by J. S. Bailey
Kaori sighed as her own stomach let out a rumble. “I hate to break it to you, but we’ve got slim pickings.”
“I told you we should have taken the interstate.”
“Too late to complain.” Without warning, the car lurched, and an ominous flapping sound became all too obvious. “Okay, I’m complaining now. I think we’ve got a flat.”
“If we’d taken the interstate, you wouldn’t have run over whatever it was that deflated it.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Kaori sought a place to pull off the road, then eyed a sign that read “Eleanor: 1 mile.”
“There’s another town coming up,” she said. “You think we can make it?”
“We might be driving on the rim for a bit, but if you want to, go for it.”
Kaori switched on her hazard lights, and two nerve-racking minutes later, they crossed into the Eleanor town limits. It was the biggest town they’d come across in the past forty-five minutes, boasting a decent number of homes and businesses. Perhaps they were nearing civilization at last.
“I’m going to turn onto a side street so I don’t get creamed trying to put on the spare,” Kaori said as she flipped on the turn signal.
“Good,” Matt said. “I’d hate to have to wipe you off the road.”
Kaori parallel-parked along the curb, popped the trunk, and hefted out the jack, wondering what in God’s name she could have run over out there. She hadn’t even seen anything in the road, so it must have been small, like a nail.
Matt climbed out of the car and stood on the sidewalk, frowning at the deflated tire. “You sure did a number on this one. Want me to help?”
“I’ll manage.” Kaori shoved the jack under the car and gave it a few good cranks, then went back to the trunk to grab a lug wrench.
When she returned to the deflated tire, the jack toppled over and the car flopped back down onto all fours.
“Oh, come on!” Kaori glowered at the jack for a moment, then snatched it up and throttled it a few times to knock some sense into it. “What’s the matter with you?”
Matt held his midsection as he laughed. “I said I can help.”
“No, no, it must have just slipped off of…” Hearing the patter of approaching footsteps, Kaori turned, and at once her mind filled with a light so bright she could see nothing else.
“Kaori? Kaori!”
She blinked, the light’s intensity lessened enough for her to see, and she realized Matt gripped her arm. “You started to go down there for a minute,” he said. “Are you all right?”
The arrival of a young man on the scene spared her from answering. He was taller than Matt and skinny enough to double as a phone pole, and his cheeks glowed red from the cold.
The white aura emanated from him.
“Who are you?” the young man gasped, looking from Kaori to Matt and back again.
“I could ask the same thing.” Kaori raised an eyebrow, trying to assess what the aura might mean. “Do you see that light?”
He nodded. “What is it?”
“I was hoping you knew. It’s coming off of you.”
“No, it’s coming off of you.”
“Would someone please tell me what’s going on?” Matt asked, looking exasperated.
Then the young man asked the unimaginable. Squinting hard at Kaori, he said, “This is going to sound crazy, but are you a Servant?”
Kaori blinked. Never had she expected that word to issue from a stranger’s mouth. “That depends on who’s asking.”
“I’m Bobby Roland,” he said. “I’m the Servant. And I think you’re the Servant, too.”
“But there’s only one Servant,” Kaori said with a frown.
“Apparently not,” he said. “Hang on a minute.” He fished his phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. Before she could speak, he said, “Change of plans. Meet me outside.”
THE FOUR of them gathered at Charlotte’s kitchen table after Kaori successfully fitted a spare tire onto her car. Carly and Matt sat on opposite sides, staring at each other with suspicion.
Bobby certainly couldn’t blame either of them for that.
“Okay,” Matt said to Bobby. “What happens if you run into someone possessed by a demon?”
“I see a black aura in my head. Sometimes I hear voices, too. Not friendly ones.”
Matt nodded. “How long does it take to exorcise a demon?”
“It’s supposed to be a few days or less.”
“Supposed to be?”
Bobby felt a sudden sense of awkwardness. “I’m, uh, a little new at this. I haven’t cleansed anyone yet.”
