“Nope. I’ve always eaten like this. Used to drive Mom nuts.”
I really couldn’t imagine being a parent to him. I guess the whole demon business really clouded my perception of him, but he wasn’t a good kid. I kind of felt sorry for him because his family was partly to blame, but damn. He was a baby in a man’s body.
As soon as the food hit the table, he started shoveling it in. It was like watching an anteater go after a nest.
“So, when are we going to do this?” he asked suddenly.
I leaned in closer. “What? The exorcism?”
“Yeah,” he said and wiped his face with a napkin. “I mean, we cleaned out the room.”
I leaned back in the chair. “Keep in mind it might take more than one session.”
“Yeah. I know.”
I took a deep breath. “Well, we could get started as soon as we finish fixing up the room.”
“How do you do that?”
“What do you think the chain and handcuffs are for?” Was he really that dense?
“Oh, shit.” He leaned back in his chair. “Are you going to keep me chained up the whole time?”
“Depends on how the demon reacts. I don’t want to die,” Tabby said.
Vespa nodded. Of course to keep Tabby safe he was okay with it.
“Can I at least have a blanket?” he asked.
I almost laughed. “Of course.”
“It’s not us that’s trying to kill you,” Tabby said.
What type of people did he think we were? I mean, yeah, being chained to a floor was going to suck, but it wasn’t like we were doing it to be mean or anything. Plus, in the back of my head, I still remembered the warning from the big guy.
But that lead to a very important question. Why was the Devil being nice to me? I wasn’t dumb enough to think that he wasn’t such a bad guy. Besides, if he wasn’t so bad, then why would he have demons like Asmodeus in his employ? He wanted something.
I shook those thoughts out of my head. It was best to deal with the problems I already had.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
COMING UNDONE
Exorcism. With a willing participant. New ground for me. Of course, willing was subjective. It depended on what side I was talking to. But I still had to wonder exactly how much he wanted to get rid of the demon. He seemed a little too easygoing with all of this. There had to be something I was missing.
The power, I’m sure, would be a tough thing for him to give up. I still wondered what type of test this really was. Of course, I didn’t know what demon we were dealing with either. He could just be being sneaky.
Tabby and I went over every inch of the chain and handcuffs, looking for marks or anything that could have weakened them, but we found nothing. I’d expected something else, but what, I wasn’t sure. Things were going too easy, and I could tell that I was about to get smacked in the face with a giant clod of horseshit. It was coming. I just didn’t know when.
What I did know was that there was no way in hell that I was starting this at night. Plus, I needed to get some normal lighting in the basement. The circle painted on the floor was bad enough. I did not want to be exorcising a demon in what looked like a really bad horror film set. Or porn. Take your pick.
I walked downstairs. It was time for another hardware store trip. “Nick!”
“Just a minute!” It sounded like he was in his bedroom.
I stood next to one of the sofas. Tabby was upstairs, making my holy water and trying to help me come up with a new rite of exorcism. We didn’t have the one we’d used for Lucy. I’d never thought to pick it up out of the attic. Of course, I never thought I’d need it again either.
Vespa came out of the kitchen. He was wearing an old T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Honestly, it was good to see him dress his age. I had to take a double-take to realize it really was him.
“I forgot a couple of things we need from the hardware store,” I said.
“Like what?”
A new brain for you, a piece of chocolate, and my own bed at home. Heh. “Regular bulbs for the lights in the basement. Concentrating will be hard enough without the flicker.”
He stood there for a moment, almost frozen. “All right. Let me find my keys.”
That was easy enough. Periodically, I could hear water running upstairs. Yep, Tabby had gotten to work. Me, I was still waiting on Vespa.
Finally, he came back. “You riding with me?”
I shrugged. It didn’t make a difference anymore. Not really. “Might as well. Besides, I don’t want to leave Tabby without transportation.” That was true too.
He led me out the door and into his SUV. The floor had candy wrappers and other trash, but at least it didn’t smell.
“Sorry about the mess. I haven’t cleaned it out since my last trip,” he said.
I didn’t ask where he’d gone. It didn’t seem important. Being a spiritualist must pay okay. Well, at least one possessed by a demon, not that I was counting. But a fancy SUV covered in candy wrappers? That was a whole other type of brat. One that had been handed everything his entire life. That bothered me—maybe more than the fact that he’d told me his family was dirt poor. “So, do you keep in contact with your family?”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes as he backed out of the driveway. “For now. I don’t like them poking around in my business.”
“Ah.” There wasn’t much else for me to say. It was a good thing we wouldn’t have to worry about his family interrupting the exorcism, but something still felt off. I just didn’t know what.
We got to the hardware store in about five minutes. It was a local place. That was one thing I liked about this part of Arizona. There were plenty of non-megastores. I hadn’t even come across a chain restaurant yet. It was a nice change from back home, where most local businesses had been run out by big companies. Tombstone would be a nice place to live if it wasn’t for the demon stuff.
Vespa pulled into a spot. “You don’t even have to come in if you don’t want to.”
I knew there wasn’t going to be anything to see. “You don’t care?”
He shook his head. “Just bulbs for the lights downstairs, right?”
