“Yes.”
Her expression morphed into one of determination. She nodded, told me to go to the bathroom and wait for her there.
“I’ll be right here. Don’t get into trouble for this. I can come up with all kinds of reasons to be lost in the wrong area of the building.”
She hurried off. I thought about using the facilities since it was so close, but not knowing how long she’d be, I decided to hold it.
“Ready?” she asked about thirty seconds later.
I nodded. She quickly led me down one hall and then another, and I no longer thought I would need to make up an excuse that I got lost. I really was lost. My sense of direction was like my sense of moderation. Nonexistent.
“In here,” she said, slipping inside a darkened room.
There were six beds total, and three of them were occupied.
“There,” she said, pointing, but she needn’t have bothered. I spotted her brother the second we stepped inside the room.
We walked quietly toward him, but before we got to his bed, he sat up and looked at us. At me. And my fears were confirmed.
A demon sat inside him. Twelve feet tall even though the boy was no taller than five. But as Reyes had said, the rules of this world did not apply. It fit. Somehow the demon, all black scales and razor-sharp teeth, fit into his small body. They always fit. Fuckers.
I sat on the cot beside him, but the boy only stared at me, his gaze empty. He had the same incredible eye color as his sister, his large irises smoky and shimmering and feverishly bright.
“Hugo, what’s wrong?” Malaya asked her brother.
“You’re right, love,” I said to her. I took her hand into mine. “He has the curse, but I can get it out of him.”
She threw her free hand over her mouth.
“You’ll have to trust me, okay?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to talk to the curse inside him. Whatever I say, and I might be mean, is not meant for your brother.” I looked back at Hugo, at the demon inside him, and placed her hand on her lap. She sat on the next cot over, gripping the edge of the mattress, her knuckles white. He was probably the only real family she had.
“You are not being very nice, are you?” I asked the creature.
One corner of the boy’s mouth slid up.
I shifted a little farther onto the otherworld.
“I can snap its neck,” it said through the boy, but it was speaking Aramaic. Though Malaya had no idea what he said, I felt her still.
I spoke back in the same language. “Leave now and never come back, and perhaps I’ll let you live.”
“You leave,” it said as though this were a game. “And perhaps we’ll let you live. Though I wouldn’t count on it.” It wasn’t stupid like most of them. It knew the moment it left the protection of the boy’s body it wouldn’t stand a chance. I hadn’t actually expected it to. I just took the opportunity to lower my hand toward the ground and wait until Artemis rose up into it.
She scurried under the bed and took up position. She’d bared her teeth, yet stood completely silent behind him, ready to attack. The boy tilted his head, wondering what I was up to, when I froze time and nodded. Artemis jumped through the boy’s chest and dragged out the demon.
It was frozen in time at first, stiff and incoherent as it oozed out into the open, but the second my light hit its skin, it snapped to the current time zone and started to shriek and writhe in her jaws. It bucked and lunged forward to bite me, its teeth like rows of needles, razor sharp and deadly. It missed. Then it threw its massive head back, bending its spine so far I could hear it crack. Or that could have been Artemis’s bite.
“Why?” I asked it.
It had started to dissolve. To dissipate. To scatter into thin air.
“Why would you do this?”
With one last effort, it looked at me again and said, “To live while we wait. There are so many more in the shadows.”
“What?” I asked, but it lost its hold and evaporated like ashes on the wind. “Wait for what?”
Time bounced back, slamming into me, the noise deafening for a split second before the world settled around me.
“Hugo?” Malaya said. “Are you okay?”
He blinked and shook his head. “I already told you I’m okay. You worry too much.”
She glanced at me expectantly.
I nodded. “He’ll be fine. It’s gone.”
A dimple appeared on one cheek. “Really?”
“Really.”
She jumped forward and hugged her brother. He patted her head, not sure what to do and probably a little grossed out. I got the feeling they didn’t hug much, but what siblings did?
I gave Artemis a quick attagirl, then she launched off my legs like a torpedo—that was so going to bruise—and disappeared through a wall.
“What are you doing in here?”
We turned to see Florence walking toward us. And Flo was not happy.
“I wanted to introduce her to Hugo,” Malaya said.
“I’m sorry.” I stood to leave. “She didn’t mean any harm.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Davidson.” She relaxed and turned to the boy. “Hugo is very special.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked.
He grinned from ear to ear. “I’m an inventor. I’m going to invent a tiny machine you can carry in your pocket that turns salt water into drinking water so when global warming melts all the ice, we can still drink the water that we’re swimming in. You know, so we don’t die of thirst.”
“And he’ll do it, too,” Ms. Rizzo said.
“I have no doubt,” I said.
I told Ms. Rizzo and eventually the home’s director that I’d found Heather and she was on her way back. They would’ve had to call the police even if Heather came back on her own accord because they’d already reported her missing, so I called Uncle Bob instead. I could explain what happened, and he could make sure no charges were filed against her. But he was out on an investigation, so they had to call in an officer.
Then I called Heather and Pari and gave them the news. The curse was gone and would not be back. I thought she would cry. Pari, not Heather.
Pari brought her back to the home, and I spent the next hour explaining to the responding officer about the curse and how Heather believed she had it and was going to die if she didn’t run away. He laughed it off like I knew he would and said that once he filed the report and he took her off the missing persons list, he didn’t think there would be any further questions.