Necessary Evil

by Donald Hanley

  I used Restore on both of them and their scars vanished almost immediately. I couldn’t do anything about their clothes other than pretend not to notice how much skin was showing through.

  “So now what?” Melissa asked. She knelt by the edge of the pool and scrubbed at the drying blood on her arms. “That’s two demon lords down. How long before Lilith sends the next one?”

  “Longer, I hope,” I told her. “Word’ll get around that teaming up with her is a bad idea. She’s going to have trouble recruiting anyone else.” Daraxandriel’s face twisted up into a doubtful grimace. “Or not?”

  “The lords of Hell think highly of their own power,” she explained, “and disparage that of others. They expect their rivals to fail, so their deaths will not dissuade them.”

  “That’s just great,” I muttered. “So how come they left you alone?” I asked Susie. She bent her fingers into claws, like she was about to scratch my eyes out. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I have better wards than you,” she said smugly.

  “Melissa has the same wards and they got her,” I pointed out.

  “These aren’t my only wards.”

  I eyed her doubtfully. She absolutely wasn’t wearing anything else that could be construed as a ward but I hesitated to ask her where the other ones were because she might actually tell me. “Let’s get inside,” I said instead. “Hopefully that’s all the excitement for tonight.”

  I took one last look around first, checking the shadows for any sign of supernatural movement. My Fireforge spell had faded at some point, leaving behind a smooth black circle of solidified rock, and there was a huge scorch mark on the grass where my Flame Lance had landed. I had no idea how we were going to explain those to Melissa’s father when he got back but that problem didn’t need to get solved until next week.

  I herded everyone back into the house and closed and locked the door, as if that would somehow slow down the next demon lord. “Everyone try to get some sleep,” I said. “We’ll have to call Mrs. Kendricks first thing and let her know what happened.”

  “Peter? Is that you?” Olivia appeared in the hallway, stifling a yawn as she scrubbed her fingers through her hair. She wore an oversized t-shirt with a pair of hearts embroidered on the front. “What are you doing up?”

  “Did you just wake up?” I asked incredulously. “How could you possibly sleep through all that?”

  “All I heard was someone talking outside my window. You were awfully loud,” she accused and then she finally realized I wasn’t alone. She gaped at the others with her jaw practically touching her collarbone. “Oh my God, what happened to you? And why is Susie naked?” She popped back into ghosthood and her t-shirt flopped to the floor at her feet. “Sorry,” she muttered in embarrassment. “I’ll be right back.” She snatched up the shirt but I raised my hand to stop her from leaving.

  “Don’t bother,” I told her wearily. “You’re just going to pop again when you find out what you missed.”

  11

  People complain about the prevalence of foul language in today’s society and yet modern cussing is remarkably feeble. After they’ve run through the D-word, the A-word, the S-word, and the F-word, the repertoire of a typical American is pretty much exhausted. In ages past, cursing was an art form. Shakespeare and his contemporaries were masters of the insult, ranging from cream-faced loon to whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch. I have no idea what those mean, but they’re certainly much more poetic than F-ing A-hole, which is the best – or worst – most of us can manage.

  Foul language falls into four basic categories. Insults ascribe various disgusting or undesirable traits to the target, often comparing him or her to something vile, such as, to pick a random example, a cream-faced loon. Cursing wishes ill upon the target, as in I hope you die or A pox on both your houses. Swearing invokes divine wrath upon the target, starting with the basic God damn it and working up from there.

  The fourth category, expletives, is reserved for those moments where anger, frustration, or pain boil over and you just have to let out a short syllable to express your dissatisfaction with current events. The S-word and the F-word are, of course, the most common utterances in these circumstances. These two words have been around for several hundred years – even Shakespeare made use of them on occasion – but it’s only in the last few decades that they’ve become the go-to stress relievers. There’s a certain catharsis that happens when you let one of these fly at the right moment. Just make sure your parents aren’t in the room when you do, though, unless you really enjoy the taste of soap.

