From what he translated, I had my hands full. Without knowing the full contract, I was kind of sunk. But it looked like for what Vespa wanted, he had likely sold his soul in some fashion. The book, near as I could tell, had nothing about “Markers” in it. I didn’t know if it would be as simple as me marking Vespa’s forehead and the contract becoming void. Something told me that it was going to be a lot more complicated than that. Still, from Doc’s translation, I got a better idea as to how binding the contract was. But I had to know what Vespa’s specific contract was. Too bad there wasn’t a demon-net or something that I could log into to find out the contract. If Hell was anything like earth, the contract would be public record. I snorted. The idea of imps running around in starched white shirts sitting in cubicles was killing me.
I put down the papers and stared at the wall for a minute. I was starting to scare myself. My brain wasn’t usually this colorful.
###
The next morning, Tabby and I headed for Tucson. It wasn’t that long of a trip, but I didn’t know how long it was going to take to find what we needed. She wanted to get there and look before anything else bad could happen. I guess our goals were kind of the same, but I thought I was being a bit more chipper about it.
We did take Isaac out for a walk first. That was an experience. He was okay with the leash, but he kept stopping and starting, then looking back at the thing. Once we finished, we locked him in the hotel room, got Lucy in the car, and headed toward our destination. The smartest thing would have been to get all this shit before we left Tucson originally, but there could have been no way of knowing about all we needed. And, well, I just wasn’t thinking, as usual.
It took us about two hours to get there. It didn’t help that a cow had gotten loose from a farm somewhere and stood in the middle of the road for awhile. But still, finally, we got into the city. I was hoping that we could somehow manage to go to one shop and get it over with. That didn’t work the way I planned either.
The first shop turned out to belong to this woman who was obsessed with angels. And when I say obsessed, I mean really obsessed. She tried to sell Tabby a holy pillow. I could just imagine her running around after scantily clad men with white feathered angel wings with a hoover, trying to suck up the loose feathers.
The next store was being manned by a kid who looked like she should be in school. Sixteen at the oldest. When Tabby asked to see the manager, the girl ignored her and continued texting her friends on her cell phone. The youth of America.
Finally, at the last store, there was this thin Goth girl manning the till. She too was young, but at least this one was probably eighteen.
Tabby stepped up to the counter. “I have a question,”
The girl looked up from the book she was reading. It was one of those romance things with vampires that all the young kids liked. I didn’t understand the appeal. I mean, sleeping with a vampire was technically necrophilia. Yuck.
“What can I help you with?” she asked.
Tabby took a deep breath. “A man we know was an idiot and made a pact with a demon.”
The girl slammed her book shut. “I don’t mess with the dark.”
“You don’t understand.” Tabby took a deep breath. “He wants out of the pact now. We’re trying to help him.”
The girl walked out from behind the counter. “Sure he doesn’t need an exorcist?”
I spoke up. “That’s the thing. If the possessee signed up for the demon to use him freely, does that mean the exorcism will work the same way?”
The girl leaned against the counter. “That’s messed up.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.” I couldn’t expect an eighteen-year-old to know more about this shit than I did, but hell, I’d expected to at least find someone who had some idea of what to do.
“We don’t have anything like that in the shop. And I really don’t know how to help,” she said. She kept grasping and unclasping her hands. I couldn’t tell if the subject made her nervous or if it was just us.
“Any idea how we could find out what the demon contract was?” I asked.
She paused. Then, she scratched her head with her left hand. After a minute, her eyes lit up. “Well, it’s kind of dangerous, but it might work.”
I was willing to try anything, including tying a severed chicken foot around my neck.
“What’s that?” Tabby asked.
“You could try an Ouija board.”
###
“No.” Tabby said after we left the shop. She was walking so fast I could barely keep up with her.
“Look, I know you had bad experiences—”
She turned around and stuck her finger in my face. Shit.
“No, you look,” she said, pointing her finger closer with each word. “I almost got possessed that night. I don’t want a repeat performance.”
I didn’t want to piss her off more than I already had, but I didn’t have a choice. There wasn’t anything else for me to do. “How else are we going to find out?”
“We’ll just ask Vespa again,” Tabby said and opened her car door.
I grabbed her by the arm. “He said he doesn’t remember. Don’t you think if he knew he’d try?”
Her shoulders slumped. “It almost sounds like the demon obscured his memory.”
More like, she didn’t want to go near a board, but I wasn’t going to put it like that. I knew she had a reason to be scared, but this was something that had to be done. “It’s go with the Ouija board, or we try to hypnotize a demon. Which do you prefer?”
“Fuck me,” she said. I didn’t like the odds any better, but the thought of hypnotizing a demon brought up images of that scene from The Exorcist when the possessed little girl almost ripped off the shrink’s privates. I didn’t want to go anywhere near that.
###
I was surprised at how hard it was to find an Ouija board these days. Back in the day, all you had to do was go to the local toy store and grab one off the shelf. Not one toy store had one. I started to wonder if it was a conspiracy.