Kaori smiled at him—she had long, dark hair tied in an unraveling braid and Asian features but no discernable foreign accent, so Bobby guessed she’d been born and raised somewhere in the U. S. Amethyst studs glistened in her earlobes, and the Death Star and three TIE fighters from Star Wars emblazoned her long-sleeved t-shirt. “Welcome to the fold, then. Everyone has to start somewhere.”
Matt chewed on his lip, and Bobby could practically see the wheels turning in the man’s mind. “What happens if a Servant dies without a replacement?” he asked.
Bobby answered without hesitation. “Evil has free rein for the next eighteen years, until the first male child born after that Servant’s death is located and he takes on the mantle of Servitude.” He noted that Kaori was still eyeing him with excessive wonder. “No offense, but I didn’t know that women could be Servants.”
A muscle twitched in Kaori’s cheek as if she were trying not to smile. “What makes you think that?”
“None of my predecessors are women.”
“No American presidents have been women, either, but that doesn’t mean they’re forbidden from doing the job.”
“Oh.” Bobby tried not to look sheepish. “Does that mean some of your predecessors are women?”
Kaori and Matt exchanged solemn glances. “I’m the only one left,” Matt said, clearly still not convinced of Bobby’s role. “My immediate predecessor was Julia Novak, and before her there was James Grayson and Louis Peck. The line broke before Louis, though.”
“Let me guess,” Bobby said. “In 1933?”
Matt’s tired eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
“I’m a good guesser.”
“Servants in your lineage must serve for a long time,” Carly said.
Matt sighed. “Sometimes too long, I think, but that’s beside the point. How can there be two Servants when we were always told there was only one?”
“It all makes sense to me,” Kaori said. “If we thought we were alone, we wouldn’t waste our time hanging out at Servant conventions.”
Bobby raised his eyebrows. “Conventions?”
“It’s a joke. Kaori used to be big into Comic-Cons,” Matt said with a smirk. “She’d usually cosplay as either Princess Leia, or Sarah Jane Smith from Doctor Who. She had Sarah’s yellow raincoat and everything.”
Bobby blinked, the reference lost on him.
“Don’t forget that’s where we met,” Kaori said. “You were dressed up like an old Luke Skywalker. When you saw me in my Leia outfit, you said we were space twins.”
“You two met at a Comic-Con?” Carly asked, raising her eyebrows as well.
Kaori grinned. “Yep—San Diego, 2009. I’d saved up for it for two years working at my uncle’s grocery store. I met Matt standing in line to go meet David Tennant, and we found out we were from the same neck of the woods, so we met up again as friends after the convention was over. I had no idea Matt was badass enough to battle demons. It was a geek’s ultimate dream.” She paused. “Besides, meeting Matt at a convention isn’t even that weird. He met Julia, his predecessor, while on jury duty. She was one of the other jurors.”
A wave of vertigo nearly unseated Bobby from his chair, and he remembered with some dismay that he’d left the clinic before a doctor could see him and prescribe something that could knock out whatever plague brewed inside of him. “Not to change the subject,
but do either of you heal by chance?”
“Not us,” Kaori said. “We both have the gift of Ministry. You?”
“Prophecy.” Bobby coughed again. “And I prophesy that I won’t be much help to anyone if I don’t get to a doctor.”
“Now you admit it?” Carly said, wearing an I-told-you-so look.
“Hey, I’d have gone back, but something came up.” Bobby looked Kaori squarely in the eye. “I don’t have any better way of saying this, but I could really use your help.”
EARLY THAT morning, Thane watched out the window of the pale blue two-story facing the Roland home in Eleanor, Ohio. He and Mia had arrived a few hours earlier and were delighted to find the dwelling vacant and for sale, so they opted to use it as a base of operations of sorts.
It had been easy enough locating the Rolands’ house. As soon as they’d landed, Thane sent out his thoughts and found Bobby lurking in it.
