I narrowed my eyes at him and shook my head, trying my best to play the part of cool, calm, and collected. “All hell could break loose? Wait a second, I thought you were Mr. Rational, Mr. Scientific Method? Whatever happened to that?”
He cocked his head to the side and regarded me coolly. “I guess I’m a little less convinced about science in situations where you’re concerned.”
Not wanting to stand in the doorway any longer, I held the door open wider, hinting for Ryan to step inside, which he did. Then I closed it behind us and started down the hallway, being careful to sidestep Christopher, Lovie, and all their belongings they’d brought. I continued into the kitchen, wanting a little privacy. “So, do I take this to mean that you finally believe that a spirit is responsible for attacking me?” I asked.
Ryan took a deep breath and then simply nodded. “I believe you.”
“You must tell him about me!” Drake sounded inside my head. “Now is the perfect opportunity!”
I leaned against the kitchen wall, eyeing the myriad boxes filling up the majority of the room—they were my special order kitchen cabinets. Had I been in the right frame of mind, I might have been excited to see them. But as it was now, I was nothing but stressed out—nervous about the impending exorcism and apprehensive about telling Ryan about Drake. But I knew I had to tell him. Because now that Christopher and Lovie were here, the chances of them letting something slip were probably 99 percent.
“Um, Ryan,” I started, my heart already hammering in my chest. I was afraid for his reaction because my first thought was that he wouldn’t like the idea of another man interloping on our affairs and, furthermore, I hadn’t really negotiated a date or time when Drake would need to vacate my body. The other part that I knew would upset Ryan was that I hadn’t included him in this decision—I’d just made it for myself. And not only that, but I’d also taken my damn time about telling him.
“What, Pey?”
“Um, there was something that I wanted to talk to you about,” I said, my voice quaking as I searched inside myself for the right words. Somehow they failed me.
He nodded encouragingly. “What’s on your mind?”
I smiled as I tried to think of the best way forward. Was it enough just to come out with, Guess what? Drake’s soul is now in my body, which means he can see and hear everything I see and hear! And that’s why I haven’t had sex with you yet. But the good news is that I can tune him out…Somehow I didn’t think that was a good way to break the news.
“Cessez de tergiverser! Stop procrastinating!” Drake demanded again.
“If you don’t quit it, I’m going to permanently lock you out of my mind!” I railed back at him. “So unless you want to spend a hell of a lot of time in the darkness of my head, with no one to interact with, shut up!” I yelled back.
“Peyton, what’s up?” Ryan repeated, this time eyeing me pointedly. I wasn’t sure if it was obvious when I was having conversations with Drake or if Ryan was just intuitive, but he seemed to always take note whenever I was carrying on with Drake.
“We are ready to begin!” Christopher yelled from the hallway.
“Okay!” I called back and breathed out a sigh as I realized my opportunity to tell Ryan about Drake was gone. “I guess we can talk about it later,” I said as I started for the hallway again, Ryan right beside me.
“I will refrain from commenting,” Drake said, but his tone sounded stilted.
I didn’t respond because I was only too convinced the subject was going to come up while Christopher and Lovie were here doing the exorcism. But it was way too late to worry about that. If the subject came up, it came up. And it was probably going to, which meant that one way or another, Ryan was going to find out about Drake by the end of the evening. Or so I imagined.
“If I learned your secret from someone else, I would certainly be angry with you,” Drake announced.
“Well, now what choice do I have?” I barked back at him. “It’s not like I can control whatever comes out of Christopher’s or Lovie’s mouths!”
“Oui, but for your sake, just hope nothing does!”
“Lovie, let’s start in this room?” Christopher asked as he spun around to face her. He was wearing the same long black cape he had the first time I’d met him, which still gave him the look of some nefarious cartoon character.
“That’s fine,” Lovie answered.