Guess what? Toy stores don’t carry them anymore. Who knew? Apparently, some crack pot, or genius savant, decided they weren’t a good idea for kids. Too bad the number of possessions hadn’t seemed to go down. All of that didn’t help me though, and I didn’t have time to wait to order one off the net.
If it hadn’t been for Tabby’s desire to run into the bookstore, we’d have been sunk. I don’t know if she sensed you could get one there, or if she had a raging desire for a book. She didn’t say. I was just her chauffer at this point.
When she came out of the store, she was simply carrying a big bag. No books. I’d waited in the parking lot.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s what you think it is,” she said.
I took the bag from her and looked at the contents. She’d found one. It wasn’t your usual Ouija board. It was this weird circle thing, but who cared? It was supposed to do what we needed it to do. That’s all I cared about.
“Thanks.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Okay. Now that we have this fucking thing, what else do we need?”
“Just the stuff for the holy water. The roses and stuff.” I didn’t want to be any more of a pain than I had to be. Just touching the board was putting Tabby in a worse mood. No sense in me doing something stupid and really getting into a fight.
Tabby grunted and got into the car. I waited until she got her seatbelt buckled before I started the engine. I put the board in the backseat.
“Be careful,” Lucy said from the backseat.
“Be careful about what?” I asked her. Had I almost hit her?
“Be careful with that thing in the bag,” she said.
“See,” Tabby said. “I knew this was a bad idea.”
I was starting to get tired. Having two women joining forces against me wasn’t what I’d bargained for. Damn. Beat the guy with a stick why don’t you? “Well, if you have any better ideas, please let me know.”
> Tabby grunted again. I programmed the GPS to lead us to a liquor store. This day was getting better and better.
###
Tabby was silent the entire trip back to Tombstone. My stomach was growling; we hadn’t even stopped to get something to eat. I probably should have tried harder to come up with another way for us to find out the contract, but using the Ouija board was the first promising idea. Did I want to do it? No. And I sure as hell didn’t even know if it was possible. It’s not like it worked in The Exorcist.
I kept quiet. I was kind of pissed now, but me blowing my ass wasn’t going to help the situation any. The best thing I could do was let Tabby blow off some steam before I got into how we were going to use the board. I knew Tabby didn’t want to do it, and neither did I.
I’m sure fighting a demon when you’re a kid does something to you. Shit, I knew Lucy was permanently scarred, and not just physically. I felt for Lucy. But I could understand Tabby’s reluctance. It wasn’t like I wanted to do this, we’d just been backed into a wall. Too bad it meant Tabby doing something she swore she’d never do again.
“Stop somewhere,” Tabby said. “I’m hungry.”
So, the lady is hungry, finally. Her wish is my command. “Okay. Anywhere specific you want to go?”
“No.”
Okay, it was going to be that way. Fine. If she got mad because she couldn’t read my mind, I was going to find the nearest wall and punch on it for awhile.
I loved Tabby. I did. But I wished she could see it from my side too. If I didn’t follow this through, Lucy was right. The demon would find a way to get her soul. The only thing standing between her and the Devil’s minions was me and my mark. I didn’t even know if my mark would matter if I died.
Scary thought there.
###
We ended up back at the diner in Tombstone. By the time Tabby had decided she wanted to eat, there had been no place to stop on the way. I could tell it didn’t help Tabby’s mood. But she didn’t say anything and didn’t take it out on me. Thank God for small miracles.
“What can I get you folks?” the waitress asked. This one was older with red hair in an old lady bouffant hairdo.
We gave our drink orders, and the waitress left.
“I’m getting dessert,” Tabby said.
“Okay.” I’m not sure why she felt she had to announce it to me. It wasn’t like I had ever refused her sweets or anything.
She stared at me. “I’m ordering the biggest thing on this goddamn menu.”
I don’t know what type of reaction she was looking for from me, but as far as I was concerned, she could eat a whole pie if that’s what she wanted. This was a side of Tabby I’d never seen.
“Whatever you want,” I said.
She brought the menu up to her face and poured over it. I set mine down on the tabletop.
Finally, she lowered her menu. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
I blinked. “What do you want me to say?”
She stared at me. “You don’t care if I eat like a pig?”
I closed my eyes for a minute. Then, I opened them and looked at her. “One, you aren’t a pig. Two, if you are stressed out, I’m not going to bitch at you if you want to eat something that might make you feel better.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You don’t care if I got to be over three hundred pounds?”
Okay, I could see where this was going now. What I didn’t understand was the reasoning. “I would worry about your health, but I’d still love you. Weight wouldn’t change that.”
She slumped back in her chair. Her spunk seemed to have calmed down a bit. “I’m still getting dessert.”
“Whatever you want.” I shrugged. What did I care if she wanted to eat a piece of pie? If she let me kiss her, her mouth would taste sweet. Yeah, better stop thinking like that now. Lucy was in the car, and she didn’t need to remotely see what happened when I… well… yeah, not going there.
She nodded.
