She doesn’t respond. I lean back with the heels of my hands resting on the carpet behind me. I suppose I can stay here for a bit.
Eventually, even though I feel very, very guilty, I do have to make her move. I first fill a small bowl with the new wet food I bought and set it on the ground in the kitchen. She sniffs the food but doesn’t seem interested. Well, it’s there if she wants it. I suppose I can set out the dry food later if she doesn’t touch the wet.
Hands on my hips, I sway my head side to side, unsure of what to do with myself. I really need to edit my video. But when I sit on the couch and pull up the editing software on my laptop, I can’t focus. I close my laptop. Maybe I should take a shower, let the steam clear my mind. I wander to the bathroom, the cat following behind me.
“Along for the ride?” I ask her.
I start the shower and wait for the water to heat up before stripping and getting in. I take a long shower, letting the steaming water run over my skin, so hot it’s nearly burning. I switch the water off. That’s a habit I shouldn’t develop.
I get out, seizing a towel off the wall to dry off. The cat is still in the bathroom, watching me. “You’re a little creepy, you know that?”
I wander across the hall to my bedroom, drop the towel, and pull on my fluffy gray robe. The cat follows me the entire way, weaving around my feet, rubbing against my legs.
“Full of love, aren’t you?”
Still in my robe, I go back to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. Once the wine is in hand, I sit back down in frontof my laptop, ready to finally edit my video. The cat hops up on the couch beside me and settles against my leg, staring at the laptop like she’s watching my screen. I manage to work on my video for maybe five minutes, and most of that is replaying the ghost saying “cherry pie” over and over, trying to get the clearest sound bite out of it.
Then I become distracted again and find myself googling,Can I bring someone back to life?
I find nothing useful. Basic warnings against necromancy of any sort, prayers to help my grief, CPR manuals, “You can bring people back to life by connecting them with Jesus,” facts about the longest time someone was dead before being resuscitated. Like I said, nothing useful. Same things I found the last time I googled this, after August.
Bottom lip between my teeth, I try something else.Can a demon be saved?
“I didn’t mean by Jesus,” I mutter as I change my wording.
Can a demon be resurrected with a soul?I scroll through article after article telling me that demons were never human (wrong), about the concept of reincarnation, and whether or not a soul can be destroyed.
I keep going until I am so deep in Google, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to dig myself out, when I notice something familiar—a name. Dr. Nerys Gray. The same woman who wrote the article Matthias found, with the anti-demon sigil.
The paper is speculative. It doesn’t even look published. It was clearly typed up, printed, and then scanned into some college library in the middle of nowhere Missouri. However, I find it fascinating. She’s working on the theory that demons who arecreated from tortured human souls can, in fact, be brought back to life.
A spell is included in the paper, or an experiment of some sort. The spell itself is difficult to make sense of, the words written in what looks like Latin. However, the instructions appear straightforward enough: (1) create a circle using the listed ingredients, (2) recite spell three times, (3) restore human soul. But…
I lean forward, squinting at the screen, rereading a sentence that confuses me. I mutter to myself, “An identical, yet original form will be created around remains of the soul.” Does that mean this spell is essentially creating a new body for the demon—a body that belongs solely to the demon? Or, reformed demon, rather.
That’s impossible. Even the writer doesn’t seem one hundred percent confident in the theory. She is very clear about how this has never been attempted and would not recommend attempting it.
The theory goes on to explain that this is something that can only be done for demons who remain pure of heart. Demons who still have a significant amount of their soul left. Demons who never should have been made demons in the first place.
“It will never work,” a voice next to me says.
“Mother fucking fuck!” I shriek, leaping up from the couch, my laptop crashing to the ground.
The cat stares back at me.
I get right up in his face. “Oh, I fucking knew it, you asshole! I knew you were in the cat!” I lean back and cross my arms. “How’d you enjoy watching me shower, you pervert?”
If a cat could grin, I’d swear he did. “I didn’t see anything, I promise.”
The voice is…well,wrong. Cats aren’t supposed to speak human languages. It’s high-pitched and scratchy, the vocal cords being forced to do something they shouldn’t. Ugh, why doesn’t he sound like Salem?
“It won’t work,” he says again. “There’s none of my soul left. And even if there was…what does this person know? This was written back in the ’90s. Don’t you think if they had anything more substantial on this, they would have published that by now?”
“She could be dead,” I say weakly as I sit back on the couch, picking the laptop up from the floor, glad I have carpet in my living room that cushioned the fall. “So, she didn’t have the opportunity to do more research.”
“There’s no way, Lace. This is just a theory. And, I hate to break it to you, you aren’t a witch.”
“Matthias is.”
