Page 7 of A Serpent in the Garden

I reject you, I told It. Officially. I…adjure you.

You wound me.

I don’t want you anymore. I never did. I only made my peace with you when I felt I had no other choice.

You have no other choice. This is pointless.

Well, maybe you lied.

I’ve never lied to you.

No, you just use omissions and half-truths.

I clenched Livvy’s hand in both of mine. Focused on her warm dark skin, the rich scent of her hair. My best friend who cared about me, not the demon in my head. “Serich, then. I need him.” Serich had served as Father Hull’s acolyte for years. If I hadn’t seen him tending to the outside of the church through churning fogs, I’d seen him on its front steps, his nose in a book. We had not had much to do with each other since I was fourteen. I could not enter the church and he rarely left it.

“Des,” Livvy said, her face eloquent with helplessness. “You can’t tell anybody! The things Serich will have to do to you. If you even survive whatever you’re put through, you’ll be an outcast.”

“It’s not the victim’s fault they’ve been possessed,” I said, more for her sake than for mine, because (not-so) privately, I agreed with her assessment. “All the texts say so.”

“You think they’ll accept that?” She hooked her thumb over her shoulder to our curtained window. “We live next door to fucking Hell! Nobody who lives here will trust that it won’t happen again. They’ll kill you just to simplify things. It’s the only way to be sure the demon flees.”

“What would you have me do?” I forced a calm I didn’t feel. “Keep silent? Accept It? Pray that it won’t happen again? Haggle with a demon? Kill myself? That’s the only way I’m free, if I don’t ask Serich for help.” Serich may have been a slim chance, but he was all I had.

“Well, we can’t go now.” Livvy collapsed on her bed, looking up at me in defeat. “It’s dark. We’ll have to wait for morning.”

And then it dawned on me that I could not go at all, day or night. I could not set foot into the church without suffering an agony so complete it made me wish for death. Where but a church could he stage an exorcism? The Warren parlor wasn’t an option.

Livvy tore her hand through her curls when I told her as much, her eyes swiveling around the room as if the answer hid in the corners.

“Serich’s father died a few weeks ago.” Her gaze snapped back to mine as she got to her feet. “His house is right behind the church. It’ll be empty since Serich left home. We can go there.”

It’s very tiring, never being listened to, It said. Now I know how my mother must have felt. Serich can offer up his own precious priestly soul in return and it wouldn’t be enough.

I’m done listening to you, I said, as Livvy stripped off my soiled cloak and worried over the knots at the back of my blood-painted dress.

If I have ever sat through a longer night, I do not remember it.

I spent it huddled with Livvy, curled beside her on her bed beneath piled quilts. Linen clotted her ears. I didn’t bother; linen would not muffle my demon and the ones who called from the wood could apparently convince me of nothing.

I got up not long after I felt the gray light of dawn drift over the bed. Livvy stirred fretfully but didn’t wake, and I pulled on fresh clothes and a cloak before making my way toward the front door.

My hand was on the knob when I heard human screams echoing up the lane, which only ever happened when a body had been discovered. I pressed my forehead into the wood, willing steel into my blood, knowing I had to run out into the lane just like the rest of the village and convincingly feign terror, but I never had a chance.

A fist pounded on the door, the cross nailed above it juddering. A man screamed my name, a macabre echo ringing along the street as the villagers took up the cry.

I drew back from the door as suddenly as if it had burst into flames, prickling all over with an icy sweat.

Someone had seen me with the corpse. I’d thought the fogs would suffice, but the cover hadn’t been thick enough to obscure me from the back windows of the cottages. Someone had witnessed me, all five feet two inches, dragging the rotund and tall, very, very dead body of John Dale with a speed and strength that was not quite human.

I felt It jerk to the forefront of my mind, which never happened so early. I imagined it was my fear that summoned It.

Run, It said. And when shock rooted me to the floor, It took the reins and forced me. I sailed past a startled Margaret, a confused Robert, and burst out the back door with their exclamations pounding in my ears. My muscles willingly joined Its momentum soon enough, and we were plunging down the empty back alley behind the cottages, skidding to a stop outside the church.

And even a few feet from it, my skin burned as though I were standing too close to a fire. I grabbed up a rock from the dirt and lobbed it as hard as I could against the church’s back door, leaving the wood cratered where it struck.

You should have just left the fucking back door open, It said. You had to move the body.

None of it would have happened if not for you.