“Yeah.”
He closed the car door. The bad feeling was intensifying, and I felt myself starting to sweat. Looked like when we got back to the house, it would be time to fix up the basement. But I still wanted a night’s sleep before I did this. The lack of sleep had been doing its thing all day.
I hoped Tabby had time to douse both circles with holy water. It was better to be extra sure that none of the bad magic remained when I tried to actually do this thing.
Soon, Vespa came back to the car with a bag. He opened the door, handed it to me, and got in. I put it on the floor next to my feet.
“Want to grab some pizza?” he asked.
I blinked. We just ate a little over an hour ago, but whatever. Gluttony was the least of the sins I needed to worry about. “Okay.”
It was almost like the demon inside him amped up his metabolism. The kid was skinny, but he ate so much. It just wasn’t normal. There was also the possibility that the kid actually had something medically wrong with him, like a thyroid disorder.
“I think I’d like to begin tomorrow,” I told him.
He paused for a minute, then looked at me. “Yeah. I think it’s about time.”
He backed out of the parking place, drove a little ways down the mini-mall, and then pulled into a parking spot at the pizza place. “So, this is my last night of freedom?”
He acted like he was going to be hung tomorrow. Jesus. “No, don’t think of it like that. Just because there have been some exorcisms that have taken years, that doesn’t mean yours will.”
His cat-like eyes seemed sad to me. The whole effect was kind of spoiled by those vertical slits. He almost looked like an abused animal.
“I’ll be back,” he said and hopped out of the car.
Shit. I hadn’t meant for it all to go that way.
Yeah, I’d been a prick, but he’d done stuff to piss me off too. I never said I was perfect. And now, he’d taken it all to an extreme I hadn’t meant. I mean, I knew this wasn’t a happy thing, but hell. This kid had no idea that his possession was nothing like how bad it could be. I still woke up some nights scared to death because of Lucy. He really had no idea.
When he came back, he put two pies in the backseat. “Pepperoni okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Fine by me.” I’m sure Tabby wouldn’t mind the garlic either. I stayed quiet the rest of the way back to the house. There was nothing else left for me to say.
Unfortunately, the house was not quiet when we got there. A strange car was parked haphazardly in the driveway, and a group of people was screaming at the front door. The door was closed. I sat up in the seat.
Before I knew what was happening, Vespa had slammed the car in park and jumped out of the SUV. “What the hell?”
He was stalking toward the crowd at the door. I got out and followed him over to them. Something told me he was going to need back-up.
“Oh, thank God. I thought that bitch had stolen your house,” the woman in front said.
She was a large lady, about a foot shorter than Vespa. She was at least sixty years old and wore a black caftan with a mosaic border on the edge. She was hideous.
“Don’t talk that way about her,” Vespa said. His eyes were starting to glow faintly.
“Baby, you know how I’ve always told you that women are bad for you.”
Something told me that this was the type of woman that created Ed Gein. Fuck.
“Mom. Look at what is next to me.” He pointed at me.
Thanks for putting me on the spot, kid. Nothing like being the target of a behemoth.
“This is my friend, Jimmy,” Vespa said. “Tabby is his fiancé.”
The lady put her hands on her massive hips. Two other women stood behind her, but they were bowing their heads too. Both had short cropped grey hair. They were as skinny as Vespa’s mom was fat. What the hell were they? Acolytes?
“That whore isn’t yours?” Vespa’s mom asked.
I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t care if she was Vespa’s mom or not, Tabby was mine, and she wasn’t a whore. I cleared my throat.
She turned her hatred to me. “What are you going to do about it?”
Apparently, no one had ever just smacked the shit out of her. I didn’t hit women, and I never would, but she needed someone to take her down a peg or two. Still, I couldn’t keep myself from taking up for Tabby. I stepped closer. “Be careful what you say about certain people. Unlike your son, I’m not afraid of you.”
“Are you threatening me?” She pumped her head back and forth at me, almost like she was trying to mimic a snake. It looked ridiculous.
I almost laughed. “No. I’m stating facts. Right now, you are out here in the yard for God and everyone to see screaming about whores. One: my fiancé is not a whore, and I think you owe her an apology. Two: you’ve messed your son up so bad he’s going to need years of counseling. Something tells me you should be thinking more about keeping a low profile than screaming in the street.”
She slapped me across the face.
I hadn’t expected that. Guess her white trash colors really decided to stand out. I stood still even though she’d just slapped the piss out of me. If I retaliated, that would make me just as bad. Plus, if she knew what was good for her, she’d quit before I let Tabby loose on her. That reminded me. Where was Tabby? I took a deep breath and looked at the peons. “I suggest you get your friend and get her the fuck out of here,” I told the two women behind Vespa’s mom. “Unlike Jesus, I do not turn the other cheek.”
I guess I was a scary man when I was pissed off because the two women grabbed her and put her in their car. Score one for the exorcist. Zero for the battleaxe.
After they drove off, Vespa turned to me. “That was so awesome.”
I snorted. “I can see why you want to get away from here.”
He walked over to the SUV and pulled it into the driveway behind my rental car.
