Chapter 14
Zhen
I probably looked ridiculous, but I had one of Meemaw’s warded large bags on my hand. Inverted, so my hand technically held the outer part. My thought was that if I saw the doll, I’d leap on it and grab the head, and the three-foot-long bag would drape all around it. Kind of like a snare trap.
Assuming my reflexes were faster than a possessed doll’s. Jury was out on that one.
Unlike what novels claimed, I couldn’t “see” demonic energy, so there was no trail in the air for me to follow. More the pity.
However, I did have a huodou pack very anxious about the threat to their human.
Qian had popped out of a shadow—I may or may not have jumped out of my skin—and offered to help search the room.
Out of all the huodou, he was the sensible choice.
Smaller than the rest at about the size of a mastiff, he could fit between the narrow aisles of luggage better, a dark shadow on the hunt.
Jo Jo was in another aisle, carefully opening up baggage and peeking in.
Pretty obvious at a glance if it was the right suitcase or not because if there was other stuff in there?
Not ours. According to the reports, Annabelle had taken up an entire suitcase.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t see the ward without opening the bag.
There had been a lock around the outside, sure, but the ward had to be encased, otherwise no one would be able to pick up the suitcase or handle it.
I understood why, but it felt a lot like trying to diffuse a bomb I had to find first.
And these were all the flights from New York, so…where was this damn bag?
I heard a zipper from the next aisle over and then a long pause.
My head came up, hopeful. “You find our bogeyman?”
“Bro, if I found Annabelle, I’d be crying like a little girl right now. No, this is…” He paused. “There’s a toilet seat in here.”
I trusted Jo Jo not to prank me right now about as much as I trusted voices coming from the dark.
My silence must have conveyed as much, because he made a protesting noise. “I’m seriously not making this up, there’s a legit toilet seat in here.”
Still not believing him, I shuffled over to his aisle, catching his baffled expression, and leaned in for a peek.
And found a perfectly normal toilet seat sitting inside the suitcase. Bubble wrapped, to boot. “Uh…belonged to a germophobe, I guess?”
“Wouldn’t that be, like, almost impossible to use? You’d have to uninstall and reinstall a seat every time you wanted to go potty. What if you cut it too close?”
“I mean, it’s in the luggage, you can’t even use it in an airport or on the flight, so…”
We exchanged confuzzled looks.
“I feel sorry for TSA people right now,” I muttered, still caught on this toilet seat.
“We should buy them drinks later. I thought my job was hard, but they have to people.”
“Peopling is harder than demon hunting. For sure.” I shrugged. “All right, back to hunting for a demon. Which is arguably scarier than a toilet seat.”
“Can’t believe they threw a demon into a goddamn suitcase,” Jo Jo muttered as he searched.
“What would you have put it in?”
“A lead-lined coffin. Then dumped it in the ocean.”
“Well, that’s because you’re sensible.”
“Bite your tongue. Neither of us are sensible.”
“’Cause we’re actively in a closed-off room looking for the, arguably, scariest demon-possessed doll in existence?”
“Exactly.”
“I can’t argue.” I looked down at Qian. “Any luck?”
“The scent is very strong,” he answered, lion-like snout wrinkling up and flaring. “It was here for some time. There’s no clear trail now.”
Well, shit. There went my awesome cheat. I couldn’t blame Qian, though, this was a bad situation all around.
We kept working our way through suitcases. The sound of zippers being unzipped and rezipped filled the air. Qian stalked at my side, ready to spring, but there was nothing to spring at.
I went back to my row and got to the end, then looked through the ones on the endcap. Still nothing. “Jo Jo, what about the third row?”
“Went through those,” he said, emerging from the shelving. “What about the shelves behind you?”
“Nope, I went through those.”
We stopped. Stared at each other. Then I let out a sound of pure dismay. “Oh god, please don’t tell me it escaped this room at some point.”
“It must have. Could be why Qian’s nose can’t pick up on it, either, because the actual source isn’t here anymore.
This is all residual energy the doll left behind.
I didn’t even find an empty suitcase. You?
” I shook my head, and Jo Jo slapped at his thigh, frustration filling his face.
“Shit, this whole case just went to hell in a hand basket. Is the doll even still in the airport?”
“I saw an energy trail coming into this room,” Qian informed me. “Let me follow it. The trail may have actually been the energy of the doll leaving and I read it wrong.”
