Angie Fox - ADS 01 - The Accidental Demon Slayer

“Hey.” Pirate ran his cold nose along my ankle. “How ’bout you feed me? I swear I haven’t eaten in a year. And screen door doesn’t count.”

I stared down at Pirate, who spun three times and sat.

He cocked his head. “Why the face? Am I drooling? Oh geez. It’s the doggie pellets. I think of doggie pellets, I drool.”

“What?” I stammered. What are you? That didn’t sound polite. I rubbed my temples.

Get a grip .

“Why, Pirate?” Each word was a battle. “Why are you talking to me?”

“Because,” he said, mimicking my stilted tone, “I am hungry.” We stared at each other for a long time. “Now.”

“This isn’t happening,” I said. I turned back to the mirror and started shoving my hair back into place. I needed something to be normal. Anything. Even if it was something as trivial as a hairdo.

“Come on, Lizzie.” Pirate licked my leg. “Lighten up. And hey, if you don’t want to feed me that dry stuff, I’ll take the fettuccine from last week. Back of the fridge, to the left of the lettuce crisper, behind the mustard.”

Yeah, right. Instead, he got dry kibble and a fresh bowl of water. Then I set about canceling my thirtieth birthday dinner. I didn’t know what I was going to tell my friends.

Sorry, guys. I couldn’t wait to celebrate with you . Believe me. But then my long-lost biker grandma locked me in my bathroom, a demon tried to kill me and now my dog won’t stop yapping .

I dialed my friend Yvette and settled for a simple excuse instead.

“A problem with the dog?” Pirate harrumphed after I’d hung up the phone. “You owe me one.”

When Grandma finished closing the portal to hell, or wherever Xerxes had come from, she took a chair opposite me. She’d perched her reading glasses on top of her head like a tiara. Slicks of oil smeared her T-shirt and a bit of brown gunk had caught under one of her rings. She folded her hands on my sunflower-print tablecloth. “Would you like to talk about what happened?”

“Sure,” I said. She had to be kidding. “Where would you like to start? With the crazy green bars of light or with the fact that my bathroom is now glowing?”

And I didn’t mean glowing from a great cleaning job. As I spoke, a purple haze spilled out from the bathroom and into the narrow hall off my kitchen.

“A mange spell. Wards off demons, gremlins, succubi. Good against black magic too.” She flicked a small piece of I-didn’t-want-to-know from under one of her fingernails. “The black lords don’t usually recognize demon slayers so quickly after the change. And they’re never this bold.” She arched her brows as if I should nod and understand. “But there have been unusual happenings lately.”

Lovely. I wanted her to leave. I wanted to forget this whole thing ever happened.

She tsked. “If only your mother were here.”

My voice caught in my throat. “Where is my mother?” The day I was born, she’d given me up for adoption. I’d never known anything about her.

She threw me a guilty look. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you. But for now, we need to hit the road.”

“Where?” I asked, afraid to know.

“Well, we got kicked out of the coven in Westchester. I’ll let my buddy Ant Eater tell you about that one.” She chuckled to herself. “We aren’t always the best houseguests. But hell, life is short. Nothing like the freedom of the open road.”

“Open road?” I said, starting to panic a little. Okay, a lot. “I’m not like you. I get carsick, train sick, plane sick. I get dizzy watching the kids swing at Happy Hands.”

“Um-hum,” Pirate agreed. “Don’t forget the time you yarfed up your hot chocolate all over Brian Thompson’s toboggan.” Pirate studied the look on my face. “Oh, but I didn’t like him anyway. He had cats. Three cats. The brown one, I called him Thor, he had pointy teeth. And another brown one, I called him Tuna Breath—”

All the homeless dogs in the shelter that day and I had to pick the motormouth. “Pirate, level with me. What made you start talking?”

“Me? I always talk. Why’d you start listening?”

“Enough!” Grandma clamped my hands in hers. “We’re hopping on my Harley whether you like it or not. The coven’s holed up outside of Memphis right now. It’ll be a good spot to teach you. You need to learn your hexes from your horny toads. Magically speaking.”

“I need to get back to normal. I have a job, friends, a cute guy I just cancelled on.” I slipped out of her grasp and saw my French manicure had melted away.

“Holy ship anchor!” I gaped at her.

“Like I said, there’s a lot you need to know. And Xerxes will be back—with a bunch of bloodthirsty creatures. Time’s up, Lizzie. Unless you can come up with a better idea, we need to hop the hog and get out of here.”

“I don’t think so,” I said, eyeing the lumpy remains of my polish. She reached out her hands, but I wasn’t about to let her near me again. “Back off. You can’t hit town on your Harley, lock me up, introduce me to Xerxes and turn me into Lizzie the road warrior. I deserve some answers.”

She sighed. “You’re right, Lizzie. The truth is, what you did in there was…unique. I know I’ve never seen it before. Your nail polish was consumed by the demon’s vox because, frankly, most things…heck, most people would have been. You, Lizzie, are special. Whether you want to be or not.”

Not . “So most people get hit by the green thingies and they die. Instead, I pluck them out of the air and they ruin my manicure?”

“The nail polish was not of you.” She touched her fist to her heart. “This. The power you have inside. This is of you.”

“Okay…” I said, bobbing my head one too many times. “But you have”—I glanced at my glowing bathroom — “magic. You can handle a demon, right?”

Hands clasped, she leaned across the table. “I run from demons. You can kill them.”

I didn’t even like to kill June bugs.

“I know it’s a lot to swallow. That’s why you have to plant your pretty butt on my bike. Other demons will come.”

“Why can’t we leave each other alone? Live and let live?”

She shook her head. “Doesn’t work that way, Lizzie. You come from a line of powerful women. Every third generation, we are honored to produce a demon slayer. You.”

But I didn’t want to be a demon slayer.

I also didn’t want any more demons showing up in my bathroom. Or at sushi night with the girls. Or at the Happy Hands Preschool where I worked. That last thought chilled me to the core. I couldn’t imagine what would happen to my class of innocent three-year-olds. I had to stay far away from them until I could get rid of Xerxes, and anything like him, for good.

“If I come with you,” I began, “will you teach me how to get rid of any demon complications, once and for all?” I needed to learn how to have my normal life. Let Grandma have her voodoo-hoodoo. As long as I could get this thing under control enough to teach preschool.

Her bracelets dangled as she leaned toward me, resting her chin on her hands. “I will show you everything you need to know. But I’m not telling you anything else until we get to Memphis. It’s not safe.”

Not safe? Try mixing me with a Harley.

I pounded my fingers on the table until they tingled. “If I do go with you to Memphis, will you tell me what to do about Pirate?”

I followed her gaze to the Jack Russell sniffing her Smucker’s jars. “I’m here to teach you magic, Lizzie. The dog is your problem.”

“Don’t worry, Pirate,” I said, shoving a mountain of underwear into a pink plastic overnight case I’d yanked from the closet in my small, loft bedroom. “I have a plan to get us a half-dozen counties away from that Harley.”