Angie Fox - ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

I ran past her and found Pirate. He lay on his side, half curled in a ball. I pushed through the hot, stinging magic. It bit like a thousand fire ants, but I didn’t care. Pirate was alive. Relief poured through me. Blood oozed from the back of his head, and he was wheezing as bad as Ant Eater. I gathered him up in my arms and hurried him outside while I could still see the light from the doorway.

A crowd of witches and werewolves had gathered in the yard. They stood in shocked silence as I lowered Pirate to the ground outside the trailer. His breathing had grown even more labored. I didn’t know what to do.

“Ant Eater?” Frieda called as she struggled across the lumpy yard in three-inch heels, watching in horror as smoke poured from our trailer. “What’d you do to her, Lizzie?”

To her? “I don’t know. She’s back in the trailer. Something’s wrong with Pirate.”

Betty Two Sticks lumbered up, her Woody Allen glasses fogging with the wet heat escaping from the trailer. Heat? “I think she threw a death spell,” she told Frieda.

“What’d the jar look like?” Frieda demanded.

“How’d you know—” I hadn’t said anything about a jar.

“We don’t have time! What’d it look like?”

“Red,” I said. “Swirly. A pickle jar with a gold lid.” I’d wanted that one. I knew I had to throw it. I took a deep breath. My go-for-the-most-dangerous demon slayer mojo had gotten us in some serious trouble this time.

“Anaconda spell.” Frieda’s voice dripped with fear and contempt.

“How’d she beat it?” Betty challenged, pointing at me.

“Don’t matter,” Frieda said, trying to yank me away from my dog. “You gotta go back in there.”

Pirate had curled on his back, fighting for every breath. I never should have brought him here.

“Listen to me!” Frieda demanded. “You let loose one of the death spells. You’re going to kill Ant Eater and your little dog, if you don’t reverse this now. Find the white jar. Betty, you get the matches. Go!”

I dashed back inside. The air felt wet with smoke. It reminded me of the way Hillary used to make me steam my pores. But it wasn’t hard to breathe. If anything, it was easier. Seeing was another matter. I stumbled over Ant Eater’s body. I found her arms and struggled to drag her out of the trailer. I had her head onto the front porch when Frieda started screaming again. “Get the jar. Now!”

A cloud of red smoke churned inside the trailer. I couldn’t see a foot in front of my face. I felt my way along the wall next to the door, nudging the floorboards with my feet until I knocked up against a pyramid of jars. I grabbed as many as I could carry and headed for the front porch. I lined them up on the weathered gray wood. Two blues, a pink and the ear jar. No good.

Ant Eater’s fingertips had turned blue. Her face wedged against the open screened door.

I ducked back inside. On the fourth trip, I found the white jar. While the contents of the other jars swirled and smoked, I could have mistaken this one for a jar of white paint. But then I noticed the tiny bubbles, like soda fizzies.

Frieda grabbed it from me. “You can’t look at it too long.” She’d pulled off her hair scarf and used it to shield her face from the smoke pouring from the front door.

We left Ant Eater on the front porch, half in and half out of the trailer. By this time, the crowd had swelled to a throng as every witch and werewolf within ten miles gathered to see what Frieda would do next.

Frieda dumped the white liquid out near the front steps of the trailer. “Let death be broken. Let life surmount.”

Her face took on a look of panic. She turned back to Betty and me. “Shit. We don’t have a death. We need a death. Betty?”

“I’ll get the roadkill.”

“No, wait.” I had a better idea. I dashed up the front steps of the trailer and found the ear.

She nodded. “Drop it in.”

I twisted the jar open. Formaldehyde fumes burned my nose. Eyes watering, I dipped my fingers into the liquid and retrieved the ear. I threw it down onto Frieda’s soup and tried not to wince as it flopped wetly into the white goo. She struck a match, dropped it and the whole thing went up like she threw lighter fluid onto a burning barbeque pit. Energy rushed past us in a soundless wave. I found myself holding my breath for no reason as I reached down for Pirate. He coughed.

“Baby dog!” I scooped him up in my arms as he hacked up a storm. Finally, he opened his eyes. “Are you all right?”

He blinked, his eyes watering. “Oh yeah, sure,” he said, his voice hoarse. “I get whacked by crazy ladies all the time.” He sneezed.

I hugged him to my chest.

“Now that’s nice. I like that,” he said, his cold nose finding my collarbone. “Anyone ever tell you how pretty you smell?”

Like roadkill and severed ears, I imagined, wiping my free hand on my ruined pants. The outfit Frieda had lent me was a total loss. Of course so was the outfit Frieda had on, I noticed, as she knelt over a coughing Ant Eater, who was still half in, half outside the trailer and holding the screened door open with her head.

Time to face the music.

“How are you?” I asked, careful to stay out of her reach.

Ant Eater hacked like a seasoned smoker and looked at me through bloodshot eyes. “They tell me you walked right through a death spell.”

I hadn’t really had time to think about it until right then. But I had. Several times if you wanted to count my trips in and out of the trailer, trying to track down the white jar to reverse the spell. “I guess it doesn’t work on me,” I said, in the understatement of the year.

Ant Eater nodded. She coughed several times, without covering her mouth. When she finished, she used the back of her hand to wipe away a clump of spit from her bottom lip. She eyed me like I’d grown four feet and gained two hundred pounds. “How about I don’t try to kill you and you don’t try to kill me?”

“Deal,” I said.

“Now get me up,” she said, struggling to sit. “And get some of the young ones in here to clean up the place. I want all my jars in my room. If I gotta live here with this pain in my ass, we might as well keep a tidy living room.” She snapped my bra and chuckled when I jumped. No way I’d ever understand Ant Eater.

“You still want me to live with you after I nearly choked you to death?” If anything good had to come out of the afternoon, I hoped I could at least end the nightmare roommate situation.

She adjusted the American flag bandana around her neck. “I don’t want your dirty undies hanging next to mine either, hot stuff. But I don’t see anyone else around here who wants to live with you while Rex is out for blood.”

“What?”

She seemed to enjoy my shock. “Yeah.” She paused for a long, hacking cough that brought tears to her eyes. “Assholes like that will zero in on a weak spot. You.” She braced her hands on her knees. “I was getting to that in the diner before your boyfriend pulled a gun on me.”

I wanted to remind her she had a shotgun pointed at my chest at the time, but I stopped myself.

She grinned and wiped her eyes on her bandana. “You might be useless, but after today, I got hope.”

“Thanks.”

“Rex won’t come round here.” She eyed her shotgun. “Mine’s bigger than his.”

I’d known we weren’t completely safe here, or anywhere, but…I glanced back at the rapidly thinning crowd. “Don’t we have a deal with the werewolves?”

Ant Eater succumbed to another coughing fit.

Frieda chewed at the corner of her unadorned lips. “For now. The fact is the alpha wants to use you to clean up around here. Rex is gunning for him hard. If you screw up, or if Rex kills you, the alpha looks weak.”