Chapter
Thirty-Two
We ate at the next restaurant down the street and got the call from Frank a few minutes later. Joe’s body at the funeral home hadn’t been disturbed by anything, except for the birds. About a hundred of them had landed in the backyard of the home all at once about the time we were clearing his house, and walked around. Then they’d flown off.
None of them were ducks. I asked.
Lunch was surreal, with Max and Claire nattering on about the town, Steve watching me with eyes that seemed a million years older now, and Mrs. Bell murmuring encouraging words at me to eat. I was starving, but also kind of sick to my stomach. I managed.
Claire also informed the group that she had decided I should go professional, and that she’d even picked out an office space for me and my emerging freelance exorcism business. I’d laughed dismissively. No one else did. Steve had watched me with solemn, certain eyes. Max’s expression remained alert and focused, and Mrs. Bell just looked frightened.
Claire simply pulled a folder out of her bag and started discussing logos.
After lunch, Steve drove Claire and me to the lake cottage, and Max once again drove Mrs. Bell. We went there in part to get Mrs. Bell back to her car, and in part to make sure the place was still standing. Claire, for all her bravado, was the slowest to get out of the car once we were there, while Steve slammed his door and stared at the cottage angrily. I looked at the building, trash spilling out over the front lawn, the cardboard covering the large hole in the picture window, trying to see it from their eyes. It wasn’t a good look.
Max moved briskly to the door, Mrs. Bell right behind him. I followed a little more gingerly, Claire at my side. Steve hung back for a few seconds more, then sighed and moved up next to us.
“This is where you got hurt?” Claire asked.
“Yep.”
“And we’re going back in?”
“It should be fine now.”
And it would be, I knew. Some exorcisms took months—years even, Mordechai had told me. But mine hadn’t, not so far. Not Mammon, not Pithius at the club…not my own personal plus one.Palemerious. The name danced over my nerve endings, slipping through my veins.
I shivered. Setting aside all that, from everything I’d read, home infestations were like dust bunnies. Once you got the house thoroughly cleaned, and the house or the land beneath it wasn’t the problem, it was simply a matter of staying vigilant.
When we stepped into the cottage, it was immediately evident that it was done. The entire place emitted a sense of relief, like a sick person in the first clammy minutes after breaking a fever. You knew you weren’t out of the woods yet, butyou felt like you were surrounded by a new and overly friendly stand of trees.
“My God. This place is creep central.” Claire’s voice was hushed as we walked through the house, checking the same doors, finding the same piles of crap. Steve didn’t say anything, but he stopped at a point on the floor where blood had been sprayed, his fists opening and closing. Max and I exchanged a look. He didn’t know about Steve, what he’d endured, and questions burned behind his eyes. I didn’t know the answers to those questions. Steve had always been…Steve to me. I didn’t have friends. I didn’t have family, not anymore.
But I had Steve. And Claire too, now.
And Max?
I glanced to where he was standing a little too close to Claire and felt the smile tease at the corner of my mouth. Yeah, probably Max too.
Mrs. Bell was already on the phone again, arranging for help to continue cleaning it. When Max tried to protest, she shooed him away. “I had no idea this place looked this bad inside, Max. None. Least I can do is help fix it.”
Our two cars made it the long way around the lake and back to the Graham house by about four o’clock. The sky was bright and bold, which boded well for the cleanup at the lake house, but the big house didn’t seem to get the memo about the summer day. It squatted like an angry toddler in the middle of the clearing, the wind barely skiffing the tops of the trees and not at all touching the grass or bushes around the house. The whole place looked desolate, though all the cars were lined up neatly, almost precisely along the drive.
“Well, this is nice, at least.” Claire didn’t seem to pick up any angry demon vibes, which I suppose was a good thing. “Nicer than it looked on Google maps at least. And it’s a horse farm, isn’t it?”
“Usually,” I said. “Not right now, though.”
“Oh.” She didn’t bother hiding her disappointment, but she still peered excitedly up at the house as Steve parked the car. We got out and stood close together while Max parked his vehicle off to the side. “This place has to be over a hundred years old, though, right? Is it amazing inside? Oh, hold on.”
She returned to the car and snagged a brightly colored overnight bag from the front seat.
I blinked. “You were pretty sure you were going to spend the night.”
She smiled sunnily. “I was! It always pays to be prepared.”
Steve, of course, had brought nothing, but I knew from long experience that Steve needed very little. I watched my housemate from the corner of my eye as Max played the host once again, the second time in a week, giving the history of the house, the Grahams who lived in it, even mentioning the Bells as the caretakers of the horses. If he noticed my attention, he gave no indication.
I had so many questions, though. Concerns. Was his blood back to normal? Was he still dizzy? Did he know that he’d been drained out by possessed people living in the heart of our city, as if that was a totally normal thing and not absolutely batshit crazy? Unfortunately, those questions would have to wait. We walked into the house, and Claire got her first blast of the evil that lurked there.
