Embers (15 page)

Max and Brian rushed the door. The girl’s fingers dug into the wood doorframe, clawing white stripes in the finish, but her grip gave way, tumbling her backward into Jules. Anya and Sparky brought up the rear, and Katie slammed the door behind them.

The girl, tangled in the shower curtain, hissed. The house lights wavered, then came on at half power.

“Cuff her to the bathtub,” Jules ordered, and the heap of ghost hunters piled onto the girl. Someone kicked the water on, and the shower sprayed into the clot of people. They succeeded in getting a bracelet around her right hand and the other bracelet ratcheted shut around the metal grab bar on the side of the tub. The family of green frog decals decorating the shower stall looked on, far too cheerfully for the scene playing out below them. Chloe flipped like a seal in the bathtub, twisting at near-impossible angles as Katie struck the stopper. The tub filled with cold water crawling up the side of Chloe’s jeans.

“What do you think you’re doing?”
the demon demanded through Chloe’s bitten lips.

“You can’t drown me.”

Katie didn’t answer, murmuring a blessing over and over: “Go home and leave this girl in peace. Evil has no place here. As I will, so shall it be.”

She poured out the remnants of her jar of salt on the girl’s chest. Chloe writhed in agony, the salt steaming where it struck and ran down into the water: a saltwater baptism. Her fist lashed out and cracked the tile of the shower surround. She kicked over a bottle of bubble bath into the rapidly filling tub. The plastic cap broke, and frothy bubbles began to rise.

“What now, Jules?” Max had jammed a towel to his bloody nose.

“We let Anya do her thing.”

Anya advanced on the bathtub, Sparky surging ahead of her. Brian stood above her, on the closed toilet lid, filming.

“Shut it off, Brian,” she ordered.

He looked down for an instant to find the power button, and that’s when the demon struck.

With the terrible groan of steel, the demon ripped the grab bar free of the wall. The demon-possessed girl swung her arm around and struck Brian with the mass of metal in her fist. Brian fell off the toilet, his feet sliding out from under him. His head cracked and bounced on the edge of the bathroom counter, the video camera shattering on the tile.

“You’re mine now,” Anya snarled, launching herself at the girl. Sparky hit her first, pinning the demon inside her to the tub full of bubbles and frigid spewing water. He landed hard enough that her head submerged under the water for an instant. She bobbed up, gasping. Anya threw herself into the bathtub, straddling the girl, one foot crammed in the soap dish and the other underwater. Water blasted in an uncontrolled spray in her face.

She slapped her hand on the girl’s head, forcing her below the water’s surface. Her kicks and flailing arms ripped away the remains of the shower curtain and launched a loofah across the room. A child’s bath toy had gotten wedged under their bodies, squeaking like an asthmatic frog. Anya’s left hand pressed to her own chest, and she breathed in, wanting to choke the life out of this spirit and commit it to the void in her heart.

She felt the demon bristling beneath Chloe’s skin, seething like a swarm of ants over potato salad. Anya felt her aura flare to life, felt Sparky at her back, growling, tail wrapped around the girl’s soggy feet. The warmth flooded her, the hunger rose in her throat, and she breathed in the demon.

She expected to feel something like she did on those other rare occasions when she’d swallowed a demon: a slow burn traveling down her throat, like scalding soup. It had always been a different feeling than devouring the ghosts. Ghosts went down cold as ice, working into her chest like a milkshake sliding down.

But this wasn’t the chill of ice. This demon
burned
, burned like lye. Tears sprang to her eyes as she struggled with it, trying to destroy this caustic thing that scorched like acid she’d sucked behind her lips. . .

She choked. The hot blackness of the demon crept down her throat in spidery tendrils. She coughed, trying to expel it, but the demon clung to her. She reeled back in the bubbles to the wall of the shower, clawing at her neck. The amber flame in her chest burned brighter, striving to consume this demon that was so much larger and more powerful than she’d expected.

