by Deanna Chase
Xerxes’s claws clickety-clacked as he snaked down from the top of the toilet. Shock drilled through me, pinning me to the floor. Xerxes bobbed his head once, twice. One side of his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Stay, Lizzie,” he said slowly, his Greek accent punctuating each word as his dark cloud embraced me.
“How did you know my na—? Hmm.” Warmth washed over me. Oddly enough, I found myself smiling at him. This can’t be right. But darned if all my concerns didn’t seem to be—whoosh—falling away.
I stifled a giggle. Time to axe the Cheshire cat grin, if only for Grandma’s sake. She’d aged a century in five seconds flat. She kept trying to stuff me behind her, but I wasn’t moving.
Strange. I hated him. He was evil and foul and he smelled like rotten cheese.
But I liked cheese, especially with crackers.
He lowered his head and hit me with the sweetest smile. His cracked skin showed character. It molded to his sleek, muscular frame. I wanted to touch him.
My grandma said something or other.
The pupils of the demon’s eyes began to shift like a kaleidoscope. Fascinating. So that’s what he was. A demon.
I stumbled. “Would you look at that?” I didn’t even remember standing up. I found myself strutting toward him, closing the space between us. “Xerxes, I’ll bet you are just the Brad Pitt of the underworld.”
Then Xerxes did something quite rude. He shot darts out of his eyes. It’s so uncomfortable when you meet someone and five minutes later they invade your personal space. Even more frightening, the shimmery green darts headed straight for my neck. What was this guy trying to do? Chop my head off?
The old lady behind me, whatshername, started wailing.
Not good. I slowed things in order to get a good look at the darts. They shone like miniature glow sticks. I touched one and it sizzled on the end of my fingertip. Warm, but not painful. I pulled it out of the air and it hummed in my hand. I gingerly touched the tip. “Ow!” Sharp as broken glass. “The trick is to grab ‘em by the side,” I said to myself. I gathered them up like I was plucking tomatoes off the vine.
“Whaddaya think about that, Mr. Xerxes?” I held out a handful of green sizzly things.
The demon seemed almost frozen in time. My grandmother stood with her eyes transfixed, her mouth gaped open.
“Biiiiitttch!” The demon screamed.
Like he was one to talk. “How would you like it if I tossed magical lawn darts at your head and called you names?” I launched the barbs back at him.
They crashed into his forehead and he exploded into a million flecks of light.
I shielded my eyes as the world ratcheted back into focus. Grandma’s scream pierced the haze in my head.
“Ak!” What had I done? My arms sizzled from the electricity in the air, and every hair on my body stood on end. The room itself tasted bitter. Grandma and I gaped at each other for about a half a second. Then she snapped her mouth closed and dashed out into the hall.
“This is real,” I said to my wild-haired reflection in the bathroom mirror. What a terrible thought.
Grandma hurried back juggling a half dozen Ziploc bags full of heaven knew what. “Get out.” She shoved past me, dumped the bags on the floor and drew a circle on the tile with ashy, gray chalk.
“What?” I choked. Handprints—my handprints—burned into the countertop like a brand. I stared at my palms. There wasn’t a mark on them. My fingers throbbed like they were asleep. I rubbed them on my dress to get the circulation going again. “Are you going to tell me what just happened here?” I grabbed the bathroom towel to wipe snot, tears and heaven knew what else from my face.
She paused, chalk quivering. “Yes. But first I’m going to slam the door on these bastards. Xerxes only wanted a look at you. There’ll be more.”
A look? I didn’t believe that for a second. “In case you didn’t notice, he fired green pointy things. At my neck!”
She shoved on a pair of silver-framed reading glasses with rhinestone clusters in the corners. “You’re right. He did decide to kill you.” She began rifling through a collection of glass vials. “Demons can be impulsive.” She harrumphed. “Like yo-yo grandchildren who touch what they shouldn’t. You damned near gave me a heart attack.” She choose a vial of olive-brown liquid and stuffed it into the front pocket of her jeans. “I don’t know what you were thinking, grabbing his fulminations.”