  I walked back into Mr. Andrews’ bedroom scrubbing my hair with a towel and discovered that seventy-five percent of my cohort had fallen asleep on the bed in my absence. Daraxandriel and Susie took up most of the space, sprawled face-down across the sheets. Melissa looked like she made a valiant effort to wait up for me but she lay on the foot of the bed curled up around one of the pillows. The other twenty-five percent was back on ghost guard duty watching for imps, doing penance for sleeping through the battle with Sadraximbril.

  It was a surprisingly sweet scene, although I couldn’t help but wonder how much Justin would pay me for a photo, considering Daraxandriel and Susie were wearing their usual sleepwear – nothing – and the long shirt Melissa chose to replace her ruined nightgown was riding up scandalously high. I glanced speculatively at my phone on the night stand and noticed that the alert indicator was flashing.

  I picked it up and discovered that I’d missed several calls, all of them from Mrs. Kendricks. The times corresponded to our little contretemps in the back yard and I wondered if Mrs. Kendricks somehow knew what happened. There was a voice message as well and I tapped the icon to play it back.

  “Peter,” she said tightly, “call me as soon as you get this message, no matter what the time is. There’s a situation.” My heart skipped a couple of beats and I nearly missed the rest. “I’m worried,” she said, but her voice was a lot fainter, as if she was talking to someone else. “What could have hap–” The message ended there.

  I immediately jabbed the callback button but nothing happened. I closed the app or tried to, anyway, but my phone was completely locked up. “God damn it,” I muttered as I held down the power button to reboot it. “Of all the times to act up.” The usual prompt to restart or power down failed to appear and I shook it irritably. “What the hell?”

  “Modern technology is so frail, don’t you think?”

  I kept myself from leaping across the bed in a single bound, but it was a close thing. Amy sat on top of the dresser, kicking her heels against the drawers as she grinned down at me. “Stop doing that!” I complained. “Can’t you just knock like a normal person?”

  “Certainly,” she agreed, “if I were a normal person.”

  I bit back my sarcastic response and instead waved my phone at her. “Did you do this? I have to call Mrs. Kendricks!”

  “There’s plenty of time for that later.”

  “I need to call her now! Something might have happened.”

  “But nothing’s happening right now, so there’s no rush, is there?”

  “What do you – oh. You stopped time again, didn’t you?” None of the girls were moving at all and the alarm clock was stuck on the same number.

  “You’re not as stupid as you look,” Amy smiled. She slid off the dresser, sticking the landing, and fluffed out her petticoats. “Nice work with Sadraximbril, by the way. That’s the kind of teamwork I wanted to see.”

  “So did we kill her?”

  “It’s kind of hard to tell with her, actually,” she said ruefully. “Either way, she’s in no shape to give you any more trouble, so well done.” She gave me a little mime clap. “Lilixandriel’s going to be livid when she finds out.”

  “Wasn’t she watching?” I asked doubtfully.

  “She has a lot of tricks up her sleeve,” she shrugged, “but flying isn’t one of them.”

  “Well, her imps would have told her what hap
pened, right?”

  Amy shook her head. “There aren’t any imps around here.”

  “Then how did she find us?”

  She bared her teeth in a wide grin. “Do you like riddles, Peter?”

  “No, I really don’t.”

  “So what’s brown, big enough to swallow seven people at once, faster than a stooping hawk, and easy to spot from the air?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I have no idea.”

  “Oh, come on, you’re not even trying. Just make a guess.”

  I let my breath out in a sigh and tried to imagine something big and fast and brown. A bear? They were large and pretty fast but I doubted they could eat seven people. A whale? Is there such a thing as a brown whale? They didn’t eat people anyway and they certainly couldn’t swim faster than a hawk could dive. Those things could hit a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Wait a minute.

  “Are you talking about a car?” I asked suspiciously. “No, a van,” I corrected myself. “Mom’s van. Which is parked out front in the driveway.” I shook my head. “Lilith knows we’re using Mom’s van because that imp spotted us in front of Mrs. Kendricks’ house. She told Sadra-whatever to look for it.”

