***
I was so shook up I could hardly move. When I looked, I expected to see a policeman standing there, but instead it was Granny holding a handgun. She slid the gun into a shoulder holster under her jacket and helped me up.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” We hugged each other, breathing hard. I pressed my face into her jacket and took in the ruggedly sweet odor of old leather. I love that smell.
I nodded. Angie and Travis hurried downstairs. Angie had fire in her eyes.
“Matilda, I told you when you moved in, absolutely no guns in this house. You’ve had that ever since you got here, haven’t you?”
Granny nodded. “Kind of a good thing, too, don’t you think?”
Angie was furious. “I can’t believe it! You know how I feel about firearms and you deliberately went against my wishes.” She went to a steel cabinet and produced some heavy chain and a large padlock. “Hurry, tie it up. Make it tight. We’ll put it in the panic room until the police leave.”
“Tie it up?” Granny was confused. “I shot it four times point blank with a .357 magnum, straight through the heart.”
“We don’t even know if it has a heart.”
“Good point. What’d’ya plan to do with the body?”
Angie shook her head. “Maybe we should call the press, let them take pictures.”
“I don’t know. We might end up in one of those tabloids lookin’ like freaks. Do you think Mark would want it? You know, to dissect or something in the name of science?”
I changed the subject. “This demon came here all by itself. That’s twice it’s happened. The first time they brought a small army and now they’re working alone. Why?”
“Maybe our security system scares the others away,” suggested Granny. Somebody pounded on the front door upstairs. Granny looked up. “Police. Angie, you’d better go chat with ‘em. The kids and I will move our two-headed friend to a more out-of-the-way place.”
“It took ‘em twelve minutes and twenty-two seconds this time,” said Travis, checking his watch. “Eight minutes faster than before.”
“But they’re still too late.” I wasn’t cutting anyone any slack about this. Especially the police.
“The only way they could possibly show up in time to help would be to move in with us.” Angie shook her head and went upstairs. Travis and I helped Granny move the dead demon into the panic room.
“Is this why we have a panic room?” asked Travis, tugging on one of the creature’s scaly feet. “To hide dead demons in? I thought it was a hidin’ place for Kelly.”
Granny laughed. “I guess a panic room’s a lot like a garage. You have every intention of using it for one thing, but soon you find yourself using it for completely different purposes.”
Her logic made me smile.
“We did better this time,” she continued. “The alarm gave us plenty of warning, though it’s way too loud, if you ask me.”
“I agree,” I said.
“Me, too,” said Travis. “My ears are still ringin’!”
“But it did the job.” Granny looked my way. “We stopped another demon from getting you. We’ve got problems, though, like how to fight the nasty things. But we’re a whole lot safer now than we were a couple weeks ago.”
She’s right, I thought. The first demon attack had taken us completely by surprise. But after that Angie went all out to have the house redone and she’d spared no expense to have the best security systems installed on the property. We had plenty of money now, because of Majik Juice sales. Chris’ amazing fruit juice was the hottest selling bottled drink on the market. Angie used the money to install thirty-two security cameras inside and outside the house. Most were hidden but some were in plain view to scare away bad guys and maybe demons, too, if they understood what a camera was for. And we had all kinds of detectors that turned on security lights and set off the alarms. Motion detectors, audio pickup systems, thermal systems, CO2 detectors that identified a person’s breath, and even pressure receptors around the yard in case another giant lobster demon was outside looking into a second story window.
In addition all the windows were bulletproof and the doors were solid steel with huge bolt locks. The only way to open the doors from the outside was with an electronic touchpad that had a secret personal identity number, or PIN, and we were the only ones who knew the number. The entire house was hardwired to the main power supply, with solar and battery backup, just in case.
Also, the outside of the house was now brick. Angie figured it wouldn’t be too hard for demons to break through vinyl siding, so she had the contractors remove the vinyl and replace it with red brick. I was impressed the contractors had been able to do so much work in such a short time, but Angie found out if you pay people enough money they’ll work around the clock to get a job done. And they did, too. There had been at least a dozen companies working all through the night every night.
Granny closed the panic room door and we started upstairs. Then we heard a desperate, muffled voice.
“Lemme go-ah! Ya can’t hold me here-ah. I won’t hurt nobody, I swear-ah!” The demon had come back to life.
The Demon Conspiracy Page 23