“Fulma-what?”
“You just wait,” she said, rifling through her bag again. “You and I are going to have a long talk. But first, take this.” She handed me a Smuckers jar filled with a canary yellow sludge. “Stick close. And for the love of Laconia, let me work.”
“Okay…” A demon wants me dead, so I get a Smuckers jar. Shouldn’t we be running? Hiding? Where, I didn’t know, but Grandma’s Harley was sounding better by the second. Even if we ended up some place like the Laconia motorcycle rally. My fingers slid over the greasy glass of the jar and I darn near dropped it. What was I supposed to do if another demon showed up? Throw this at his head?
“Ey-ak!” I squealed as she popped open a Ziploc bag that smelled like dead mouse. She ignored my distress and began rubbing tiny circles of mush onto my bathroom floor. “Tell me that isn’t poop,” I said, as she ground the foul substance into my grout.
“Raccoon liver. It may not smell like peaches and cream, but it works,” my grandmother said without looking up from the mess on my bathroom floor.
I ducked out of the bathroom, tripping over Grandma’s animal hide bag and what had to be about a half dozen Smuckers jars in the narrow hallway outside. They were filled with various brackish liquids, plants and at least one possum tail. Road kill witch craft. Fan-frickin-tastic.
I slumped down at the kitchen table and buried my face in my hands. Of course that was the least of my problems considering Xerxes the demon had just tried to chop my head off.
I didn’t know what to think anymore. That thing was real. No question about it. He came for me. And as crazy as my Grandma was, she’d actually attempted to protect me.
An hour ago, I wasn’t even sure I believed in hell. Now it was after me. Worse, he’d gotten inside my head without even blinking. How could I defend myself against a creature that could control me like a Muppet?
I couldn’t help but wonder what my Grandma knew about all of this. When she’d called, I figured she was interested in what I’d been doing the last thirty years of my life. I’d tell her about my friends, my teaching job at Happy Hands Preschool. She’d tell me about herself and her family. Make that my family. At last, I’d learn about my mom, any brothers or sisters, who I was, where I came from.
Now I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I could be dead right now. Killed by a demon in my very own bathroom.
Claws scurried across the ceramic floor in the hallway.
“Grandma!” I leapt from the chair, on instant high alert.
She shot out of the bathroom as I realized my would-be attacker was, in fact, my Jack Russell terrier. Pirate was mostly white, with a dollop of brown on his back that wound up his neck and over one eye. He scampered around the corner into the kitchen, slid three feet and nearly thwacked his head on the side of the refrigerator.
“Pirate.” The tension oozed out of me and I about collapsed on the floor in front of him. He leapt into my arms and licked wherever he could reach. I hugged him close, his wiry hair tickling my nose. “Where have you been, boy?”
His entire body wriggled with excitement. “Alone! Locked in the backyard! Alone! But I dug under the fence. And then I ate through the screen on the front door. And I’m here now! I’m here! What’d I miss?”
My blood froze. “Oh no, no, no.” I scrambled away from him like an oversized crab. “There’s a demon in my dog!”
Pirate danced in place. “Are you kidding? It’s me! I burrowed, I ate screen, I ignored Mrs. Cristople’s tabby cat. I’m here to save you!”
Grandma scrubbed her hands on her jeans, leaving an oily smear
behind. “Pirate is fine. A little impatient.” She grabbed a vial of silver powder from her back pocket and uncorked it with her teeth. “I told you to keep quiet until I had a chance to speak with Lizzie.”
Pirate let out a high-pitched dog whine.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she said, eyeball measuring a bit of silver powder into her palm. “Now, Lizzie. I have to finish this containment spell or we could have another Xerxes on your toilet bowl.” She gave a worried snort. “Or worse…” She disappeared back into the bathroom.
I stared at Pirate, who promptly began licking himself.
“Stop it.”
He ignored me like he always did.
“Well hallelujah. At least some things don’t change.”
But, oh God, what had just happened?
