Demons are Forever: Confessions of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom (8 page)

“But if they do slip into a body,” I continued, “then they can walk around like you and me, and nobody’s the wiser. Or, at least, nobody except a Demon Hunter.”

“Which is exactly what I asked in the first place,” she said. “How come you can tell but nobody else can?”

I gave her the CliffsNotes version of Demon Spotting 101, running through the various tests on which a Hunter relies, with breath being first on the list.

A demon’s breath is beyond putrid. But in this day of Listerine strips and Trident White gum, even the nastiest breath can be masked.

A better test is holy water, but it can be awkward trying to douse a potential demon to see if the water burns. And, of course, a demon can’t walk on holy ground. But like the saying goes, you can lead a demon to church, but you can’t make him walk inside.

Or something like that.

“So once you’re sure,” Allie asked, “then what? You get ’em with the crossbow?”

“That’s one way,” I said. “But to kill a demon you have to get him right in the eye.”

“Ewwww.” She scrunched up her face, appropriately grossed out. “And then they’re dead?”

I shook my head. “No. But then they don’t have a body anymore.” The only way to truly kill a demon was to cut it down while in its true form. But once encased in a human shell, demons very rarely revealed their true nature. Allie, in fact, was one of the few who had seen a true demon and lived to tell about it.

She turned her attention back to my trunk. “So to kill the demon, you have to get close enough to jam that through its eye?” she asked, pointing to my stiletto.

“Or learn how to throw it accurately.”

She looked at me with respect. “You can do that?”

“Yeah,” I said with a small laugh. “I can’t make a chocolate cake from scratch, but I can nail a demon from twenty paces.”

“Pretty cool,” she said.

Indeed.

I was grinning when I took the knife from the trunk, explaining how Eric had given it to me for our third anniversary. He’d had it custom made, and it boasted a double-action release system. What I didn’t tell her was how much of a workout the blade had gotten lately. I can’t traipse around San Diablo with a crossbow, but the stiletto fits nicely in the sleeve of my favorite leather jacket.

She took a bit more interest in the knife than she had in the crossbow, even going so far as to slash it through the air one or two times. “Pretty cool,” she repeated. “And romantic,” she added, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Well, it was romantic,” I said, laughing at her expression. “Thoughtful and useful. What more could a woman ask for?”

“Stuart usually gives you flowers and jewelry.”

“Which I also love,” I said.

“They’re not useful.”

“But they’re thoughtful,” I retorted. “And considering I don’t have nearly enough jewelry to wear to all these various parties he and I go to, the pieces come in handy as well.”

“I guess,” she said, but she was looking at the knife, and I couldn’t help but think that she was mentally comparing her father to Stuart. I couldn’t blame her; at the moment, so was I.

My love life, though, wasn’t nearly enough to hold her attention, and she started pawing through the trunk again. She carefully lifted various items out—glass bottles for holding holy water, crucifixes, dangerous knives with ornate handles. She examined each, then inevitably moved on to something else.

At one point, she pulled out a tiny velvet bag. She looked at it curiously, then started to untie the strings that firmly sealed it at the top. I gently tugged it out of her hand with a quick shake of my head. “Careful with that.”

“What is it?”

I hesitated.

“Oh, come on, Mom. Either you’re telling me the truth or you’re not. I mean you can’t just—”

I held up a hand to ward off her diatribe—not to mention my guilt. “Fine. You win. Take a peek, but open it carefully.”

She did, moving slowly and reverentially. As she peered into the bag, I saw her forehead crinkle, and when she looked up at me there was no mistaking the confusion on her face. “It’s dust,” she said.

“Powerful dust,” I countered, a small sampling of the relic that Goramesh had come to San Diablo this past summer to find. I’d managed to foil him, but it hadn’t been easy.

I’m not entirely sure why I kept the dust. Superstition, maybe. A memento from my defeat of a High Demon even when I was out of shape and out of practice. And, more, a reminder of why I was willing to come out of retirement in the first place. To keep my kids—my family—safe.