  “Precisely,” Amy nodded, looking pleased at my deductive skills.

  “Wonderful. Look, we’ve killed or maimed three of her demons. Can’t you just turn her over to the Dread Lord now?”

  “Oh, no, we’re not even close,” she said, shaking her head. “She’s going to have to work her way up to someone truly impressive before I waltz in to save the day. At least an 8.75 on the Demonic Threat Meter.” Amy reached way over her head to illustrate.

  “But someone’s going to get hurt!”

  “Well, sure, if you’re going to hide out in crowded neighborhoods,” she agreed amiably.

  “You mean we can’t stay here?” I asked in dismay.

  “You can if you want to,” she grinned, “but if Lilixandriel can’t find you easily, she’s going to have to lure you out into the open. That’s probably not going to work out well for someone.”

  “Why me?” I sighed, rubbing my forehead.

  “Because you’re the good guy,” Amy shrugged. “That’s what happens to people like you. Well, I’m sure you’ll sort things out. Later.” She raised her hand to snap her fingers.

  “Wait!” I begged, but it was too late. Amy vanished and Melissa rolled over onto her other side, mumbling something I couldn’t make out. Daraxandriel and Susie resumed their slow breathing but remained otherwise motionless.

  There was no room left on the bed to lie down without getting entangled with someone and I was wide awake anyway. I pulled on my shirt and pants and went downstairs to the kitchen, peering into the fridge for a drink of some sort. There were two bottles of wine chilling in the rack, most of a six-pack of imported beer, a wide selection of juice, and a couple of sodas. I contemplated the options and then went with the old standby for late-night libations, a glass of cold milk.

  I slumped in one of the kitchen chairs, turning my glass between my fingers as I stared at nothing in particular, wondering how we were going to get out of this in one piece. Amy was convinced Lilixandriel was going to escalate our conflict into some form of arcane mutually assured destruction but I couldn’t imagine her taking things that far. Lilixandriel was evil and ambitious but she wasn’t stupid. As soon as she realized there was no way she’d ever get my Philosopher’s Stone, she’d give up and go off to ruin someone else’s life. I just hoped we’d reach that point before anyone got seriously hurt. Any human, I amended. I wouldn’t mind thinning the demonic ranks some more before things got back to normal.

  “Peter?” Olivia ghosted through the back door, looking at me doubtfully. “What are you doing up? Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I assured her. “I couldn’t sleep.” I slurped my milk as Olivia perched on the chair across from me.

  “I couldn’t find any imps,” she reported. “They must be hiding somewhere.”

  “You can stop looking,” I told her. “Amy said there weren’t any.”

  “Who?”

  “Amy. She – wait a minute.” I sat up abruptly, almost knocking my glass over. “You actually heard me say that?”

  “Yes,” she said doubtfully. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Amy’s the Dread Lord’s daughter!” I blurted, trying to get everything out before Amy stopped me again. “She gave me Melissa and me our powers back. She wants us to keep fighting Lilith until we wipe out all of the demon lords who are trying to overthrow her father so she can claim credit!”

  Olivia leaned away from me. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “No! I mean, yes! Oh my God, this is great! She was keeping me from telling anyone about her.”

  “So why isn’t she stopping you now?” she asked suspiciously.

  “I don’t know. Every time I opened my mouth, something else would come out. Except –” I looked her over speculatively and she nervously pulled the fabric of her nightgown closer around her. “Amy never mentioned you. She talked about everyone else but not you. You were always a ghost whenever she appeared,” I remembered. “Maybe she doesn’t know about you. No, that can’t be right. She seems to know everything that’s going on even when I can’t see her and you’ve been solid most of the time. This doesn’t make any sense,” I murmured.

  “I’ll say,” Olivia grumbled.

