by Julie Kenner
“Doesn’t make sense,” I said, opening the doors and crawling through the well-kept little vehicle. “Eddie? Can you hear me?”
“Gramps!” Timmy hollered. “Grampa! Grampa!”
“Gramps!” Allie added. “Are you in here?”
Another thump, and—yes—it was definitely coming from the car.
“Mom!” Allie said, on her belly on the garage floor with her brother right beside her. “Look!”
I bent down and saw what she was looking at—a thin line in the concrete with a tiny metal ring on one end.
“A crawl space,” I said. “Come on.”
I wasn’t crazy about the whole neighborhood seeing us, but we didn’t have a choice. We got Wanda’s car into neutral, then eased the vehicle back into the driveway. Then we shut the garage door again. Nothing suspicious about a car parked in a driveway, right?
As Allie worked the garage door controls, I slid open the crawl space hatch, then looked down to find Eddie bound and gagged, with barely enough room to kick out. He’d managed, though, and it was his kicks that had finally alerted us to his presence.
I jumped down into the crawl space, alarmed by how blurry everything seemed before I realized I was crying.
“I’d give you grief about those pansy-ass tears,” he said as I yanked off his gag, “if I weren’t so damn happy to see you.”
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Then Allie jumped down beside him and threw her arms around him so tightly, I felt the first hint of a smile through the tears. Above us, Timmy peered in, and I held up my arms, swinging him down to join the reunion with us.
“God, Gramps!” Allie cried. “We were so scared!”
“Not me,” he said, squeezing her back. “I knew you’d find me.”
The words were sincere, without a hint of Eddie’s usual curmudgeonly flair. And that, more than anything, told me just how scared he’d really been.
“Come on,” I said, slicing through the rope that bound his wrists and ankles. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“What happened?” Allie asked, helping him up from the other side.
I climbed out first, then grabbed Timmy after Allie held him up for me. We found a step stool, then dropped it down to Allie so that Eddie wouldn’t have to do acrobatics to get out.
“Got me right after I walked her home. Asked me to come in and check on something for her. Didn’t think nothing of it and now I’m feeling like a damn fool, that’s for sure.”
“You and me both,” I said, giving him a hand on the final step.
“Was the chewing gum that did it,” he said. “Cinnamon. Didn’t even smell a hint of that demon stench.”
I didn’t even have that excuse, because I hadn’t noticed the gum. I had noticed her wandering my halls, but it was Wanda. Crazy, eccentric Wanda. People I knew didn’t get turned into demons. It simply didn’t happen.
Except it did.
For that matter, it had happened more times than I liked to admit, and I could still remember with perfect clarity the very first time that the body of someone I cared about had been breached. The way that Cami’s body had mimicked the way she’d been in life, as if deliberately taunting me by tugging at my memory.
“We let our guard down,” I said, hugging Timmy close. “And we shouldn’t have.”
“Good news is she’s the only one they got,” Eddie said, straightening slowly, the hours in cramped conditions taking their toll. “Least for the time being.”
“What do you mean?”
“Heard her talking to herself. Either that or to her master. Don’t know. All I know is that I overheard some damn fine intelligence.”
“What?” Allie said, practically bouncing.
“Until Wanda went and had herself a heart attack, they were fresh out of bodies. The bimbo you got in the ladies’ room was the last minion in San Diablo.”
“But that’s not right,” I said. “There’s that scuzzy guy that did this to me.” I held up my finger for illustration. “Believe me, I’m looking forward to taking him out.”
“Daddy already did,” Allie said, and a few seconds later, her cheeks burned bright red.
“He did?”
“Well, um, that’s what he told me.”
“Good for lover-boy,” Eddie said. “And it means I’m right. Wanda’s the last. For now.”
“That’s good,” I said, still surprised Eric hadn’t mentioned Scuzzy’s death to me.
“It’s very good,” Eddie countered. “Because whatever they’re up to requires corporeal assistance. We kill off Wanda, and we may be able to stop them in their tracks.”
“Too bad we don’t know what that is,” I said wryly.
“Can’t help you there,” Eddie admitted. “But I know this mysterious sword is a big honking problem for the demons. They’re convinced you have it and that you’re gonna bring some bad-ass demon down with it.”
“Abaddon.”
“Suppose so,” he said. “And the fact that they think you have the sword is the only reason I’m alive to tell you this.”
“A hostage,” Allie said, her voice flooded with awe.
“Smart kid,” Eddie retorted. “Now get me home. I want to change and go to the library. See if any of lover-boy’s books got a mention of anything that might help.”
During our life together in San Diablo, Eric had worked as a rare-books librarian, filling the library with unique and curious finds.
“Now?” I asked. “Eddie, you’ve been trapped underground for an entire day. You should rest. Drink water. Then rest some more.”
He snorted. “Been sleeping for hours. Now I’m ready to nail a few demon bastards to the wall.” He illustrated the desire with a solid one-two punch, then a forward kick that knocked him sideways and into Allie, who managed to steady him.
“I don’t know . . .” The one-hundred-eighty-degree flip from disinterest to a desire to castrate every demon in a fifty-mile radius was totally understandable. But desire wasn’t worth a lot if he was going to get himself killed.
