Servants of the Storm

  Isaac comes around to take my hand. I feel his bones crunch in my grip.

  “What do we do?” I say.

  “Whatever we have to,” he growls, his eyes black and angry.

  We walk up the sidewalk like Hansel and Gretel going to the witch’s cabin, and his arm is as tense as a downed power line. At first I’m afraid of what my mom will say; I’ve been gone way longer than I should have, and I’m holding a strange guy’s hand. But when I get up close, I can tell that she’s zonked on pills, or the clear liquid, or maybe even more potent demon magic. Her pupils are wide, and she sways back and forth. And I’m not worried about getting in trouble anymore. I’m just worried for my mom. How long as Mr. Hathaway been here with her? What has he done to her? And where’s my dad?

  “Hi, Mom,” I say, swallowing hard.

  “That’s nice, sugar,” she says, which is something my hardcore lawyer mom has probably never said, ever.

  “Come on inside now. We don’t want the neighbors to talk, do we?” Mr. Hathaway says.

  Isaac and I follow them into the foyer, and a low growl rumbles near my feet. Grendel’s got my pillow in his teeth. Or what’s left of it. And what’s left of him, as he’s twice his normal size and covered in slick green scales and wiry gray hair. He doesn’t look anything like a bassett hound anymore.

  Mr. Hathaway keeps a hand on my mom, guiding her to the dining room table. Yesterday’s lunch is still set out, untouched since I smoothed the dishes over with my fork. Fat flies buzz overhead, and a long line of sugar ants snakes down the table. The food was going downhill yesterday, and now it’s just as rotten as Savannah itself. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been hungry for my mom’s version of my grandmother’s Sunday dinner spread, a meal nearly identical to the one Carly’s mom was so famous for, although my mom’s macaroni is never quite as good as my grandmother’s was. There are collards, of course. And pie. But not lemon chiffon. No, my mother’s specialty is Mississippi mud pie, and the fluffy mound of Cool Whip is collapsed and leaking onto the tablecloth.

  “Where’s my dad?”

  “He had to work, sugar,” my mom mumbles, and I can’t tell if I’m glad that he’s far away from Mr. Hathaway or angry that he’s not here to protect us.

  “You hungry, Lovey Dovey?” Mr. Hathaway asks.

  “Hell, no,” I say.

  “ ‘Hell, no, sir,’ ” my mom says in a singsong voice.

  He just laughs.

  “You’d better sit down, girl. We got talkin’ to do.”

  I take my regular chair, and Isaac sits between me and Mr. Hathaway. Now I recognize the demon under the old man, that underlying reek of decay. Déjà vu washes over me, and for just a second it’s not my mom sitting across from me. It’s Carly just as I last saw her at Riverfest, just as she was in my dream. But in this vision, she reaches out with a purplish-brown hand and says one word.

  “Best.”

  “Dovey?”

  Isaac’s hand on my arm draws me back to reality, which isn’t that far off from a nightmare. I don’t know if it was my own imagination or a dream or what, but I need to get away from this table, now. Mr. Hathaway is sitting across from me, grinning his crazy grin with black veins running through his skin like cracks in the sidewalk. I can see what Isaac meant about lesser demons being ugly and twisted, just generally put together wrong. Kitty or the lynx-eared demon might look attractive in the right light when you’re on pills, but Mr. Hathaway is a complete troll. My mom reaches out for a piece of ham, and I touch her gently and say, “No, Mama. Leave it.”

  “As I was saying, y’all have been causing quite a stir. Sticking your noses in where they don’t belong. There’s certain folks that don’t like that.”

  My mom blinks in confusion and says, “Now, Mr. Hathaway, that’s not very kind of you. My Dovey, she’s a good girl.”

  It’s weird, hearing my grandmother’s accent coming out of my lawyer mama’s mouth. My mom once told me that when she got off the bus for college in Athens, the first thing she did was pick up a flat accent. She didn’t want anyone to think she was just a small-town girl from Savannah. And she’s only ever talked like that, with a soft twang, when I was in serious trouble. Or, like now, when she’s defending me from someone else. She only has an accent when she’s emotional.

