by Julie Kenner
“Forza,” I repeated. “You, the Lone Ranger of alimentatores is actually pulling Forza into the loop? On purpose?”
“Like I said when this started, this ain’t for me. It’s for the kid. And if Forza’s got a bead on this ceremony Lilith’s got planned, then we need to know. And that was some damned clever hoops the kid jumped through. Forza ought to know the kid’s got the goods.”
“The kid’s sitting right there,” I pointed out.
“So she is,” he said, and a wide smile split his face. “You’re doing damn good there, kid. Course I wouldn’t expect anything less from my granddaughter.” He winked, then turned and headed for the door, leaving Allie and me shaking our heads in wonder.
“So should I? Call, I mean?” She glanced at the clock, as if it held answers. “What time is it in Rome now?”
“Just after five in the afternoon,” I answered automatically. “Go ahead and call. If you can’t get Father Corletti directly, ask him to call back as soon as he can. Tell him it’s urgent.”
“Shouldn’t you call?”
“Go on,” I said, as the doorbell rang. “And go in Stuart’s study. That’s probably the dishwasher guy.”
As it turned out, I was right; it was the dishwasher guy. Or, at least, it was a guy wearing a brown work shirt with Mr. Appliance embroidered on it. Under the circumstances, I didn’t intend to take any chances.
I led him through the house to the kitchen, and once he was peering into my dishwasher, I took a vial of holy water out of my purse and poured it into one of Timmy’s plastic Dora the Explorer glasses. Then, feeling only slightly foolish, I marched over beside Mr. Appliance. “See anything?”
“A sword,” he said, which was so utterly completely off the beaten dishwasher path that I immediately tensed, certain I’d invited into my home a demon with a sense of humor.
“What?” I said, and when he pulled his head out of the mechanism, I tossed the contents of the cup on his face, then watched as he spit and spluttered, but absolutely didn’t burn.
Okay, time for me to be more than a little embarrassed.
“I’m so sorry! I tripped,” I lied. “And now you’re all wet. Oh, dear.” I passed him a towel, all the while silently chastising him for mentioning a sword. I mean, honestly. What was the man thinking? “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said, drying himself off. “Usually it’s a burst hose instead of a customer dousing me, but I’m used to getting wet on the job.” He rocked back on his heels and pointed to the inside of my dishwasher. “You got yourself a little army in there,” he said. “Plugging up the drain.”
“I do?” I leaned over and peered in, for the first time noticing the green plastic arm extending up, waving a sword as if about to launch an attack on the silverware. “I see,” I said. I cast a backward glance toward the living room, where my own little demon sat innocently watching the Backyardigans . “I have a feeling I know how that happened.”
“Oh yeah,” he said cheerfully. “See it all the time. You want I should fix?”
I half-considered dumping the job on Stuart, who I firmly believed should have found the army when I’d first complained of escaping bubbles. But I owed Mr. Appliance for a service call anyway, and I didn’t think it would take too long to free the army. Besides, if I didn’t get the thing fixed, I’d be spending another day or two washing dishes by hand, and that was something I really wasn’t looking forward to.
Once he was happily disassembling the dishwasher, I headed out into the living room to check on Timmy, who was singing along merrily about a Yeti. I gave him a kiss, found myself thoroughly ignored in favor of Nickelodeon, and continued on toward Stuart’s study. Allie was hanging up the phone as I came in, grinning broadly. “You got through to Father?”
“He told me I did really awesome work.”
“You did,” I agreed. “Does he have any ideas about the binding ceremony between her and Nadia?”
“Not yet, but he’s going to check the archives and get back to us. But Mom, he said I should come to Rome! He said I’d like looking over the resources and that he’d totally love to meet me.”
“I know he would,” I said, smiling.
“No, Mom. You don’t get it.” Her eyes were bright and excited. “He didn’t say it because he has to ask you first, but I’m positive that he was gonna tell me I could go there and train. He thinks I’m good, Mom. He says I take after you.”
My smile broadened. “Did he?”
“Uh-huh. And Daddy, too, only I know he meant the nondemon stuff, you know?”
“I’m sure he meant the nondemon stuff,” I said, once again struck cold by the fact that throughout our entire relationship, “the demon stuff” had always been hidden under the surface.
“So can I?”
I blinked. “Can you what?”
She rolled her eyes and sighed, deeply frustrated with her idiot mother. “Can I go to Rome and train?”
“Oh.” The question caught me off guard, and I sat down.
“Please, please, please! I mean, I should, right? That’s what Hunters do, unless they’re rogue. Isn’t it?”
“It’s what Hunters do,” I admitted. And although I couldn’t believe I was even letting this conversation progress, I heard myself asking, “Is it what you want to do?”
“Are you kidding?” She looked at me with the same bafflement and amazement I would have seen if I’d asked if she wanted her own car. “I mean, duh.”
Not the most articulate, but she got the point across.
“You’re sure? No hesitations? Just duh?”
Her brow crinkled, making a line appear above her nose. “Well, yeah. I mean, I want to do this. Is that bad?”
Is that bad? The question rattled around inside me as I considered my answer. What should I tell her? What did I wish someone would have told me, all those years ago?
