Page 19 of Resting Witch Face
“Can I hear of this plan?” Blackman asked in a hesitant drawl.
“No,” Sissily and I said at the same time.
“I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.” His hands rose to the sides in surrender, and he leaned away from us.
“I appreciate you sharing what you suspect is going on with us, River.” Biting back my annoyance, which was wrongly aimed at him, I sagged with a sigh. “I really do. But its best for everyone at this table to stay away from me on Saturday. Whatever happens, I don’t want anyone getting in trouble or, Goddess help me, getting hurt because of me. I can deal with whatever Danika decides to do. I’m used to it.”
My best friend was grinding her teeth so hard I could hear her molars scraping, but I couldn’t get a read on Blondie. There was an expression on his face I couldn’t truly grasp, or more like I refused to. Maybe he had some misplaced hero complex and that was the reason for all this info sharing. Everything else was too messed up to take into consideration. Which gave me an idea.
“I would, however, ask you for a favor. If you don’t mind.” My gaze stayed level on River, or I would’ve missed the barely noticeable straightening of his shoulders.
“Name it, and if it’s in my power, consider it done.” He played right into it as I’d hoped.
“When it’s time for me to face the Council, I need you to take Sissily out of there.”
“Like hell you’ll push me away when you need me most,” Sissily snarled, her teeth bared at me. “Fuck you, Hazel, if you think I’ll hide while they decide your fate.”
River was watching me silently, his eyes darting over my face.
I waited.
“I don’t need your permission to do anything, by the way.” Sissily was getting angrier with each word, and venom coated every word she spoke. “And you, River.” She rounded on him, but he didn’t look away from me. “I will fry your ass to kingdom come if you get anywhere near me on Saturday. Hecate help me, I’ll kill you if it’s the last thing I do, you hear me?”
“Deal,” River said to me.
All our phones chimed at the same time, cutting off the rest of the death threats my best friend had planned to throw at Blackman. Sending a thank you to Hecate, I fished my iPhone from my purse, and adrenaline spiked in my veins when I opened the message. A rogue demon was holding humans hostage in their home. And as luck would have it, the address was not even five minutes away from the café.
What were the odds twice in two weeks for me to be the closest witch to answer the call? River and Sissily not included, of course.
“Chug-a-lug, peeps. We have a demon to kill.” Gulping my espresso in one swallow, I jumped up, slugging the purse over my shoulder.
I powerwalked to my car after I waved at Amber, worried they’d stop me from going after the rogue. Surprisingly, neither River nor Sassily said a word about me going on the hunt. My best friend was still busy enlightening River about all the ways she knew how to melt his organs if he touched her on Saturday. Blondie was too busy staring at me like I was one of the greatest mysteries of the known world.
Me?
Jittery and high on caffeine, I was shaking in my peep-toes from excitement. All the anger from hearing Danika say she didn’t give two shits about what would happen to me would have an outlet.
I was skipping on the way to the car as I imagined all the ways I was going to beat the crap out of the demon.
10
Okay, so I couldn’t really beat the shit out of the demon.
That became obvious the moment I reached the apartment door after rushing up the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor. First, the said door was leaning sideways like a drunk sailor holding onto the frame by the top hinge. Smears of something black were smudged on both sides of the hallway, and a rancid stench potent enough to peel paint off drywall wafted from the apartment. Sulfur and the heavy odor from black demon magic made the air so thick and heavy it was almost tangible.
Second, the demon had a buddy who blocked the doorway and was staring me down with red, glowing peepers. Even without the whole dramatic flair from the red eyes, it was easy to recognize what type of demon I was dealing with. The beautiful woman in front of me that belonged on the cover of a magazine rather than blocking a doorway, with murder written on her pretty face, could’ve passed for human if she wasn’t being a drama llama, but the backward hands were a dead giveaway to a witch like me. Her silky red dress clung to her body like a second skin, pushing her boobs to her chin, and her platinum hair cascaded over her shoulders like liquid silver while she pursed her lips and eyed me up and down, finding me lacking most probably.
Rakshasa demons had those backward hands to help them in hand-to-hand combat because the attacks usually came from unusual and unexpected angles, confusing their opponent until they ripped them to shreds or syphoned their soul. They also changed into animals or nightmarish monsters in a very different way from shifters. Rakshasa needed a ready body to jump into—no matter if she found it lacking or not—if they wanted to change, hence the soul sucking thing they had going on. That gave me my main priority.
I had to make sure my body was not used as a meat suit.
Blindly running into a situation was never a smart idea—there was a lesson there somewhere I was sure—but I wanted to reach the place before River and Sissily. The two witches in question were thumping up the stairs already, and I had too much suppressed anger to wait until they caught up with me. Backward hands or not, I was prepared to face a Rakshasa demon. Maybe not two of them, but one for sure. I even had a practice dummy in my basement, which I dismembered by placing the hands backward so I could train myself for this specific situation.
“It’s rude not to invite me in when I rushed to get here,” I told the demon, and the bitch smiled, a toothy grin displaying two overlapping rows of sharp teeth like a damn shark under her pouty red lips. “And I’ll need the number of your dentist. It’s hard to reach that perfection of white these days.”
“Why don’t you come closer, witch?” My palm itched to slap myself for waving my hand at her because she saw the pentagram tattoo on my forefinger.
My saving grace was the fact that I stayed away from gatherings, so only a handful could recognize me as the infamous dud of Gatekeeper’s coven. Flashing my tattoo, though, presented a big problem for me. The demon would expect magic, and would fight with it, too. Fuck a duck on a stick.