Not much of interest had happened since he and Mia took up watch. A school bus stopped by early on to pick up a teenager from the end of the Rolands’ driveway, then not long after that, Bobby’s stepmother left the house for work, leaving Bobby and his lady friend alone inside.
“We can kill them now,” Mia said after the woman’s car disappeared down the street.
“Wait.” Thane stared at the woman, who stood beside him with her hands planted on her hips. “If we kill the Jovingo girl, Bobby is going to have a premonition about it and stop us. We have to leave her alone and only target him.”
“Because he doesn’t have premonitions about himself?”
“That’s right.”
Mia wrinkled her nose. “What a lousy gift.”
“For him, yes. Not for us.”
“You realize if we leave the girl unharmed, she’ll just call the police.”
“Not if you use your witchcraft and stop her.”
“Fair point. And I guess you’ll use your own little brand of wizardry to hide us from everyone who might be watching.”
“That’s right.” Thane sighed. As much as the woman had annoyed him previously, they did make something of a team.
“Okay, then,” Mia said. “Let’s go.”
TRAFFIC WAS less than light on this residential street; it was nonexistent. Thane sent out his thoughts and found a total of two people dwelling within eyesight of the Rolands’ home, then implanted the idea in both their minds that they had far better things to do than go outside or look out the windows today.
Which wasn’t too different from mind control when you got right down to it.
They strode right up onto the porch and tried the doorknob. Thane focused hard to make Bobby and Carly not hear anything he and Mia were about to do, and Mia startled him by saying, “Hello? Are you just going to stand there?”
Thane opened his eyes. They were still on the porch, and his hand still rested on the doorknob. “I’m altering their perceptions,” he said, irritated. “I can’t do that if you interrupt me.”
“And that involves you standing there like an oaf while anyone driving by can see us?”
“It requires deep concentration. You should know.”
“Just sounds like another lousy gift to me.”
Thane’s irritation flared, and it was all he could do not to smack the arrogance off of Mia’s pretty little face. Then he heard movement beyond the door, and he motioned for Mia to duck down before someone inside looked out a window and saw them.
“We could burst in now, and you can strangle the Bobby creep,” Mia whispered.
Thane nodded. “And you be sure to stop the Jovingo girl from calling the police.”
“Sure thing.” Mia reached up a hand and rapped on the door three times.
“What are you doing?” Thane hissed—knocking was not part of the plan.
“Trying not to look suspicious.” Mia straightened her shoulders and pasted on an innocent smile. “Maybe you should do the same.”
The door swung open, revealing Bobby Roland wearing a t-shirt and sweats and looking like death warmed over. “Can I help you?” he asked, looking from Mia to Thane. Then his eyes grew round, and he started to slam the door in their faces, but good little Mia shoved forward at the same moment and wormed her way inside, Thane right on her tail.
“You will not call the police!” Mia cried so anyone in the house could hear her.
Bobby had backed up against the wall and let his arms hang at his sides while Carly Jovingo stood a short distance away in the kitchen, her eyes bugging out of her head. Thane knew from the multiple occasions he’d dug around in the girl’s mind that she strove to be fearless just as her father had always brainwashed her to be, though right now she looked about as fearless as a mouse about to be shredded by a cat.
“You can’t be here,” Bobby said to Thane. “I’m too far away from you.”
Thane took a step closer to him. “I think you’ll find that assumption erroneous.”
“Oh yeah? If you can mess with my head anywhere, why haven’t you done it sooner?”
“I have my reasons.”
“You can’t hurt me.”
Thane couldn’t help but smile. “Keep telling yourself that.”
He lunged at Bobby, who made an instinctive dive to the right but wasn’t fast enough. Thane clenched his hands around Bobby’s throat just as he’d done with Randy Sunday night and squeezed.
Hard.
“You…you can’t…you’re not really here,” Bobby somehow managed to hiss as his face changed color.
“Another erroneous assumption,” Thane said. “And you thought you were so much smarter.”