I didn’t feel any different. I did a quick once-over in the mirror above the living room couch. I didn’t look any different. But there had been a demon in my bathroom. And he knew my name. I wasn’t up on my demon lore, but something told me that wasn’t good.
As for Pirate, I didn’t know what to think. I took a deep breath, counted to three. There had to be a logical explanation for all of this.
“Hey.” Pirate ran his cold nose along my ankle. “How ‘bout you feed me? I swear I haven’t eaten in a year. And screen door doesn’t count.”
I stared down at Pirate, who spun three times and sat.
He cocked his head. “Why the face? Am I drooling? Oh geez. It’s the doggie pellets. I think of doggie pellets…I drool.”
“What?” I stammered. What are you? That didn’t sound polite. I rubbed my temples.
Get a grip.
“Why, Pirate?” Each word was a battle. “Why are you talking to me?”
“Because,” he said, mimicking my stilted tone, “I am hungry.” We stared at each other for a long time. “Now.”
“This isn’t happening,” I said. I turned back to the mirror and started shoving my hair back into place. I needed something to be normal. Anything. Even if it was something as trivial as a hairdo.
“Come on, Lizzie.” Pirate licked my leg. “Lighten up. And hey, if you don’t want to feed me that dry stuff, I’ll take the fettuccine from last week. Back of the fridge, to the left of the lettuce crisper, behind the mustard.”
Yeah, right. Instead, he got dry kibble and a fresh bowl of water. Then I set about canceling my thirtieth birthday dinner. I didn’t know what I was going to tell my friends.
Sorry, guys. I couldn’t wait to celebrate with you. Believe me. But then my long-lost biker grandma locked me in my bathroom, a demon tried to kill me and now my dog won’t stop yapping.
I dialed my friend Yvette and settled for a simple excuse instead.
“A problem with the dog?” Pirate harrumphed after I’d hung up the phone. “You owe me one.”
***
When Grandma finished closing the portal to hell, or wherever Xerxes had come from, she took a chair opposite me. She’d perched her reading glasses on top of her head like a tiara. Slicks of oil smeared her T-shirt and a bit of brown gunk had caught under one of her rings. She folded her hands on my sunflower print tablecloth. “Would you like to talk about what happened?”
“Sure,” I said. She had to be kidding. “Where would you like to start? With the crazy green bars of light or with the fact that my bathroom is now glowing?”
And I didn’t mean glowing from a great cleaning job. As I spoke, a purple haze spilled out from the bathroom and into the narrow hall off my kitchen.
“A mange spell. Wards off demons, gremlins, succubi. Good against black magic too.” She blew out a breath. “So what do you want to know?”
She had to be kidding. “What happened here?” I asked, spreading out my arms.
“Okay,” she said, scrubbing a hand over her eyes. “Let me figure out how to explain it.”
I leaned back, arms crossed. “Start with the dog.”
She gave me a cock-eyed look. “Lizzie, that’s the least of your problems.”
“Maybe so, but I want to know. Why is my dog talking?”
She dropped her hand. “You’ve gained some magical powers.”
“I noticed.”
“Magical people can understand animals. Well, certain animals.” She glanced down at Pirate, whose tail was thump-thumping against the kitchen floor. “Your dog seems to be an exceptional communicator.”
Pirate’s nose nudged me under the table. “I always knew I was special.”
Oh geez. “Wait. So am I going to start hearing all kinds of animals? Like squirrels and bugs and birds?”
Grandma chuckled. “No, you’re not going to start hearing everybody. It depends on the animal’s intelligence and inclination. Squirrels, bugs and birds aren’t big thinkers.”
Thank goodness.
She raised a brow. “Now can we get on to the important things?”
“Okay, shoot,” I said, dragging Pirate onto my lap, wondering how this could get any weirder.
“You’re a demon slayer,” she said, as if challenging me to debate her. “I know it’s not easy, Lizzie. My coven and I have been trying to find you for years, just so we could make it easier. But you were impossible to detect.” She slid a silver ringed finger across the table at me. “That’s good. It most likely means you’re powerful.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” I told her. In fact, I already had a life. “I have a job, friends, a cute guy I just cancelled on.” I looked down at my hand as I rubbed at Pirate’s fur and saw my French manicure had melted away.
