Chapter 17
My appointment to kill Joel isn’t for another five hours, and I am attempting to stake out my own house. It has occurred to me that I should be around in case I get a demon delivery.
I’ve left my family arguing over whether to attempt Giraffe River in conjoined tubes, Dee looking faintly tortured but resolute, Ella insisting she will almost certainly fall in and it might be too deep.
I drive slowly around the block a few times, then park.
Everything looks the same, except more beautiful; every maple tree is a declaration, oranges and reds triumphant.
Ours is drag queen flamboyant, shedding neon leaves like feathers from a boa.
The porch vine drifts a little in a breeze, waving hello.
Or maybe warning me off. Maybe screaming in a tiny viney voice: He’s in here!
He’s waiting for you in your bedroom closet! He has a machete! Run!
I shiver. I wish I had binoculars. Do they sell those at Walgreens?
Maybe not. Definitely Home Depot. But that’s twelve minutes away, and I’m already here, and what if I miss the demon in the twenty-four minutes of travel time plus, let’s say, eight minutes of shopping time?
I squint at the house. It looks expressionlessly back at me.
I text Joel: You killed a child. A good, innocent boy. He wasn’t an abomination. He was a human with a curse. You are wrong. You don’t know anything. And his blood is on your hands.
He doesn’t respond.
I throw my phone down on the passenger seat. I need to stop.
I pick it up again. My thumbs hover.
Enough, T. Just stop.
I hate you, I write.
His hand, reaching toward mine on the tabletop. The way he looked at me, his mouth that wanted to taste me. He seemed so genuinely interested; he seemed to feel the same way I did. Could that have been real?
God.
Stop.
My phone rings and I gasp. It’s the pharmacy, no doubt an update on Dee’s prescription status. I ignore it. Wait, he’s texting!
I didn’t know he was your brother, he has written, a bit belatedly. Is that real?
And then, I would never hurt Ella. You know that.
I do know that. But why should I believe him? I don’t know anything except you killed my brother.
And this is the end of our exchange. I stare at my phone for a long time while an van blocks my view of the house. Finally, it moves. Am I supposed to sit here all day? I’m hungry.
And then someone is walking purposefully up the sidewalk. I stiffen.
They turn in to the front garden and walk right up to the porch. Up the steps. A woman in a baseball cap. Carrying something.
The demon is a woman?
I shouldn’t be sexist.
I’m half out of the car when I recognize her.
Alice, in a yellow tank top, her intricate botanical and insect specimen tattoos on display.
She’s carrying her toddler, Bo. It’s Thursday morning, the time she always stops by after dropping Henry, her eldest, at a nearby class.
Which I managed, in the midst of my frantic new reality, to totally forget until this moment.
She knocks on the door.
I strain forward, ready to—what? Charge to her rescue?
She waits. She pulls out her phone and texts while holding Bo.
My phone buzzes. Where are you? WHERE IS MY COFFEE. Am I seriously supposed to get through thurs without you and your famous coffee? did you guys go to the park?
My coffee is not actually deserving of fame; Dee bought a fancy espresso machine.
I wish we had gone to the park. I stand there, three-quarters of a block away, partially hidden by a neighbor’s landscaping, and stare back into my previous, disconcertingly recent life.
The life where I could never have sex again, where I was dividing my reading time between stories of tender romance and the fourth book in a series called Alien Love Addicts, set in the distant future on a spacecraft called a Grimorthean trawler, where the crew is really horny and meets a lot of similarly inclined aliens.
A life where I was always going to be a little bit sad, but I also had a lot to be happy about.
A life where I was not in imminent danger.
Where I could have coffee with Alice. I look down at her text.
My thumbs quiver. Should I tell her to leave? What if the demon shows up?
To my horror, she plunks down on the porch bench and starts nursing Bo.
She’s on her phone.
I’m literally just chillin on your porch boobing the little boob monster. Sooooo jealous of this porch. I would trade like half my house for this.
I try to imagine what a pain demon might look like. Nothing comes immediately to mind.
I can’t go up to her—I’d have to explain why Ella isn’t with me. I’d have to explain why I look like I’m really scared. Why I’m hesitating to enter my own house. I can’t think what to text her. So I just wait.
Alice sits for a while, scrolling on her phone while Bo nurses happily away. Some people walking by do a double take at his size and her exposed breast. She gives them a friendly wave.
I wish I could walk closer. I miss Alice as I spy on her. I miss the friendship we’re supposed to have. The one where I could tell her who I really am, what I’m really going through.
She only pried a little about Joel after our run-in at the Malaysian restaurant. She’s sensitive—she could tell I didn’t want to talk.
What she couldn’t tell is just how much I do want to talk.
What she couldn’t tell is that I can’t.
I pull up Dick Face’s number, hit Call.
“This number is no longer in service,” I am told.
I almost yell in frustration but bite it off. I don’t want Alice to look up.
Crap.
Crap.
Also, crap.
I wait until she finally leaves. It takes her a minute to settle Bo in his car seat.
I see now that she’s parked pretty close to the house.