  Mr. Hathaway sighs deeply, like he’s sorely aggrieved, and runs a hand through his hair. Just for a moment I see what his unruly, curly gray hair has always hidden.

  Tiny little horns, like a baby goat.

  “Go to sleep, Lou-Ellen,” he says. “This don’t concern you.”

  My mom falls face-first onto the table and lets out a rip-roaring snore. Fury blooms and flares in my chest, that this monster would walk into my house and hold my mom in so little regard. I’ve never seen her powerless before, and the rage builds in my heart like a storm brewing.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Mr. Hathaway says, sliding a brown bottle of pills in front of me. “Billie Dove. You haven’t been taking your pills, girl. So I’m gonna watch you take half that damn bottle, and then you’re going to perform at the Liberty Theater tonight come hell or high water.” His grin spreads out farther. “And believe me, they’re both comin’.”

  “And what about me?” Isaac says, eyes black and jaw tense.

  “You do the right thing tonight, all is forgiven,” Mr. Hathaway says with a fake sweet-old-man smile. A roach skitters out from under the pie platter, and he snatches it up and pops it into his mouth and swallows. “Otherwise? Things could get ugly.”

  “Is that all?” Isaac asks.

  “Not even close.” When the old man smiles, a roach leg twitches between his teeth.

  “I need to use the facilities,” I say softly, looking down.

  “Go on and take the pills and you can go wherever you want,” Mr. Hathaway says. “It’s your own damn house.” His hand lands on the back of my mom’s bare neck, his nails digging into her skin, and I flinch.

  He flicks the bottle of pills with one thick fingernail and moves a slurry glass of sweet tea across the table. My mom must have poured it yesterday. The ice has melted, the sugar is pooled on top like an oil slick, and two dead flies are floating in it. I swallow my breakfast back down and daintily use my spoon to get the flies out onto my napkin. Under the table Isaac’s hand finds my knee and squeezes it, but I barely feel it. I take out ten pills.

  “That enough to knock me out, Mr. Hathaway?”

  “It’s a start.”

  One after the other I swallow the pills. They’re bitter on my tongue.

  “Show me,” Mr. Hathaway growls, and I open my empty mouth and then snap it shut.

  Combined with the syrupy taste of lukewarm tea and the acid taste of bile, I can’t tell if the pills were from a new bottle or the aspirin I put into the old one. But they’re inside me now, for better or for worse, and Mr. Hathaway’s hand is off my mom’s neck, and that’s all that matters. Little bruises pricked with blood remain where his nails dug in.

  My chair screeches as I push back, and I hang my head as I walk down the hall. The Grendel demon scrabbles to his clawed feet on the wood floors and growls, following so close that I can feel his slobber splatter on the back of my pants. I pass my dad’s study and go into the bathroom that’s considered mine. Grendel starts to rush through behind me, but I slam the door. It’s satisfying, when he howls in frustration. His growl starts to build, and I know that I don’t have long before he breaks down the door.

  My half of the friendship necklace is sitting on the counter right where I left it. I inspect it quickly but don’t see anything that stands out, anything that Carly would want me to see. When Grendel’s claws scrape against the door, I start to put the necklace on, then realize that it could easily be taken away from me again; if Crane has one half, maybe there’s something special about it that the demons know but I don’t. I have to hide it. I consider my bra, then think about what it would be like if Mr. Hathaway tried to retrieve it himself. I
nstead I wrap it a few times around my ponytail and twirl the ponytail up into a poufy bun. I wrap an old scrunchie around it and survey the final product. So long as Mr. Hathaway isn’t up on fashion, I should be okay.

  Grendel scratches again, and I think about him snuffling possum blood on my window while I was asleep. I’ve always hated that nasty old dog, even before I knew what he really was. His clawing on the door grates on my nerves, and my resolve grows. I told Isaac and Baker I was going to fight. And I am. I don’t want to get schooled by Mr. Hathaway on how to be a good girl. I don’t want to watch my drugged mom get shoved around. The old man sitting over holiday supper in my dining room isn’t an authority figure or an elder. He’s a freaking demon. And I don’t have to do what he says.

  Hell no, sir.

