by Cassandra
“Well, on the bright side—we’re almost done,” Kacey said and leaned against the side of the house.
Jessica went to join him and leaned beside him. “You always find a way to look on the bright side, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “Because it helps, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” She smiled.
They stood silently for a moment and watched the rain. She mentally calculated how much longer it would take for them to officially finish.
Out of the blue, he snickered. He looked up to the window they stood beneath. “Is that your Grandma’s room, by any chance?” he asked. “Does she always watch TV with the volume up so loud? It sounds like a feisty soap-opera with a killer. The kind of stuff my great-aunt likes to watch. That’s some killer surround-sound, by the way!”
She frowned because she could hear the noises from the window above as well. However, she was well aware that it was her room, not Ethel’s, under which they stood. And considering Frank had still been asleep, she knew it wasn’t the TV that they heard. Nevertheless, she could hear his voice, and he was indeed talking—or arguing, rather—with someone else.
Kacey, who still leaned against the side of the house with an amused expression sketched onto his face, continued to listen and chuckle.
A cold shiver rippled down her spine.
Despite not being able to see what was going on, she could tell from the squeakiness of the voice that replied to Frank that her familiar was fighting someone his own size—which could only mean one thing.
The demon imp, his cousin, had arrived.
Jessica had been right about him not showing up in the yard, at least. Yet, once again, she’d been shortsighted and hadn’t realized he could just as easily show up indoors like the Medusa-woman had.
She swore in her head, completely at a loss as to what to do. Ideally, she wanted to make a run for it and rush upstairs but clearly, she couldn’t do so with Kacey right there.
Again, she cursed herself. Why on earth had she thought it was a good idea to invite him over at a time like this when she knew the demon imp could show up at any moment? While she had previously assumed she’d be able to handle the little devil whenever he arrived, she now simply felt stupid.
Kacey laughed again and she froze for a moment to listen to what Frank and his cousin were saying.
“I told you I would kill you the next time I saw you,” Frank yelled. “I’ll never forgive you. I loved her and you stole her from me when we were eighteen. Why couldn’t you get a girlfriend of your own? Why did you have to take mine, you little bastard?”
Jessica’s jaw dropped. Beneath all her frustration at not knowing what to do at the moment, she couldn’t deny the shock she felt.
That was the reason Frank hated his cousin so much? His cousin had taken his girlfriend?
“What’s wrong?” Kacey suddenly asked. He’d no doubt noticed that she didn’t look anywhere near as amused as he did.
“Uh…nothing,” she said, her voice a panicked squeak when she heard the distinct sounds of fighting drift from the window. Her heart raced. She needed to get inside quickly. If Frank was fighting his cousin, that was against the rules of the game and she couldn’t allow it.
She began to move away from Kacey and thought fast. “You know—it’s really not good for my grandma to watch TV so loud. It’s um…bad for her ears. I’ll run inside really quickly to turn it down, okay? You stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Without waiting for a response, Jessica rushed inside the house and ran so fast that her feet almost didn’t touch the floor. She raced up the stairs and burst into her room.
The two imps fought in the middle of the floor. Frank darted around with his fists raised and moved as if he was Rocky in a boxing ring. Meanwhile, his cousin glared at him with an evil and ugly sneer and looked as if he wasn’t even concerned.
“Nooo,” Jessica yelled as Frank lunged for his adversary and delivered a right-hook.
“That’ll teach you not to steal other people’s women,” Frank bellowed. He stood victoriously over his cousin, whom he had knocked unconscious.
Frank’s triumph was short-lived, though. And all Jessica could do was watch in terror as her familiar’s expression suddenly grew stupefied and his figure began to flicker and become transparent. As if being sucked away by an invisible vacuum, Frank hurtled across the room, screaming as he was sucked up into the demon card once again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
With Frank’s evil cousin passed out on her bedroom floor and Frank missing entirely, Jessica simply stood in the middle of the room, shell-shocked.
“This…is…not…happening…” she said out loud as if voicing her denial would remove the situation before her. Yet the evil imp remained on the floor instead of Frank and consequently, Jessica simply stared at it without even the faintest idea what to do.
Take a deep breath. Think, she instructed herself.
Slowly, she glanced at the set of demon cards on her desk. Sure enough, the previously blank card now contained a thoroughly disgruntled-looking Frank.
She groaned and stamped her feet on the floor. “Dammit, Frank! What did you do?”
For someone who was one hundred years old and seemed to be a walking encyclopedia at times, the imp had certainly proven his ability to be outright stupid when provoked. She had made it a point to warn him about not fighting his cousin because the game might construe it as cheating, yet he’d done it anyway. And now look at him.
His cousin.
Jessica turned quickly to the unconscious imp on the floor. It suddenly occurred to her that possibly, if she hurried and finished him off, it would do the trick and free Frank before anyone could even miss him.
Too distracted and flustered to conjure the rain spell, she dashed off to the bathroom to retrieve a cup of water and planned to simply dump it on the creature to see if that would be sufficient to defeat him.
