Demon's Daughter: A Cursed Book (8 page)

So I picked out a memory, and told him…

Elizabeth’s brother, Miles, was like me when it came to his younger sibling. He protected her no matter what. When someone insulted or disrespected her, he got revenge.

I’d seen him stomping over to our house, fourteen years old, all temper and greasy skin. Miles was a bully, and he wasn’t afraid to pick on girls or kids younger than him. We’d stayed away from each other, until Elizabeth tattled on Dro.

He’d come to our house looking for her, and found me instead.

“Your sister’s a liar!” he shouted. “Make her apologize!”

“No,” I shot back. “Dro didn’t do anything. Your sister did. Get lost, Miles.”

“Your sister’s just a freak!”

“Don’t call her that,” I growled, clenching my fists.

The people in other houses were starting to stare at us, but no one was walking over to see what was going on. As far as they were concerned, they didn’t have to get involved because we weren’t their kids. It wasn’t their problem.

“Bring her out here and make her apologize to Liz.”

He was older than me. Bigger and stronger. He would hurt me, and then he would hurt Dro. I stood my ground.

“No.”

I wasn’t ready for Miles’ fist when it hit my face. I dropped onto the ground, feeling bruised and dizzy. Miles grabbed my hair and pulled it, trying to drag me along the pavement. I found my footing and kicked back, my foot driving right between his legs.

He let me go and cupped himself, howling in pain. I tried to kick him again, but he tackled me and pushed me onto the ground. He weighed at least fifty pounds more than I did, crushing my chest under his knees. I couldn’t move my arms, so I couldn’t stop him when he started hitting me again. My head cracked harshly against the sidewalk. Blood was on my lips.

“Hey!” someone shouted furiously.

Miles was suddenly yanked off me and thrown back onto the sidewalk. He scrambled and tried to get up to fight again.

He stopped when he saw how angry my father was.

“You like beating up on girls? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Miles had half a brain after all. He backed away from Dad. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, my hands still resting on the sidewalk. My head was pounding, and I had to spit blood out of my mouth.

“Get away from my daughter. If I see you anywhere near my house or my family again, I’ll show you what a real beating feels like.”

Dad didn’t talk about his past with the cartels when I asked, trying to figure out why we left Mexico. Mom had only ever said that we were better off here, and that Dad had done everything he could to make a new life for us. She said never to ask him about it, and to be grateful for what he’d done. I was, but sometimes I wondered.

Miles scrambled to get away from my father. We were probably going to get a complaint or another angry call from parents, but Dad would deal with it. He always did.

He watched Miles run home awkwardly, then glared at the neighbors. None of them had come out to help me. He turned and rushed over to me, taking me by my shoulders. Any rage that might have been in his eyes before was replaced with concern.

“Are you all right, Constance?” he asked.

I nodded, stopping when it became too painful. I held back tears from the throbbing pain in my skull. Dad twisted so he could see the back of my head. I felt him gently peeling strands of my hair away. He cursed under his breath, not thinking I would hear him say “shit.”

“Daddy?” a soft voice called from the house. “What’s wrong with Connie?”

Dad kept his hand on my shoulder, starting to push himself up. “She got hurt. Stay with her. I’m going inside to get a first aid kit and call Mommy.”

Dro was at my side before he’d even finished giving his instructions. She gasped when she saw the blood in my hair and on my face. Her eyes glistened with tears, her lower lip starting to tremble.

Dad put his hand on her back. “Constance will be okay, honey. Just stay with her and keep her awake until I come back.”

She nodded, putting her arms around my chest. Dad got up and ran for the house. Dro tucked her head into the crook of my shoulder, starting to sob. I clutched her hands.

“I’m okay, Dro. It’s just a headache.” A very, very painful headache.

“You’re bleeding,” she whimpered.

“Yeah,” I said. A grin twisted my lips. “But you should’ve seen what I did to Miles.”

I tried to make Dro laugh, but all she did was cry more. She pulled away from me suddenly, staring at me with tears streaking down her face.

“I want to fix it,” she said. “It’s my fault.”