“What if you get light-headed?”
“I’ll drink water.”
“What if you pass out?”
“I’ll take the youngster with me.”
“Not with Wanda loose out there and pissed off, you won’t. What if you ran into her?”
For that one, he didn’t have a snappy retort.
“I’ll think of something,” he finally said.
“At least rest for half an hour,” I begged, leading us all through Wanda’s house and back across the street toward home. Allie’s hand was clutched tight in Eddie’s, and my arms were tight around Timmy clinging to my chest like a monkey.
“Half an hour,” he said as I stuck my key in the door. “You want to stuff me full of food and water, you do it now,” he said. “ ’Cause when that timer goes off, I’m out of here.”
“Fair enough,” I said, pushing the door open to reveal Wanda Abernathy standing in the middle of my hallway, a crossbow aimed at my chest and a toothless grin on her wrinkled face.
Sixteen
"Holy crap!” Eddie said, rolling to one side with Allie even as I shoved Timmy to the ground, the arrow from the crossbow zipping out our open front door to embed in the kumquat tree growing in the front yard.
“You cannot stop him,” Wanda said. “He will rise, and in rising, The One will have revenge. The One will have vengeance. And you and yours will surely fall as he rises, becoming whole and one through the becoming.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Allie called, even as I whipped out with my purse, holding the handle as the bag caught Wanda at the ankles, sending her tumbling.
“Right now,” I said, “you’re the only one who’s falling.”
“Yes!” Allie said, scrambling forward and grabbing my keys off the floor where they’d fallen.
“Whoa there, missy,” Eddie said, holding her back by the tail of her shirt even as Wanda was climbing to her feet, swinging the heavy wooden crossbow like
a battle-ax.
“Bad lady!” Timmy said. “Bad, bad lady!”
“Damn straight,” Eddie said. He grabbed one of the arrows off the floor and lunged forward.
“Eddie,” I called, but it was too late. He was already there, and he was pissed. And though Wanda tried to put up a fight, it was no use. Eddie was a raging ball of fury.
Allie and I rushed forward to help, but it wasn’t necessary. Eddie lashed forward with the arrow, sliding it deep into Wanda’s eye even as I turned Timmy toward me, pressing his face to my chest.
“The bitch is dead,” Eddie said. “About damn time.”
No kidding, I thought, hugging my baby close.
I checked the clock: only two forty-five.
This was turning out to be a very, very long day.
Allie peeled back a foil corner and peered at the cannelloni inside. “Is it still good?” she asked, her nose crinkling.
With barely more than four hours until the hordes descended, those were exactly the kinds of questions I didn’t need. “Of course they’re still good. Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Duh. They sat in the car while we went off and did . . . you know. Do you know how much bacteria can grow on food?”
“No, and neither do you,” I said. “I saw the grade you got in biology.”
She gave the meal another look of total disdain. “Well, I’m not eating it.”
“No one asked you to,” I said curtly. “And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the food.”
“You’ll feel pretty stupid when all of Stuart’s contributors are dead of food poisoning.”
“Go,” I said, thrusting my finger out toward the living room. “Play with your brother. Clean your room. Read a book. Just leave. Now.”
She complied, but a whispered “salmonella” drifted back toward me.
Teenagers.
Still . . .
I grabbed my laptop off the counter and moved it to the table. As soon as the machine was awake, I navigated to Google and did a search for food, car, and salmonella. The results were less than illuminating, particularly as I saw nothing relevant right off the bat.
Not being the kind to poke around the Internet, I decided to approach the question the old-fashioned way. I called Laura.
“You’re fine,” she said after I’d explained the situation. “I swear you won’t kill anyone. At least, not anyone human. What you do after the party I’m not responsible for.”
“Very funny,” I countered, as Allie wandered back into the kitchen, heading for the refrigerator, with Timmy trailing behind her, holding his sippy cup out like little Oliver begging for more.
“Need any help?” Laura asked.
“Believe it or not, I think I’ve got it under control.”
“Really?”
“No,” I admitted, holding Tim’s cup while Allie filled it with milk. “But you’ve got a date with a doctor tonight, and I’m not about to beg you to come help me instead of primping. ”
“You’re a good friend,” Laura said, and I laughed, the sound cut off by Allie’s own hysterical cackle. I looked over to find her not at the refrigerator returning the milk, but in front of my laptop.
“Ha!” she said. “You did believe me.”
“I have to go,” I said to Laura, who was savvy enough to have figured out what was going on, and was trying to smother her own hysterical giggles.
“You are so busted,” Allie said, pointing to my very pathetic attempt at searching Google.
“Busted!” Timmy mimicked.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But I was right.” I waved at the stacks of pans. “Totally edible.”
She made a face, but didn’t argue. Instead, she turned back to the computer, presumably looking for evidence to shore up her point of view.
“Give it up, Al,” I said. “Come help me move all this stuff to my own pans. I want it to look like I’ve been slaving for hours.”
“Um, I don’t think so,” she retorted, staring down her nose at me. “If you’re gonna lie to Stuart about where his dinner came from, I’m so not helping.”
