by Cassandra
Suddenly, still ignoring them all, Frank snatched up the remote control to continue channel surfing. Jessica noticed, though, that he flicked through channels she had never seen before. Channels she didn’t know they had.
“What?” Frank said and finally acknowledged everyone’s presence.
“Stop. Detectives,” Pastor Norman said and everyone spun to look at him. He shrugged his shoulder and pointed at the TV. “What? I love this show.”
Frank paused from flipping through the channels.
Grandma Ethel grinned. “My kind of Pastor. I love this show too. Aint it the best?”
“No. Everyone knows this show is staged. It’s a bunch of made up nonsense,” Chad said and shook his head. “Knock yourselves out, though. Call me if the demon shows up. Unless you want to call the fake detectives from this show, of course. Is there any good food in the fridge, Ms. Ethel? Never mind. I’ll go take a look for myself if you don’t mind.” With that, he turned and headed back downstairs and didn’t even bother to wait to see if Ethel minded.
“Welp—it looks like he’ll miss out then,” Ethel said. She hurried toward Jessica’s desk, where she sat and made herself comfortable. “Turn the volume up, Frank!”
Pastor Norman crossed the room toward Jessica’s beanbag chair. “This looks like a good spot.” He knelt with a grunt and proceeded to settle into the chair, wiggling and shifting until he was comfortable, at least somewhat. “There,” he said and panted slightly, then suddenly frowned. “How the hell will I get back up, though?” he muttered.
“Probably with a lot of aches, pains, and swearing,” Grandma Ethel said and chuckled.
He sighed. “I guess I’ll have to worry about that later when it’s time.”
Jessica turned her head and snickered as she plopped onto the bed beside Frank. Old people, she thought and cleared her throat. “So,” she said and managed to hide the laughter in her voice, “what’s this show about and how come I’ve never seen it before?”
“Because you weren’t magical before,” Frank said.
She blinked. “Um…come again?”
The imp sighed. “You’re such an amateur.”
“Yes, I know. You’ve expressed that to me a time or one-hundred before already. Now, what do you mean about this TV show?”
“There are some shows that only magical creatures can see. Mundanes can’t access these shows and stations. These channels don’t work for them.”
“Really?” Jessica said, surprised. She looked toward her grandmother. “I didn’t know that. I never see you watching anything but soap operas. The regular kind. How come you don’t watch this stuff?”
“Well, duh, Jessica. Obviously, I do. How else would I have known this show?”
“Oh, yeah. Right…”
“I watch it in my room all the time.”
She stared at her grandmother for a moment longer and wondered if she’d been hiding the magic stations from her for some reason. She supposed it didn’t matter now, though. “Well,” she said, “does anybody wanna fill me in on what the show’s about?”
“It’s based on a detective office in Hauppague, Long Island,” Pastor Norman answered. “You see, they’re only supposed to investigate mundane affairs and leave the magical work to their colleagues in New York City. But they always wind up getting involved anyhow. There’re four of them and they’re hilarious. Watch and see.”
Intrigued, Jessica proceeded to watch the show, fascinated to see how magical programs were different from the mundane ones she was used to.
Twenty minutes in, she was howling with laughter. This particular episode dealt with a mundane CEO who had hired an exterminator for what he thought was a mouse problem in his family’s home. However, the house was actually overrun with tiny mouse-sized demons, courtesy of a spell cast on him after he’d fired an employee from his company. An employee who, unbeknownst to him, was a vengeful witch.
Upon catching wind of the man reporting extremely weird-looking mice, the witch detectives posed as exterminators in attempts to investigate his home.
“I don’t get it,” the man said after they began to question him. “What does this have to do with the damned mice in my kitchen?”
“Er…mice can sometimes sense bad energy. So tell, us…has anyone been upset with you lately?” one of the detectives asked. Right that moment, a glob of mysterious green slime soared through the air and struck the man right in the back of the head. Startled, he turned to find a scaly little demon standing on its hind legs, right in the center of his living room table. The creature laughed and seemed ready to launch another glob of goo at him.