“Ugggggh!” she groaned once she made it back to her room. It had only taken a matter of seconds for her to get the water, but that had still been too long.
The evil imp was gone.
She looked hastily at the demon cards again and held onto the hope that Frank had managed to knock him out hard enough to send him back into the card. But she should have known her luck would never come so easily, at least not when it came to this demented game. The card contained only a peeved Frank, meaning his evil cousin was still on the loose.
Dejected, Jessica flopped down onto her bed and stared at the wall as she tried to wrap her mind around how things had managed to go so wrong so quickly.
When she shifted her gaze to the window, she saw that the rain had started to ease up. And then she remembered that Kacey was still out in the yard.
She swore and jumped from the bed. How could she have forgotten about him? She dashed hastily down the stairs, out the back door, and returned to the yard, where he was still waiting.
He took one look at her and his expression filled with concern. “Is everything all right?” he asked.
No, she thought. My familiar tried to fight his evil cousin for stealing his girlfriend about eighty years ago, and now, he’s trapped inside a set of demon cards for the second time. I have two people to save from this stupid game that seems to never want to end. So I’m pretty much at my wits end over here.
Jessica took another deep breath and tried as best as she could to rearrange her face into a neutral expression before she responded. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” Her voice sounded fake to her own ears, and she could only hope Kacey didn’t detect anything.
Fortunately, he merely nodded and pointed to the sky as he grinned. “It stopped raining.”
“Yeah. Great,” she said and tried to sound pleased. Unfortunately, she knew that rain was now the least of her concerns.
“How about we finish the last of the garden work and afterward, I think I’ll make a quick stop at home to change out of these clothes. They’re soaked in rain and sweat. Then
, we can meet up at the bowling alley in town.”
Jessica nodded and forced a smile. “Sure. Great!”
“Jess,” Kacey said and eyed her suspiciously, “are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Yep!” She grabbed the rake and forced another smile. “Let’s get this over with so that we can go out and have some fun.” I desperately need it right now.
“Right.” He stared at her for a moment longer before he resumed his garden work.
All the while, she constantly thought about Frank and fumed inwardly at him for getting himself sucked into the cards again. She already had such a hard time getting Roger back, and now, Frank had to go and pull this.
She suppressed a sigh and decided that at this rate, she would never get either of them back. Roger would be stuck inside her grandma’s gold picture frame forever, and she’d have to go through her life as the witch whose familiar was constantly stupid enough to get himself stuck in a set of cards.
A set of cards that she was stupid enough to buy in the first place.
Okay, stop being so dramatic. You’ll get them both back eventually, she told herself. And it’s not my fault that I was tricked into buying the cards. They were a trap set by Satan. It could have happened to anyone.
Still, she wondered how many more demons she would have to fight before it was all said and done because she already felt like a hamster running in a wheel. The game would keep going, but she would never really get anywhere.
“And we’re done!” Kacey’s voice rang from across the yard and snapped Jessica out of her thoughts. He made his way over to her, grinning, and held a hand up for a high-five.
“Wow. That went a lot quicker than I thought it would. Thanks for coming over,” she said, trying to muster some enthusiasm into her voice.
“No problem.” He shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll head home to change now. Meet me at the bowling alley in about an hour?”
She nodded. “Yeah! I can’t wait.”
“Awesome.” He flashed a smile that suddenly gave her a couple of butterflies. Quickly, he gave her hand a squeeze and headed out of the yard toward his car.
All right. I’ll enjoy my date with Kacey and worry about everything else later, she vowed to herself as she watched him drive off.
Besides, with all the stress she was under, she deserved a little fun. And if Frank and Roger didn’t understand that—well, too bad. They shouldn’t have gotten themselves stuck in the first place.
Once Kacey’s car was out of view, Jessica rushed back into the house and went directly to her room. She already knew that she would spend the next half hour stressing over what to wear.
They were only going out bowling, so she decided she needed to dress casually. Regardless, though, she still wanted to look nice. She had to redeem herself after Kacey had seen her in raggedy old flannel pajamas and bed-hair.
But she also didn’t want to seem like she was trying too hard.
“Ugh!” she screamed in frustration as she yanked clothes out of her closet and threw them across the room. After several agonizing minutes, she narrowed her top choices down to a blue ribbed sweater and a tan button-up blouse.
She discarded the blouse when she decided that it was more appropriate for some type of holiday party or a fancy dinner, not hanging out at a bowling alley.
Finally, once she’d showered and fought her hair back into a neat ponytail, she matched the sweater with a pair of ripped jeans and boots. She added earrings and a necklace and headed downstairs.
“Garden work all done, I presume?” Grandma Ethel asked from where she sat at the kitchen table with a hot mug of coffee in her hand while she read the newspaper.
“Yep,” Jessica said and a lump formed in her throat. She knew her grandma needed to know what had happened to Frank but she wasn’t in the mood to discuss it at that moment.
The old lady narrowed her eyes at her and likely sensed something in the tone of her granddaughter’s voice.
To avoid her grandmother’s gaze, Jessica turned her back and opened the refrigerator, even though she wasn’t at all hungry.
