by Chloe Garner
“Shut up,” she said. Jason looked at her approvingly.
“Where did you learn that?”
She glared at him.
“Self defense classes Freshman year.”
He nodded.
“I haven’t heard him make that note since puberty,” he said.
“Jason,” Sam said. Jason laughed.
“I assume you’re okay with us staying? That there really is something important going on, here?”
“Yes,” Samantha said.
“Then let’s go get our bags.”
Jason held up his keys and shook them, grinning at the rage on Sam’s face. He deserved it, thinking that going to dinner with Sam-the-girl once was going to change him completely.
“Why aren’t you angry?” he heard Sam ask her as they walked back to the car.
“Because that’s who he is. I’m shocked that you’re surprised.”
Jason nodded to himself. She understood. That was all he was looking for.
He turned and walked backwards down the sidewalk.
“So is someone going to tell me what’s going on, or are you two going to figure it all out on your own while I dally with the desk girl?”
Sam stiffened and Samantha shook her head at Jason.
“Sam had a vision a couple of weeks back with that symbol in it,” she said. “There was a girl in a basement, we think, where they had that symbol on something out in the hallway. We need to find her.”
Jason nodded.
“So you two can explore the hotel tonight, and I’ll see what I can get from the desk girl,” Jason said. Samantha looked up at Sam then, reading something that Jason couldn’t see, threatened to pinch him again. Sam skittered away and held up his hands defensively.
“All right, fine. That’s what we’ll do.”
<><><>
“So tell me about the vision again,” Samantha said.
“I told you what there was. A girl sitting in an empty concrete room. A man opened the door and she started crying, and then laughing. The hall with a desk in it and a piece of paper or a booklet with that symbol on the cover.”
“Concrete room. Concrete floors? Concrete walls? Windows?”
“Yes, yes, no.”
“Okay. And the hallway. How was it lit?”
Sam paused, trying to review. The vision was surprisingly clear in his memory.
“Natural light, I think. At least, it was all coming from behind me.”
“Okay. How about the carpet? Anything you can tell me about it that helps me recognize the place when I see it?”
Sam paused again.
“Dark. Blue, maybe. Purple. Could just be really dirty.”
“Okay. How about the table?”
“Narrow, along the wall. Less than twelve inches deep, hip-high.”
“Wood?”
“Yes.”
“Two legs or four?”
He thought harder, the front edge of a headache hitting him.
“I didn’t see.”
“Okay. You can cut it there. Don’t hurt yourself.”
“Are you making fun of me?” he asked.
“No. You’re getting a headache. I need your mind clear.”
“Could you try again?” he asked. “Maybe I’d see something different that might help.”
“Could. It seems like it’s most likely that she’ll be here, though. Let’s see what we can find tonight, and cross that bridge when we have to.”
“We have to find her,” Sam said, his mind replaying her sobbing as it transitioned into that evil cackle over and over again. “She was so afraid.”
“I know.”
“Do you know what’s wrong with her?”
Samantha looked over at him and smiled sympathetically.
“I think she’s possessed,” she said.
“We can deal with that,” he said. She turned her head and looked at him strangely.
“You know how to pull a demon out of a human?” she asked. He shrugged.
“We do do this, you know,” he said. “Even before you.”
“I guess. What language do you use? Can you write it out for me?” she asked. He rolled over on his bed and pulled his laptop out of his bag and opened the file, then handed it over to her. She read quietly for a minute.
“Exorcism on a laptop,” she said. “The world is a weird place.” She drew a breath, then swung her legs over the side of the bed and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and holding the laptop out where he could see it. He sat up.
“Pulling a demon out of a human using a human language is like pulling a cat out of a bag by its tail. If you’re strong enough and the bag holds together long enough, it will eventually work, but the cat is going to tear up the inside of the bag as badly as it can in an effort to not get pulled out.”
He nodded.
“How would you do it?” he asked.
“Two options,” she said. “Light and dark. With a light ceremony, you reach in, grab all four paws and lift. Demon comes out, bag intact. But you have to be pretty clever and know what you’re doing to grab all four of a cat’s paws, so to speak, without getting ripped up yourself. Dark ceremony, you just roll the bag from the far end until the cat has no more space, then it bolts. Human ends up wrung out and exhausted, and it takes a long time. Not to mention the soul burn you get for having used the magic.”
“And why can’t we use light magic instead of natural magic?” he asked. She smiled. She was proud of him for identifying the patterns.
“Because you don’t know the spells or the rest of the magic. I do, but I’m in such a small minority that I call attention to you two.”
“So?”
She put her mouth against the backs of her bent fingers and looked at him.
“I told Jason some stuff last night that I haven’t told you yet.”
“Okay.”
There was only the smallest prick of jealousy. Mostly, Sam just hoped that this meant she was actually ready to talk.
“Headlines,” she said. “I died four years ago, and I left Carter two years ago when my fiancé was killed by a demon.”
<><><>
Sam was making a rough outline on the types of ghosts he knew and how to identify and kill them as Samantha slept. She had only gotten a couple of hours of sleep before breakfast, and she hadn’t slept at all last night or since lunch, so she was getting caught up before most of the hotel staff would head home for the night.