  “We need to tell Mrs. Kendricks and Agent Prescott about this. They don’t even know I have my powers back and – oh, crap!” I fumbled for my phone.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Mrs. Kendricks left me a message. Amy interrupted me when I was trying to call her back.” I hit her number and she answered before the first ring finished.

  “Peter!” she exclaimed anxiously. “Are you okay? Is everyone else all right?”

  “We’re fine,” I told her. “What’s going on?”

  Her breath whooshed in my ear. “Praise the Goddess,” she murmured. “We were so worried.”

  “Why? What happened?” I set the phone on speaker and set it on the table so Olivia could hear as well.

  “Tara called me about an hour ago. She said she woke up in a cold sweat and felt something terrible passing close by. She described it as a dark evil.”

  “Tara?”

  “Tara Kingsley. You must remember her, she was one of the witches we recruited to perform Dr. Bellowes’ ritual last month.”

  “Oh, right, the black girl.” That wasn’t very PC of me, I knew, but that was how I remembered her. “It wasn’t just a bad dream or something?”

  “It was a demon,” Mrs. Kendricks insisted, “and a very powerful one. Lilith must be getting ready to strike again, much sooner than I expected. Are you at home?”

  “I’m at Melissa’s. All of us are,” I added hastily, in case she misconstrued the reason for my presence.

  “How quickly can you get here? We can protect you better here.”

  “You’re too late,” I told her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve already taken care of it.” I gave her the abridged versions of our encounters with the hellhound and Sadraximbril Shadowmaster. The incredulous silence that stretched out on the phone was gratifying, frankly.

  “You both have your powers back?” Mrs. Kendricks asked finally. “How is that possible?”

  You can thank Amy, Spawn of Darkness, for that, I tried to say, but what came out was, “Who knows?” The Dread Lord’s daughter is using us to get herself out of the infernal doghouse. “We’re lucky they did, though.” I shoved the phone towards Olivia. “You tell her,” I demanded in frustration.

  “How?” she protested, gesturing at her translucent self.

  “Turn human again!”

  “But –” My glare convinced her to go along with my request. “Fine,” she groused, stalking off to her bedroom.

  “Who are you talking to, Peter?” Mrs. Kendricks asked doubtfully.

  “Sorry, that was Ol
ivia. She has something to tell you.”

  “Can’t you tell me for her?”

  “Um, no, not really.”

  “I see,” she said, obviously not seeing. “Well, this changes things quite a bit. I’m going to have to tell Ryan about this.” She didn’t sound very enthusiastic about that.

  “Are you two, um, going to be okay?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “We’ve both changed since that night. He spent the last twenty years protecting people from demons but I’m not that helpless girl he remembers. It’s going to take some time to get to know each other again.”

  “I hope it works out,” I said sincerely, “for Stacy’s sake.”

  “Yes,” she sighed. “In the meantime, we need to sort out what’s happened to you and Melissa.”

  Olivia walked back in then, clad in her borrowed heart shirt, and I pointed eagerly at the phone. “Tell her!”

  “Tell her what?” Olivia frowned.

  “About, you know, how this happened.” I tapped my forehead but she shook her head doubtfully. “We just talked about this! About the Dread Lord.” That was as close as Amy’s restrictions would let me go.

  “We didn’t talk about Him.”

  “We did! About someone He knows.” I barely got that one past my lips.

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Peter?” she asked dubiously. “You’re not making sense.”

  “Is something wrong, Peter?” Mrs. Kendricks asked.

  “Hang on, I’ll call you right back.” I hung up and turned on Olivia. “I need you to tell her about –” My lips refused to form Amy’s name. “We just talked about this two minutes ago! Why isn’t it working now?” I glared at Olivia as if it was her fault somehow and then the lightbulb went on. “Go back to being a ghost,” I told her.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!” She grimaced and concentrated for a moment. This time she managed to catch her shirt before it hit the floor. “Amy! Do you remember Amy now?”

  “Of course. What’s wrong with you, Peter? You’re asking all these weird questions. Did Melissa’s spell mess with your head or something?”