Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
“Foul one,” I murmured, my blood thundering in my ears. “Why do you plague this daughter of Abraham?” I’d heard these words so many times I knew exactly what to say—just not, apparently, how to say it.
Because unlike Mordechai’s gently reproving recitation of recognition and rebuke, my question was spoken almost like a sneer, heavy with both disgust and a hint of glee.
It sounded awful, even to me. No wonder the rabbi never let me speak when he conducted his solemn ceremony.
No wonder he seemed angry every time I tried.
Still, I continued, mockery slicing sharp. Words Mordechai would never say, but that I couldn’t help but speak. “How far you’ve fallen, to choose such weary chattel as this? She’s disgusting; you should do better.”
Behind me, Mrs. Klein gasped, but in that moment I loathed the wretched old woman cowering in front of me far more than the demon infesting her.
Iris. Poor, pitiful Iris. She was weak and frail and pointless.
Revulsion shuddered through me at her smell and at the sticky fluids that bubbled out of her, her rheumy eyes and swollen knuckles—
I shook myself, hard. What was my deal?
But I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop. I would pry this weak and stupid human open and get at the creature inside her if it was the last thing I did.
“What is your name?” I growled, trying to keep my voice low, trying to focus on the demon, only the demon, and not the woman it inhabited.
Iris, of course, heard me plainly. Or whatever was inside her did.
She froze like a rabbit against that stained wallpaper. Her heart thudded so hard beneath her thin ribs that I could hear it plainly, but I drowned out that sound with my own twisting, sneering abuse.
“Do you know what I’ll do to you for making me wait?” I hissed. “I’ll stretch you wide, rip you apart, turn your moments into lifetimes of agony—and you’ll thank me for it before the end.”
The old woman shuddered, and her breath became a shallow, guttural huffing as I continued, never letting up.
Her fingers dug into the wall, her sobs rasped out.
But she didn’t speak. Seconds lengthened and warped, taking on a life of their own.
My words blurred into snarls I couldn’t even understand anymore—until, at last, something inside Iris shattered, pushing the darkness within her over the edge.
With excruciating slowness, she turned her head around to face me even though her chest was still pressed tight to the wall. The eye-popping display of flexibility was one I’d never gotten used to, no matter how many contorted bodies I’d seen.
Iris’s eyes were wild now, the pupils huge and black. Her face remolded, unnaturally smooth as her skin stretched over the harsh edges of her bones and sank into the hollows of her cheeks. In that moment, it was as if she had lost fifty years—or gained five hundred.
She screamed something at me then, a howl of rage that burst apart like rats flying out of a hole. A name—the demon’s name. It scraped across my mind like something half-remembered, forbidden. A name I knew, somewhere deep inside me. A name I recognized.
“Mammon,” she gasped.
Mammon. Of course.
Thick pleasure swelled up, and I reached out to the wall blindly, steadying myself as I leaned against it, my knees suddenly unreliable.
But the moment passed as Iris turned the rest of the way to face me.
Clarity returned, and slowly, steadily, I advanced against the stench, even as snot rained from her nostrils and vomit spilled from her mouth—vomit that was half bile, half blood—and—
I finally reached the woman and put my hands on her shoulders, shaking her hard enough that her gaze snapped back to mine, her eyes liquid as the demon stood naked and writhing within the withered husk of her body.
Gripping a shoulder that was little more than a stick and ball, I moved my other hand up to Iris’s forehead and plastered it there, ignoring the sweat, the sticky fluid oozing down her chin.
“Leave this daughter of Abraham, Mammon,” I snapped. Not as Mordechai’s typical gentle suggestion, but as an order. A command. “Leave her and do not return. Else, I will hunt you without ceasing, and you shall never know a moment’s rest.”
Iris seized, vibrating violently in my grasp, and a chill ran through me. This shouldn’t be working this fast. Mordechai never connected so harshly, so quickly…
But I can.
Iris’s body slammed against the wall hard enough that I heard something crack like dusty crockery.
She lifted her left arm, and it seemed to swell with putrid sickness, turning purple with the weight of rot and fever.
Then her wrist bulged, and her hand snapped to the right at an awkward angle, the sound of a bone breaking as she screamed, her fingers splaying wide.
A cold wave rushed through and past me, leaving my skin icy.
I didn’t feel afraid, though. For a moment, I felt glorious.
The moment Mammon left Iris, an electric pleasure coursed through me—not just satisfaction, but something deeper, more intimate.
A spinning whump of power that stretched out in all directions.
I had battled evil, and I had won, and nothing—nothing—could stop me anymore.
Nothing could stop…us.
The thought came clear and strong, and for once, I didn’t fight it. We had won. Together.
Magnificent, the voice whispered, and there was something almost reverent in it. Something that made my skin prickle with awareness. You were magnificent, Delia.
My name in that voice did something to me I didn’t want to examine too closely. Made me feel seen in a way that was both thrilling and deeply, deeply wrong.
Then my brain came back online, and I remembered where I was.
A bone-shaking wave of panic flashed through me, icy nausea freezing all my thoughts, the disorientation so overwhelming that I jerked with real surprise as Iris fell forward into my arms.
Blood and vomit stained her chin, the front of her dress, the floor, even me. I staggered backward, hugging her awkwardly.
