Back out in the courtyard, Claire smiled brightly. “Mind if Steve and I join you guys, Max?” she asked with the air of someone who always got her way. She waved vaguely to the street, where I saw Steve’s beat-up sedan.
Something warm and easy uncurled in my stomach, and my heart’s thudding slowed. He’d come back to the duplex. He’d brought Claire here. That was good, right? He’d be okay?
“Delia?”
I glanced over to see Claire squinting at me. “Are you seriously okay? Or should we take you to whatever passes for Urgent Care here?”
“I’mfine,” I stressed again. “The cuts were from flying wood splinters and some knives and things that came up during a house exorcism, and demonic wounds heal faster in churches. Way better than Urgent Care.”
The silence of the group made me grimace, and I looked up to see drawn faces and horrified eyes. “Well, you asked,” I groused as Claire stepped forward. To get it over with, I let her pull the back of my shirt up so she could gape at my back. She fussed over me for a solid sixty seconds until I batted her away.
“Well, you won’t die, anyway,” she decided, with determined cheer. “And this is thecutestlittle town I think I’ve ever seen. Where is good for lunch? You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”
She swung her gaze to me, her smile a little forced, her eyes a little desperate. For the first time, I felt Claire’s need to be needed—to be wanted. I couldn’t understand it, but, for once, I didn’t mind it. She and Steve had come all the way out here, and perhaps together they could help fill the deep cavern I’d openedup inside myself. I stuffed down my own fear, then released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“Lunch sounds good, actually.” I looked at Max.
“I know just the place. You have GPS, Claire?”
And, of course, she did. She also had clearly done something to my phone, so we could have lunch in Nashville, and she’d probably find me. Still, I offered to ride over with her and Steve to the restaurant Max chose for everyone, while Max and Mrs. Bell went together. Because ground rules would be necessary.
“What exactly did you do?” Claire turned toward me the moment we pulled away from the curb, while Steve stared at me in the rearview mirror. I wasn’t imagining it though—my cuts did feel better. Like, unreasonably better, after just a few minutes with a real holy man. That still didn’t mean I wanted to hash through the whole story again with Claire. “How many knives are we talking here?” she demanded.
I pressed my lips together, all my good feelings ebbing away. This was wrong, this was stupid. I could seriously put them both in danger. “Claire, this isn’t a good time for you to be nosing into my life.”
Steve snorted from the front of the vehicle, and Claire’s eyes went wide. “Well, somebody should be, clearly. You’rehurt. And Steve said there are terrible things out here.”
“Oh?” I met Steve’s gaze as he flipped me a glance via the mirror again. Steve probably would know.
I didn’t say those words out loud, but I didn’t need to. Steve flinched and refocused on the road ahead. But he didn’t stay quiet. “I can feel things, now,” he said simply, his long fingers flexing on the steering wheel. “Things I’d rather not feel. And the energy out here…this is some serious shit. Worse than the clusterfuck at the club.”
“Whatclub?” Claire demanded, her gaze swiveling back to me. “Since when do you go to clubs?”
“I…fuck.” I muttered, swallowing back the taste of copper in the back of my throat. I still couldn’t sit back in the seat without my back complaining, so I perched on the edge, ignoring the belt. Steve followed Max, who never went above ten miles an hour in town, so I wasn’t in danger of being flung around. At least, not for a minute.
“Fuck is right.” She scowled. “How bad is this, Delia?”
I glanced out the window, watching the houses slip by. “You’re not going to believe me.”
Her dry chuckle drew my attention again. “You showed up last week with the word ‘Cunt’ scrawled on your collarbone, remember? So, what did you exorcise this morning, exactly? Out of whom? And if you look that bad, how bad does the other guy look?”
I couldn’t avoid laughing, which made the cut on my shoulder twitch. “Today, there wasn’t anyone. It was just a house.”
“Ahousedid that to you?” Steve demanded from the front seat. “A house. You exorcised a haunted house.”
“It was a very unhappy house.” I liked this, I realized with surprise. I enjoyed having this special skill. This ability. Even if I didn’t yet fully know what I was doing.
Except that wasn’t really true either. Iwasgood at what I did. Maybe not in ways I fully understood, but I had called upon whatever it was within me to help Mordechai. And whatever it was within me had responded. Had leapt at the chance. It had looked into the eyes of the possessed and it had called their tormentors by name. By name! And then stood by and made sure the darkness had left. It had done well. I had done well.
And then, on the heels of our greatest joint success, I’d booted it straight out of me.
I suddenly didn’t feel so great again.
Steve pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot, and we stared at the place, a cute wood-timbered café with bistro tables out front, set back from a busy street. “This, um—this place isn’t infested, is it?” Claire asked as Max and Mrs. Bell pulled in behind us. “Or possessed or whatever?”
“Claire, I can’t exactly tell that from out here.” I winced. “That’s not how it works.”
“Pffft,” she said, re-engaging the locks on the doors. “Give me your phone. I’m going to text Max that this option for lunch is no good. Steve, keep driving.”