Why didn’t I notice her pull up? Maybe that happened while the van was blocking my view.
I’m apparently not very observant. I’m not the right person for a stakeout. But I’m the only one I’ve got.
By lunchtime, I’m incredibly hungry, I really have to pee, and it’s pretty clear there is no pain demon coming to save me. Or at least, not before my doctor’s appointment. So, not in time. Which is running out.
Time is running out, Joel texts evilly, ignoring the rest of my messages.
How did I miss all the signs of his evilness before?
Were there any? I think of Mr. Button purring wildly on his lap as Joel watched Ella demonstrate her part of the lumbering dance of the troll princesses that she and her friend Sinai had been practicing.
Somehow he’d managed not to laugh. But I saw the laugh he was holding in his eyes when he glanced at me.
I don’t know where my father is, I text back.
You visited him in Florida. I know you know.
He left! I’m serious. I really don’t know.
Figure it out.
How is he planning to kill me? Now that I know who he is, I should have more information about how he does it. But I don’t. I need to think. It might have something to do with the healing ability. But what?
* * *
I forgot something really basic about doctor’s appointments. Sometimes you’re already naked.
“Just change into this, please,” says the nurse, handing me a shapeless mint-green gown. She has already taken my blood pressure, which isn’t at its best at the moment. “It ties in the back. Panties and bra can stay on. The doctor will be in soon.”
I’m like a wild animal in a cage. I’m about to grab a scalpel off a tray and hide it under the paper on the exam table.
Not that there’s a scalpel just lying around.
Which is why I brought a large hunting knife.
It exceeds the legal limit for carryable blade size in the state of New Jersey (sort of a stingy state when it comes to weapons one might conceal), but I’m more focused right now on not dying than on not getting arrested.
And no one at the reception desk of the family practice office asked to search my bag, where the knife is.
I unfold it until it snaps into readiness and set it carefully on top of my packet of tissues, extra granola bars, and wallet.
My bag is on the chair next to the exam table. I can get to it quickly, if I need to.
I think of Dick Face saying demon hunters can heal themselves. Well, maybe it’ll buy me some time at least.
Should I just hold the knife behind my back?
Why am I so bad at this? Then again, why should I be good at planning a knifing?
Breathe, breathe, I tell myself. I may actually be speaking aloud, alone in the room, it’s hard to tell.
There’s a picture of a sunflower in a frame on the wall.
A computer, cabinets, a sink in a dull Formica counter—the usual stuff.
I hear footsteps and tense, standing, the gown in my hands. They pass by.
When has a doctor ever been on time?
Never.
I probably have twenty minutes. I would feel a lot better if Dee was in the waiting room, backing me up.
If anyone knew where I was. And then I can’t stop myself, I text Dee: If I’m not back in two hours send cops to .
. . I send the address. Also I love you and I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you everything.
Except it doesn’t go through.
I am stunned at the realization that I’m totally, completely alone here in the lion’s den because of central New Jersey’s random pockets of zero cell coverage.
I force myself to breathe slowly. Meditative breaths.
Then I strip quickly and put the knife on the table so I can stuff my clothes into my bag, Thinx included.
I pull the gown on and tie it loosely. I put the knife back in the bag, adjust the opening around it so it’s obscured.
I run a hand through my hair, shake off the strands that fall out and wind around my fingers.
I told the receptionist I’d forgotten my wallet and that I was having a really bad day, and it worked.
She told me to send her a photo of my ID later, once I’m home.
I didn’t even have to use the rest of the story I’d prepared, which went deep into a thing about a custody battle with a fictional ex.
I’d also prepped a statement about someone stealing my purse out of the shopping cart when I left it for a second at ShopRite, as a more detailed alternative to the simpler “forgot my wallet” narrative. . . . Maybe I overthought it.
I put my phone on the table, hop up so I’m sitting on the edge. The paper is unpleasantly thin and the vinyl on either side adheres to my skin.
Time is passing. I look at the clock again. And again.
I’ve been in the room twelve minutes . . . fifteen.
It is 4:45. It is 4:47. It is amazing how long my body can sustain this level of hyperalertness and careening fear. My palms are slick with sweat, my elbows tremble, my bones buzz. I have to pee even though I peed right before I left.
4:48.
I hear him. I would know his voice anywhere. But of course I know it here.
“Thanks, Jenna,” he’s saying. “That’s great. I’d appreciate it if you could . . .” I don’t catch the last bit. Just the warmth, the gentle timbre of it, the caring.
“Fuck you,” I whisper. I sit up straighter.
The door opens and he comes in, displacing all the air in the room, curly head down, looking at the chart in his hand.
“Ms. Jones!” he says cheerfully, looks up.
His shoulders straighten by reflex, continuing a mechanical process that doesn’t interrupt the impression that he has fallen totally still. The door closes behind him.
I stand up, sliding off the table. The linoleum tiles are cold, reptilian under my bare feet. I reach behind myself and untie the gown, fingers shaking uncontrollably. I tug on it. It falls to the floor.