Demon 04 - Deja Demon (32 page)

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Authors: Julie Kenner

BOOK: Demon 04 - Deja Demon
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“Half an hour,” he said as I stuck my key in the door. “You want to stuff me full of food and water, you do it now,” he said. “ ’Cause when that timer goes off, I’m out of here.”
“Fair enough,” I said, pushing the door open to reveal Wanda Abernathy standing in the middle of my hallway, a crossbow aimed at my chest and a toothless grin on her wrinkled face.

 

Sixteen
"Holy crap!” Eddie said,
rolling to one side with Allie even as I shoved Timmy to the ground, the arrow from the crossbow zipping out our open front door to embed in the kumquat tree growing in the front yard.
“You cannot stop him,” Wanda said. “He will rise, and in rising, The One will have revenge. The One will have vengeance. And you and yours will surely fall as he rises, becoming whole and one through the becoming.”
“What the hell does that
mean
?” Allie called, even as I whipped out with my purse, holding the handle as the bag caught Wanda at the ankles, sending her tumbling.
“Right now,” I said, “you’re the only one who’s falling.”
“Yes!” Allie said, scrambling forward and grabbing my keys off the floor where they’d fallen.
“Whoa there, missy,” Eddie said, holding her back by the tail of her shirt even as Wanda was climbing to her feet, swinging the heavy wooden crossbow like a battle-ax.
“Bad lady!” Timmy said. “Bad, bad lady!”
“Damn straight,” Eddie said. He grabbed one of the arrows off the floor and lunged forward.
“
Eddie
,” I called, but it was too late. He was already there, and he was pissed. And though Wanda tried to put up a fight, it was no use. Eddie was a raging ball of fury.
Allie and I rushed forward to help, but it wasn’t necessary. Eddie lashed forward with the arrow, sliding it deep into Wanda’s eye even as I turned Timmy toward me, pressing his face to my chest.
“The bitch is dead,” Eddie said. “About damn time.”
No kidding,
I thought, hugging my baby close.
I checked the clock: only two forty-five.
This was turning out to be a very, very long day.
Allie peeled back
a foil corner and peered at the cannelloni inside. “Is it still good?” she asked, her nose crinkling.
With barely more than four hours until the hordes descended, those were exactly the kinds of questions I didn’t need. “Of course they’re still good. Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Duh. They sat in the car while we went off and did . . . you know. Do you know how much bacteria can grow on food?”
“No, and neither do you,” I said. “I saw the grade you got in biology.”
She gave the meal another look of total disdain. “Well,
I’m
not eating it.”
“No one asked you to,” I said curtly. “And there is absolutely nothing wrong with the food.”
“You’ll feel pretty stupid when all of Stuart’s contributors are dead of food poisoning.”
“Go,” I said, thrusting my finger out toward the living room. “Play with your brother. Clean your room. Read a book. Just leave. Now.”
She complied, but a whispered “
salmonella
” drifted back toward me.
Teenagers
.
Still . . .
I grabbed my laptop off the counter and moved it to the table. As soon as the machine was awake, I navigated to Google and did a search for
food
,
car
, and
salmonella
. The results were less than illuminating, particularly as I saw nothing relevant right off the bat.
Not being the kind to poke around the Internet, I decided to approach the question the old-fashioned way. I called Laura.
“You’re fine,” she said after I’d explained the situation. “I swear you won’t kill anyone. At least, not anyone human. What you do after the party I’m not responsible for.”
“Very funny,” I countered, as Allie wandered back into the kitchen, heading for the refrigerator, with Timmy trailing behind her, holding his sippy cup out like little Oliver begging for more.
“Need any help?” Laura asked.
“Believe it or not, I think I’ve got it under control.”
“Really?”
“No,” I admitted, holding Tim’s cup while Allie filled it with milk. “But you’ve got a date with a doctor tonight, and I’m not about to beg you to come help me instead of primping. ”
“You’re a good friend,” Laura said, and I laughed, the sound cut off by Allie’s own hysterical cackle. I looked over to find her not at the refrigerator returning the milk, but in front of my laptop.
“Ha!” she said. “You did believe me.”
“I have to go,” I said to Laura, who was savvy enough to have figured out what was going on, and was trying to smother her own hysterical giggles.
“You are
so
busted,” Allie said, pointing to my very pathetic attempt at searching Google.
“Busted!” Timmy mimicked.
“Maybe,” I conceded. “But I was right.” I waved at the stacks of pans. “Totally edible.”
She made a face, but didn’t argue. Instead, she turned back to the computer, presumably looking for evidence to shore up her point of view.
“Give it up, Al,” I said. “Come help me move all this stuff to my own pans. I want it to look like I’ve been slaving for hours.”
“Um, I don’t think so,” she retorted, staring down her nose at me. “If you’re gonna lie to Stuart about where his dinner came from, I’m
so
not helping.”
If only that were all I’d been lying to Stuart about.
Short of grounding her again or bribing her with something on the level of a new car (or her very own crossbow), I couldn’t see my way clear to persuade her to dish out cannelloni. Fortunately, it was the actual preparation of food that had me mostly stymied. Pretend preparation? That one I could handle all on my own.
“You got an e-mail,” Allie said from her perch at the table. “Can I open it?”
“Who’s it from?”
She clicked a few buttons, then looked up at me, eyes wide. “Father Corletti.”
I debated making her leave so that I could read the e-mail in private, then decided to throw caution to the wind. She already knew I had raised her father from the dead; what could she possibly learn from Father Corletti that would be worse than that?
“It’s a big document,” she said, after I’d given permission and she’d clicked on it. “Hang on, I take it back. It’s a picture.”