“Do you see that? I’ve never seen anything like it. Damned devil-mice, I tell you,” the man yelled, incensed. “They’re infected with something. They have to be.”
“You have no idea how right you are about that,” one of the detectives said. “Tell me, sir, what do you do for a living?”
“Forget what I do for a living. Set some traps and catch these wretched—” His words were cut short, though, when he was hit with yet another slime-ball. “And what the hell are they throwing at me?”
“You’d probably rather not know, sir.”
“Oh, my God!” Jessica exclaimed. “This is hilarious. Are those things real, by the way?”
“Yeah,” Grandma Ethel said. “These episodes are always based on real cases. My second husband’s mother had an infestation of that kind of demon before. Served her right. Nasty woman, she was. And I mean that literally and figuratively.”
“Well, I’ll have to watch this more often,” Jessica said and decided that the show would be a fun way to learn more about the mysterious magical world that she did not yet know.
When the show came to an end, Pastor Norman exhaled a long sigh.
“Need a hand there, Pastor?” Ethel said and her mouth quivered as if she tried to hold back a laugh of her own.
Pastor Norman rolled over onto all fours and struggled to get onto his two feet. “What is the appeal of this kind of contraption?” he asked and gestured to the beanbag chair. His eyes sought Jessica from his current upside position as he continued his efforts to stand.
Also holding a laugh back, Jessica shrugged. “They look cool, that’s all. And they’re quite comfortable.”
He finally pushed himself into a standing position. “Comfortable? Ha! For who?” he muttered. “Certainly not aging pastors, that’s for sure.” He stretched, his bones popping.
“Comfortable for people under the age of twenty-five is what she means,” Ethel said.
“Enough of the old-people talk. Where were you guys earlier today, may I ask?” Frank said but looked primarily at Jessica. “You were kind of late getting back here.”
“Oh,” she said, “we went back to the magic shop to try to find out where the demon cards came from. We had no luck, though.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?” the imp said and sounded slightly affronted.
“What?” Jessica, Ethel, and Pastor Norman all said at the same time.
“It’s exactly like a bunch of witches to underestimate an imp’s knowledge,” he muttered and shook his head. “Demon cards come from Hell, obviously. Hence the name. I could have told you that a long time ago. Satan sends them up with one of his demon couriers. That’s typical Satan behavior. He does it to spread chaos throughout the magical world, and even occasionally into the mundane world.”
Grandma Ethel tilted her head and stared at him with something akin to shock. “How do you know that?”
Frank merely shrugged. “You tend to know a lot of things by the time you’re my age.”
“What? How old are you?” Jessica asked, recalling that he had literally made a joke about old people.
He smiled. “I turned one hundred this year. Belated birthday gifts are welcome if you’re wondering.”
“What?” the other three all cried out at the same time again.
“One hundred? Are you serious?” Jessica's eyes widened. Having en
countered other imps before, she could easily see that Frank looked younger than the others she’d seen. “I…I thought you were like a…a teenaged imp or something. You look younger than the others I’ve seen. And you definitely act like a teenager—no offense.”
“Well, in comparison to other imps, I suppose I am like a teenager. Imps live to be anywhere from six hundred to seven hundred years old, so…yeah. I’m young by imp standards.”
“Well, how about that,” Pastor Norman said, astounded.
“You learn something new every day,” Ethel said and also looked surprised.
“Wow,” Jessica said, for it was all she could muster. She thought back to how annoyed she had initially been to have an imp as her familiar. Little had she known back then how useful he would prove to be to have around.
Who would have thought the little guy was good for something other than watching Keeping Up with the Kardashian reruns?
Chapter Eleven
The room had fallen silent while everyone continued to ponder how much Frank—or imps in general—knew about the magical world that most witches probably weren’t privy to. If what he said was true about imps living extraordinarily long lives, most of them were undoubtedly like walking encyclopedias.