“So what’s the big deal about the dust?” she asked. “It’s not like you couldn’t find twenty bags’ worth under the living room sofa.”

“Very funny, Miss I’m-About-to-Get-More-Chores.”

“Seriously,” she said, closing the bag and holding it up. “What’s it do?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “Nothing except bring the dead back to life.”

Her eyes widened. “Whoa. No sh— No kidding?”

“No kidding,” I said. At least, that was my understanding.

I never actually got to see the dust in action, and now the bulk of it was safely tucked away in the Vatican.

“Where’d you get it?” she asked, staring in wonderment at the little bag.

I took it gently from her hands and placed it back in the trunk. “Long story,” I said. “One of these days, I’ll tell you.”

I expected her to press me on the point, but I guess the lure of the trunk was too strong because she was off and running again.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“What?” I leaned forward, trying to see what she’d found under a pile of old
Forza
reports that had spilled out of a leather folio near the bottom of the trunk. She shifted, and I saw the brown paper bag in her hand. My heart gave a little stutter, and I think I made a soft sound, because Allie looked at me, a question in her eyes. “That’s your daddy’s stuff,” I said, my voice thick. “The things that were with him when he died.”

“Oh.” Just one small word, but it hung between us. She looked at me, and I saw the storm start in her eyes.

I scooted over and pulled her close to me. We sat that way for a while, both of us thinking about Eric. Finally, I looked at her, my hand on the bag. “Do you want to open it?”

She gave only a tiny nod in reply.

“Go ahead, then.”

She carefully opened the sack and peered inside. I knew the contents by heart. His wallet. A blank postcard showing the Golden Gate Bridge emerging triumphant from the fog. A man’s gold ring with a ruby surrounded by tiny diamonds, one of the many rings Eric collected and wore, although this one was a bit bigger and gaudier than his usual style.

When the police had sent me the bag, I’d stared at the contents daily, my heart aching for the man who’d been going about his business, oblivious to his killer until it was too late. At the time, I’d cried myself to sleep wondering if we were his last thoughts, and pitying the man who wouldn’t see his daughter grow up.

Lately, though, I’d cried for a different reason. Because Allie and I had recently learned that Eric’s death hadn’t been the random mugging we’d once believed. It had been deliberate. It had been murder.

And, undoubtedly, it had been the result of his demon-hunting past.

She slipped on the ring then held her hand up, the stones glimmering in the attic’s dim light. “I remember this,” she said.

“You do?” I frowned, surprised by that. After all,
I
barely remembered the thing. Eric had always had a thing for rings, something I found amusing since I rarely wore jewelry. He’d owned at least three dozen rings, collected at various places across the globe, and he would wear a different one each day.

“I was looking for my birthday present and I found it in his sock drawer. I thought it was cool.”

There were so many things wrong with that statement, I didn’t even know where to begin. “You were looking in your father’s drawers for presents?”

“Come on, Mom. It wasn’t like I was snooping around yesterday.”

Good point. “Yes, but how can I ever trust your judgment again. I mean, you’ve just admitted to thinking that is cool.”

“Yeah, well, like I said. I was a little kid.” She took the ring off and put it back in the bag, then pulled out Eric’s wallet. I knew what she’d see when she opened it—his driver’s license was still in the little plastic envelope, although his money had been taken.

I watched as my little girl swallowed, then pressed her fingertips over her father’s photo. A single tear snaked down her face, hung tenaciously to the end of her nose, and then finally landed with a plop on the wallet. Only then did she look up at me.

“Do you think he’s still watching me?”

“Oh, baby. I know he is.”

“I can’t even think up his face anymore. When I close my eyes, all I can see is that picture of us in my room. It’s not a memory of the past, you know? It’s just the memory of a picture, and that’s not the same.”

“You remember him, sweetheart. Who he was and how much he loved you. If you can keep that in your heart, it doesn’t really matter what he looks like.” I tapped her nose. “All this is just a shell anyway, right? It was the man inside you loved.”