“Of what?” I asked, transferring the rest of the entrée and putting the whole pan in the refrigerator. I’d put the reheating instructions in my purse somewhere. As long as I could find them, this dinner party thing would be moving in the right direction.
“Hang on. Oh. Look. It’s the cover of some book.”
“That’s it?” I moved to peer over her shoulder, but the picture was gone, replaced by the text of the e-mail.
“He says they’re scanning in the book for you and he’ll send along a translation, too, since he knows your Akkadian is rusty.”
She twisted around to look at me. “You can read Akkadian? ”
“According to Father, I can’t,” I said, squinting at the screen. “So the cover of the book shows the symbol of the ancient tribe that forged the original sword.” I made a face. “Somehow, I don’t think they were native to San Diablo.”
“So?”
“So what is Abaddon doing here? Why come if he thinks I’m waiting here, all ready with some magic sword to strike him down?”
She thought about that for a moment. “The beaches? With a name like San Diablo, we’re probably a fine travel destination for your higher class of demon.”
I smacked the back of her head with the dishrag I’d been carrying. “Open the photo and quit being a goof,” I said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She clicked, but the photograph must have been huge, because it took forever to appear on my screen, loading one line at a time from the top down. “I thought you said we had high-speed Internet.”
"Mother...”
I shut up, shamed by my utter lack of technological know-how, and started to go over every countertop with 409 instead. Timmy, bored, headed back into the living room to play with his train.
“Here we go,” Allie said, and I immediately abandoned cleaning (any excuse) and headed back to the computer to examine the photograph of the illustrated book cover—an intricate line drawing of two hands holding a circle bisected by two intertwined lines.
My breath caught in my throat—I’d seen that symbol before.
“So what’re we looking at?” Eddie asked, shuffling into the room, his hair damp and his face shaved.
“Mom got a picture from Father Corletti. All about the tribe that forged the sword. But it doesn’t look like anything helpful,” she added, clearly disappointed.
I, however, had to disagree. “That symbol,” I said, tapping the screen. “I know it.”
“You do?” Allie asked, whipping around to see if I was serious. I was. Deadly serious.
“The fortune-teller at the carnival,” I said. “She was wearing an amulet around her neck.
That
amulet,” I added.
“Well, come on!” Allie said, jumping up.
“No, no, no,” I said. “This isn’t a family affair.” It was one thing for Allie to be caught unexpectedly in the middle of a fight and to hold her own. It was something else entirely to walk headfirst
into
the fight. And believe me, I was expecting a fight.
“But Mom!”
“Dammit, Allie. I said no. Besides, I need you to stay here and research. This is the first solid clue we’ve gotten.”
She made a snorting noise. “Like I’m gonna find anything useful on the Internet. I don’t even know what words to punch into the search.”
“Bet your daddy stocked that library with lots of picture books,” Eddie said. “I’m heading that way. Why don’t you come with me?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, sullen. “I’d rather go see the carnival lady. I bet Daddy wouldn’t make me sit back and do research. He’d let me be in the field.”
I opened my mouth, hoping a brilliant retort would fly out, but Eddie got there first.
“That demon-bitch smack you on the head and loosen your brains there, girlie? You know how many demons are out there? More than you’d ever be able to take down in the field. You want to be on the front lines and actually win, you got to know how to get the advantage. And how do you think you do that?”
“Research,” Allie said, her voice small. “But isn’t that what Mom’s doing with the carnival lady? Asking questions and stuff like that?”
Smart girl.
Eddie tilted his head sideways and squinted at her. “Nice try, kid. But what do you think your mom’s gonna do if that nice lady with the necklace ain’t willing to talk?”
“Kick her ass?” Allie said, and Eddie snorted.
“I think that about sums it up.”
“I’m not exactly Dirty Harry,” I said.
“Who?” Allie said, making me feel a million years old. “And anyway, you’re Kim Possible,” she said, referring to the heroine in one Timmy’s favorite shows. And one of my guilty pleasures.
I took being compared to a Disney cartoon heroine in the spirit it was given and told her thank you. Then I grabbed Eddie by the elbow and steered him to the living room. “I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” I said, bending over to roll a stray train back to Timmy. “I mean you two going out. Especially after—well, you know.”
“The girl wants to do something, Kate. And after that old bitch shoved me under her floor, you better believe I do, too.”
“But—”
He held up a hand, his eyes more serious than I could remember seeing. “You can’t keep her inside forever, Kate. And as long as you’re in this business, she’s gonna be in some danger. Hell, as long as you’re alive. Seems to me the first time demons came knocking in San Diablo you weren’t in business anymore, were you?”
“No, but Eddie, they kidnapped you. This is more than just a vague threat.”
“That’s exactly what it is right now,” he said. “ ’Cause for the moment at least, we got an advantage. There ain’t no demons out there to nab her. Not till someone dies and some new beastie steps in.”
“Could have happened already,” I said, though in truth I doubted it. Not only did a demon have to be paying attention in order to make that moment-of-death portal, but the deceased also had to be of dubious faith. True, a lot of demons are out there roaming the streets, but it wasn’t as if they were springing up as fast as dandelions in April.
“Decision is yours, girlie, but I’d give the kid some room. She’s almost fifteen. How deep was the shit you waded into at that age?”
A lot deeper than anything we’d seen in San Diablo so far. Not that I acknowledged that out loud.
“We’re gonna have crossbows in our backpacks, holy water in our sports bottles, and knives up our sleeves. Nothing’s taking us down.”

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