Demon 04 - Deja Demon (31 page)

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Authors: Julie Kenner

BOOK: Demon 04 - Deja Demon
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“Probably,” I admitted. As long as the demons thought I had this sword, they were going to keep on coming. Unfortunately, they’d figured out—rightly—that the best way to get to me was to go through my children.
“That was
Mrs. Abernathy
,” Allie said. “We knew her. Mindy and I used to play at her house.” She pressed her lips together, her face tight.
“I know, baby.”
“They can’t do that. They shouldn’t be able to do that. She was nice. She wasn’t evil or mean or crazy.”
“No,” I agreed. “She wasn’t.”
“I’m gonna be sick,” Allie said, looking a little green as she clapped her hand over her mouth. She wasn’t, though, and after a moment, she took her hand away and looked at me with sad, serious eyes. “It just keeps getting realer and realer.”
“Yeah,” I said, stroking her hair and looking into her eyes. “Are you gonna be okay?”
She nodded, a little tentatively. “It’s never going to stop, is it? Even if we get Mrs. Abernathy, I mean. It just keeps going and going.”
“We will get her,” I said. “And as for the other, that’s the nature of evil. It’s a rough wake-up call, I know.”
“We can’t stop, either, can we?”
“You can stop anytime you want to, baby.”
She turned and looked wistfully back at the grocery store, then twisted in her seat to look at Timmy, who’d fallen asleep in his car seat. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t think I can.”
"Eddie?” I called,
as I trundled into the house, my arms full of grocery bags. “Can you give us a hand and I’ll fill you in on the latest?” In addition to the news about Wanda, I wanted him on board with my car rental cover story—a fender bender in the grocery store parking lot.
No answer.
I grimaced, having a hard time reconciling Eddie with a wild night of dating.
“Mom,” Allie said, her voice so tense and sharp that I grabbed a steak knife out of the block on the counter before turning to her. “
Mrs. Abernathy
,” she said, her face pale and her lips tight. “He walked her home last night. Remember? ”
I did remember, and I was kicking myself for not remembering earlier. “Call David and tell him to meet me at her house,” I said, then realized there was no way I was leaving her and Timmy alone, even to make a phone call. Not with Wanda wandering the streets. “Never mind. Call Laura.” I grabbed the phone from her and did that instead, as Allie gaped at me.
No answer.
“Dammit!”
“Mom!” Allie said, heading toward the door. “Eddie! Come on!”
I hesitated. I didn’t know what I was going to find at Wanda’s, and I didn’t want the kids with me when I found it. But at the same time, this could be a ruse of some sort. And if I left the kids alone—even with the alarm turned on and Allie with her knife—I’d never forgive myself if something should happen.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” I hurried toward the door, swinging Timmy up to my hip as I passed by. “You stay right by me,” I said to Allie, my voice firm. “Stray one inch—do one thing out of line—and you don’t train for a month. You understand?”
She nodded, wide-eyed and serious. “I got it.”
“Then come on.”
We raced across the street, cutting diagonally to Wanda’s house. I pounded on the front door, got no answer, then moved around to the back to repeat the process. Allie shadowed me, peering through windows and calling out for Eddie.
Nothing.
“Mom! Do something!”
My sentiments exactly, and without even worrying if the neighbors were watching, I slammed my purse through the window next to her back door. I reached inside, flipped the lock, and two seconds later we were inside.
“Bad Mommy,” Timmy said. “You broke it.”
“Sorry, kiddo. I had to. Now
shhh
. Mommy wants to listen. ”
I signaled to Allie to hold his hand and to follow, and she nodded, one hand clutching a steak knife, the other her brother’s tiny hand.
As far as I could tell, no one was home. There were no signs of life, and the more rooms we investigated, the more worried I became.
“Maybe he really is with Tammy,” Allie suggested, her own expression reflecting my fear.
I pulled out my cell phone and called the library, then asked to speak to Tammy. “This is Kate Connor,” I said, after she came on the line. “I was wondering if Eddie was with you.”
“Why no,” she said. “He missed our date yesterday and—”
I hung up. Rude, but I’ve never been at my best when I’m frantic.
Allie’s chin trembled. “Gramps isn’t—”
“We’re not thinking the worst until we have to,” I said. “Do you understand?”
She nodded, then picked up Timmy and clung to him the same way she used to clutch her rag dolls.
“Come on.”
“Where?”
“Once more through the house,” I said, aiming straight for the closet under the stairs.
Wanda Abernathy, I soon learned, hung on to a lot of junk. But though I found everything from boxes of costume jewelry to bags of flyswatters, I didn’t see any signs of Eddie. Not in the closets, not under the beds, not shoved into cabinets. Neither our search nor our calls turned up any sign of the man.
“The attic,” I said to Allie, who’d been following on my heels like a puppy, her desperation as acute as my own. I tossed her my phone. “And call David after all. We need the help.”
She nodded, her face still ashen, but her eyes alert and determined. As we hurried into the garage, she dialed while I tugged at the string to extend the ladder. It dropped down and I climbed up, clapping my hand over my mouth in defense against the dust and bits of insulation that fell on top of me. But though I crawled along the beams to every corner of the house, I still didn’t find Eddie, and so help me, I was beginning to lose hope.
“He wasn’t there,” she said. “I left a message.” Her expression began to crumble. “What are we going to do?”
“Keep looking,” I said. “There has to be some—did you hear that?” I cocked my head to the side, looking around the garage.
“The car! Mom, he’s trapped in the car!”
The only trouble with that theory was that Wanda drove a teeny-tiny hatchback, and I’d already peered inside when we’d entered the garage. Still, Allie was right. I could hear a faint thumping, and it sounded like it was coming from the car.
“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.

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