My voice cracked a little as I spoke, and it hit me again how much I’d lost with David’s announcement last night. For weeks, I’d been entertaining the fantasy that while Eric’s form had changed, the man himself was still around. Still watching over Allie.

Now, I knew there was only me.

My chest seemed to fill with lead, the weight of loss and the unknown pulling me down. I hugged Allie close, and we sat that way for a long time, just the two of us, lost in memories.

After a while, she shifted a little, then lifted the bag and toyed with it. “So how come you kept it all up here? Daddy was retired when he was killed, right? So why keep his stuff with your demon-hunting things?”

I started to answer, but she got there first, her head cocking to one side. “He
wasn’t
retired,” she announced triumphantly. “Daddy was still hunting demons, right up to the day he was killed.”

“I think he might have been,” I admitted, though that wasn’t why I kept his stuff in the trunk. That was simply because it seemed to belong there, with the things from my past that were special to me.

“You think?”

“Because of the notes we found,” I explained. “My best guess is that your dad was hunting again.” Right before Christmas, Allie and I had found two cryptic notes from Eric. To both of us, it had been clear that Eric had been purposefully killed. From the subtext, though, I’d gleaned that he’d stuck his toe back in the Forza waters. Whether he’d gone so far as to hunt again, though...

That I wasn’t sure about, and that one simple question had weighed on me for weeks. I’d lived for years with the belief that I knew Eric inside and out, just like he knew me. And then, with one cryptic note, everything changed. Suddenly, I’d learned that Eric had secrets. Big secrets.

Reality had slapped me hard across the face and I was still reeling.

“When we moved to San Diablo,” I began, in response to Allie’s querying look, “it was because we’d retired. We were done with hunting. It’s not exactly a career you want long term. There’s a pretty high mortality rate, and we were starting a family.”

She scooted around until her back was against the chest and her knees were tucked up under her chin. Then she nodded, my signal to continue.

“I gave up hunting completely, and I thought your dad had, too. I stayed at home with you. He got a job in the rare books room at the library. We invited the neighbors over for dinner, went to birthday parties for your friends, spent weekends at the beach. It was normal.”

“Except Daddy wasn’t really...”

“Apparently not,” I said. “But let me tell it my way.”

She nodded, and I kept on.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently your dad had been training to be an
alimentatore.”

“A what?”

“It’s like a coach for a Hunter. Does research. Tells you where to go and who to fight. That kind of thing.”

“And you didn’t know?”

I shook my head. “I only just learned, actually. I called Father Corletti a few weeks ago. He told me. And he told me that your dad had wanted to keep it a secret.”

“Oh.” The sound was small and insecure, essentially a mirror to the way I felt. The knowledge of Eric’s secret pursuit had stung, the pain all the more intense because I couldn’t help but wonder if the life we had together wasn’t enough for him. That I wasn’t enough for him.

I took a deep breath, determined to stay in control for Allie’s sake. “So when he went on that business trip to San Francisco,” I continued, “I had no reason to think it was anything other than what he’d told me. Now, though...”

I broke off, my voice cracking. Allie leaned forward and took my hand. “It’s okay, Mom. It’s okay to be mad at him.”

I blinked, startled. Because she was absolutely right. I
was
mad. I’d had no idea he was in danger; no idea that he’d reentered the world of Forza. When we’d hunted together I’d been prepared. But ten years later, when we were supposedly retired? His death just about laid me flat. And to know now what I should have known then... well, yeah.
Mad
is pretty much an understatement.

Her hand was still in mine, and I tugged her close and hugged her fiercely. “I love you, Allie. Don’t you ever forget that.”

“I know, Mom,” she whispered, and hugged me back just as tight. “Daddy loved you, too,” she said, after a long pause.

“Oh, baby, I know that. I’m a little mad, but mostly I’m confused. And maybe my feelings are hurt. But I’ve never doubted for a second that your dad loved me. You can keep a secret from someone and still love that person. That’s just the way the world works.”

She considered that only for a moment before turning to me, her eyes cool and deliberate. “I want to know, Mom,” she said. “I want to know why Daddy was killed.”