Valcour Enchanted by a Demon

Chapter 8

“Checking out of room four-oh-three, please.”

It was the morning after the events of last night, and the desk clerks had changed shifts. It wasn’t Mary who took Brianna’s room keys. Instead a young guy, younger looking than Brianna even, with pimples across his forehead and cheeks, smiled at her and checked the hotel’s computer records. “Thank you, ma’am. You’re all set. Hope everything was all right?”

Brianna took the printed paper receipt he handed her with her left hand, and hiked her duffle bag higher up her right shoulder. “Yes. Everything was fine.”

“Except for the big explosion down the street, am I right?” he said to her with an excited grin. His pale red eyebrows lifted up to his hairline, his eyes wide. “Don’t usually have that kind of excitement in Blue Earth.”

“Um, yeah,” she said. “I don’t usually have that kind of excitement in my life either.”

After escaping through the flames of the burnt-out gas station and convenience store, Jake had walked them back to her hotel room. No one they passed even looked their way once. All the attention was on the horrendous blaze and the thick black smoke roiling up from the center of their main street and the screaming fire trucks.

She was in severe pain the whole way. Her wrist throbbed. Her shoulder ached. She still couldn’t use her right arm. Her whole body was shaking. Halfway there she had to tell him to stop so she could lean over a row of low bushes and barf out the contents of her queasy stomach. But Jake held her as she did, and supported her the rest of the way back to the hotel.

In her room, he had her lay on the bed. She didn’t argue, but she did eye him with a look that made him smile and promise he wasn’t that kind of guy. That made her laugh, but then wonder if a demon could even do that sort of thing.

He laid his hands on her wrist first, just like he had done back in the convenience store. Then he did something similar to her right shoulder. Cold ice seeped through her flesh, turning her injuries numb, and then tingly. Then there was an odd crawling sensation that made her think of a hundred butterflies crawling across her skin.

Jake told her to lie still, and as she did what he asked she could slowly begin to feel her injured arms again. The sensation wasn’t scary, wasn’t painful, it was just like waking up, almost. After a short while she raised her left arm experimentally and rotated her wrist a few times. No swelling, no redness, no pain. She did the same with her right arm, flexing the shoulder, feeling no trace of the bullet that had pierced her body.

Demons might not work miracles, but Jake had done something damn close.

A voice bidding her farewell brought her out of her reverie and she smiled at the hotel clerk now with his bushy red hair as she turned to walk away. It was time to head out to the parking lot where her car waited for her. It was time to start for home again.

“Oh, Miss Maitland?” the clerk said to her suddenly. “We have a message here for you.”

Brianna stopped. She’d had enough of messages and strange things popping up out of nowhere. “A message from who?” Her stomach began to tighten.

The clerk scanned the little pink piece of paper the message had been written on. “I’m sorry, there’s no name. It came in last night and the night clerk said she didn’t want to disturb you while you were sleeping. Here.”

The fact that there wasn’t any name on the message didn’t even surprise her. She took it from him and read it quickly. Then she stuffed it in her pocket and walked away.

Brianna had changed her clothes this morning, throwing out the t-shirt from yesterday with the bullet hole torn through the shoulder. She was wearing a blue blousy shirt now, one of her better ones, and had opted for a comfortable pair of khakis. She had transferred her pocket change and thumb drive and other things from her jeans, along with the item she felt in her pocket now. She had forgotten it was even there.

As she walked distractedly out to the car, Brianna did another mental tally of her belongings. She had everything of hers from the room already packed in her duffle bag, and she’d checked the room over several times to make sure that nothing was left behind.

Her Altima waited for her in the same spot she had parked it in yesterday, near the back of the lot. She popped the trunk with the key fob and set her duffle bag in among her other suitcases and things, then closed the trunk again. It popped back open. Sometimes it stuck open like this and she had to slam it down to get it closed. There.

In the driver’s seat, she adjusted the mirror and took a quick look at herself. Yesterday, she had thought she looked much older than her twenty years. Today, the lines around her eyes were less noticeable, and there was an unidentifiable quality to her expression that she had trouble naming at first.

Then it hit her. She looked happy, which make her laugh to herself. Happy is the last thing that any normal person should be feeling when seated next to a demon.

“You ready to go?” Jake asked her from the front passenger seat.

“Almost,” she answered, adjusting the mirror back. “You ever been to New York?”

“I have. It’s been a while, but I’ve been there. Big buildings, lots of people, cops on horseback. Just like in the movies.”