Dimly, she was aware of her body convulsing, of Sparky curled tight around her waist, front feet splayed open against her chest, trying to claw the demon out of her. Bubbles and water lashed around her; she wrapped all that terrible heat of the forge in her chest around the demon and squeezed. The bright star of her aura surged, then quivered out.

The demon whispered to her:
“Sirrush is coming. And I will give you to him.”

Anya rolled over in the bathtub and threw up. She felt Katie’s hands holding back her hair, felt the blessed coolness of the water spraying against her face. Sparky clutched her back like a koala hugging a tree; the tremors of his fear twitched through his skin. He licked the back of her neck with his tongue, making worried little growls in the back of his throat.

Anya lifted her head and pressed it to the cold tile. Through slitted eyes, she saw Jules pluck the limp girl out of the water.

“Jesus, did I drown her?” she cried.

“No.” Katie shook her head. “She’s gonna be okay.”

“Brian!” Anya flopped in the bubbles. She remembered the sickening crack his head made when it had struck the counter.

Max crouched beside Brian’s prone form. “He’s breathing, but I can’t wake him up.” A red gash crossed Brian’s brow, drizzling blood down his nose.

“Call the squad,” Jules ordered.

Anya crept out of the tub on all fours, stumbling on the soaked bath mat. She shook Brian’s tennis shoe, smearing bubbles on him. Her fingers tangled in his shoelaces.

“Brian, wake up, c’mon. . .”

His head lolled limply on his shoulder, unresponsive.

Tears blurred her vision. This had all gone so terribly wrong.

“Katie,” Jules muttered. “Get her out of here. Max and I will clean up.”

Anya’s knuckles whitened on Brian’s shoe. Even Jules couldn’t dislodge them. She was taken out of the house with one hand wrapped around Sparky’s neck and the other knitted in the shoelaces of Brian’s empty shoe.

CHAPTER EIGHT

NO MATTER HOW HARD SHE TRIED, she couldn’t scrub the taste of demon from her mouth.

Anya stood before her bathroom mirror, brushing her teeth for the twelfth time in a row. Sparky sat on the floor, watching her. The salamander wouldn’t so much as let her pee by herself. Her shower-damp hair hung straight and dripping over her shoulder. Sparky had supervised that, too; he’d chased his tail in circles at the bottom of the shower, tracking the water as it circled down the drain. She didn’t want to go to the hospital reeking of demon and vomit. That was a surefire way to attract unwanted attention, both from the visible and invisible worlds. She’d had enough of that for tonight. Perhaps forever.

She spat out the toothpaste. In the sink, it still held some traces of black, as if she’d eaten too much licorice. She let the water run, washing the crud down the sink, down the pipes, and far away from her.

Her fingers traced over her bare chest, and she winced. A new burn spread beside the old one caused by the little girl’s ghost. It stretched like a waxy butterfly across her collarbone, down across one breast, and ended just above the navel. The center of it glistened spotted red: a second-degree burn. When she touched the edges, her fingertips left white marks. Gingerly, she spread antibiotic ointment on the area. No matter what she did, it would leave an unforgettable scar, but the primary concern was avoiding infection.

“Anya.” Katie’s voice trickled under the closed bathroom door. “Jules called. We can see him now.”

Anya grabbed a pair of jeans from the dryer and snatched a cotton button-down shirt from her closet. She fastened it carefully over the ointment, feeling the fabric stick to her skin. She wanted something—anything—on her body that didn’t smell like fear and vomit and Mr. Bubble.

Katie stood in Anya’s living room, subdued. The witch had done a final blessing on Chloe, scrubbing her aura clean of any remaining blemishes. She’d said that the demon was gone, and that had been some relief.

“How’s Chloe?” Anya asked, grabbing her jacket. Her voice was scraped raw and hoarse, as if she’d been a three-pack-a-day smoker for life.

Katie nodded, seeming to be trying to convince herself as much as Anya. “She’s physically unhurt. She’s got no memory of the exorcism whatsoever. She said that her dad would go ballistic when he saw the bathroom trashed. Mom was not too happy about that, either.”