  But I do have to pee, so I sit down and look around the small, old-fashioned bathroom. Grendel’s wet black nose appears under the door, his yellow demon teeth clicking against the tile like he’s going to chew his way into the room. If I’m going to act, I need to do it now, especially since I’m still not sure if Mr. Hathaway gave me aspirin or real pills. If only there were some way to tell Isaac, or make a big noise or something.

  I consider starting a fire, since I’ve got candles and matches, but I don’t know if I could get my mom out in time. So I just turn on the bathroom fan and flick the toilet handle in the way that makes it flush continuously. I grab a towel, one of the new, superthick ones my mom bought with the insurance money after Josephine hit. While the toilet is loudest, I sneak up to the door and open it, twisting the old-fashioned lock. The demon hound falls into the bathroom, slobber flying. I wrap the towel around his head and yank him inside, cringing at the slippery but hairy feel of his skin. His claws scrabble and slice the tile floor as I shove him into the linen closet and slam the door, which is hard as hell since he weighs as much as I do.

  He howls, and Mr. Hathaway calls, “Dovey, leave ol’ Grendel alone. He’s just a nosy busybody.”

  “Sorry, y’all. The toilet’s stuck. Be there in a minute,” I call in my sweet Southern girl voice. “And I’m feeling awfully sleepy.”

  I slip into the hallway and gently close the locked bathroom door behind me. I’ve got to work fast before the demon dog eats through both doors and gets in my way again.

  “Lovey Dovey, you are wasting my time,” Mr. Hathaway shouts irritably from the dining room. “Do I need to have another talk with your mama? Maybe another talk with your grandmother? That last one we had didn’t turn out too well.”

  If I have hackles, they rise. If that nasty old demon man had anything to do with my nana’s passing, I will see to it he goes in the ground.

  “Coming, Mr. Hathaway,” I call, making my voice a little dreamy and slurring.

  I don’t care what Isaac and Baker say. I’m starting this war now, on my own terms.

  For Carly. For Savannah. For me.

  “Lovey Dovey, I’m going to count to three, and if I don’t see you and my dog, heads are going to roll,” Mr. Hathaway barks. I hear Isaac’s voice, but I can’t tell what he’s saying. He doesn’t know about the switched pills, and he can’t know what I’m about to do. I just hope he’ll stay out of my way.

  I tiptoe down the hall and slip into my father’s study. For the tiniest moment the smells wash over me, the pipe smoke and gun oil and model glue and radiator heat and love.

  Then Mr. Hathaway says, “One.”

  I reach into the little niche in the decorative arch over the door. It’s like whoever built this house in the 1800s knew that it would be the perfect place to hide a gun. I grab my dad’s .38 pistol and check to see that it’s loaded. Which it is. It always is. This is Savannah, for chrissakes.

  “Two.”

  I think about cocking it, but Mr. Hathaway will know that sound. Even people who didn’t grow up with guns know that sound. But my dad’s been taking me to the range since I was eight. He may be a dreamy playwright at heart, but he’s a Savannah boy, after all. I know exactly how much pressure it takes to pull the trigger.

  “Two and a half.”

  I smirk. Who’d have guessed? Demon Mr. Hathaway is a softy.

  With one last breath and a whispered “This is for you, Carly,” I walk into the dining room and point the gun at Mr. Hathaway’s chest.

  “Three,” I say.

  24

  MUCH TO MY SURPRISE, MR. HATHAWAY grins.

  “Well, look who grew some—”

  The gun kicks in my hand, and the old man hits the wall and slumps to the ground. There’s a black stain on the flowered wallpaper. I always wondered what kind of damage a revolver could do at point-blank range, although I don’t assume that Mr. Hathaway’s body is at all normal.

  “Do you have any idea what you just did?” Isaac says.

  “Yep. I killed a demon.”

  Honestly, I’m pretty proud of myself. I’ve always hated heroes who just get strung along in a story, doing what they’re told and letting bad guys finish their speeches.

  “Not yet, you didn’t,” he says, jaw set. “You’ve got to cut off his distal and destroy it before he heals himself and wakes up angry. And then you’d better hope that whatever bigger, meaner demon possesses his other distal doesn’t come looking for you.”

  “Goddammit, Isaac,” I say, putting the gun on the table. “That would have been a lot more helpful to know yesterday. And Grendel’s in the bathroom.”

