Chapter 15
Militant atheism is a form of religious fanaticism. Discuss.
And discuss they did. Although, discuss was too kind a word for what was unfolding under Effie’s tweet and in her mentions.
The replies, of which she’d received over a hundred in under half an hour, had devolved into an outright flame war, a cesspool of name-calling and verbal abuse, cyberlibel and threats.
People, whether they agreed with the post or not, were mad.
Big mad. Effie personally didn’t give two shits what people believed, but the topic of religion was infamously divisive, and when pot stirring was the goal, it tended to do the trick.
Perhaps it was low-hanging fruit, but as long as Effie got credit for picking it, she’d take the win.
Work smarter, not harder. No one had told her she had to be artful about how she went about sowing the seeds of discord on the interwebs.
A sharp knock sounded at the door, making her start. She set her phone down on the bedside table and crossed the room to answer the door. Finn stood on the other side of it, looking relieved to see her.
“Good. You’re here.” He sailed through the door, and it was then she noticed the car seat in his hand, Bea strapped inside it burbling happily and gumming her fist.
“Is everything all right?” she asked cautiously, shutting the door and leaning against it.
He had set Bea’s car seat down on the floor and was sliding off the backpack slung over his shoulder. “Georgia’s playing Auburn today.”
She stared at him blankly.
“Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry,” he said, by way of explanation.
“I’m sorry. Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry?” She scoffed out a laugh. “Wouldn’t that be—”
He quelled her with a look. “College football, sweetheart. It’s the name of the rivalry game between Georgia and Auburn.”
The endearment made her feel warm all over. “Okay, well, that still doesn’t explain why you’re here. Not that I’m complaining,” she said, joining him in the middle of the room. “I just thought we were meeting up this afternoon.”
With a bone-deep sigh, he set his hands on his hips and dipped his head.
“Grace is in Savannah visiting her sister. It’s her birthday.
Her sister, not Grace. She mentioned it a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t realize it was the same day as the game.
Luella’s not home, and she’s not answering her phone.
Monty and Chrissy are in Auburn for the game.
Everyone else is going to be at the bar.
” The longer he spoke, the more strained his voice grew.
He began to pace the length of the room, from the dresser to the window and back again.
“It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation, and I can’t call out.
It’d be a—fuck, it’d be a mess if I did.
” He stopped pacing and looked at her. “I need someone to watch Bea.”
“So you brought her here? To the inn? To—” She looked at Bea, still chewing happily on her fist, and then at Finn, who was staring imploringly at her, connecting the dots. He couldn’t be suggesting that she…No. No way. “You don’t mean…”
“I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate.”
She considered herself an expert on desperation, having encountered her fair share of desperate people. Amazingly, none of them had ever asked her to mind their children for them.
“You cannot seriously want me to watch your child, Finn.”
He gave her a puzzled look. “Why not?”
She choked on a disbelieving laugh. “Oh, I don’t know, let’s count the reasons together.” She held up a finger, claw protracted. “I’m a demon, for one. No soul here.” She put another finger up. “I don’t know the first thing about taking care of an infant.”
He arched a single brow and crossed his arms. Today’s Henley was burgundy, and it brought out the flecks of green in his left eye. “You told me you had cousins with kids and that you had younger siblings.”
Yesterday, Finn had asked her all about their family trees, traditions, what sorts of holidays they had celebrated, both of them needing a reprieve from the heavy.
Amazing how that was the part of what she’d just said that he chose to focus on.
“Yes, but that was five centuries ago.” And though her experience with toddlers and older children was far greater, her experience with actual babies was limited.
A dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think babies have changed much. I think it’s always been eat, sleep, poop, repeat.”
So not the point. “You’re ignoring the fact that I have…” She let the glamour she wore partially fade and pointed to the horns now visible on the top of her head. “Demon now, remember?”
Finn gave a long-suffering sigh. “Are you going to do anything to hurt Bea or put her in harm’s way?”
She stumbled a step back, her mouth falling open. She was appalled that he would ask her that. “Of course not.”