“No it’s not,” I told her. “Miles was just being mean. It had nothing to do with you.”

“He came here because of me, didn’t he?”

I said nothing. Dro’s ability to know things like that freaked me out.

She sobbed again, then pressed one of her little hands on the back of my head while the other covered my mouth. I was about to push her off when I felt a weird tingling in the places she was touching. A pins and needles feeling that buzzed along my nerves. I jumped back, away from Dro.

My little sister stared at me with wide eyes. I was about to ask her what had happened, but then I noticed the pain in my head was gone. I wiped my lip with my fingers. They came away bloody, but I hadn’t felt the cut. I pressed a hand to the back of my head. My hair was still matted with blood, but I couldn’t feel a gaping wound anywhere.

“I wanted to fix you,” Dro whispered across from me.

I looked up at my sister, whose touch had healed me. It didn’t make sense. People didn’t just randomly touch others and heal their injuries. That only happened in movies.

But Dro had done it for me.

I sat there and stared at her, not knowing what to think. She was on the verge of tears again.

“Are you scared of me, Connie?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

I shook my healed head slowly. “No,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing.

When Dro started crying again, I knew I hadn’t done a good job. I crawled across the pavement to sit next to her and hugged her tightly to my chest.

“I’m not scared of you, Dro. I promise.”

She clutched my shirt in her tiny fist and sobbed. I kept holding her, but my mind was racing. Dro had known about Elizabeth’s stolen doll. She had healed my cuts with single touches. How had she done it? Why had she been able to? What else could she do? Mom and Dad and I knew that Dro was special, that she was different. But this was something else. Something I hadn’t expected, and couldn’t understand.

She was still my sister though. I loved her and would stick by her side. Dro had been abandoned before, left alone in the forest to die as a baby. I would never do that to her.

I turned my head, resting my cheek on the top of her hair. I lifted my eyes and sighed, stopping when I saw that only one of the neighbors, the lady across the street, had stayed outside.

She was tall, thin, and beautiful. She was relatively new to the block, having moved across the street a couple years ago when the last residents suddenly decided to go on a really long vacation. The woman had golden skin like mine, her hair long and silky down her back. She wore a black suit with a pencil skirt and spiked heels. Long gloves were on her hands, reaching up to the elbow. She looked like a harsh, serious businesswoman. Or a funeral director. I think Mom said her name was Isabel.

And right now, she was staring at us. Or more accurately, at my little sister.

I’d caught her watching Dro a couple times before when we were playing outside. I hadn’t thought anything of it, because everybody looked at Dro. But this wasn’t one of the normal, curious or amazed stares. This one was darker. This was the look of a lion watching a gazelle from the long grass. Predatory and dangerous.

I held Dro tighter to me and glared at her.

Isabel smiled at me. It wasn’t a nice smile. She glanced at Dro, then winked at me. She turned and walked back into her house, leaving me with a crying sister and a bad feeling in my stomach…

By the time I finished telling Manny every power Dro had, it was almost seven in the morning. He hadn’t said anything the entire time I was speaking, listening to me with rapt attention instead. I stared at Manny’s desk, not seeing anything. Even though I had told Manny the truth, the weight on my shoulders didn’t feel any lighter.

Finally, I looked up at him. “Do you have any idea what she is, or what she might be?” I sounded small, almost childish. I hated myself for it.

Manny held my eyes. I couldn’t tell if he was thinking or frozen with terror. Then he blinked slowly and sighed, his dark eyes turning sorrowful.

“No, Constance. I have no idea.”

Chapter 5

As a professional demonologist in Texas, Manny and Max had a lot of interesting clients. Dro and Max had woken up a few hours after I had. Dro offered to make breakfast for all of us, whipping up some French toast so delicious Max was halfway to groveling at her feet.

An hour later, their first client showed up. She was an elderly woman with kind eyes behind round glasses, dentures for teeth, and fire engine red lipstick.