If only that were all I’d been lying to Stuart about.
Short of grounding her again or bribing her with something on the level of a new car (or her very own crossbow), I couldn’t see my way clear to persuade her to dish out cannelloni. Fortunately, it was the actual preparation of food that had me mostly stymied. Pretend preparation? That one I could handle all on my own.
“You got an e-mail,” Allie said from her perch at the table. “Can I open it?”
“Who’s it from?”
She clicked a few buttons, then looked up at me, eyes wide. “Father Corletti.”
I debated making her leave so that I could read the e-mail in private, then decided to throw caution to the wind. She already knew I had raised her father from the dead; what could she possibly learn from Father Corletti that would be worse than that?
“It’s a big document,” she said, after I’d given permission and she’d clicked on it. “Hang on, I take it back. It’s a picture.”
“Of what?” I asked, transferring the rest of the entrée and putting the whole pan in the refrigerator. I’d put the reheating instructions in my purse somewhere. As long as I could find them, this dinner party thing would be moving in the right direction.
“Hang on. Oh. Look. It’s the cover of some book.”
“That’s it?” I moved to peer over her shoulder, but the picture was gone, replaced by the text of the e-mail.
“He says they’re scanning in the book for you and he’ll send along a translation, too, since he knows your Akkadian is rusty.”
She twisted around to look at me. “You can read Akkadian? ”
“According to Father, I can’t,” I said, squinting at the screen. “So the cover of the book shows the symbol of the ancient tribe that forged the original sword.” I made a face. “Somehow, I don’t think they were native to San Diablo.”
“So?”
“So what is Abaddon doing here? Why come if he thinks I’m waiting here, all ready with some magic sword to strike him down?”
She thought about that for a moment. “The beaches? With a name like San Diablo, we’re probably a fine travel destination for your higher class of demon.”
I smacked the back of her head with the dishrag I’d been carrying. “Open the photo and quit being a goof,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She clicked, but the photograph must have been huge, because it took forever to appear on my screen, loading one line at a time from the top down. “I thought you said we had high-speed Internet.”
"Mother...”
I shut up, shamed by my utter lack of technological know-how, and started to go over every countertop with 409 instead. Timmy, bored, headed back into the living room to play with his train.
“Here we go,” Allie said, and I immediately abandoned cleaning (any excuse) and headed back to the computer to examine the photograph of the illustrated book cover—an intricate line drawing of two hands holding a circle bisected by two intertwined lines.
My breath caught in my throat—I’d seen that symbol before.
“So what’re we looking at?” Eddie asked, shuffling into the room, his hair damp and his face shaved.
“Mom got a picture from Father Corletti. All about the tribe that forged the sword. But it doesn’t look like anything helpful,” she added, clearly disappointed.
I, however, had to disagree. “That symbol,” I said, tapping the screen. “I know it.”
“You do?” Allie asked, whipping around to see if I was serious. I was. Deadly serious.
“The fortune-teller at the carnival,” I said. “She was wearing an amulet around her neck. That amulet,” I added.
“Well, come on!” Allie said, jumping up.
“No, no, no,” I said. “This isn’t a family affair.” It was one thing for Allie to be caught unexpectedly in the middle of a fight and to hold her own. It was something else en
tirely to walk headfirst into the fight. And believe me, I was expecting a fight.
“But Mom!”
“Dammit, Allie. I said no. Besides, I need you to stay here and research. This is the first solid clue we’ve gotten.”
She made a snorting noise. “Like I’m gonna find anything useful on the Internet. I don’t even know what words to punch into the search.”
“Bet your daddy stocked that library with lots of picture books,” Eddie said. “I’m heading that way. Why don’t you come with me?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, sullen. “I’d rather go see the carnival lady. I bet Daddy wouldn’t make me sit back and do research. He’d let me be in the field.”
I opened my mouth, hoping a brilliant retort would fly out, but Eddie got there first.
“That demon-bitch smack you on the head and loosen your brains there, girlie? You know how many demons are out there? More than you’d ever be able to take down in the field. You want to be on the front lines and actually win, you got to know how to get the advantage. And how do you think you do that?”
“Research,” Allie said, her voice small. “But isn’t that what Mom’s doing with the carnival lady? Asking questions and stuff like that?”
Smart girl.
Eddie tilted his head sideways and squinted at her. “Nice try, kid. But what do you think your mom’s gonna do if that nice lady with the necklace ain’t willing to talk?”
“Kick her ass?” Allie said, and Eddie snorted.
“I think that about sums it up.”
“I’m not exactly Dirty Harry,” I said.
“Who?” Allie said, making me feel a million years old. “And anyway, you’re Kim Possible,” she said, referring to the heroine in one Timmy’s favorite shows. And one of my guilty pleasures.
I took being compared to a Disney cartoon heroine in the spirit it was given and told her thank you. Then I grabbed Eddie by the elbow and steered him to the living room. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” I said, bending over to roll a stray train back to Timmy. “I mean you two going out. Especially after—well, you know.”
“The girl wants to do something, Kate. And after that old bitch shoved me under her floor, you better believe I do, too.”