“Want to help get some of this?” he asked.
I started walking over, and Tabby came out of the house. “What was that woman’s problem?”
I laughed.
“Mom is a pain in the ass,” Vespa said.
I laughed. “That’s one way to describe her.”
Tabby stood on the front porch while I walked back to Vespa’s car. I opened the door and grabbed the bag-o-bulbs while Vespa got the pizzas.
“It’s a good thing she got out of here,” I said as I closed the car door.
“Dude, your hair was standing on end,” he said.
I laughed again.
###
“Your face is red,” Tabby said. She reached forward and touched it. It burned a little.
“Bitch slapped me,” I said. I wasn’t trying to get sympathy or anything, but Vespa’s mom had a hell of an arm.
We were sitting down at the dining room table. It was this huge oblong thing that seated ten people with no problem. The pizzas were spread out in the middle of the table. We all had plates.
“Remind me to put something on it later,” she said.
I nodded.
Vespa came back in from the kitchen and handed us all a soda. “I’m really sorry about Mom.”
I shrugged. This was the one definite thing that wasn’t his fault. “You can’t help who your family is. Don’t worry about it.”
“What did she say to you?” he asked Tabby.
I had a feeling that if I didn’t manage to get the demon out, that Mrs. Vespa was going to end up one dead lady.
Tabby opened her soda and took a sip. “Well, I finished up getting stuff ready upstairs, so I came down here to wait.”
I nodded.
“So,” she said. “Suddenly the doorbell rang. I got up, went to the door, made sure the security thing was latched, and opened the door.”
“What did Mom do?” Nick asked. He was tapping his fingers against his soda can, creating a tattoo.
“Well, I asked her if I could help her, you know? And she wanted to know where you were. I told her you’d gone to the store, but then she tried to force her way into the house. I managed to get the door shut and the dead bolt on.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“She screamed for at least ten minutes. I kid you not.” The woman was lucky that Tabby had a long fuse. I’d seen her pissed before, way beyond how mad she’d been with me recently, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Just for that, you get the first slice of pizza.” Vespa grabbed her plate and loaded her with a hell of a slice. It was almost three slices worth.
“Thanks,” she said. She picked it up and took a huge bite out of it.
“Think she’ll come back?” I asked. Here I’d been worried about the lighting being a distraction. The battleaxe from hell was a whole other dimension.
“If she does, I’ll kill her,” he said.
Either way, Nick wasn’t a nice kid. Most normal people would just distance themselves from their family if they had a mother like he did, not set out to kill. Maybe the demon was affecting him more than even I realized.
###
After pizza, Nick and I went downstairs. We needed to finish getting the room ready, plus I wanted him to get used to the changes we’d made. He froze.
“What did you do?” His eyes began to glow.
“Calm down,” I said. I didn’t need Mr. Demon right now, I needed Nick. “We had to break the circle. We couldn’t risk anything else coming through.”
His eyes started glowing full bore. Dammit. Nick was gone again.
The demon laughed. “I don’t need the circle to bring more of my kind in. All I need is a little blood.”
I stared down the demon. No way was I letting that happen. “It’s not time for you yet. Let Nick back. Your show is tomorrow.”
The demon laughed again. “I love a good exorcism in the morning.”
I rolled my eyes. Either the demon was that cocky or that stupid. I hadn’t decided which yet. Nick’s eyes went back to normal.
“You aren’t going to be doing this anymore anyway, right?” I asked him.
He exhaled slowly for a minute. “I guess not.”
His hesitation made me uneasy. What was the point of me exorcising him if he planned to continue messing with demons? Fuck if I knew. No sense in worrying about it now. “Okay then,” I said. “This just will keep us safer. Get a drill and some screws so we can attach the hasp to the floor.”
He darted upstairs. I started meticulously going around the room changing out light bulbs. There had to be over a hundred. I was starting to think I should have just dealt with the flicker. It would have been a lot easier, velvet Elvis setting or not.
“What do you want me to do?” Nick asked when he came back.
“Line up your drill bit with the hold on the installation plate of the hasp. Then, pre-drill the holes.” He was the one who’d insisted on installing that tile, let him do the work.
Four zzzt’s later, and he switched to the drill. He went ahead and screwed the hasp to the floor. It had taken him like five minutes. I was still changing out fucking light bulbs. It just wasn’t fair. I had no one to blame but myself.
“You guys okay down there?” Tabby yelled from upstairs.
“Yeah. Almost done,” I said.
We were waiting until tomorrow for the handcuffs and the chain. I still was worried about sabotage. It could be easy enough to check on the hasp in the morning before we began. And I could bless the chain and the handcuffs with holy water if I wanted.
“Want some help?” Nick asked
“Sure,” I handed over the bag. The sooner I could get this done the better off I’d be. I was done with it for the night.
###
Finally, we made it back upstairs. Isaac was sitting on Tabby’s legs, purring. I guess now that we were actually going through with the exorcism, he felt it was safe enough to grace us with his presence. She was on one of the sofas. I sat down next to her.
“Get it all ready?” she asked.
“As ready as we can.” What wasn’t ready was my brain, but that was my problem and not theirs.