She looked, for the first time, like any old lady who’d lost her balance, as light and insubstantial as dried leaves. Her left hand bled, and her wrist looked dislocated. I reached down and popped it into place again, shocked at my calm efficiency. How did I—?
It didn’t matter. Iris swung her gaze to meet mine, eyes wide and confused. The old woman appeared unharmed.
The stench and the bugs were completely gone.
Mrs. Klein rushed up. I couldn’t understand her words as she gathered her sister close, helping Iris to the bed. Her grief billowed out from her in waves, like stiff laundry in a hot breeze, but she’d been happy, too, once. Satisfied.
I had to get out of this room.
I stumbled into the hallway, aiming for the front door. Desperate for the ringing in my brain to stop, I lurched down the too-long hallway, not seeming to gain any ground until—finally—I reached the doily-covered living room. I shivered, unfathomably cold, and glanced at the grandfather clock.
Then blinked.
Only thirty minutes had passed?
Impossible.
Mordechai’s exorcisms typically lasted hours, sometimes days. I was used to that. Did I really think I had been able to, ah, expel a demon alone in just a few minutes?
Behind me, Mrs. Klein called out something, and I jumped.
I was doing this all wrong! Mordechai would have stayed back in that room to comfort the sisters.
He would’ve helped them understand what had happened.
He would’ve prayed with them, spoken more psalms, and blessed their house, then left with words of reassurance.
Hope. Forgiveness, if that was what they needed, which many seemed to.
Words, words, and more words would flow from him to fill all the empty spaces completely, clearing away the darkness, making everything fresh and new. And safe. Above all, safe.
Nothing is ever safe.
As I blinked around Mrs. Klein’s living room, clarity hit me like a thunderclap.
What was I even doing here?
Panic surged, clawing up my throat. Today was Thursday, not Friday. I wasn’t supposed to meet Mordechai until tomorrow. Tomorrow!
I knew the truth, of course, knew it as much as I knew that my shirt was flecked with vomit and blood, my hands wet with another woman’s tears.
I’d come here by myself intentionally. Deliberately.
I had known Mordechai wouldn’t be here. Yet still I’d come. I’d done the one thing he’d instructed me never, ever to do. I’d confronted darkness without him.
What had I been thinking?
Somehow, I made it to the other side of the living room. I stumbled into the front door, then stepped back, jerking my glance to the side as I tracked a sudden movement there. A decorative mirror hung on the wall, and my gaze raked across it for barely a second.
Only a second.
But a second was all I’d ever needed.
My breath stopped as something else looked back at me from the glass. Not my reflection—though that was there too, pale and shaken. But behind it. Through it. Like there was another face superimposed over mine...
A face of knife-twisting beauty.
Dark eyes gleamed beneath a lush fall of hair that seemed to move with a life of its own, catching light that shouldn’t exist in the dim hallway. Winged brows arched in something between amusement and assessment. A smirk both brutal and sly curved lips that promised torment...
And rapture.
And death.
The face was masculine—distinctly, devastatingly so—but not quite human. Too perfect. Too sharp. Like an artist had sculpted the ideal of male beauty and then added just enough wrongness to make it dangerous.
As I stared, the eyes narrowed. They weren’t cruel, exactly. But they weren’t kind, either. They were interested. Curious. As if I were a puzzle it had been working on for a very long time, and it had finally figured out the solution.
Hello, Delia, it whispered, and I felt the words slide across my skin. You were so very good today.
My mouth went dry. Not from fear, but from something that felt disturbingly like recognition.
As if I’d been waiting my whole life to be seen by those eyes.
“No,” I whispered.
The thing in the mirror smiled.
Yes.
Heat curled through me, thick and full. I should be terrified, some tiny part of my brain realized. I should run. This face in the mirror, this voice, was a mirage of lies and bullshit and I knew—knew!—I was out of my league.
Instead, I found myself leaning closer to the glass, and finally a spindly strength welled up from somewhere even deeper than the voice that plagued me. Words flickered within me; old words, my words.
“As wax melts before the fire,” I whispered thickly. “So the wicked perish at the presence of God.”
The ebony eyes went flat. Quick as a heartbeat, the monster’s beautiful, sculpted lips twisted into a sickening snarl.
Fury cracked his face, revealing a boiling scramble of worms and viscera beneath the now-puckering skin.
As I stared, unable to breathe—to move—to think, a violent spew of bone-splintering rage ripped through me, shattering the heat and leaving only spine-freezing terror behind.
“No!” I gasped, wheeling away from the mirror as if it were going to explode off the wall at me.
I spun and slammed my back against the front door, my eyes going wide as I took in Mrs. Klein standing in the center of the room, her powder-white fingers clutching something that looked almost familiar…
I swiped my hand awkwardly at my hoodie pocket, but there was no phone there, of course. My phone was in Mrs. Klein’s hand. I’d dropped it—where? Probably in the hallway.
“Your phone, dear,” she said, her lips trembling as she tried to form a smile. She stared at me, and I stared back, neither of us able to make any more words come, and nothing but the soft, wracking sobs of Iris in the back filling the air between us.
I’d failed this poor woman, I realized. Here I’d done everything I could to save her sister, and the result wasn’t joy, or gratitude, or even relief.
It was fear.
Mrs. Klein was afraid of me.
And…she probably should be.
I blew out a long breath and took my phone from her, careful not to look anywhere but at her, then at the front door. I shoved the phone in my pocket and left.