She came for a palm reading from Max, apparently one of the few people who knew about his gift. Max was more than happy to do the reading in the living room. I watched with my hands on my hips. I’d known some tough old folks in my life. When it comes to holding a gun, age doesn’t matter. A seven year old can hold a gun just as well as a seventy year old.

But Dro had assured me that she was okay. Some dark spots on her mind, but mostly from memories she wanted to forget. She was focused on Max, chatting him and Manny up as Max read her palm. When she asked who Dro and I were, Manny had simply said we were interns. It was a lie as close to the truth as he could make it.

Max told the old woman what she wanted to know– which Bingo numbers she should pick– and then she left. At the door, she gave Max a peck on the cheek, leaving a huge red lipstick stain on his face. Dro giggled from behind me. The woman patted Max on the back and looked at us.

“You girls look after little Maxie, now. He’s a good boy.”

Max turned as red as the lipstick on his face. Even I managed a grin.

“Thank you, Mrs. Dawson. I’ll see you next week.”

“Not if your numbers are right, Maxie!” She said merrily before walking down the porch steps.

Max glanced at us when she was out of earshot. “She used to babysit me,” he said, rubbing at the lipstick on his cheek. “I almost got cavities from all the sugar she gave me.”

Dro laughed again, taking a tissue from the box at the table behind us. She dabbed it in the water of the plant vase next to the tissue box and walked up to Max.

“Here,” she said, “I can actually see what I’m doing.”

He grinned as she started wiping the lipstick away from him. “I wasn’t doing a good job?”

She shrugged. “You were kinda smearing it all over your face. That’s all.”

Max laughed, unable to take his eyes off my sister. She blushed and looked down. It only made him smile more. I rolled my eyes.

I glanced over their shoulders, seeing a car pull up to the sidewalk in front of the house. I drew myself up tall, my hand resting on my hatchet.

As a man and a woman got out of the car, I walked past Dro and Max, putting myself in front of them. The couple glanced at a piece of paper in their hand, the sign on the lawn, then back to the house. They kept their eyes on the house as they walked toward it. They were a few feet away from the porch when they noticed me. The cold look in my eyes made them stop.

“We’re looking for Manny Garcia,” the man said.

“Why?” I asked.

The man almost flinched. “We called him a few days ago for an appointment, but something’s come up. We need him now.”

Max jumped up beside me. He held out his hand and shook both of theirs. “Mr. and Mrs. Kenway, good to meet you.” I couldn’t tell if he was seeing anything with his gift, because his face was expressionless. “You guys can come in. Don’t mind her. She’s a grumpy intern.”

I gave Max a look so black that the smile dropped off his face.

“Let them pass, Con,” Dro whispered from behind me. Her voice was serious, and I looked over my shoulder at her. “They’re out of their minds with worry.”

I trusted my sister, but I made no effort to soften my expression. I pulled back into the house, hearing Max apologize and make excuses for my behavior. The couple walked inside, Mr. Kenway glancing at me with suspicion as they walked down the hall. His wife still hadn’t noticed me. She looked exhausted, her eyes puffy and ringed red, like she hadn’t been able to sleep after days of crying. Max led them into the living room, where I could hear Manny greeting them and offering what sounded like a condolence.

“They have a demon in their house,” Dro said.

I faced her. “How do you know?”

“I sensed it from Mrs. Kenway.” Dro looked at me with sad blue eyes. “It’s attacking their daughter. They don’t think she’s going to live.”

My hostility toward them lessened, if only a little. Demons had attacked us for years. I had enough scars to know exactly how horrible it was. I took a couple steps toward the doorway, leaning in so I could hear what was happening.

The couple was sitting with their backs to me, facing Manny across from his desk. Max stood at his father’s side, looking uncomfortable.

“We can’t keep waiting, Mr. Garcia,” said Mr. Kenway, his voice filled with desperation. “We need an exorcism today.”

“That’s a very tall order,” replied Manny. “It takes time to prepare for an exorcism. To know exactly what is possessing your daughter and how powerful it is–”

Mrs. Kenway burst into tears. Her husband put his arm around her back and tried to calm her down, but it wasn’t working. Exhaustion had finally broken her.