“Peyton,” Christopher started as he turned to face me, and I prayed he wouldn’t bring up the possession ritual. “Have you noticed any spiritual activity in the last few days that might hint to the entity still being here?”
I immediately shook my head. “It’s actually been very quiet. Nothing has happened at all.” And even though I was grateful that there hadn’t been any activity, I was also suspicious.
Christopher nodded. “Very good. We may very well have cleansed the majority of the presence during our last visit—”
“So anyway,” I interrupted him and grabbed Ryan’s hand as I started to walk from the room but then thought better of it. “Do you need us for this exorcism? Or should we just find something else to do?”
Christopher eyed me pointedly but didn’t say anything. Ryan, on the other hand, offered me a dubious expression and then freed his arm from my grasp, shaking his head. “I’d like to see what an exorcism entails,” he said to me before bringing his attention to Christopher. “If that’s okay with y’all?”
Christopher shrugged and looked nonplussed. I had to wonder if anything was ever “okay” with him. “You can watch as long as you do not get in the way.”
Then without saying anything more, he bent over and opened one of the black cases he’d brought with him, producing a red candle that bore the image of some religious saint. Next were two small white porcelain bowls, a brass incense censer that hung from a fairly long chain, a small steel sword, and the same bell Lovie had used last time in the possession ritual. Christopher set both bowls on the floor and then filled one with what looked like kosher salt and the other with a bottle of water. Then he closed his eyes and started doing that REM sleep thing before opening them again. He spilled a palmful of the salt into his hand and then dropped it into the bowl of water.
“So what does that do, Christopher?” Ryan asked as I inwardly winced, knowing Christopher wouldn’t react well to questions.
Christopher offered him a disgruntled expression and then sighed. “I’m blessing the water and the salt,” he answered succinctly before he started drawing in the air above the bowl of salt and water. “Now I’m drawing the pentagram. It’s important to start the drawing at the top point and then move to the left, ending at the top again.” Then he raised his fingers up in front of him and brought them down again in a straight line. “Next I make the sign of the cross.” Then he cleared his throat.
“I bless this salt by the power of Michael the Archangel and my own power that this salt rid this space of all malevolence and evil!” he said out loud and in a very strong voice. Then he drew a pentagram and the sign of the cross and said the same mantra over the bowl of water, the red candle, and the incense censer. I wasn’t sure but I thought I recognized the pattern from our last ritual. This wasn’t my first rodeo…or ritual, as the case may be.
“Are you ready, Lovie?” Christopher asked as he shifted his cloak dramatically over his shoulder and placed the steel sword in a little scabbard attached to his thigh. Then he started forward.
Lovie wasn’t really given the option to respond and instead brought up the rear, but not before taking the candle and the incense censer from him. She was already holding the bell.
“Do you want us to hold anything?” I offered, but Lovie immediately shook her head although it was Christopher who answered.
“Don’t touch anything!”
It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that Christopher didn’t have many friends.
Holding the two small bowls of water and salt, he approached the far side of the foyer and sprinkled salt in t
he corner. Then he turned to his right, sprinkled a handful of salt in that corner and then proceeded forward, toward the hallway, repeating, “By the element of Earth, this salt and the power of my will and Michael the Archangel’s, I banish all evil and malodorous spirits from this room!”
“I am quite fortunate to be taking refuge in you, ma minette,” Drake piped up with a laugh. “Otherwise I would wonder where I would be banished to!”
That was an interesting thought. If Drake had never taken possession of my body and did still exist within the walls of the house would this exorcism drive him from it? “It’s only evil and malodorous spirits, and I wouldn’t say you’re either…”
“I believe the word he was looking for was malevolent or possibly malicious,” he responded with a laugh. “Malodorous implies that the spirits do not smell good!”
I hid my own laugh beneath an impromptu clearing of my throat and was relieved when no one noticed.