  “Alive?”

  “If that’s what you call it.”

  “Then we don’t have much time. Get a knife.”

  I get my mom’s superexpensive knife from the kitchen, the one that can supposedly cut through tomato cans. When I come back into the dining room, Isaac swings around to face me. My dad’s gun is pointed at my chest.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, voice low.

  “Just being safe,” he says, tucking it into the waistband of his jeans.

  I snort.

  “If you’re being safe, I wouldn’t stick a recently fired, loaded revolver in your pants.”

  With a pretty comical face he sets it gently on the dining room table. But not, I notice, within my mom’s reach. She’s still out and snoring softly.

  “Okay, so now I just cut off his pinkie, and we’re home free?”

  I kneel by Mr. Hathaway. He looks dead, from the black bloom on the front of his grungy white shirt to the fact that he’s not breathing. I never noticed before, but he’s missing the end of his pinkie on one hand. Of course.

  “It’s not as easy as it sounds, Dovey.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  Isaac runs a hand through his hair and squats next to me. The gun’s back in his hand, and for some reason that makes me uneasy.

  “How the hell should I know? Do you think I do this all the time? I know stuff, but it’s not like there’s a manual on killing lesser demons. Just hurry up before the dog gets out.”

  He stands and puts a boot on Mr. Hathaway’s chest, right where the bullet went in. Aiming the gun at the old man’s head, he says, “Really. Hurry.”

  I stretch out Mr. Hathaway’s hand on our new blue carpet. His skin is calloused, his nails thick and gray like Old Murph’s. I curl all his fingers under his hand, leaving his pinkie out.

  “Do I—”

  “Just do it!”

  I pin his hand down and grip the knife. I don’t know where to cut, or how to cut through bone, or if the knife will slide into demon flesh as easily as it would a juicy tomato. But I have to do this before he wakes up and does something even worse to me. With a small prayer I settle the knife over the same place where my finger ends, close my eyes, and press down with a violent jerk.

  The knife sinks in like he’s made of Silly Putty and lodges in bone. The force jars up my arms and sends pins and needles up and down my wrist.

  “It’s stuck,” I say.

  “Then get it unstuck,” Isaac says through gritted teeth.

  I wiggle the knife back and forth, trying to figure out w
hat to do with it. It won’t budge. Mr. Hathaway’s eyes flutter. I stand up, lift my foot, and stomp on the knife with everything I’ve got. Mr. Hathaway lurches up with a gurgled shriek, and I stomp again just as Isaac shoots him in the chest. The third stomp, thankfully, pushes the knife right through, and I sigh in relief, my ears ringing.

  “Now what?”

  “You get a plate and some matches or a lighter or something. We burn that thing and scatter the ashes.”

  I dump out the bowl of peas on the table and throw in the pinkie finger and wipe my hand off on my pants. I head to my dad’s study, where the matches live. I can hear Grendel’s claws shredding wood, but I can tell he’s still in the closet, thank goodness.

  I catch myself in the hall mirror. I look like I haven’t slept in days. Worst of all, though, are my eyes. They’re not honey-gold anymore.

  They’re black.

  Not black like Kitty and the lynx-eared man. Not black all over like a demon.

  Black like Crane’s and Isaac’s eyes, opaque and deep and dark as a black hole. Black with anger. And black with determination.

  I guess I know for sure now what I am. And I know what I have to do.

  Matches in hand, I round the corner back into the dining room, and Isaac spins with a gasp. There’s an explosion, and the scent of gunpowder fills the air as a framed picture beside me shatters and falls to the ground. Normally I would cower, but I’m so filled with rage and purpose that I don’t even flinch.

  “Sorry,” Isaac says.

  I exhale through my teeth, sick to death of this crap.

  “You can’t aim for shit,” I mutter. “Now give me the gun.”

  “I will right after you burn Mr. Hathaway’s distal.”

  “Seeing as how I haven’t accidentally almost shot you today, maybe you could do the burning and I could hold the gun?”

  “I can’t. You took the first shot at Hathaway. It has to be you.”

  “Why?”

  “You started it, you end it. Demon rules,” he says.