To Thane’s utter surprise, Bobby brought a knee up and rammed it into Thane’s crotch. Cursing, Thane loosened his hold on Bobby’s neck, and Bobby took the opportunity to swipe an old Chinese vase off the entryway table, swinging it at Thane’s head. It shattered upon impact, scattering fake flowers across the floor, and Thane staggered to the side, dazed.
Bobby picked up one of the shards and brandished it at Thane like a crude knife. “I don’t know how you’re doing it, but I know this can’t be real.”
“If you really think this is all in your head,” Mia said to Bobby, “then why don’t you stop defending yourself?”
Bobby lowered his defenses and squinted at her a moment. “Do I know you from somewhere?”
Mia shrugged. “I’ve got one of those faces.”
Thane, his ears still ringing from the blow, snatched another shard off the floor and launched himself at Bobby, tripping over his own foot and managing only to drag it down the boy’s motionless arm. A line of red seeped from his skin and dripped onto the floor. Terror gleamed in Bobby’s eyes—he knew if Thane hadn’t tripped, he’d now be dying.
Regaining his footing, Thane gripped Bobby’s other wrist with his free hand and made to slash the shard across Bobby’s throat when sudden pain blossomed across the back of Thane’s head.
As he fell, he caught sight of Carly Jovingo wielding a frying pan like a bludgeon—an apparent oversight on Mia’s part.
Maybe Carly was more fearless than he’d thought.
IMAGES SWAM before Phil’s eyes; disjointed as if he were watching a film with half the frames removed. Allison lying on a hospital bed. Ashley sitting in a chair, coloring. His friend Martin’s ghost haunting him in a dream, and the black entity blocking his view of the road.
He blinked, and as the images faded, he tried to bring the real world into focus. Everything around him appeared to be stone, dimly lit from a light source somewhere to his left.
He lay on the ground, and it felt warm.
Phil pulled himself into sitting position and dragged his hands over his face. No glasses. No wonder everything looked so blurry. So where had they gone?
He tried to stand but found he couldn’t. Something wasn’t right here. He must have fallen asleep somehow, but how he’d gotten to this strange place was beyond him. And why did it feel so warm?
Allison, he thought with a start. I’ve got to
go see Allison.
Since he felt too weak to stand, Phil got onto his hands and knees and crawled toward the light. Light was good, right? Light meant a way out.
After what could have been minutes or hours, Phil emerged into a world of white so bright he could hardly see. When his vision cleared (as much as it could, given his lack of corrective lenses), he saw a sweeping expanse of fallen snow perhaps an inch thick, and a whole forest of evergreens that appeared as vertical green blurs.
He glanced down at his hands, which had sunk into the snow. His fingers were purple. Wasn’t that funny? Purple fingers. He wondered if his face turned purple, too. Strange how he felt so warm, with all this snow around him. That was supposed to mean something. Feeling warm even if it was cold. He should probably get inside before he got sick.
Phil squinted in every direction looking for a house where he might find refuge, but all he could see were trees and snow. If only he had his glasses!
He regarded his purple fingers a second time, shrugged, and continued crawling.
“UNCLE RANDY, where’s Daddy?” Ashley asked from her spot at Randy and Lupe’s kitchen table. Lupe had poured her a bowl of Lucky Charms and a glass of orange juice, doing an admirable job of keeping on a positive face even though Randy knew she was just as worried as he about Phil’s continued absence.
“He had to go out,” Randy said as his stomach churned.
“When will he be back? I want to go see my mom.”
“I don’t know when he’ll be back. He didn’t say.”
He and Lupe exchanged grim looks. Citing a family emergency, both had already taken the day off work so they could watch Ashley until Phil’s return, which should have been hours ago in Randy’s estimation. It wasn’t like Phil to pop off like this without explanation. Randy didn’t even know where he’d gone.
He slipped upstairs and called Phil’s number for the fifth time, cursing when it went to voicemail again. Why did the whole world feel like it was coming apart? If only Bobby were here to help him figure this out, but no, Bobby had to slip away too, leaving one huge, steaming mess for Randy to deal with.
