CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The countdown til Wednesday night went excruciatingly slow. Ada was away at school during the day and I was stil on hiatus from work, even though I was starting to feel increasingly guilty about it. I hated taking advantage of the time off but I knew there was no way I’d be a reliable employee until after the cleanse, when everything would be under control. It felt like my life was on hold until then.
Fortunately, al supernatural activity around me had slowed down. Maybe Abby (or whoever/whatever it was) knew what was coming and was scared off. Or maybe she was just conserving her energy and gearing up for a showdown. Either way, the random thumps coming from the roof was the last peculiar thing that had happened and things were looking brighter. Literal y. It was like my eyes were so used to seeing shadows everywhere that everything looked fresh and clean for once.
I hadn’t talked to Maximus much and I just put my faith into whatever he was arranging, though I have to say I was a bit wary when he cal ed me late Tuesday and asked me to do a peculiar task.
“You want me to what?” I repeated into my phone.
“Get hair and nail clippings from your parents.”
I was sitting on the couch watching the news with them.
My face furrowed with disgust but they were paying me no attention.
“How...and, good God, Maximus, why?” I whispered.
“I know it sounds goofy but it is part of the banishing ritual. Just be glad you’re not charged with the task of finding dragon’s blood oil.”
“Dragon’s blood?”
At that both my parents tore their eyes away from the screen and gave me a funny look. I smiled at them weakly and excused myself to my room.
“It’s al over the place in Louisiana but I’m having a hard time finding it here.”
“I’m going to assume it’s a lot more normal than it sounds,” I said as I climbed the stairs. I paused in the hal way and with a quick peek down the stairs I quickly and quietly made my way to my parents’ bedroom and into their large, yel ow bathroom with enough light to show every pore on your face.
“And so what am I supposed to do with the…parent particles?” I asked him as my eyes roamed across the counter. I spied my mom’s hairbrush and found my dad’s in one of the drawers.
“Find a glass bottle, plastic might do, and put them in there.”
I picked up a pair of tweezers and removed the hair, holding it away from me. It was funny how hair was lovely to look at and touch when it was on your head, but the minute it was off your head it was as gross as anything.
“Mmm, you probably should have told me that before I started this,” I said with a grimace. “Where on earth I am going to get nail clippings from?”
“I guess it’s not crucial from them. The hair wil do. But we’l need the same, plus the clippings from you and Ada.
And me.”
“Is there a book tel ing you to do this?” I quickly shut off the bathroom light and soundlessly scampered back to my room before I was caught, hair stil in my hand.
“I’m certainly not making it up off the top of my head,” he answered. “Do you have a bel ?”
“A bel ?” A recal ed sound of the bel from my dreams echoed in my mind.
“Yes. You know. Ring-a-ding, darling.”
“I know what a bel is. Why do we need one?”
“Why do we need holy water? We just do. If you can’t find one they said we can substitute with an iPod.”
I laughed. “So we need holy water and dragon’s blood, but if a friggin’ bel is hard to find, wel then we can just use an iPod.”
“That’s the way it is.”
“I guess so.”
“See you tomorrow, Perry. Get a good sleep.”
“Good luck with the dragon. You’l probably need a real y large needle,” I told him and hung up.
The next evening Ada and I were sitting in my room and flipping through the book on demonology plus a few she checked out herself from the school library. They were mainly witchcraft books, nothing too serious for a public school, but it was nice to know she was taking this as seriously as the rest of us.
“Holy hel ,” she said as she paused on a certain page.
“Ada,” I warned, feeling extra touchy about mentions of anything holy. I peered at the book. It was a real y old, detailed black and white drawing of some pretty despicable creatures in revolting positions. The fact that I was viewing the artwork upside down and it stil made sense spoke volumes about the depravity.
She looked up at me with a pained face. “These artists were fucked.”
“It’s what they believed,” I said.
“Could you imagine if it’s what they saw?”
It was my turn to look pained. “I don’t want to think about it.”
She watched me careful y with her big blue eyes. Final y, she said, “Do you think this is what’s going on with you? I mean, real y?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maximus doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, he says it’s rarely the case and if this was somehow…demon-related…we would definitely know about it. I mean, look at everything that has been happening. It seems to be a ghost and it seems to be centered around me. Aside from the pig, it’s always been about me.”
“And yet you got this book out.”
I looked down at my nails. The coral polish was al chipped off and they looked normal again. “I just have a funny feeling. Down here.” I put my hand on my gut. Then I put it to my head. “And here.”
She nodded attentively. “I think you’re awesome for trusting your instincts. You’l probably be wrong. But I don’t think being extra careful wil be a bad thing.”
I
remembered
Maximus’s
warnings
about
the
dangerousness of doing exorcisms to people who weren’t possessed. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Soon my parents were at my door, coming in just as Ada hid the books underneath the pil ow. They looked nice and fancy. My dad was actual y wearing a suit, even though the navy jacket was stretched too tightly against his ever-burgeoning bel y, and my mom was flawless as usual in a lavender shift dress and black pearls.
“Ada, you need to leave your sister alone,” my mom chided her. “Go on, shoo.”
“I’m being picked up by Rachel in ten minutes,” she lied with a toothy smile.
“Al right,” mom said to her, then focused her pale eyes on me. “Have a good time, Perry. Don’t burn down the kitchen. Whatever you do.”
“And no funny business,” my dad said sternly, to which my mother smacked him on the arm. “What, you said it first.”
They left the room, with my mother cal ing out, “We’l let you know when we’re on our way back. Nine-thirty at the very latest!”
After they left and we were safe, I looked at Ada. With Maximus arriving at 6:30, it didn’t give me as much time as I hoped.
“I hope they don’t come home when we’re in the middle of it, cuz that would be awkward.”
“Then your ginger boy better know how to do a quick cleansing…” she said wryly.
I had a feeling that he wasn’t sure how to even do a cleansing in general. Oh wel , there was no point in dwel ing on it. We were al green when it came to this side of things and had no choice but to wing it.
At 6:30 Maximus came rol ing into the driveway in his snazzy truck, coming up to the front door armed with a dozen bags. The scratches on his face were somehow uglier and clotted black red.
“Do we need al this stuff?” I asked as I opened the door and welcomed him in.
“Unfortunately,” he said, and stooped down to give me a quick peck on the cheek. He looked behind me at Ada, who was giving him the staredown.
“Ew, what happened to your face!” she said.
He smiled and stroked his cheek fondly. “Wildcat.”
I blushed, then shot her a look of my own, internal y warning her to behave, and a wave of resignation flooded her face.
“Oh. Wel , we’re glad you could make it,” she said with reluctance.
“Why thank you, blondie,” he said. He held out one of the bags for her.
“You can be in charge of the cleansing material.”
She took it hesitantly and peeked inside while he turned to me. “Do you have the Witch Bottle? Have you created a permanent home for it yet?”
“Say what?” Ada said, but I understood what he was asking. I quickly ran up the stairs to my room to fetch the bottle from my nightstand. As he had asked, it was a glass bottle and the hair from my family members’ heads, plus mine and Ada’s nail clippings were resting at the bottom. It looked like a gruesome rat’s nest of black and blonde hair.
I brought it back down to the kitchen where they now were, lifting items out of the bags and spreading it out on the island countertop.
“Here you go,” I said, handing it to him. We al winced at the bottle in unison.
“Lovely,” he said. “And the home?”
I told him I dug a hole in the back yard where we could bury it and no one would be the wiser, unless my parents decided to put in an in-ground pool one day.
“Yeah right, a pool. Dad’s salary ain’t what it used to be,”
Ada said under her breath.
Nothing’s as it used to be, I thought.