Banishing the Dark

by Jenn Bennett

  “I’m fine.” My hand slid to my stomach, as if I could tell something. “Everything feels okay. Priya?” I asked, pushing away to search for him.

  “He couldn’t hold on,” Jupe explained. “He said he’d find a healer in the Æthyr. And he’s pretty torn up about what happened, thinks he failed you and all that junk. So you should probably be nice to him next time you summon him. He’s got some self-worth issues.”

  “Thank God you don’t have that problem,” Lon mumbled, and I wanted to hug them both all over again. But the crunch of gravel behind Jupe made me remember we weren’t alone.

  I peered around his mass of curls and spotted the girl. She was pretty, now that I could see her better. And she held herself as if she was slightly uncomfortable but would die before she admitted it. I liked her immediately.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She held up a tentative hand. “Hi.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up earlier.”

  “No problem.”

  A slow grin lifted Jupe’s cheeks, and his eyes went a little squinky. “This is Leticia Vega.”

  “Nice to meet you, Leticia.” I gripped Lon’s hand like he might dry up and blow away. “I’d apologize that you caught us on a bad night, but this is pretty much the everyday circus sideshow for this family.” Dead body. Pig’s blood summoning circle behind us in the shed. A great first impression.

  “Her sister gets naked in front of the entire lodge every week, and her grandmother’s a racist,” Jupe volunteered happily. “She’s used to weirdness.”

  “Well, then,” I said, giving her a sympathetic smile to ease her through Jupe’s gift of oversharing. “I think we’ll get along just fine.”

  EPILOGUE

  August, three and a half years later

  I lounged on a wide wicker chaise in the backyard. It had been dark for an hour or so, and a pretty good fire still crackled in the round stack-stone fire pit Lon had built this spring. It felt fabulous on my chilly feet.

  Behind me, a few hundred yards below our cliff, the dark Pacific crashed on the beach. In front of me, beyond the fire, Mr. and Mrs. Holiday hauled away the last of the plastic cups and paper plates to the garbage before they drove back to their cabin. And beside me, a lingering party guest shared my lounge chair.

  “I swear, it’s a good ten degrees colder out here than in the city at night.” To prove her point, Kar Yee shivered dramatically and hugged her sweater tighter.

  “You say that every time you come out here.”

  “It doesn’t stop being true. It’s summer, for the love of God.”

  “I don’t mind when there’s a fire. Where’s Hajo tonight?”

  “Working some police case in the foothills. A missing girl.”

  “Another one? Damn, he’s really helping them out a lot lately. Not half bad for a former junkie.” I wanted to add and the biggest jerk I know, but the last time I joked about someone “pulling a Hajo,” Kar Yee and I had a huge fight and didn’t speak for almost a week.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking full credit for his miraculous turnaround from Death Dowser/Drug Dealer to Death Dowser/Halfway Decent Person. “He’s cleaned up nicely. And if he quits smoking, he can move in with me.”

  I chuckled. “Crack that whip, Kar Yee.”

  “Gross. You know how I feel about black leather and vinyl.”

  “S’pose there’s no need for riding crops when you’re wielding that fear knack of yours.”

  She tucked the tips of her bobbed hair behind her ears and grinned. “Oh, I almost forgot. Glen texted me to say he got the snafu with your business license smoothed over. I told you he would.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “No problem. You need me to help you with anything? Spreadsheets, organizing . . . ?”

  “Think I’m good. Everything’s squared away now. Grand opening’s on Friday.”

  “I’ll drop by after closing to see if you need help counting all the cash.”

  I laughed. “Deal.”

  Although Kar Yee and I were still co-owners of Tambuku, I hadn’t bartended since I buried my mother. Kar Yee had promoted Amanda to head bartender and hired two assistant managers and three new servers. Back in May, I signed a lease on a shop in the Village between an art gallery that sold Lon’s signed prints and Three Dwarves Pottery, which made all the Tambuku Tiki mugs.

  And my new demon-friendly business? Arcadia’s Garden. Yep, I was now the proud owner of a rare herb emporium and tea shop and the only magical apothecary in town. I figured making magick medicinals was one of my better skills, and it was something I enjoyed. And it damn sure could be put to better use helping locals in La Sirena than pacifying drunk-ass bar patrons.

