I wasn’t scared—I’d been on the hunt too many times for that—but I was pissed. This was my house. My home.
My family.
I’ll fight demons all day long if I have to, but a demon coming in my house? That really elevates the stakes.
As for Eddie, not for the first time I realized how nice it was to have another Hunter in the house. My whole life I’d worked in tandem, and in those months before Eric had become David, I’d missed that assistance and camaraderie.
I took a step forward, then another. I paused, having heard a small, whining moan.
I burst into the living room, blade at the ready, then stopped short when Allie’s scream pierced my ears.
“Mom!”
In a split-second, I assessed the situation, realizing there was no demonic threat at all. Just my daughter, scrunched in the corner of the sofa, a pillow hugged tight to her chest.
I tossed the stiletto onto the coffee table as I sat beside her. “Baby, what is it? Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. I just feel ... I told Aunt Laura I feel bad. I needed to come home.”
I glanced over at Eddie. “It’s okay. I’ve got her. Go on back to sleep.”
He shuffled forward, his sleep tousled gray hair sticking up in all directions as he focused on my daughter. “You need anything, kiddo?”
She shook her head and hugged the pillow tighter, looking a little queasy as she did. I frowned, wondering how much ice cream and other sweets they’d binged on while watching hours of television. A lot, I knew, since it would take the monster ofall stomach aches to get her back home from a sleepover with Mindy.
“I just want to sleep,” she said. “Can I go to bed, Mom?”
“Of course you can.”
I felt her forehead, but it was cool. “Do you need anything for your stomach? Tums? Chicken soup? Mine’s famous you know?” As a rule, I’m a terrible cook, but I have amazing can opening skills, and always keep chicken broth in the pantry.
Usually any reference to my utter lack of cooking skills gets a smile out of her, but this time she only shook her head and pushed herself off the couch.
“Okay,” I said starting to get concerned that she was truly ill and not just suffering the after effects of a junk food binge. “Let’s get you upstairs and in bed. Then we’ll see how you feel in the morning. This lingers too long, and we’ll take you to the doctor.”
She nodded, and as Eddie watched, I led my daughter back up the stairs. I glanced at him one more time from the landing, and saw the worry carved into his craggy face. It was the first time that either of the kids has been sick since he came to live with us, and he’d never been a parent himself. “She’ll be fine,” I said. “Probably by tomorrow morning.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look convinced, and I wished I had the time to go back downstairs and give him a hug, for no reason other than the fact that he loves my daughter, too.
I got her into bed, tucking her in the way I’d done when she was little, then bent over to kiss her forehead before heading to the door and turning off the light.
“Mom?”
I stopped in the process of pulling the door shut. She pushed herself up in bed, the brown floppy-eared dog that had been her favorite children’s toy in her lap.
“You okay, baby?”
One shoulder rose, but she didn’t look up at me. A tight knot of worry formed in my chest, and all of the relief that I’d been feeling whooshed out me with the same speed and force as if I’d impaled a demon through the eye.
I hurried to her side, then sat on the bed beside her. “You’re going to rip that ear right off again,” I said, referring to the time she was eight and had carried the stuffed dog everywhere by his ear.
She met my eyes, hers glistening with unshed tears. “If I do, you can fix it, right?”
My chest tightened in response to the unspoken question. “You won’t,” I said.
“But what if I do?”
I moved to the bed and sat on the edge. I took her hand from the fuzzy ear and squeezed tight. Then I abandoned the pretense that this was a conversation about a stuffed lovey. “Father Donnelly said?—”