I watched Lovie hold up the incense censer and swing it into each of the corners of the room and repeat the same phrase, only substituting the element of air for the element of earth. Next she lit the red candle, which by now I assumed featured a picture of Michael the Archangel, seeing as how he seemed to feature pretty prominently in this ritual. She held the candle up to all four corners of the room and repeated the same mantra again, this time substituting in the element of fire.
Christopher followed suit with the bowl of water and repeated the same quote, this time referencing the element of water. Lovie rang the bell three times as Christopher announced, “Let all things evil and impure hear this ringing bell and depart from this space at once! At my command, I banish all evil from this place!” Lovie then walked over to him and released the sword from the scabbard on his thigh, offering it to him as she took the bowl of water and played a precarious game of balance. Given everything else in her possession, it was a wonder she didn’t drop anything.
I would have offered to help again but after Christopher’s last discouraging comment, I zipped my lips.
Christopher accepted the sword and, similar to the possession ritual, he approached the windows and the door leading from the foyer outside and drew the sign of the cross in the air before each one. As soon as he was finished making the sign of the cross, it felt as if the temperature in the room plummeted at least ten degrees—like someone had opened a window during a snow storm and let in the freezing cold air. I glanced around myself, at Christopher and then Lovie, looking for an indication that either of them had felt the change in the atmosphere, but neither looked especially concerned.
I watched Lovie offer one of the bowls to Christopher, who reached inside it and produced a palmful of salt that he then sprinkled along the threshold in front of the windows and the doorway. He said, “By this salt and the power of my will, I consecrate this threshold that it shield against malevolence and evil and all creatures that would do us harm from now until forever!”
At that, the temperature in the room plummeted even more—so much so that I could see my breath as I exhaled. I glanced over at Ryan and noticed he was focused on his own breath, which billowed out of him like a white cloud. “It’s freezing in here,” I whispered.
Ryan just nodded as his attention fell to Christopher and Lovie, who just continued busying themselves with the ritual, acting like they were used to subzero temperatures. When Ryan glanced back at me, he smiled consolingly. “They don’t appear to be concerned,” he started.
“So I guess we shouldn’t be either?” I interrupted.
He shrugged. “Guess not.”
We followed Christopher and Lovie as they walked single file into the next room, the incense wafting behind them and reminding me of some sort of holy procession. ’Course I really couldn’t say there was anything holy about Christopher.
The room into which they ventured happened to be a bathroom, but apparently evil spirits were not immune to restrooms because Christopher and Lovie repeated the entire ritual all over again. Approximately five minutes later, they retreated from the bathroom and started down the hallway again. I could have sworn the feeling of freezing air followed us; it seemed like it was nipping at my heels as we walked. As soon as we paused, it surrounded me in its icy embrace.
“Are they gonna do this to every room?” Ryan whispered down at me, an expression of concern spreading across his handsome face. Apparently neither of us had been prepared for how lengthy this process was. Or maybe it was that neither of us were prepared for the bitter cold.
I glanced up at him with a consoling smile. “I think so.”
“We’ll be here all day!” he whispered back with a laugh as he gripped my side and pulled me into him, whispering into my ear, “Good thing I’ve got you to distract me.”
I playfully swatted him while I wondered if Drake would pipe up with one of his snide comments. I was surprised when he didn’t.
Meanwhile, Christopher and Lovie finished their ministrations in the next bedroom, so Ryan and I followed them to the next room as Lovie continued to do her juggling act with the various artifacts involved in the exorcism.
“Well, I would consider yourself lucky that neither of them have yet mentioned the possession,” Drake said.
“I’m still going to tell him,” I responded resolutely.
“Je ne suis pas convaincu. I am not convinced.”
“Why is it getting so cold in here? ” I asked him, deciding to change the subject.
“I did not notice that it was,” he responded, which I found odd since I figured he could experience the same outside influences that I could. But apparently that wasn’t the case because I was shivering; it was so cold in the room.