He felt guilty.
She should have been in New York doing important things with Carter, not wandering around the backwoods of the rest of the country killing demons one at a time and - worse - hunting down ghosts. Humanoid. Not her problem. She had more important things to do. Not that he would ever send her back to Carter on purpose. He hated the guy after less than a day, and so did Jason. There was hardly anyone that both of them disliked. Even vampires fell on Jason’s good side.
The more reasonable part of his brain told him that she had chosen to stay on purpose, and that she seemed to be getting healthier and happier every day - he thought of her singing at the top of her lungs to a particular song in the car and smiled - and that he should let her set her own path, but she had tied her life to his. And he was plotting on how to keep her around as long as possible, throwing her at his brother. He resolved that when it was time for her to go, he would recognize it and make sure to take himself out of the way.
He pulled over the laptop to e-mail Simon and let him know at least part of what was going on - that they had found a hotel that had a weird vibe and that they were sticking around to check it out - and included enough details that Simon could do a little digging on his own, just in case there was anything in the dark web to be found. He glanced at the incantation Samantha had revised, knowing he would want to commit it to memory yet this evening. She said that it would be more powerful with the word changes, so at least it would be over faster. The image of a cat clawing at the inside of his ribcage still haunted him.
/>
Someone knocked on the door and Sam glanced at the clock. Five. He went and opened the door for Jason, motioning for him to be quiet.
“I’m bored,” Jason said, glancing around Sam at Samantha. “You want to get a pre-dinner?” he asked. “There’s a place down the street that looked good.”
“You’re planning on taking that girl to dinner tonight, and…” Sam said, trailing off.
“Yes, and I want to go eat dinner with my brother first. All right?”
Sam looked back at Samantha.
“It’s not like she can’t find you, if she wakes up and doesn’t know where you are. Hell, she’ll probably even be able to tell that you’re with me.”
Sam grinned and grabbed his bag from beside the door.
“You are the only person who annoys me like that.”
Jason blew air between his lips.
“Let’s go.”
The air was turning crisp with the promise of fall as they walked down the street and Sam looked around.
“What do you suppose it’s like to live in a place like this?” he asked.
“You mean, apart from the captives in their basements?” Jason asked.
“Oh, come on. Seriously. Little town, everyone knows everyone. Go pick apples in the fall, go hiking just to see the trees.”
“Bunch of incestuous hicks,” Jason said.
“Big city bias,” Sam said. “I think it might be nice.”
“What do you do for fun at night? Come watch the one stoplight cycle?”
“Oh, that’s not even a little bit fair. It’s a bigger city than that.”
Jason snorted.
“And I bet half the town hates it,” he said.
They got to the bar that Jason had indicated and picked out a table. A wide dance floor was empty.
“You suppose that gets any use, outside of line dancing?” Jason asked. Sam smiled up at the waitress.
“You get any people dancing?” he asked her as she started to take their drinks orders. Her eyes widened and she smiled, showing off perfect white teeth.
“Friday nights, we get young people from all over. This is the best spot to go dancing for thirty miles,” she said. Jason smiled politely.
“That’s great. Can I get a beer?”
“What kind of music?” Sam asked.
“Anything we can shake a booty to,” she said, laughing a big laugh. “What can I get for you, hon?”
“Just a Coke, please,” Sam said, then looked at Jason after she had gone.
“You should bring Sam tomorrow night,” he said.
“Is it Thursday already?” Jason asked.
“How the days fly,” Sam answered. “I’m serious.”
“Are you just going to keep pushing her at me?” Jason asked.
“No, actually, well, okay, probably, but this is because of the dancing. You know I don’t dance, and it makes her so happy.”
“Learn,” Jason said, smiling at the waitress and accepting his beer. They ordered their food and Jason scratched his head.
“Fine. If, by tomorrow, we have found your lost girl, saved the day, and wrapped everything up so early that I’m bored, I will take Samantha dancing.”
“I didn’t even have to push.”
Jason grinned.
“I just remembered how she looked.”
He winked and Sam’s stomach lurched a bit.
“Don’t worry. Her honor is safe with me,” Jason said. “You two figure out anything else out about the girl?”
“No, not really. We’re going to search the basement tonight. I haven’t got any other ideas.”
“We’ll find her,” Jason said. Sam nodded.
“Sam told me that my vision might not have happened yet, or just yesterday or today. I just can’t help feeling like she’s been waiting for me to come save her the whole time, and I completely forgot about her.”
“We’ll find her,” Jason said again.
“I can’t believe you’re going to eat dinner twice.”
<><><>
Midnight.
Sam and Samantha were scouting the guts of the hotel, finding little other than laundry facilities and staff rooms. Sam thought that Samantha looked a bit ridiculous with her backpack on, in the tiny, winding little hallways of the old hotel, but she insisted on taking it everywhere.
“Carpet?” she asked as they transitioned into a darker section of flooring.
“Still way too light,” Sam said. “And this hallway is going the wrong way.”
“Your visions come with a compass?” she asked. It sounded sincere.
