from him, words spewing from me like vomit.
“It’s never enough because eventually you slip. You mouth off, you lash out, you do something human, and they look at you like you’re something they found on the bottom of their shoe. And you can see them weighing every nice thing they’ve ever done for you, realizing you weren’t worth it. Then they don’t just stop doing, they resent you. They use everything you say, everything you do to justify what they think of you until you start to believe them.”
“I would never—”
“And I wanted to keep it that way!” I jerked my gaze down to the floor, unable to look at him. “I know you’re not keeping score, I know you’re not—but one day I’m going to push too far, ask too much and I’m going to—you’re going to realize—” I drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “When I’m with you, I feel like myself again. It’s—” I cleared my throat, voice thick. “You’re all I have. And if I lost you right now, it’d be devastating. But if I lost you after . . . getting involved with you that way, it’s this whole other spin and I just . . . I keep trying not to take from you, but you make it so damn hard. And it’s just a matter of time before I screw this up.”
“Hey.” He gripped my shoulders. “Look at me.” When I complied, he continued. “You’re my best friend. You’ve been there for me when everything was going to hell, you listen to me, you call me out on my bullshit, and you get me on a level no one else ever will. I’m not keeping score, Tess. And not because I’m better somehow. But because I wouldn’t know where to start. Who you are to me, the things you do? They’re not quantifiable. They can’t be measured. And if I’ve been pushing you, if I’ve ever made you feel like you owe me anything, I am so sorry.”
Tears pricked at my eyes. Derrick dropped his hands from my shoulder and pretended not to notice my futile effort to collect myself as he busied himself with the incense ingredients.
“Ready?” He held up a handful of the powder.
I couldn’t trust my voice not to waver, so I nodded.
He blew the powder in my face.
For a second nothing happened, then my throat seized. I tried to take a breath but couldn’t. I felt like I’d plunged into the deep end of a pool. Panic flooded my chest, but try as I might, I couldn’t break the surface and breathe.
Derrick watched me, face dispassionate. “Anything?”
My vision darkened. Derrick was there in an instant, brushing the powder off my face and pulling me to the edge of his room.
“It worked!”
“Yay,” I managed to mutter, my voice extra dry thanks to feeling like death. Within a few seconds, I found myself breathing easier, which should have been a relief, but instead it made me worry. If incense was the monster’s weakness, wouldn’t I not heal? I opened my mouth to ask, but a knock on his door cut me off.
“Derrick,” his mom called, jiggling the handle. “Why is your door locked?”
“It shouldn’t be.” Derrick sprang to his feet and headed to the door, pausing to look me over.
I scrambled back into a sitting position and moved toward the small bowls of powder. No way to hide these before—
Derrick opened the door, and the sheriff’s gaze landed on me, then the bowls. Her brow crinkled. “What—”
“We’re making paint,” I blurted. “Do you have any glue? We’re missing a good binder.”
The sheriff crossed the room and knelt to pick up one of the sauce bowls. She gave a cautious sniff. “Cinnamon?”
I flashed her a grin. “Makes a great brown. Smells good, too.”
“Huh.” She glanced up at the ceiling. “If you’re out of paint, Tess, I can just—”
“No, no. I’m good,” I said quickly, before she could ruin Derrick’s surprise. Man, I was going to give him such a hard time whenever he bothered to look up at his ceiling. “I just found this online and thought it looked fun.”
She gave me an odd look. “Maybe move this into the kitchen? Tile’s much easier to clean up if this spills than carpet.”
“Will do.” Derrick gathered the bottles of spices and shoved them into the bag.
I hastened to join him, all but tripping over myself to apologize for potentially making a mess.
“It’s fine, really. Uh . . .” The sheriff glanced around. Whatever she’d worried we were up to in here, this must not have been it. “I overslept, so I didn’t have time to cook anything before I leave for work.” She yawned, rubbing her face.
Derrick and I exchanged a glance. She’d come home this afternoon looking worn but relieved. We hadn’t gotten much information from her before she crashed, but from what little we could gather, everyone bought Matt’s suicide pact explanation. We didn’t know what they did to Josh, and Derrick hadn’t managed to get ahold of Matt again.
“Anyway.” She yawned again. “I left money. I’m working a double—there’s a lot to sort out right now—so don’t wait up.”
“Okay.” Derrick grinned at her. “Be safe.”
“Always.”
We followed her to the kitchen, depositing the ingredients on the table. While she got ready for work, I busied myself looking for glue and making spice paint while Derrick set to work mixing the powders.
The second the door closed behind her, Derrick poured the powders into several small plastic bags. “Let’s go meet Elizabeth.”
Chapter 42: Derrick
Sunday, October 2nd
“WOO-HOO! GUTTER!” Tess declared with a triumphant leap.
I smiled at Tess as she watched the ball return, bouncing on her toes like an over-caffeinated five-year-old on a sugar high. She’d filled the entire drive here with mindless chatter, too-loud laughs, and smiles that didn’t reach her eyes. And I’d let her, too scared to ask her about what she’d said about her feelings for me last night, in light of what she’d shared this afternoon.