Jessica noticed her grandmother and Pastor Norman exchange a few glances, although she wasn’t quite able to tell what they thought or tried to silently convey to one another. Was it something magical-business related or something else?
Suddenly, she felt like she didn’t quite want to know anymore.
With a loud sigh, she stood, stretched, and crossed the room to retrieve her laundry basket. “Well,” she said, “I’m going to the basement to do my laundry—again.” She shot Frank an annoyed look.
Ethel laughed. “Why is it that people tend to feel the need to announce when they go to another room in the house?”
She shrugged. “Just being polite, I guess. It’s common decency to tell others when you’re going somewhere. You know that, don’t you?”
“All right, young lady. Watch your tone,” the old lady said, the significance of the words clearly not lost on her.
Jessica turned her back. “Sorry,” she muttered as she leaned down to pick her laundry basket up.
“Well, let me see what Chad is up to,” Pastor Norman said. He wanted to excuse himself from the brief awkwardness in the room.
“Hold on, Pastor. Right behind ya,” Ethel said, also ready to make her exit from Jessica’s room.
“It looks like the party in here has come to an end then,” Frank observed. He looked at Jessica. “Going to the basement, huh?” he asked without even an ounce of remorse on his face for being the one who had messed up Jessica’s clean clothes in the first place. “I’ll go with you. I’ve never seen that part of the house.”
Jessica couldn’t figure out why the imp would find the basement interesting, but she didn’t object. Now that she knew Frank was a walking wealth of knowledge, she figured any opportunity to pick his brain a little was likely worth it.
“Why does your grandmother keep all the good chairs down here, gathering dust?”
She shrugged as she made her way over to the washer. “Good question. I honestly don’t know. Now that you mention it, though, I think we should take one upstairs. Without Roger around, Chad is bound to bring another sidekick to dinner with him soon. We might as well have an extra chair already available to save us the hassle.”
The washer ran for a minute before she added liquid detergent and began loading her clothes. “Syrup on popcorn,” she muttered and frowned at the sticky brown drizzle Frank had managed to get everywhere.
When she noticed that the imp had grown suspiciously quiet, she glanced around to see what he was up to. He merely roamed the basement as if he was sightseeing in some fascinating location.
Perhaps Frank actually did have reason to be captivated with Grandma Ethel’s basement, though, she thought as she shoved the last of her laundry into the washer. Having never quite been a fan of basements herself due to watching too many horror movies, she had never really spent much time hanging out down there. She had always ensured that her ventures were short and to the point.
But now, she couldn’t help but wonder if her grandmother had any cool magical artifacts lying around that would be fun to discover.
Jessica ignored the banging and clanging of the washer as it warmed up and spun her clothes around and joined Frank to see that he peered at a collection of books and a box of blankets and sweaters Ethel had obviously knitted eons ago.
“Your grandma has a lot of cool stuff,” he said.
“Yeah,” she agreed. She was just about to move on, though, when something caught her eye.
One of the books was actually an old photo album and it looked like it had been covered with a heavy layer of dust that had recently been wiped off.
She picked up it, curious to see what was inside.
Carefully, she opened the leather-bound cover. The first photo featured a young Ethel—perhaps not much older than Jessica—as well as a young Maximus.
Jessica stared at it for a moment, dumbfounded.
Grandma Ethel had been gorgeous. Curly dark hair, bright vivid eyes, smooth skin, and a teasing grin very much like the one she still flashed around today. And Maximus—he looked like the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome, similar to how he had looked when Jessica first met him at the old ladies’ knitting circle.
There was no denying it. Ethel and Maximus had been a stunningly beautiful couple. She wondered what had caused their eventual breakup. Then she realized she needed to be thankful they broke up because otherwise, Grandma Ethel would have never met her grandfather, and she and her mother wouldn’t exist.