He had the audacity to roll his eyes. “I didn’t think so. You brought up the demon thing, not me.”
He made it sound like a condition. Arthritis. Irritable bowel syndrome. The demon thing. “I could still corrupt her.”
Finn reached out and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Bea is six months old. I’m not entirely sure she even understands object permanence yet.”
Oh, please. Like that would ever stop a demon from trying. “Everyone knows corruption is best started early, when minds are malleable.”
“She’s still got a soft spot on the top of her head, so yeah, I’d call that pretty malleable.” He smiled like he found this all very amusing. “Corrupt away. Tell me—what are you going to do first, teach her how to cheat at peekaboo?”
Effie gave him a flat stare.
“Look.” Finn’s thumbs swept over the stretch of skin below her collarbones where the shoulder straps of her corset top were thin, the square neckline low, velvet clinging to her body. “If you really don’t want to watch Bea, I guess I could bring her with me.”
She gave his chest a weak shove, then cursed herself for it when he took a half step back, his arms falling to his sides.
She’d liked the feeling of his hands on her bare skin, how big they were, big like the rest of him, his calluses rough but his touch gentle.
She liked it too much, if she was being honest.
“Be real. A crowded bar is no place for a baby. And I never said I didn’t want to watch her, I just…
wasn’t expecting it. I didn’t think that you…
” She huffed softly, squirming under his questioning stare.
“I was surprised you’d ask, okay? That you’d want me to watch her.
That you’d—” She swallowed, words stuck in her throat.
“You know.” She flapped a hand uselessly, wishing for once that he could read her mind.
“Trust me. Demons aren’t usually the first choice for babysitters. ”
“Effie,” he said, voice quiet, plaintive, his expression achingly soft, practically tender. “Desperate or not, I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t trust you.”
She knew that, but hearing him say it was different, made a knot of tension she hadn’t even realized she was carrying unspool inside her chest.
“I still don’t have a clue what I’m doing,” she said. “But all right. I’ll watch her.”
Finn bowed his head, his shoulders slumping in relief.
“Thank you. It should only be for a few hours. And everything she needs is in the bag.” He walked over to the backpack he’d brought along and set it on the foot of the bed, unzipping it.
“Diapers, wipes, changing pad…” He dug around.
“There’s an extra outfit in case of spills or blowouts, another pair of socks if she gets cold…
I fed her right before we left the house, so she shouldn’t need a bottle until around one, and—let me give you my number. ”
She grabbed her phone off the bedside table and copied Finn’s number into her contacts as he rattled it off, firing him a quick text so he would have hers, too.
“You’re going to be just fine,” he said.
“—and P is for poltergeist. Which is not the same thing as a ghost, Beatrix. Poltergeists are what? Poltergeists are noisy,” she said in a singsong voice, and patted Bea’s chubby little hands together.
Bea gurgled cheerfully, spit bubbles bursting between the bow of her lips. She was resting comfortably in the middle of the bed, surrounded by a moat of pillows.
“Q is for…hmm. Let’s skip Q for now. R is for…well, we have options. It could be for revenant, or we could go with rusalka. S is for seelie folk and selkies and sirens.”
Curled at Bea’s feet, her belly bulging from a meal Effie did not want the details of, Nessie lifted her head and gave a sleepy-sounding hiss.
“S is also for serpents, infernal and otherwise,” she said, pacifying Nessie. “T is for trolls. U is for—”
Her phone rang, the volume turned all the way up in case Finn needed to reach her. She stretched across the bed, plucking it off the nightstand, going cold at the sight of not Finn’s name on the screen, but Belphegor’s.
“Shit.” She winced sharply, eyes darting to Bea, who was none the wiser.
Aside from telling Finn, and later Martha and the other ladies, that she was engaged and then telling Finn she was in an open relationship, she hadn’t really thought about Belphegor.
Because she’d had other things on her mind.
Big, of-the-moment, in-her-face things that took up all her focus, all her brain space.