Tess buried things instead of dealing with them. She always had. She was hiding in plain sight, and I couldn’t do anything about it other than play along.
“You’re doing it wrong.” I stood up and walked to the ball return. “Your arm went like this.” I swung my arm in front of me in a diagonal. “Here. Take the ball.” I lined Tess up in front of me.
“We have the same score, Derrick,” she objected as I guided her hand. “There’s nothing you can show—”
“Hold it like this.”
“You need to come to terms with the fact that we suck at this equally.” Her ball sailed straight to the other gutter. “Double gutter!” She spun around, slapping both of my hands in a high-five. “Thanks for the help.”
“Another point and you’d beat me.” I flashed her a grin. “Can’t have that.”
“Hey, guys!” Elizabeth Dare rushed to our lane, carrying a large book bag in one hand and a pair of bowling shoes in the other. “Sorry I’m late.” She tossed her bag down on a table right behind our lanes, ignoring the couple gathering their things to leave. “I ordered pizza,” Elizabeth said, impervious to the couple’s annoyed looks. “I hope you like cheese.”
“Thanks.” Tess sat in the booth across from her, sliding to the wall to make room for me to sit.
Elizabeth slapped her notes down on the grey table, just as I pulled out the ‘puzzle’ we’d pieced together.
“So this is what happened at that bonfire no one will shut up about, huh?” she asked.
“Yup,” Tess said before I could stop her. She rolled her eyes when I shot her an incredulous look. “Would you rather she thought we were planning on trying this?”
Elizabeth laughed. “Yeah, in case you didn’t guess this, I’m hella smart. Not that I would need to be to connect the glow-in-the-dark dots between the ritual described in here and the suspicious slaughter in the woods on the night of th
e eclipse.” Sympathy flickered in her eyes as she looked to Tess. “Did they really do this to you?”
“Apparently, they really wanted to win their next football game.” Tess caught her up on events as I scanned the pages.
“Okay,” Elizabeth said when Tess finished, laughter in her voice. But there was an edge to it. As though she wasn’t sure if we were joking or not, but she didn’t want to risk falling for it. “So if all that’s true, why would the creepy evil creature help you?”
“Help us?” Tess and I demanded at exactly the same time in exactly the same tone. We glanced at each other, then away.
“You guys were completely in the dark about what happened, right? I mean, a memory wipe of that scale’s gotta be supernatural. So why let the memories come back?”
Tess blinked. “Maybe—”
“It wears off?” Elizabeth spoke right over Tess. “But then why draw you a map? Or a picture, or whatever? And why tell you, point blank, what’s happening when you two didn’t have a clue?”
Chills raced down my spine. I’d taken all of that in stride with the weirdness of the past few weeks. But Elizabeth had a point. “Maybe if we knew what it was, we could figure that out.”
Elizabeth looked at her papers. “This is an invocation to the demon Estrie.”
“Like a demon, demon?” Tess clarified as if there were another type.
“Well, according to this book, yeah. The translation is a little rough. I mean, I did my best, but come on.” Elizabeth splayed her hands in a helpless gesture. “I can’t tell if Estrie is a specific demon or if she’s an Estrie. According to my research, Estrie are like Jewish, vampire, succubus chicks who turned into cats and messed with people in their dreams. So that seems to indicate it’s a species rather than a name. But the wording doesn’t line up. “
“What does it want?” I leaned forward, cutting to the chase. We could consider the implications of demonic existence and subclasses later. “What did the ritual do?”
“Can I get, like, an exorcism?” Tess spoke right over me.
“Those are kind of hard to come by.” Elizabeth tilted her head apologetically. “And you don’t have time to wait out the approval process.”
Tess blinked. “Approval process?”
“How much time does she have?”
Elizabeth hesitated, unsure which of our questions to answer first.
“How much time,” I repeated.
“Um . . .” Elizabeth pushed her hair over her shoulders. “Until the next full moon.”
So the demon told the truth about that.
“But it’s not a good luck spell.” Elizabeth snatched the paper out of my hand and pointed to a smudged line. “Technically, all this ritual does is donate a vessel for the demon to take corporeal form. In return, Estrie might grant favors, but there’s no promises.”
“So they donated me?” Tess’s voice sounded small.
I bumped my shoulder against hers in a not-quite hug, and she took a deep breath.
“Right, you’re the vessel, but you’re not the sacrifice. Not technically. The sacrifices are marked with these symbols.” Elizabeth flipped to another page and pointed at the hastily drawn moon-phases. “Preferably in their blood. Any prime number of sacrifices will kickstart the process, then one for each moon phase until possession is complete.”
“Wait, so they marked themselves as sacrifices?” I smirked. “Oh, that’s too good.”
Tess gave me a look.
“Except for the part where you’re involved,” I clarified.