  Karlan Rooke and I had kept in touch since my visit to Pasadena, so he was supplying most of my rare herbs. And although I’d be selling some of them loose—a fine selection of valrivia, rare teas, and few obscurities for the magick-minded customer—the majority of my business would be in medicinal teas and drinks. Depressed? Need energy? Trying to detox? Need to calm your nerves? I had you covered.

  And it didn’t hurt that my old buddy Bob would be sending patients my way; he’d have his medical license next year and was interning under Lon’s BFF Dr. Mick at the hospital here. If I could just get Kar Yee to move to the beach, the whole gang would be back together. As it was, Auntie Kar Yee was driving out here at least once a month, and I did the reverse, popping in at Tambuku on occasion.

  “Well, I hate to eat and run,” she said, staring at her phone. “But Hajo found the body. Which is gruesome, but it means I have a date, and sex trumps children’s birthday parties.”

  I gave her a fist bump. “Thanks for coming. Your gift was a big hit.”

  “Clothes are better than toys any day. She’d do well to learn that early on.” She blew Jupe a kiss across the yard and marched up the steps to the patio, black bob swaying as she ducked under party streamers and strings of carnival lights, and left through the house.

  A dark male figure blocked the light from the fire pit, sparks glittering around his shoulder-length hair as he stoked the wood. When he was finally satisfied, he plopped down next to me and slung an arm around my shoulders. “Peace and fucking quiet,” he said. “No more birthdays. Ever.”

  I sniffed the wood smoke clinging to his shirt. “Next time, don’t say ‘Daddy is going to throw you a big party’ and expect her to forget it.”

  “Mmm.”

  I poked his side, smiling when he flinched and made his I’m-too-manly-to-be-ticklish noise. “By the way, thanks for telling me you invited Ben Waters. He had his hand halfway up Mrs. Dutton’s skirt every time his wife turned her back. That man is not family-friendly.”

  “You’d think he would be. He’s fathered enough bastards around town to start his own baseball team. Anyway, it was a goodwill gesture and a reward for not breaking our truce.”

  Truce. I guessed that’s what it was. Although Lon was officially not active in the Hellfire Club, he turned out to be the only remaining member trusted with the club’s bank account. And that included Dare’s son, Mark. Dare’s wife had long ago moved to Europe, but Mark and his family ended up staying to run Dare Enterprises. Now, make no mistake, I still hated Mark Dare. But as long as he stayed away from my family, I tried not to hold his father’s sins against him. Mark might be an ass, but at least he wasn’t an evil overlord. And if he ever knew what his father did to me, I had a feeling he’d be pretty sick about it.

  So Mark got to play leader of the club, Ben Waters was his second in command, and Lon controlled the money behind the scenes. Which meant no more Hellfire-bought drugs at the monthly parties, no more demon fight club, no more Incubus and Succubus sex circles in the Hellfire caves. That didn’t mean the parties were G-rated. I had no doubt plenty of the members were still banging each other’s brains out in the back caves and snorting every drug they could pass around.

  “I’m just saying, if his wife comes into my shop asking for something to
cure her husband’s roaming eye, I’m telling her to toss his ass out and get a divorce. Maybe give her something to rot off his boy parts.”

  A slow smile spread over Lon’s face. “God, this town doesn’t know what it’s in for.”

  No, it totally did, which was why Kar Yee had to send me the guy who helped her fix legal stuff at Tambuku. Someone at City Hall had messed with my license paperwork, and when I found out who was behind it, they were in for a world of hurt.

  A screech shot across the yard, immediately followed by maniacal, tinkling laughter and excited barking. Two halos raced across the lawn under the carnival lights. One spring-green, the other silver and gold.

  “Oh, really,” Jupe called over his shoulder. “That’s how it’s going to be? After I helped you smash that piñata and all that candy I picked out of the grass for you?”

  More laughter and some serious huffing and puffing.

  “Jesus, she’s going to have a heart attack,” I mumbled, feeling mildly panicked myself.