Not that I’d had a choice, not really. I’d been raised in the life. For the life.
But it was nice to live in a fantasy world where I had a say in deciding my destiny.
“Mom? It’s not that complicated a question.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with that, but I caught the undertone of teenage impatience and abandoned my own musings. “Tell me this,” I said. “Why?”
She blinked. “Why? Why what?”
“Why do you want to go to Rome? Why do you want to be a Hunter?”
“Are you kidding? Why wouldn’t I?”
I could think of a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that if she walked away—if she went to college and got a job in a bank—the odds were good that no one she knew would ever again have a demon inside them, she wouldn’t spend her life fearing for the next attack, and she’d most likely survive to see her own grandchildren. I could have said all that, but I didn’t. Instead, I simply said her name. She heard the rest in my voice. Like I’ve always said, I’ve got a smart kid.
“I can’t walk away simply because it scares me,” she said. “I mean, could you?”
“I did,” I reminded her. “Your father and I both walked away because we wanted a family. Neither one of us thought this was a good life for kids.”
“Well, see?”
“See what?” As far as I knew, I hadn’t just brilliantly bolstered one of her arguments.
“It doesn’t matter what you do, Mom. It finds you. It finds you, and it sucks you back in. And the second time you didn’t walk away,” she added, pointing a stern finger in my direction. “You didn’t have to sign back up with Forza, right? But you did, and you told me why. Do you remember?”
“Not specifically,” I said dryly. “But I’m sure it was profound.”
“It was. You said you had the ability to fight evil, and that meant you had the responsibility, too.”
“You’re right,” I said, touched that she’d not only listened so well, but had taken my words to heart. “That was profound.”
“More than profound, Mom. It’s true. This is big stuff, you kn
ow? The biggest. And most of the people out there don’t even know what’s going on. It’s like a secret war, you know? And for whatever reason, I got drafted.”
“You could dodge,” I said. “Head up to Canada.”
“Ha-ha. Forget drafted. I enlisted. Signed up with eyes wide open because I think this is important. And yeah, I get the risks, and yeah, I know you might not get grandkids. But it’s good. It’s good versus evil, and it’s not sponsored by Nintendo, and evil keeps getting her claws in, you know? And if I can help stop that—if I can do even the tiniest little thing—then I think it’s worth it. And oh, God, Mom, you’re crying!”
“I am not,” I lied.
“Do you really think it would be a terrible mistake?”
I shook my head. “No. On the contrary, I think that was one hell of a mature speech from a girl who doesn’t even have her learner’s permit.”
“Yeah?” She preened a little. “Cool. So I can go?”
“I’m not saying no,” I said. “But I am saying that I think you’re too young.”
“Too young! But you were only fourteen!”
“And I didn’t have a family,” I said. “Give it some time, see if you still want it.”
“I will,” she said grumpily.
I laughed. “Allie, give me a break. I’m not saying no. But I don’t want you to rush it. And I also want to see what your dad thinks about it.”
She swallowed, then licked her lips. We both knew that I wouldn’t be asking her dad anything about her soon.
“One or two more days,” I said firmly. “One or two more and then we’ll go to his apartment and ask him together.”
“Okay,” she said, her voice small. Then she seemed to buck up as she turned to grin at me. “Maybe he’ll think fifteen’s not too young.”
I sighed. Loudly.
“There is one other reason I want to do it, you know.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Being a Hunter is just too dang cool.”
“I think that’s the last of them,” Betty Lackland said, plunking five more musty, leather-bound books on the table where Laura and I had settled ourselves in the San Diablo County Library. We’d come here after dropping Timmy at day care and Allie at school, armed with the appropriate note from her mother to excuse her tardiness.
We weren’t only in the library, though. We were in the rare books room, a section that was both well-stocked and well-renowned, due in large part to Eric’s efforts when he worked here.
I, of course, had assumed he was happily ensconced in your average, everyday rare books librarian job. Pulling in items of interest, cataloging them, slapping Library of Congress or Dewey Decimal numbers on them, or doing whatever it was that librarians did.
Naturally, I’d assumed wrong.
My husband had been using his acquisitions budget to acquire rare books and manuscripts that touched on his situation. That maybe even documented similar situations. More important, one that maybe documented a way out.
At least, I hoped he had. I’d already reviewed all the books he’d acquired personally. If we didn’t find a clue in the library, I feared I was running out of ideas.
“So we’re hoping he either didn’t get around to reviewing all these book, or whatever cure he found didn’t work right the first time, right?” Laura said as Betty left the room. “It still seems like a long shot to me.”
I nodded; we’d been over this ground before. If Eric had figured a way out of his unwanted relationship with a tag-along demon, he would have done whatever was necessary to put that information into effect. The fact that Odayne was still with him meant he hadn’t found the answers in his books. Either that, or it meant he’d tried the answer and it didn’t work.
“All this ceremonial stuff, it has to happen in just the right time and in just the right way,” I said. “If he tried it and something didn’t go the way it was supposed to, it’s possible he wrote it off as a bogus ceremony.”