“They were crazy stupid unlucky,” Elizabeth interjected. “I mean the odds of this working are insane. Virgin vessel.” She ticked off each item on her fingers. “Prime number of sacrifices, full, red, lunar eclipse happening at the same time the moon reaches its full phase during the Harvest Moon; plus, the corresponding sacrifices must be willing and must be completed in a very specific way at each lunar phase, for the remainder of the lunar cycle, at exactly the right moment until the Blood Moon. That’s when possession is complete. I’ve outlined all that in the notes. Then . . . uh, well, the vessel also kind of has to drink at least a bit of their blood before their hearts stop beating, and—”
“I’ve been drinking their blood?”
“That’s not possible.” I shook my head. “She’s been miles away each time someone died.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I’m literally just reading you the translation.”
I sighed in frustration. “What does it say happens to Tess after they all die?”
“Her soul shatters and gets absorbed by the demon, who then uses its energy to hang around in her body wreaking havoc until it runs out of juice and waits around for another set of idiots to do the ritual under exactly the right circumstances.”
I could almost see Tess’s brain close off as she decided not to process this. She stood, walked over to the ball return, and grabbed a bowling ball. “Appearances,” she said when Elizabeth gave her an incredulous look. “People will notice if we just sit here.”
“Right . . .” Elizabeth said after a moment. “Oh, here comes our pizza.” She waved the waiter over. “Can I grab a soda, too?” she asked when he reached the table. “Derrick? Want one?”
Her soul was going to shatter?
When I didn’t respond, Elizabeth ordered water for Tess and me, then dug into the pizza with gusto. “What?” she asked, her mouth full, when I gave her a look. “You seemed like you needed a minute, and I’m starving.”
“No, that’s fine.” I lapsed back into thought, unsure how to grapple with all this information. The sounds of the alley washed over me—the steady stream of laughter and conversation, the hum of balls rolling across polished wood, the clatter of pins. Life whirled on around us under the yellow glow of too many lights.
Think. I sifted through Elizabeth’s translation. “Why would it want to finish the ritual? Right now, Tess’s soul is intact, and it gets to hang around. Long game-wise, wouldn’t shattering her soul start its countdown?”
Elizabeth motioned for me to wait a minute while she chewed. “Right now, it can only kill certain people. Those marked as sacrifices and those perceived as a threat by Tess. It’s also limited on when it can control Tess’s body.”
Tess turned at the sound of her name. “What? When?”
“Anytime the moon’s up.”
So I’d been right. “Does it know what she knows? I mean, is it aware of what’s happening when the moon isn’t up?”
Elizabeth gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. So I mean, assume it can? But it can’t act on anything it learns until the moon is out.”
Tess dropped into the seat beside me. “But I’ve lost time during the day.”
Elizabeth wiped her hands with a brown napkin. “Moonrise and moonset don’t always correspond to traditional night hours. Ever seen the moon out in the middle of a sunny day?”
Tess nodded.
“Then the moon had risen over the horizon. If everyone else dies when they’re supposed to, those limits are lifted until your soul runs out.”
“Why is Derrick linked to this?” Tess asked, motioning for me to bowl.
I ignored her, leaning forward to hear Elizabeth’s answer over the music.
“Insurance?” Elizabeth guessed after a sip of soda. “Until the demon takes full possession of you, you can be killed. If the vessel dies, the demon returns to hell or wherever.”
Tess and I exchanged a glance. Well, there was one option we could take right off the table.
Elizabeth didn’t seem to notice our discomfort. “Everyone has at least one person who wants to keep them safe. Or at least, they think they do. So the demon uses them as a kind of tether. After the sacrifices, when the vessel is at their most vulnerable, they’re returned to that person.”
&nb
sp; “Most vulnerable?” Tess crossed her arms.
“You tend to be unconscious, yes? Then when you come to, you’re less . . . stable? Emotional, disoriented, confused?”
“Yeah,” I replied before Tess could deny it. “Feverish, low blood sugar, the works.”
“There you go. Most vulnerable.” She glanced at me. “It can get in your head, too, Derrick. Not to the same extent as Tess or the other sacrifices, but it can sway you.”
I thought of my sketchy logic for not calling the police when Tess showed up on my doorstep the night of the bonfire. “So why the blackouts and the nose bleeds?”
“Creep factor?” Elizabeth held up her hands. “Guys, I don’t actually know this stuff. I translated the book enough to read and make some sense out of it. But if it’s not there,” she motioned to the pages, “I can’t tell you.”
I rubbed my forehead and tried to think. “So other than Tess dying, how do we stop this?”
“Disrupt the sacrifice cycle? I mean, that must have worked for Jenny, right? She lived practically forever. Near as I can figure, that’s gotta be because she never found the last guy.”
“This thing can kill with shadows,” Tess objected. “How can we possibly stop that?”
“Timing?” Elizabeth guessed. “Everything has to be done at a very specific time in a very specific way. Knock one detail out of place and maybe the rest falls apart.”
Details. I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to sort my thoughts into some semblance of order. “This thing required a virgin vessel, right? What happens if that . . . status changes before this thing has a chance to completely take over?”
“Really?” Tess shoved my shoulder. “That’s where your mind goes?”
I gritted my teeth and fought past my embarrassment. “We’ve gone around in circles trying to figure out what it got out of impersonating you that night. What if it wanted to shut down any chance of that?”
Blood and Other Matter Page 26