  “She’s fine,” Lon assured me. “Let her run off all that sugar.”

  Jupe stopped several yards away and turned around. “Come on and get me, Tabby-cat. That cape of yours is slowing you down.”

  And God, it really was. Kar Yee would faint if she saw her gift, a sparkly robe, tied around my kid’s neck by the sleeves. It looked like it was practically choking her, but she didn’t seem to care. Orange dress, paper pirate hat, sparkly pink cape waving like a flag as she bobbed toward Jupe like some crazed fruit bowl.

  Jupe lunged to one side and skidded in the grass, and that’s when she tagged him on the leg.

  “Ow! Shit, Tabby, that hurts!”

  “Shit!” she cried out triumphantly. “Shitshitshit!”

  Great. Now she’d be busting that out at the grocery store.

  Jupe rubbed his leg. “You shock me again, and—”

  She got him in the arm.

  “Goddammit!”

  More batshit laughter followed.

  “Hey, no shocking. Stop egging her on, Jupe!” I called out as he sidled around her as if they were opponents on a soccer field. He jumped back one more time, moving too fast for her to follow. And in her sugar-hyper, overexcited, past-her-bedtime state, she miscalculated and tripped over her own feet. The fruit bowl went down, face-planting in the grass.

  The piercing cry that followed knifed right through my heart.

  Lon’s hold around my shoulders tightened before I could scramble off the lounge and run to her. “She’s okay.”

  And although that was probably true, it didn’t stop that heart-squeezing wail from jumbling all my insides. Nor did it stop my eyes from transmutating from human to serpentine. I focused on her with moon-powered nocturnal vision that gave me a sharper, silver-tinged view of her body.

  Jupe bent over her and hauled her into his arms. “All right, I’m sorry. Enough playing.” He walked her over to us and peeled her arms from around his neck. Lon was closer, so he got the pass. She fell on him in a fit of quivering, jerking sobs.

  “Da-a-a-ddy,” she cried. “Jupe hurt me.”

  Jupe’s mouth fell open in mock offense. “I didn’t even touch you.”

  “Shhh,” Lon said, rubbing her back as she clung to him. “You’re going to live.”

  I sat up and inspected her as she cried her eyes out all over Lon’s chest. One barely skinned knee and some grass stains on her dress and palm. Switching knacks, I pushed my senses a little further into her body to make sure nothing was broken. Everything seemed to be in order, so I rubbed my fingers over her knee to heal up the scrape.

  “All better,” I said.

  Lon pushed her hair back. “See? Mommy fixed you. It’s all fine.”

  She wasn’t ready to stop crying, so I reached over to heal up any other scrapes on her other knee, and that’s when I found the weapon locked in her plump grip.

  “Who gave her the pencil?” I said. It wasn’t sharpened, but it served its purpose well enough. She’d started with the shocking a few weeks ago—without any prompt from me, I might add—and I’d been freaked out that she was going to hurt herself. So I showed her how to release Heka through pencils.

  Huge mistake. Last week, I had to round up every pencil in the house.

  “Jesus, Jupe,” I complained. “She could’ve poked her eye out when she fell.”

  “Come on, it’s not like they were scissors.”

  “It’s my fault,” a girl’s voice said.

  Leticia strode up behind Jupe. “Jupe’s art teacher left her present next to the grill. She tore into it before I could stop her. It’s an art kit with a bunch of crayons and stuff, but she went straight for the pencil.” She handed me an unopened birthday card.

  I stuffed it into my sweater pocket and made a mental note to add it to the thank-you list. “She can sniff out graphite a mile away,” I said, tugging the knotted sleeves around her neck and slipping off her impromptu cape. “But don’t let her run with stuff in her hands, okay, Jupe?”

  “Got it—my sister is clumsy.”

  She raised her head and stopped crying long enough to say, “Am not!”

  Jupe grinned and rubbed his arm. “Well, nothing like electrocution to end a party. We’re out of here.”

  The tears suddenly shut off as if she’d turned a spigot. “Don’t go!” she pleaded.

  “I have to,” he said, mussing up her hair. “Movie starts in half an hour, and I want to get a good parking space before the drive-in fills up.”