“Holy h—!” I couldn’t say it. I simply gaped at her.
“You can’t run from this, Lizzie.”
Maybe not, but I really wanted to.
Hands clasped, she leaned across the table. “You’re not alone. I’m going to help you get through this. My coven is going to help you.”
I pounded my fingers on the table until they tingled. “No offense,” I said, panic growing, “but I don’t want your help. I just want to be left alone.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. I really am. But we don’t have a choice in this. Xerxes will be back, with a bunch more bloodthirsty creatures. We have to get you out of here.” She locked eyes with me. “My Harley seats two.”
“A Harley?” I gaped.
She gave a small grin. “There’s nothing like the freedom of the open road.” She probably meant to encourage me, but it had the opposite effect.
“You don’t understand,” I said, starting to feel a little queasy. “I get car sick, train sick, plane sick. I get dizzy watching the kids swing at Happy Hands.”
“Um hum,” Pirate agreed. “Don’t forget the time you yarfed up your hot chocolate all over Brian Thompson’s toboggan.” Pirate studied the look on my face. “Oh, but I didn’t like him anyway. He had cats. Three cats. The brown one, I called him Thor, he had pointy teeth. And another brown one, I called him Tuna Breath—”
All the homeless dogs in the shelter that day and I had to pick the motor mouth. “Pirate, level with me. What made you start talking?”
“Me? I always talk. Why’d you start listening?”
That wasn’t helping. “Why?” What had I done to deserve any of this?
I slipped Pirate down onto the floor and stood. I had to get away—and not on a hog.
Grandma followed me across the kitchen. “Your mother tried to hide you from this. She gave you up. Put you with a new family and thought if nobody knew who you were, then you didn’t have to be who you are. But life doesn’t work that way, Lizzie.”
I stopped in front of the refrigerator and looked at the pictures of my adoptive family, the ones who had actually wanted me. My voice caught in my throat. “Tell me about my mother.”
The day I was born, she’d given me up for adoption. I’d never known anything about her.
Grandma placed a steadying hand on my shoulder. “She was smart. Too smart for her own good sometimes. She wanted to do right by you, but I’m not goi
ng to lie, she messed things up bad.” She nudged me around to face her. “I’m trying to make it right.” Her brow furrowed with concern. “I just hope it’s not too late.”
I sized her up, from her long gray hair to those ridiculous motorcycle boots.
After a moment, she said, “That demon you met, Xerxes. He works for a fifth level demon named Vald. Vald has figured out how to steal power. He wants my coven’s powers and he certainly wants yours. We’ve managed to avoid that, mostly, for the past thirty years. But it’s not easy and we have to stick together.”
I understood. I thought. It still seemed so surreal. “What does Vald do when he takes someone’s power?”
The horror of it showed in her eyes when she said, “He swallows them up, body and soul.”
I glanced to the side, toward my glowing bathroom, then back to the aged biker witch in front of me.
Grandma gave a small smile. “What you did in there was…unique. I know I’ve never seen it before. Your nail polish was consumed by the demon’s vox because, frankly, most things…heck, most people would have been. You, Lizzie, are special. Whether you want to be or not.”
Not. “So most people get hit by the green thingies and they die. Instead, I pluck them out of the air and they ruin my manicure?”
“The nail polish was not of you.” She touched her fist to her heart. “This. The power you have inside. This is of you.”
“Okay…” I said, bobbing my head one too many times. “But you have magic. You can handle a demon, right?”
She cocked a slight grin. “I run from demons. You can kill them.”
I didn’t even like to kill June bugs.
“I know it’s a lot to swallow,” she said, growing serious once more. “That’s why you have to plant your pretty butt on my bike. My coven can keep you safe. This demon just wanted to get a look at you. There will be more.”
“Why can’t we leave each other alone? Live and let live?”
