“Glad to hear it.” Pause. “You okay?”
“That sort of thing happen a lot?”
He rubbed a hand through his jet-black mop of curls. “Time to time.”
“You don’t think I’m, I don’t know, triggering it?”
That made him straighten a little. To his credit, he didn’t answer right away. When he did, though, it was to ask another question. “Is that why you’re out here?”
“Could be. Or maybe I’m just scared.”
His teeth flashed in the light. “You really think I believe that?”
“I’d believe it.” But I was already opening the door to the car. Still, it took a lot more effort than it should have, and when I stood, I wobbled. “I couldn’t open the trunk.”
“Sorry. The button sticks sometimes.” Then Max was at my side, and he pulled the gun from my hands along with the keys. A soft thunk of the trunk opening sounded behind us, and Max walked behind the car and put the gun away. When he returned to me, he reached out for my hand, which was a little surprising. What was even more surprising was that I let him take it.
He turned me toward him then, and we studied each other in the sweep of porch lights. He smelled of expensive soap and leather, of quiet rooms with gleaming furniture where men and women talked to words in books the same way I spoke to the creature inside me. His eyes were dark and earnest in that glow, so achingly sincere, and I knew what he wanted from me. He wanted to feel safe and whole again, normal. He wanted to stop seeing things he couldn’t unsee. Things I was destined to see for the rest of my short and doubtlessly crummy life.
I squeezed his hand. “It’s going to be okay, Max,” I murmured. “I know what to do. I’m just working my way up to doing it.”
“I know,” he said simply. He gave me a little half-smile. “I kind of want to kiss you now, but I don’t want you to think—I mean, with the way Emily acted?—”
I didn’t let him finish. I stood up on my toes and tilted my head just enough that I could press my lips to his surprisingly full, soft mouth. For the barest moment, I allowed myself to taste the traces of panic, despair, and wine that lingered after the chaos of the evening. I started to shift back, only to feel Max’s strong, steady hand snake up behind my head, firmer than I would have suspected, surer. He held me long enough to deepenthe kiss, and something raw and wild cracked open inside me, lighting my insides on fire.
He stepped back and gave me a crooked smile in the porchlight. “Hey there, Delia Thompson,” he murmured. “I’m Max Graham, and I have a demon problem.”
For a moment—just a moment—something hot and violent cracked open inside me. Not desire, or not only desire. Something rawer. Hungrier. The urge to bite down, to break skin, to mark him in ways that would never heal.
I pulled back sharply, my breath coming fast.
Inside me, the demon was growling.
“Hey, Max Graham.” I grinned back, punching down the violence, the chaos, the hot, aching need deep within me. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
Chapter
Twenty-Six
The next day, Max and I went into Hooperton to return Emily’s gun. There was only one place she could have gotten it, Max said, in a tone that meant that anyone who’d lived around here for more than two seconds would know this information, and he was none too thrilled to be included in that a small, sad subset.
The gun shop was located on the other side of town, and we passed through the cute town center to get there. “Did you guys come here much when you were growing up?” I asked him. “Or did you pretty much stick to yourself out in the country?”
“We were in town more than you’d expect. Church, mostly, back when I was young. Before—everything.” He stopped talking, not needing to say much more. Eventually, we turned onto a beautiful street with giant weeping willow trees hanging down almost to the sidewalks, and stately old homes beyond. Like the Grahams’ but built on a city scale. “Dad ran an office down here for a while, something tied to the county exchange office, farmers’ coalitions, like that. It kind of petered out too. Since Carol Ann got sick, we started keeping more to ourselves.”
His lips tightened. “Carol Ann’s illness changed everything. It was too much, you know? Too much to happen over just one thing.”
“Yeah.” But it wasn’t just one thing, I knew. Possessions that begin in a place and extend to the people who live there are a layered rot that crops up in unexpected ways. I also didn’t miss the fact that Max never—not once—referred to Carol Ann’s affliction as possession, but a sickness. Like he thought she could get better on her own? Wake up recovered from demonic flu?
I twisted my lips, refocusing. “Did you ever figure out exactly what Carol Ann did to trigger everything? What specifically she was trying to do with Joe and the Ouija Board or whatever?”
He winced. “Carol Ann and that fucking board,” he muttered, the phrase sounding like a well-worn epithet. “No, not exactly. Joe was willing to tell anyone who would listen, but he was half out of his head after he saw what happened to Carol Ann, and none of us took anything he said too seriously. After a while, he didn’t say much at all. Here it is.”
We got out of the car, and I squinted up at the sign above the squat building. “Mills Farm & Fleet?”
“Yep. It’s where all the cool kids hang out.” He grinned at me, and it was like he held my hand in the soft night again, though we weren’t touching. “The gun shop is technically a separate entity, but Mills sells all the gun accessories, so it pretty much feels like the same place. And more to the point…”
He narrowed his eyes in the bright sunlight as he surveyed the far end of the parking lot. “Yeah.”