“And trying again could do the trick,” she said. She scowled at the mile-high stack of books Betty had brought in. “You want the top of the stack or the bottom?”
“Let’s just grab and go,” I said, then watched as she pulled a book from the top and carefully opened it. I followed suit, only to discover that my selection was in Latin.
“Great,” I said. “If the answer’s in here, we’ll never find it.” Unlike the books at home, which Eric could have filled with bookmarks and marked with sticky notes, these public books would have to be marked less obviously.
“Look for bits of paper between the pages,” she suggested. “He might have marked a page and forgotten. He might have even written in the book with pencil.”
I lifted a brow, thinking of my bibliophile husband. “Probably not,” I said. “But I’ll keep my eyes open.” Figuring that any book with a solution to our problem would have been opened, poured over, and possibly photocopied, I closed the book and examined the side, looking to see if there was any place where the pages didn’t slide together just so, any place where the spine seemed stretched. Any indication at all to indicate that a book had sat open and developed even the slightest hint of a crease.
Naturally, I found nothing. Not surprising, considering it was not only my first book to examine, but that I’d picked it from the stack at random. Still, hope springs eternal. Since there were apparently no shortcuts, though, I flipped slowly through the musty pages looking for anything—annotation, marking, even creepy illustrations—that might suggest we were on the right track.
I found nothing. And five books later, I’d still found nothing. My nose, however, tickled from the dust.
At least this wasn’t like searching through old records in the cathedral archives. Those boxes were kept in the basement and, at least until reviewed, not kept very tidy. Dust wasn’t my problem then, bugs were. Libraries, thank goodness, were blissfully bug-free.
“Anything?” I asked Laura as she closed a leather-bound volume with fancy gold writing.
“Not a thing. Are we wasting time?”
I frowned. “I guess we won’t know that until we’re done looking.”
She glanced up at the clock. “You staying or coming with me?” Since Laura was working that night at Cutter’s, our plan was for her to pick up Allie and Mindy and take them with her. Convenient for me since Allie could get in an extra class. As for Mindy, she could either cheer her friend on or do homework.
“I’m staying,” I said. “I’ll pick up the girls after class and take them to my house after we pick up Timmy. If you want Mindy to stay the night . . .” I added, letting my voice trail off into suggestiveness.
“We’re not that serious yet,” she said. “Honestly, I still can’t figure out why he’s interested in me at all.”
I shrugged. “Brains and good looks,” I said. “After all, you can balance his books. And you do look cute in a gi, even if your crescent kicks are for shit.”
Laura laughed, which was just the reaction I was going for.
“Fine. Okay. I’m off.” She nodded at the still tall but significantly less intimidating pile of books. “I’ll expect a full report in the morning.”
“If my eyes don’t fall out from the strain, you’ll have it.”
An hour later, I was beginning to think that I hadn’t been exaggerating. My eyes were dry and sandy, and no matter how many times I blinked, I couldn’t seem to clear them. My throat felt scratchy, most likely from the mustiness of the old books. And I was absolutely certain that the windowless walls of the rare books room were closing in on me.
In other words, I wanted the hell out of there.
There were, however, only three books left. At least in this batch. Betty had come bounding in twenty minutes earlier to inform me that she’d forgotten to tell me about five titles that had been shipped down to UCLA as part of an inter-library loan. She’d requested the books’ return and promised she’d call me when they were in.
Oh, yay.
In the me
antime, in the spirit of thoroughness, I had to look through this last trio of tomes. I pulled the top book off and turned to the first page. When I saw that it was in Latin, I almost put it aside, but, honestly, I was too afraid of missing something important. So I flipped pages, looking for familiar Latin words or clues that Eric had found something interesting in the book. About two-thirds of the way in, I found what I was looking for—a page, completely missing. It had been ripped free, leaving a scar of jagged, yellowed paper behind. And although my Latin is for shit, I could at least catch the gist of the words on the surrounding pages. The section was talking about trapping and binding evil. And if the missing page was specific to Odayne, then I’d just found what we were looking for.
Too bad it had gone missing.
Frowning, I made a note of the book, then left the rare books room and headed for the circulation desk. “The rare books don’t circulate, right?”
“That’s right,” Betty said. “I’m sorry it’s inconvenient, but it’s the only way we can ensure the integrity of the material.”
“Right. No problem. I totally get it. But is it possible to tell me whose pulled a particular book?”
“Well, now, I don’t know.” She pressed her fingertips to her mouth, and I could just imagine her head filling with concerns about policy, privacy, and the First Amendment.
“I just don’t want to duplicate work with my team,” I said, hoping that made sense despite the fact that I’d never given her specifics as to why I wanted to look at Eric’s acquisitions, much less laid out for her the duties of my imaginary team. “If I can review the list for this book, I can rule things out quickly enough.”
Her lips pursed as she checked the computer, then relaxed as she looked back at me. “I don’t suppose I can do much damage telling you one name, now can I?”
“Just one? Since when?”
“Since Eric died, dear. These books don’t get that much use. Fine collection he pulled together, don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t get much practical use, you see.”
“Right. So, um, who looked at the book?”
“David Long.” She peered up at me. “Do you know him, dear?”