She laughed, a sudden and explosive sound that made him turn and stare at her with his mouth partly open, and the way he looked made her laugh harder, and then he was laughing with her even though he couldn’t know why.

“I’m not from that part of New York,” she said to him. “I’m from rural, small-town, northern New York. Think trees and farms and highways that lead pretty much nowhere.”

“Really? Huh. Can’t wait to see it.”

She started the engine, shaking her head. When she had started out for home two days ago, this trip sucked. Her mom had died, her dad needed her help, she’d had to drop out of school almost at the end of the semester. All of that. Not to mention being inside a building when it blew up, and having demons chasing her.

But she never would have met Jake if she hadn’t been here, in this small city in Minnesota. Being with him, knowing he’d be with her for the rest of her trip, gave her a different perspective on everything

Maybe exciting things did happen to her, after all.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly remembering. She leaned back to push her hand into her hip pocket and noticed the way his eyes followed the line of her body as she did. “Down, boy.”

He smirked and tilted his head briefly to the side. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m really not.”

Her fingers caught the chain and she pulled out the gold necklace, the spiral designs catching the morning sun through the windshield. She put it on over her head now and turned it so she could look at the pendant. “I wanted to say thanks for this. It’s pretty. Is it old?”

Jake was staring at it, eyes wide and unblinking.

“Jake? Um, hello?”

His eyes flicked up at her then back at the necklace again. “Where did you get that?”

“I got it in the package you sent me, doofus. I appreciate the gift. Only wish the rest of our date hadn’t been, you know, all about running for our lives.”

“Brianna, I didn’t give you that.”

That sent a little shock through her, tingles running up her spine and settling at the base of her neck, making the hair there stand up. “What do you mean, you didn’t send it to me?”

“I didn’t send it.”

“Jake, you had to. Who else knew I was at the ho—”

The demons had. They’d been in the lobby, waiting for her and Jake. But if the demons had sent this to her, then…

“Should I, maybe, get rid of this?” she asked, holding it now like she had a snake by the tip of its tail and it might coil around and bite her at any second.

Jake stared at the necklace in silence. Then he shuddered as if he were coming out of a trance. “No. No, keep it. It’s a very old and powerful symbol among demons. It’s for protection.”

“But if you didn’t send it, then who did? I can’t see those creeps you barbecued last night wanting to send me anything to protect me.”

Jake just shrugged and settled back into his seat. “Someone must have had your best interests at heart.”

Brianna took the necklace off again and looked at it, with its heavy oval pendant swinging lazy circles on the end of the chain. She’d had the thing with her, in her pocket, all of last night, and she’d been shot, chased, and terrified. In the end of it all, she had been put in the middle of an explosion that had killed two…well, two demons.

But… she’d survived. So maybe there was something to this being her protection after all. It sure couldn’t hurt to hang onto it.

So she put it back into her pants pocket and promised herself that she’d figure it out later. Right now, she had to get them started towards home.

“So, how does this whole demon thing work, exactly?” she asked, putting the car in drive and heading for where the parking lot exited onto the highway.

“I told you, that’s—”

“Complicated.”

“—complicated,” he said at the same time as she did. They both laughed and Jake playfully pushed at her shoulder. “Well, it is.”

“Good thing we have a long drive ahead of us for you to explain it to me, then. You don’t have, like, horns or anything, do you?”

“No, no horns. That is really stereotypical of you, by the way.”

“What about a tail?” She sat and waited for traffic to go by with her signal light on.

“You want to check me for one?”

She nearly choked and pulled out quicker than she had meant to. A red pickup truck swerved to avoid her with tires squealing.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she headed north on Route 169. A few miles down the road toward Interstate ninety, she finally found her voice.

“I want you to tell me everything.”

“Everything?”

She nodded. “I think I’ve earned it, don’t you?”

He leaned back, bracing his knee up on the dash. “Yeah, I suppose you have. You’re sure? Some of this…you might not want to know.”

Brianna reached her hand out to hold his. He turned away from her but his hand held hers tightly. This wasn’t going to be easy for him. She could tell.

“Hey,” she said, watching him and the road at the same time. He looked so vulnerable right now, sitting in her car, leaning up against the window. It was just like he was any young guy with issues. “We’ll take it slow, okay? Tell me what you want to. I can wait for the rest.”

He didn’t turn away from the window but she saw the ghost of a smile. He took a deep, shaky breath, and began to talk. She knew he was holding some things back from her. But even so, it didn’t take her long to understand why he kept telling her that his life was complicated.

Complicated didn’t begin to cover it.