The women walked down Anya’s narrow driveway to Katie’s car, a white SUV with

“Wicked Confections” and her phone number scripted on the windows in red. Her catering gear was scattered all over the interior, and Katie pulled aside a couple of cake boards to make room for Anya. The interior smelled sickly-sweet, like frosting left out in the sun too long.

Sparky insisted upon sitting on Anya’s lap, like a child. She distantly wondered if she should consider buying him a car seat, or one of those baby slings that yuppie moms and dads wore to keep their hands free for texting on their cell phones. Maybe a leash. The thought of walking an invisible pet down the street on a taut leash made her smile in spite of herself. She just might need to make a trip to the pet store sometime soon.

Much as she bitched about it, Sparky’s clinginess was reassuring tonight. She wrapped her arms around his warm little body and rested her chin on the top of his leathery head. Perhaps they both needed reassurance the world was whole and safe, that it would always go on, pretty much as it always had.

But tonight had made her doubt.

They’d nearly lost Brian.

Sparky seemed to sense that Anya was in no mood to deal with shenanigans at the hospital. He trotted along at her heels, not even veering away to nip at a temptingly lit IV

pole dragged by an elderly woman walking in circles. Even the ghosts seemed to shy away from her, disappearing behind walls and melting into the floors at the first sound of Sparky’s growling. She could sense the chill of their shadows as she passed them, but not one made an effort to accost her. Perhaps she hadn’t managed to scrub all the traces of demon from her skin. Perhaps they could feel Sparky’s hypervigilance as he stomped before her like a bulldog on parade. But they left her alone.

The ICU was painted pale pink, the color of old gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe. The central nurses’ station provided a central view of a dozen cubbies divided up by pastelcolored curtains and glass partitions. At this early hour, the lights were still low enough to allow the patients to sleep, casting the unit in a shadowy, enforced serenity. Machines beeped in counterpoint to the low conversations of the staff behind the desk, punctuated by the clicking of nails on a keyboard. A cart holding covered dishes in metal pans rattled down the green-tiled hall. Shift change was taking place, and the hospital only allowed visitors at those times when more staff were available.

Anya spied Jules and Max in the perimeter hall, and she quickened her pace. “How is he?”

Jules rubbed the stubble forming on his chin and gestured to the drawn curtain before him

“We just got here. The doctor on rounds is checking him out now.”

“Did he—did he wake up?”

Jules stared down at the floor. “He got out of surgery an hour ago, but nothing’s happened yet.”

The white-coated doctor scraped the curtain aside and stepped into the hall. He was a young man of Middle-Eastern descent with serious eyes, a stethoscope draped around his neck. “Are you here for Brian McKinney?”

“Yes.” Anya craned to see over the doctor’s shoulder. “How is he?”

“He came in with a head injury that was causing high levels of intracranial pressure and bleeding. . . an acute epidural hematoma. We performed surgery to repair a broken artery and to place a stent in his brain to drain the fluid. The primary danger is swelling and brain damage.”

“Is he awake?”

“No. Now he’s only responding to specific, intense stimuli and not in an organized fashion.”

“When will we know if he’s going to be okay?”

“We’re going to watch him over the next several days, see how his coma score improves. An epidural hematoma, like his, is rarely fatal, but the impact on the brain can’t be known until he regains consciousness.” The doctor’s eyes wavered among them, bottomless sympathy in his expression. “You can see him now, though.”

Anya pulled back the curtain and tears prickled her eyes.

Brian lay in a metal hospital bed, the upper part of his body elevated to show the breathing tube taped to his mouth. His head had been shaved of the thick hair Anya had run her hands through just a day before, an angry series of precise stitches marching like ants over the pale skin. A tube and an electronic device were implanted near his temple, draining and monitoring the intracranial pressure. His eyes were closed, hands arranged on his stomach. His wrist and arms were full of tubes and wires, an oxygen monitor clipped to his finger. His chest, covered in a blanket and green surgical gown, rose and fell with a mechanical hiss. The heart monitors stuck like stickers on his chest ticked out a rhythm like a metronome on a screen beside him.