“I guess so. It just feels like we’re going at an angle to the hallway in my vision.”
She nodded.
“Can I help you two?” a male voice asked. Sam turned, ready to win whatever fight was coming, but the man speaking was much too small to be the one from his vision.
“I think we took a wrong turn at vending,” Samantha said, apparently pulling out of Sam’s head that this wasn’t the guy.
“Let me help you find the stairs back up,” he said and smiled the tight, tired smile of a man who has worked too many hours and has found too many young couples fooling around in the staff locker room. Sam pulled his jacket back up over the gun he had at his waist.
“I hope Jason had better luck than we did,” he said, suppressing the urge to add some kind of ‘lucky’ joke. She nodded.
<><><>
Jason was waiting for them outside of their room.
“Where’s Stephani?” Samantha asked.
“Was that her name?”
“She was wearing a name badge,” Sam said. Jason shrugged.
“But can you tell me what color her eyes were?”
“Can you?”
Jason grinned.
“I just sent her home. Will you guys show me some mercy and let me in without the blanket judgment?”
Sam unlocked the door.
“So?” Samantha asked.
“It’s a crest,” Jason said. Sam sighed with exasperation.
“If she thinks that’s a crest, anything else she told you us suspect,” he said.
“No. It was a crest. It’s an old crest, and they had it on the hotel for years, then the new owner, the son of the previous one, decided to modernize it. So he got an artist to do an interpretation of the crest and he renovated the hotel a few years back. They did a run of booklets to explain the old crest and how the modernization blah blah blah, stuff. Is this it?”
He pulled an ivory-colored booklet out of his back pocket and unfolded it.
“That’s it,” Sam said.
“So, Sir has been in a foul mood for the last couple of months, and scuttlebutt is that his pretty little fiancée has left him, because no one has seen her.”
Sam closed his eyes and rubbed his face.
“Say it,” Jason said.
“No.”
“Say it.”
“Fine. You were right. But you didn’t have to sleep with her to find any of that out.”
“Without making her suspicious? Are you kidding?” Jason asked. “I kicked her out of my bed to bring you this. Some respect, please.”
“You want a medal?” Samantha asked. Sam grinned despite himself.
“His name is on the cover. I’m going to see if I can find any pictures of them online,” he said. Samantha nodded.
“So you’ve laid claim to my bed, huh?” Jason asked her as Sam pulled out the computer.
“What did you think I was going to do?” she asked, then winked. “I’m seeing someone.”
Jason snorted.
“Reminds me. Sam wants me to take you out dancing tomorrow night at a bar down the street.”
She shrugged.
“Sure.”
“You bring your cowboy boots?” Jason asked.
“Did you?” she answered.
“No. Wait. Seriously. Do you have cowboy boots?”
“Do you?”
Sam looked up at the two of them and rolled
his eyes.
“This is her,” he said, turning his computer. “And there’s every chance that this is him.”
<><><>
The next morning, they sat in the Cruiser outside of the house where the hotelier lived, waiting for him to leave for work. He didn’t leave until after nine, and Jason watched after him.
“She said that he comes home for lunch every day, now, too. I’d say we’ve got maybe two hours.”
They drove up the winding driveway through partially-wooded land to the old house where the family had lived for generations, and Jason parked the car out of sight of the house, just in case they needed a chance to sneak out. Sam and Samantha scouted the windows as Jason walked up to the house, and the consensus was that it did not appear anyone was home. Jason picked the lock to the front door and they walked in, and Sam had a tugging sensation at his palms that was vaguely reminiscent of the morning that he had found Samantha. She looked at him and nodded.
“We’re here,” she said. “Careful, everyone. This is a hostage situation, now.”
They found a door to a bent stairway at one end of the house, which led to a long underground hallway with doors on each side of it. There was no lightswitch in the hallway; the only light to be had was what came down the stairway. They checked the doors one at a time, though Sam knew it was the one at the end he was interested in, and they didn’t find anything other than unused bedrooms and storage rooms full of old furniture. They got to the last door and Sam stood with his hand on the doorknob, counting out entry with Jason. He pulled the door open and pointed his gun at the woman in the corner. She stood, squealing fright, and started hopping up and down on her toes, shaking her hands. Samantha walked past Sam and pulled the stiletto from her boot, pinning the woman by her chest against the wall.
“Quietly,” Samantha said. “Don’t get excited. We’re here to help.”
The ugly panic on the woman’s face suddenly switched and the eyes went from turned down at the outside, hiding behind ratty bangs to manic, peering at Samantha through them. Her mouth opened and her tongue rolled out across her teeth in a maddened smile. She swiped at Samantha’s knife and Samantha pulled it away to keep her from slicing her hands on it. The mouth laughed. The eyes stared at the knife hungrily. The arms and the legs went independently insane. Samantha lost her grip on the woman’s chest and she rocketed free of the wall, a bucket of crazy, uncontrolled limbs knocking Samantha back on her heels as she tried to manage the knife and the spasmic body. She threw the knife clear and put both arms into holding the blond woman stationary as the dirty fingernails clutched at Samantha’s face. She bared her teeth and started trying to bite Samantha’s arms.