“Go for it, buddy.”
In a flash, he vanished into a shadow.
“If the doll’s not in this airport, we’re up shit creek with no boat, much less no paddle,” Jo Jo growled, staring about in frustration. “We’ll have no easy way to cage the demon, and no idea of where it’s gone.”
“Unless the huodou can pick up the scent. But they’ll only be able to track it. It’ll be up to us to hunt the demon down and cage it again.”
Jo Jo’s head flopped back as he groaned. “I really hate this.”
“It’s not sparking joy for me, either.”
No point staying in this room, so I handed Meemaw’s bag back to Jo Jo and left the room altogether. I met Kris’s eyes and shook my head, telling the security guards as I passed, “No point staying here, guys. The doll’s not in there anymore.”
The guards went still, like their brains refused to compute and they were praying their ears had chosen to have an auditory hallucination. I, too, wished this was all a vivid hallucination. In fact, I’d pay good money for it to be a bad dream.
Dad jogged in as the guards processed my words. He looked hopeful for a full second until he realized I had nothing in my hands. Then his hope turned into outright dismay.
“How bad is it?”
“Well, on a scale of one to ten, one being Kris is feeding things she shouldn’t—”
“Hey!” my wife protested.
“—ten being zombie apocalypse started ten minutes ago and we just now realized, I’d say we’re somewhere at a nine-point-five.”
Jo Jo moved to stand next to me. “In other words, Annabelle’s not in that room.”
Then my father, known for his patience in wild situations, started swearing. He wound down with, “God fucking damn, of all the things to happen in my city! Zhen, you know you can’t hunt this thing down alone, right?”
“Hey! I’m not that stupid.”
I received a lot of judgmental looks, not only from my father but also my best friend and my wife.
Seriously, hurtful. “I do not appreciate these looks I’m getting.
I do have a modicum of common sense, and it does choose to come online sometimes!
Even I don’t want to mess with something the Catholic church has to bless once a week! ”
Hunting Annabelle alone was suicidal. Even hunting it down with me, Dad, and Jo Jo felt suicidal.
I didn’t know what this entity was capable of.
No one really did, in a way, because it had never completely let loose before.
Plus, Christian demons were way, way outside my expertise.
I’d helped hunt them down before, but I’d never sealed them or landed the killing blow. Not my skill set.
Hmm. “How many friends does it take to capture a demon-possessed doll?”
“This sounds like one of those terrible how-many-dogs-does-it-take-to-change-a-lightbulb jokes,” Kris groaned.
“Better question: How many people can you call in on short notice? That’s your hunting party.
You absolutely do not want to give the demon any time, especially in Demonbreun.
What if it trips over a ley line and starts using the line’s power to boost its own? ”
If not for Kris gripping my hand, the surge in the bond likely would’ve knocked me on my ass. As it was, my knees buckled a little from the pain.
“Shit on a cracker!” Jo Jo cried, slumping in on himself. “I didn’t think of that!”
I hadn’t either. Damn, Annabelle finding a ley line really would push us straight into apocalypse level.
While we’d be frantically unzipping suitcases, Kris had had all the time in the world to stand out here and think, so no wonder she’d put pieces together.
Well, and she was admittedly smarter than me.
“Plus, it’s stupidly close to Samhain,” Kris tacked on with a grimace.
Dad regarded her with a proud smile. “You really are paying attention in my lessons.”
She drawled back, “Unlike your wiggly son, I can pay attention.”
I’d learned how to pay attention! Granted, it was a struggle when I was a kid. Fidget toys helped a bunch, though. And good, good, those two joking helped me settle myself again. I needed to get my shit together, anyway. We’d be fine, we were always fine.
Right?
Jo Jo pulled out his phone and started typing. “I’m calling family. They’re not too far off, they can get here in a day or two, surely.”
Assuming nothing else was going on in their corner of the world, sure.
That was the problem, really. We were all usually tied up in our own emergencies.
In theory, I could have people here by tomorrow.
But that assumed they weren’t fighting a demon themselves right now. Which was a very large assumption.
Which meant I had to call everyone.
The Ramshaws I left to Jo Jo. I asked my dad, “Campbells, Evans, Stewarts?”
“I’ll call them, you call your friends.”
He knew them better than I did, which was why I’d asked.