###
I didn’t bother to try to understand all of that. I knew she was stressed and pissed off, but where the weight talk came from, I was at a loss. I’d never said a word about her weight to anyone. To me, she was great the way she was. Maybe she’d eventually talk to me about it. I could only hope that would be how it turned out. It definitely seemed like something she needed to get off her chest. And if some guy had made her feel that way, well, I might just go and kick their ass. If they were still alive, that is.
Still, something had to have happened to her in the past to make her bring that up. What it was remained a mystery to me. Hopefully, she’d learn to trust me enough to tell me about it.
###
After we got back to the hotel, I made it a point to grab the board. The less she had to touch it, the better. I wasn’t about to make her mental state any less unstable than it already was. She didn’t say a word, just grabbed up the rest of the bags. Lucy looked like she wanted to cry. I could tell already that this was going to be a fun evening.
Once we got into the hotel and up to our floor, Tabby opened the door to our room. Nothing was amiss. Doc wasn’t there. We set the bags down on the floor near the wall. No sense in messing with them now. It wasn’t like we were going to do this tonight. Isaac meowed at us. Tabby stopped to scratch him behind the ears.
I wanted to grab her and hold her, but she was being too stoic for that. I knew she liked to be the strong one, but strength had nothing to do with needing support once in awhile. That made her normal.
“Want to do something fun later?” I asked.
“Like what?” she eyed me suspiciously.
“I don’t know. Watch the reenactors or something?” Every day in Tombstone, reenactors performed the shoot-out at the OK Corral. While the Old West wasn’t exactly my favorite thing, it was something we could do that really had nothing to do with exorcism.
“Maybe,” she said.
It was better than nothing. I sat down at the table. Tabby laid down on the bed.
“Get over here,” she said.
Far be it from me to refuse her. I got up from the table and crawled into bed beside her. She curled up to me and put her head on my chest. It felt nice. Maybe she was going to let me be her comfort after all.
###
At some point, we both fell asleep. By the time I woke up, it was after four. Tabby was snoring softly. It felt good to know that even though she wasn’t happy with me, she still wanted to curl up to me. Demon contract or not, the rest of the day was going to be about Tabby.
In my opinion, the stuff with Vespa could wait a day or longer if need be. It wasn’t more important than Tabby’s well being, and, as far as I knew, just as long as Lucy was in the warded room, the demon in Vespa couldn’t hurt her. That made things not as much of a priority as they had been.
Lucy suddenly looked at me. “I miss Mommy and Daddy.”
I gently disengaged myself from Tabby and crawled down on the floor where Lucy was seated. Damn. This wasn’t fair. I was starting to wonder if Lucy had been this depressed the whole time. “I know, honey. If I could, I’d fix it.”
“I know,” she said.
I wanted to hug her and tell her that everything was going to be okay. It wasn’t fair. I silently prayed to God that he’d figure out a way to fix this. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take not being able to actually help the kid instead of just being a holding place for her.
“Maybe it won’t be much longer,” I said.
Lucy nodded. “I hope not.”
What I could do was find a way to distract her. Get her thinking about something else. My choices were Isaac or Tabby. I chose the latter. “I want to do something special for Tabby. Any ideas?”
Lucy paused. “What does she like?”
“Scary movies, good food, stuff girl’s like.” How do you answer that question for a six-year-old?
Lucy laughed. “You’re silly.”
“I know. Tabby tells m
e that all the time.” I thought of myself as more of a dork, but it wasn’t like there was much of a difference.
Isaac hopped off the bed and trotted over to Lucy. She started petting him immediately.
I started thinking about it. This was different than before. How in the hell could she pet a cat? I mean, she rubbed his ears, they moved, the whole nine yards. Her form was no longer passing through him. Maybe God had answered my prayer after all.
“How do you do that?” I asked her.
“Do what?” She wasn’t even realizing the difference.
“Pet Isaac,” I said. I wasn’t sure how much deeper I should go into this.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Something is different. When you touch me or Tabby, we just feel a little coldness, but it’s not like when you are petting Isaac now.” I was just so stunned by it all.
She shrugged again. “Maybe cats are different.”
“Maybe.” It was just about the only explanation, minus the prayer, and it wasn’t like I had time to explore this further right now. Plus, while I had been a man of God, I wasn’t a huge believer in miracles. Sometimes things went how we wanted them to, and sometimes they didn’t.
“What’s going on?” Tabby asked from the bed.
Shit, we’d woken her up. I hadn’t wanted to do that. “Nothing. I just noticed Lucy can pet Isaac. I mean really pet him.”
Tabby sat up and rubbed her eyes. “That’s…interesting.”
“Yeah. How are you feeling?”
“A little better.” She popped her neck. “I’m hungry.”
Food must be her medicine for the day. I wasn’t going to say a thing, especially not with how the conversation went earlier. “Want to do an early dinner?”
She nodded. “Let me go get cleaned up.”
I got the feeling that there was something she really wanted to talk about. I wasn’t about to ask about it. Not yet. It was better to let her tell me on her own. Especially when I got the feeling it was something really important. Maybe food wasn’t her biggest focus. She just wanted to be away from Lucy for awhile.
I got off the floor and changed my clothes.