After what felt like an eternity, Christopher and Lovie had “cleansed” the entire upstairs as well as the majority of the downstairs with the exception of the kitchen, but we were merely a salt bowl and a steel sword from completion. Once the salt had been spread and drawings of pentagrams and crosses had been drawn, Christopher turned to face us with a sigh.
“No doubt you feel the presence?” Christopher asked, first spearing me with his expression, and then Ryan. At the mention of “the presence,” I felt my heart drop down to my feet as a sense of foreboding and fear began working its way up my spine.
“All I feel is the bitter cold,” I answered, my teeth chattering as I faced Lovie, who looked as if she were completely comfortable in her short sleeves. “Aren’t you freezing?” I asked, shaking my head in wonder at the realization that she didn’t appear to be. “Can’t you feel that?”
Lovie shook her head and offered me an expression of consolation. “We have trained ourselves ta deflect the imprintin’ o’ the spirits. It is cold only if you allow yerself ta be influenced. Otherwise, it’s all in yer head.”
As soon as she finished speaking, and almost in response, there was a sudden howl of wind that started at one end of the hallway and blew through to the end, throwing itself against us full force. I felt my hair blow out behind me and had to right myself against the intensity of the blast so I wouldn’t get knocked over. I wasn’t sure if the sudden pounding in my ears was my own heartbeat or something else.
“What the hell?!” Ryan exclaimed at the same time I heard myself scream as another gust of wind slammed against us.
“Quiet!” Christopher wailed out over the growing gust, which continued to howl with an uncanny roar. “Do not grant it the strength of your beliefs!”
I figured that meant if you don’t believe it, you won’t see it. Well, one, if not all of us, had to be believing in something because before I could so much as blink, it felt like the ground beneath me was giving way. I grabbed Ryan’s arm as I tried to right myself, but it felt as if the floor was shaking in a violent earthquake, the walls of the house looming impossibly low and close to me as it attempted to ride the rumbling earth.
“Ryan!” I screamed as I felt myself start to fall toward the floor. I felt his big arms suddenly encircling me around the waist as he thrust us bo
th up against the wall. I was so scared, I couldn’t even think, could barely even command myself to breathe.
“Do not grant it power over you!” Christopher’s voice suddenly rose up over the cacophony of the wind and the rumbling of the earth. “I consecrate this threshold that it shield against malevolence and evil and all creatures that would do us harm from now until forever!” he yelled out as he gripped Lovie’s hand, and the two of them continued to throw salt and holy water into each corner of the room, doing their best to move forward on their unsteady legs.
When Christopher held his sword up to draw the image of the pentagram, it seemed as if the entire house were twisting and turning around him. I could hear the sounds of creaking floorboards, slamming doors, and groaning as the house appeared to vacillate this way and that. The floor looked as if it were miles away as I glanced down at it, my vision suddenly going blurry only to become clear again. The walls seemed alive as they throbbed back and forth, as if in response to my throbbing heartbeat.
“Drake! ” I yelled in my thoughts. “What’s happening? What’s going on? ”
“I feel and see nothing, ma minette,” he answered coolly. “I do not understand of what you speak.
So somehow and for whatever reason, Drake couldn’t see or hear any of this? Maybe all of this really was just a hallucination, then? Maybe it wasn’t real? The floor seemed to buckle beneath me as soon as the thought left my mind, and I screamed out as Ryan wrapped his arms around me more tightly, pulling me toward him.
“Close your eyes, Pey,” he crooned into my ears. “Close your eyes an’ don’t let it scare you.”
I did as he instructed and felt the cold suddenly give way as the sounds of destruction settled into oblivion around me. I could still feel the floor moving beneath me, though, as if it were floating on an upset river.
“Deny the hallucinations!” Christopher wailed. “Deny the artifice!”
“I consecrate this threshold that it shield ’gainst malevolence an’ evil an’ all creatures that would do us harm from now ’til forever!” Lovie called out, her voice loud and strong.