“You’re taking advantage of your punishment being over already, I see,” Grandma Ethel said and took a slow sip of her coffee. “So, where are you off to?”
“Bowling.”
“With?”
“With Kacey.”
“Ah ha. I knew it.” She smiled smugly. “You can’t get enough of that boy, can you?”
“Grandma.” Jessica groaned.
“Don’t use that tone with me. And don’t play innocent with me, either. I keep telling you, I was your age once, you know. Now, I don’t pay the heat bill to keep my food warm, so close my refrigerator. If you haven’t found what you wanna eat yet, it must not be in there.”
She refrained from rolling her eyes as she closed the refrigerator and turned to retrieve a mug instead. After a quick glance at the clock, she calculated that she had time for a cup of coffee before she left. She still felt a little cold and clammy from doing garden work in the rain, not to mention that she was still chilled to the bone over the fact that Frank had managed to get himself stuck in the cards again.
Jessica poured herself a cup of coffee and took a seat across from her grandmother. “So—are you satisfied with the garden work?”
“I suppose,” Ethel said and turned back to her newspaper. “I’ll have to go out there and take a more thorough look.”
“Well, thank you for allowing me to get off being grounded early,” she said and decided to keep the conversation on this particular topic. She didn’t want anything to reveal what had happened to Frank yet, primarily because she didn’t want to be made to feel guilty for going out on a date while her familiar was still trapped.
Then again—what could she do, anyway? His evil cousin had disappeared for the time being, and she literally couldn’t do anything until he returned. He wasn’t her imp, so it wasn’t like she could summon him.
“You’re welcome,” Ethel said. “But don’t get into any more trouble and you won’t have to worry about it again.” The old woman fell silent, but there was something about the way she constantly glanced at Jessica that made the girl nervous.
She finished the rest of her coffee hurriedly and set the empty mug in the dishwasher. “All right, Grandma. See you later. I won’t be gone long.” She stooped to kiss her grandmother’s cheek, retrieved her coat hurriedly, and left the house before Ethel could ask her any more questions.
The butterflies in her stomach had returned by the time Jessica pulled into the parking lot of the bowling alley. It was still fairly early, so the lot wasn’t as crowded as it would be later that evening. As a result, she’d been able to spot Kacey’s car easily and parked not too far away from it.
By the time she parked and headed toward the building, she saw him as well. Now that the rain had ended, the day had grown rather sunny but it was still quite cold, though. He stood outside the building’s entrance with his hands stuffed into his coat pocket, waiting for her.
“Wow, long time no see,” she said and her breath billowed in the chilly air.
“I know, right?” Kacey laughed. He, too, had changed into jeans. Beneath his coat, Jessica could see that he wore a simple t-shirt.
Thank goodness I opted for a casual sweater rather than that blouse, she thought gratefully.
Smiling, he opened the door for her.
“You didn’t have to wait out here in the cold for me, you know,” she said.
He shrugged. “I didn’t mind. Besides, I wanted to see you when you got here. To make sure you actually showed up. You know—to make sure you didn’t stand me up because you needed to buy more cat food or go talk to your priest or something.”
Jessica looked sideways at him, relieved to see the smirk on his face that indicated he was only joking. “Touché,” she said as they headed over to the coat-check section.
Kacey’s gazed roamed over her and her outfit once she had shed her coat. “You look nice.”
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Her face flushed, and she pretended briefly to be concerned about a hangnail on her thumb. “Thanks,” she said and fought to keep her voice nonchalant.
“Not that you don’t always look nice,” Kacey added. “Even in flannel pjs and stuff.”
She looked up and punched him playfully in the arm. “Ha, ha, very funny,” she said but laughed as the brief awkwardness she’d felt melted away. “Let’s see if you feel like paying me so many compliments once I beat you in bowling.”
“Well, now,” he said as they walked farther into the bowling alley, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You beating me, I mean. I’m fairly good at bowling if I do say so myself. I’m sure I can beat you and be back home before my folks even suspect a thing.”
Jessica grinned. “Uh huh. Sure. Yeah, you keep talking.”
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Do you want to get something to eat first before we start?”
“Sure,” she agreed. “You woke me up so early and I didn’t eat breakfast.”
“Ha. Same here.”
Together, they headed to the food court, where he had a burger, fries, and a Pepsi, while she munched on chicken tenders, fries, and a Sprite.
“Okay—I take it back. You might actually be a somewhat decent bowler,” Kacey said. They had gone through their first couple of rounds, and their scores were close to tied.
Jessica stepping up to the lane as it was her turn once again, tossed her head back, and laughed. “You know, I should have made a bet with you. Like—make you serve my punishment the next time I’m grounded or something.”
He grinned. “All right, let’s not get too carried away.”
Still laughing, she grabbed her bowling ball and immediately froze.
She peered down the lane at the pins and saw an ugly little face sneering at her.
The imp had returned.
Jessica swore under her breath. This is so not the time, she thought angrily. She glanced around and wondered if anyone else could see the little demon.
“Hey, don’t get cold feet now,” Kacey teased and made his way over to her.