  “What are you seeing?” I asked as she pouted, burying her face in Lon’s shirt.

  “An American Werewolf in London. From 1981, directed by John Landis.” Jupe pretended to bite Leticia on the neck. She punched him in the arm where his sister had shocked him, and he feigned injury.

  Looking at him now, I was amazed at how much and how little he’d changed since I first saw him standing in Lon’s doorway. He was still long and skinny, but the seventeen-year-old was all lean muscle now, thanks to two seasons of being the top midfielder on La Sirena High’s soccer team.

  And although he’d somehow sprouted up several inches and morphed from a boy to almost a man while I wasn’t looking—a painfully good-looking man who attracted stares wherever he went—he was still the same old cocky, overly optimistic, filterless Motormouth.

  “Be back by one,” Lon said

  “One? It’s Saturday, and I have to drive a half hour to take Leticia back to Morella, then a half hour back. That’s an hour right there, and the movie doesn’t let out until midnight. I’d have to speed to get home in time.”

  “I’m not paying for another ticket or a jacked-up insurance bill,” Lon said. “Figure it out.”

  I held up two fingers.

  Jupe grinned while his dad mumbled under his breath.

  “No later, okay? And please don’t speed. I don’t want to sit around here worrying about seeing a smashed purple GTO showing up on the late news.” He’d finished fixing it up two months before he turned sixteen and then promptly dented the back end—the tree next to the garage “looked farther away after it got pruned” and several other ridiculous defenses. It took him three additional months to fix the damage; the tree still had electric purple paint wedged into the scrape marks on the bark.

  “I’ll never speed again,” he promised. A lie if I’d ever heard one. I pointed to my lips. He leaned down and kissed me, mumbling, “Thank you.”

  “Good night,” Leticia said.

  “Thanks for helping me with the decorations.”

  “Anytime. See you on Wednesday at the shop.”

  I grinned and gave her a thumbs-up as she ran to catch up with Jupe. Turned out Leticia was a surprisingly good apprentice and wasn’t half bad at making medicinals.

  As the GTO rumbled to life in the distance, the bundle in Lon’s arm let out an exhausted sigh. Laughing, crying, and now fast asleep, all in the span of five minutes. He carefully removed her cardboard pirate hat and set it on the grass, then tucked his ch
in to his chest and picked a stray piece of confetti out of her hair.

  She looked a lot like him, with her long body, high cheekbones, and wavy hair that was almost exactly the same length as his. Green eyes, too, so apparently, someone on my side of the fence carried a green-eyed gene.

  And she might have Lon’s waves, but it was dark brown like mine, and she definitely had my nose. Everything else blended together in that weird, unique way it does with kids—part of you but not you—including the silver and gold halo swirling above her frizzy dark hair. She was born with it, no waiting and wondering, and its metallic swirls almost looked like moving stripes.

  Tabitha Rose Bell Butler was born two weeks early, after fifteen grueling hours of labor. And three years later, even through the postpartum depression and the nights I sat awake scared out of my mind that I didn’t know what I was doing—or that she was too good to be true and something horrible would happen to rip her away from me—it was worth every second.

  Tabby likes collecting shells, coloring on the walls and floor, clementines, birds, and building sand castles down at the beach. Every Saturday, she watches cartoons with Jupe. And every Sunday night, we call up her favorite bird of all, Priya, who shows her all the threads that connect us together and how big his wings expand.

  She loves to tell wild stories, so when she informs the checkout lady at the grocery store that Mommy can turn into a dragon lady and Daddy has horns, we just shrug and smile.

  And as for horns of her own? The verdict’s still out on that, I suppose. Apart from her halo, there’s nothing unusual about the way she looks. But she can already kindle Heka, as Jupe knows all too well, and although we haven’t seen any definitive proof of an early knack, Lon and I have been a little on edge. This past Christmas, Jupe rushed downstairs in a frenzy to tell me that Mr. Piggy wasn’t waking up. He was already on the far side of normal life expectancy for a pygmy hedgehog, so I knew the day would eventually come. And he might not be the coziest of pets, but it still broke my heart.