The library was just a quick walk away. She went there, more so she could spend a few minutes breathing in the deeply ordinary and comforting smell of the place than for any other reason. Generally, Sherry spent a lot of time disabusing her bookish friends of the idea that being a librarian was the ideal career for a reader: it wasn’t as if the county paid her to achieve her goal of finally getting throughThe Guermantes Wayor chatting with her fellow bibliophiles about the latest Jonathan Franzen. Most of the time when she was at work, she was more concerned with keeping the patrons from flushing foreign objects down the fragile old toilet than she was with soaking in the lovely book-drenched atmosphere. Whenever she came to the library on a day off, she found herself startled by how legitimately pleasant a place it was to be.
She wandered through the shelves for a while, avoiding making eye contact with anyone who might want to speak with her, until her feet came to an abrupt stop. A moment later a book jumped off the shelf and landed on her left foot. She’d already been hissing and dramatically hopping up and downfor a few seconds of silent agony before she registered which book had just attacked her.
It was a biography of Thomas Cromwell.
For a moment, Sherry considered leaving without the book, just as a way to assert her independence from her demonic overlord. Then she gave in and grabbed it off the ground. If she was going to, in a sense,livewith the man, she might as well know a bit more about him than what she’d gleaned fromA Man for All Seasons, which was exactly enough to make her think thatLord Thomas Cromwellwould be a very funny name for a cat and not a drop more. At the very least she might glean something that she could use to insult him if he tried being rude to her again.
Once she was home, she added the biography to her fast-growing pile of demon-related literature, then went to the telephone to make some calls. First, she called up Janine and managed to make it just long enough for Janine to pick up the phone before she blurted out, “Do you remember calling me?”
“Sherry,” Janine said after a moment. “You just calledme. I picked up the phone. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Sherry said. “I mean the last time you called me. You shouted at me about how I need to investigate Alan’s death.”
There was a longer pause this time. Sherry braced herself for denial and an argument, just like how Sheriff Brown had argued with her. Instead, Janine said, “I’ve been worried about that for days. I remember calling you to find out how you were, and then everything went hazy. I was thinking about bringing it up at my next physical. Ishoutedat you?”
Sherry, unexpectedly, felt her eyes start to sting. Embarrassing. She blinked a few times. “You did,” she said. It cameout plaintive. “You didn’t sound like yourself. And—” She hesitated, just for a second. Then the whole wild story came tumbling out: Janine’s call, and Sheriff Brown standing outside her door the whole night long, and talking to Father Barry and having him witness the absolute madness of what happened at the sheriff’s office, and then finally, terribly, humiliatingly, she had to say aloud, in English, to another human being, that her cat had been possessed by the spirit of an extremely rude and even more extremely dead figure from English history.
This time the silence stretched out for so long that Sherry had a miserable moment of wondering whether Janine might have hung up on her in disgust. Instead, Janine said, “Maybe we ought to talk in person.”
“Yes,” Sherry said immediately, and thought fast. “Eight tomorrow morning at the rectory at Sacred Heart?”
“At therectory?” Janine asked. “Why?”
“So that my cat can’t spy on me,” Sherry said. She felt a little giddy. “Just make sure that you come. I’ll see you in the morning.”
As soon as she hung up, she picked up the phone again, this time to call Charlotte. She told the whole story again. Charlotte didn’t go silent at least. She gasped and groaned and said things like, “Seriously?Oh my God!” that suggested to Sherry that she was taking her story with gratifying seriousness. When people didn’t take you seriously, they never demanded to know whether or not you were being serious: they just made subdued noises of agreement as often as possible until they spotted a window in the speeding train of your narrative, jumped out of it, and ran desperately toward the safety of a change of subject.
Then Sherry got to the part about Lord Thomas, andCharlotte started to laugh. “Oh my God, Sherry, you really got me, I thought you were serious! I was sitting here getting goose bumps remembering how you were talking aboutsomething wickedcoming the other day, like,this is it!So how are you, really? I’m so sorry about your friend, by the way. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t want to intrude.”
“You could have called,” Sherry said, oddly touched. “I always like talking to you. And I wasn’t joking.”
Andtherewas the nervous silence. Sherry was the one to break it. “I’d like you to meet me at the rectory at Sacred Heart tomorrow morning.”
Charlotte started giggling again. “At the Catholic church? So like—in case one of us gets possessed, the priest is nearby?”
“Sort of,” Sherry said. “Father Barry’s going to be there. Mostly I want to make sure that the cat can’t listen in.”
Charlotte giggled even harder at that. “Oh, great! I’m glad that’s the reason. That’s kind of fun.” Then, abruptly: “Do you think the girl who killed John was possessed?”
Sherry swallowed. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said honestly. “Maybe.”
“Oh,” Charlotte said. “Jesus. What does that mean, do you think? I mean—should she go to prison? Do you think she really wanted to do it? You can’t plead not guilty by reason of the devil making you do it, can you?”
“I don’t know,” Sherry said. “I think that people try, but it doesn’t usually work. Son of Sam didn’t get away with it, at least.” She swallowed again. “I think we should try to stop the—whatever it is from hurting any more people before we start worrying about the rest of it.”
“Not like worrying about it would make a difference,anyway,” Charlotte said. “What are we going to do, call up the governor and go, ‘Listen, you might want to sit down, this is going toblow your mind.’ Wait a second, is that what you’re calling about? You want me to help youfight demons?”
“I’dlikeyou to help me fight demons,” Sherry said. She was blushing. “You don’thaveto, though, if you don’t want to. I don’t want to pressure you. But you’re one of the smartest people I know around here, and you’ve been affected by all of this. I thought that you might want to be involved.”
“Are you kidding?” Charlotte asked. “I’ve just been sitting around crying and eating Oreos for weeks now, and you’re telling me that I have the option of going full Buffy instead? Even if you’re crazy, at least I’ll have to put a bra on to help you investigate whether or not your evil cat’s trying to kill you.”
“I don’t think that Lord Thomas is trying to kill me, exactly,” Sherry said, in the spirit of fair play. “Mostly he’s just tried to boss me around and get me to open cans for him in exchange for telling me secrets, which isn’t that different from how cats usually act. But I don’t want him listening in on my conversations.”
“Understood,” Charlotte said. “Makes complete sense. Should I bring anything tomorrow to the demon-hunting society meeting? Do we need…garlic? Stakes? Ingredients for mimosas? Are we doing brunch, or just coffee?”
“The garlic and stakes probably wouldn’t hurt,” Sherry said. “I’ve been stocking up on crystals. Every little bit helps, when it comes to demons. And I’m going to bring some pastries.” Then she said goodbye to Charlotte and hung up to call Father Barry, feeling markedly more cheerful than she had a few minutes earlier. There was something really bolstering abouthaving Charlotte laugh at her and then promise to come help, anyway. It made her feel as if things couldn’t be quite as bad as they felt.
Father Barry wasn’t nearly as delighted with her call as Charlotte had been. Mostly he just sounded annoyed that she’d planned to use the rectory as the venue for the inaugural meeting of the demon-hunting society without consulting with him first. “I’m still moving in! There are still boxes everywhere in here, Sherry!”