Still, she couldn’t help being amazed by their movie-star looks. “Wow,” she said and stared at the picture for a moment longer before she finally turned to the next page.
It didn’t take long to discover that the whole album was filled with photos of Ethel and Maximus, along with photos here and there of women Jessica recognized from the knitting circle.
It was strange to see that they had all actually been young before.
“Ahh,” Frank said and peered over Jessica’s shoulder. “The infamous days of Ethel and Maximus. It’s nice to see there’s photographic evidence.”
“So you remember those days fondly too?” Jessica said as she continued to flip through the pages.
“I don’t know if fondly is the right term.”
She looked at him, her eyebrow raised. “Why not?”
“Well, what would you expect? I’m an imp. Those two killed a lot of my kind. Imps were terrified of them. But so were demons.”
Jessica swallowed and a sense of guilt came over her. Now that she and Frank were friends, she could never forget that she had killed a couple of imps herself. It wasn’t fair that they had such a horrible reputation among witches when clearly not all imps were bad.
A faraway look formed in Frank’s eyes. “I personally remember when I was about thirty-five or forty,” he said, “and Ethel and Maximus crashed an imp gathering. They weren’t there for us, though. They were hunting a couple of demons who’d showed up unexpectedly.” He let out a low whistle. “Talk about a force to be reckoned with. Ethel and Maximus were a bad pair. Bad? Do you kids still use that word?”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure. Now finish the story. What happened?” she asked, eager to hear more.
“They killed those demons dead, that’s what happened. What else? Maximus grabbed one of them by the horns while Ethel conjured a sword and decapitated the poor bastard. All without getting an ounce of demon blood on her dress. She was all dolled up like they’d been on their way to a fancy date or something.” Frank paused for a moment, lost in the memory. “Thank goodness me and my friends fled before they got ahold of any of us. They saved our lives that night but probably would have taken a few of our lives too if we had stuck around for too long.”
“Do you think my grandma re
members you from back then?”
“Heck no. I told you, I was only about thirty-five or forty. I was only a kid. There’s no way she’d recognize me from back then. Plus, it wasn’t like I stuck around long enough for her to get a good look at me anyway.”
Jessica snickered, but it was short-lived when the sadness of the situation—at least from the imp’s perspective—sank in. She felt the pang of guilt again.
Perhaps he’d noticed her reaction because Frank shook his head. “I can’t deny it. Not all imps are good or as charming as me. There is a reason we have a bad reputation. Those rotten apples spoil the whole bunch in most witches’ eyes.”
“That has to suck,” she said.
“Yes, it does.” He shrugged. “A lot of my friends were terrified of Ethel and Max. But then, of course, Ethel and Max stopped being demon hunters. When they were active, they tipped the scales and it almost seemed like demons would go extinct as long as those two were on the prowl. But once they stopped, the balance was restored. In fact, maybe they stopped for too long. That’s why the demons have gotten out of control now.”
Frank fell silent, and Jessica was momentarily lost in thought. Her mind wandered, reflecting on what Frank had said as she resumed looking through the pictures. She gasped when she came across pictures of her mother when she was young.
“Geez—she looks exactly like me. Or I look like her, rather,” she mused. “Look.” She pointed a picture out to Frank, but instead of his commentary, she was met with his scream.
“What?” she cried, jumped, and almost dropped the photo album.
It didn’t take her long to see what was wrong, though.
The floor was black, shiny, and moving.
Covered with beetles.
Jessica’s skin crawled and fear and disgust consumed her. To add to the horror, she realized the beetles had snapping jaws. She could hear them clicking and the sound from their mouths grew so loud that it drowned out the sound of the washer and the imp’s screams. He had an expression of genuine agony on his face, though, so she lowered her gaze to see that the beetles were biting at his feet. He hopped from foot-to-foot, and it would almost have looked like he was dancing if his expression wasn’t so petrified.
