Chapter 33 #2
He doesn’t correct me, pointing out that I’m the one who forced him away. “He did? How?”
“Research, Kit. And it didn’t take us that long to find this solution. Were you even trying?”
“Of course. I told you a tattoo was a possibility, but I wasn’t sure if it would work.”
“But why didn’t we try it? I could have gotten the tattoo, then you could have tried to possess me again, and when that didn’t work, we would have known.”
His mouth purses in a fine line.
I answer for him. “Because that would have meant I didn’t need you anymore. You didn’t want to let me go. You were being selfish.”
The train pulls into the next station, and even though it is not the one I need to be at, I run out and get back to street level.
I spot a yellow cab with its light on and stick my hand out to hail it like an old-fashioned New Yorker.
I hop in with a relieved exhale and say, “Grand Central, please.”
The cabbie starts driving then rotates fully around and says, “Was the exorcism on purpose, or did you just take the opportunity when it was handed to you?”
I should jump out the window. “Jesus, Kit! Keep your eyes on the road!”
He turns back around, swerving into another lane, and says, “I don’t actually know where Grand Central is.”
“Pull the car over!”
He does as I ask.
I sigh, leaning forward toward the glass divider, and say, “Listen. I am sorry that I threw you out like that. I found an opportunity to escape, and I took it. Matthias told me the episode I had to put on.”
“S1E4,” he says, remembering the card.
I grimace. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t be locked up like that. I was losing myself. A body isn’t meant to be shared by two people.”
I get out of the cab. It’s a nice day—I’ll walk the rest of the way.
“Wait! Lacy, please. I-I’m sorry. I held on to you for longer than I should have. I was being selfish, you’re right. I didn’t try hard enough to find another way to save you. If I would have known you were losing yourself…” He trails off.
“What? What would you have done differently?”
He doesn’t respond.
I’m still holding the door open, hand gripping the top, my eyes unable to look at him, as I say, “I truly have enjoyed getting to know you, but we shouldn’t see each other again.
I can never be okay with the fact that you need someone else’s body to survive.
In order for you to live, an innocent person dies, even if just for a short while. I’m sorry, Kit.”
I close the cab door and leave him, pieces of my heart tumbling away as I walk. I board my train at Grand Central and find a seat by the window. I don’t hear from him again. Despite my desperate desire to cry, I refrain, blinking the tears away as I stare out a window too dirty to see through.
The conductor soon comes by to scan my ticket, and after that, I lean my head on the window, tightly clutching my bag to my chest. I lightly tap my head on the window a few times before picking it up and pulling out one of the new charms. I secure it to my wrist. There. Double the protection. Double the pain.
That was dramatic. I’m wallowing. I know I am. I just…I don’t know how not to.
When I get off the train, I amble slowly back to my car. I keep checking over my shoulder for Kit, but he doesn’t seem to be there.
I’m glad he’s all right. I’m glad the exorcism didn’t confine him to Hell. That’s one less thing weighing on my guilty conscience.
When I climb into my car, I drop my bag on the concrete as I’m sitting with a swear. As I reach down to grab it, a black cat comes out of nowhere and hops up on my lap.
“Whoa there,” I say, reeling back. “Who are you?”
I half-expect the cat to reply, but she stays silent. She gazes up at me and, shit. No. No way. The eyes…no. That’s irrational. Kit has not possessed this cat, has he?
“Kit…?” I ask cautiously.
The cat doesn’t respond.
Probably because I’m being senseless and demons do not possess animals. Nor do cats speak. I need a nap.
I feel around the cat’s neck. “You have an owner?” I don’t find a collar. The cat stares back at me with big eyes, pupils all black with a sliver of green surrounding them. She seems friendly, so she must belong to someone.
I scoop her up as I stand from my car to scan the parking lot for anyone obviously searching. Doesn’t look like it. Sigh. I sit back in my car, still clutching the surprisingly docile cat. I don’t want to leave her alone.
“Want to come home with me? I can take you to a vet tomorrow and see if you’re chipped. Do people chip cats, or is that just dogs? I’m sorry—I know literally nothing about cats.”
She doesn’t seem to mind. She rubs her head against my arm then curls up and settles on my lap. Cool.
On my way home from the station, I stop by the store to pick up cat food, a litterbox, and litter. She may only be with me one night, but hey, I could decide to get a cat one day. This could come in handy. I should probably become a cat person.
When I open the door to my apartment, I break the salt line, as I always do.
I make a note to fix it later. I bring the cat inside, dropping her to the ground once the door is securely shut behind me.
I expect her to do something cat-like, like immediately run and hide under my couch or behind the toilet, but she just sits in the middle of my living room and stares at me.
“You’re very strange, you know that?”
She continues to stare.
I sigh. “Well, I should check you for fleas. Since you’re an outdoor cat, probably. Come here.” Considering how much she has cuddled up against me, if she has them, I wouldn’t be surprised if I caught fleas as well.
I snatch her, sitting down and placing her on my lap. She settles in the pocket created by my crisscrossed legs. I turn on the flashlight on my phone and comb my fingers over her fur, pulling it back to search for any sign of fleas. Luckily, I see nothing.
“All right, ma’am. You seem fine. We’re still going to the vet tomorrow.” I scratch her head and nudge her off my lap.
She climbs off, stationing herself before me and stretching upward into a stiff seated position to stare at me with those big eyes.
“What, you don’t want to go? We can make sure you’re healthy and see if you have an owner. Maybe they’ll give you some catnip.” I chew my bottom lip. “And maybe if you have no obvious owner, I can take care of you.”
She looks satisfied with this and curls up again, laying a head on my ankle.
“Comfortable?” I ask.
She doesn’t respond. I lean back with the heels of my hands resting on the carpet behind me. I suppose I can stay here for a bit.
Eventually, even though I feel very, very guilty, I do have to make her move.
I first fill a small bowl with the new wet food I bought and set it on the ground in the kitchen.
She sniffs the food but doesn’t seem interested.
Well, it’s there if she wants it. I suppose I can set out the dry food later if she doesn’t touch the wet.
Hands on my hips, I sway my head side to side, unsure of what to do with myself.
I really need to edit my video. But when I sit on the couch and pull up the editing software on my laptop, I can’t focus.
I close my laptop. Maybe I should take a shower, let the steam clear my mind.
I wander to the bathroom, the cat following behind me.
“Along for the ride?” I ask her.
I start the shower and wait for the water to heat up before stripping and getting in. I take a long shower, letting the steaming water run over my skin, so hot it’s nearly burning. I switch the water off. That’s a habit I shouldn’t develop.
I get out, seizing a towel off the wall to dry off. The cat is still in the bathroom, watching me. “You’re a little creepy, you know that?”
I wander across the hall to my bedroom, drop the towel, and pull on my fluffy gray robe. The cat follows me the entire way, weaving around my feet, rubbing against my legs.
“Full of love, aren’t you?”
Still in my robe, I go back to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine.
Once the wine is in hand, I sit back down in front of my laptop, ready to finally edit my video.
The cat hops up on the couch beside me and settles against my leg, staring at the laptop like she’s watching my screen.
I manage to work on my video for maybe five minutes, and most of that is replaying the ghost saying “cherry pie” over and over, trying to get the clearest sound bite out of it.
Then I become distracted again and find myself googling, Can I bring someone back to life?
I find nothing useful. Basic warnings against necromancy of any sort, prayers to help my grief, CPR manuals, “You can bring people back to life by connecting them with Jesus,” facts about the longest time someone was dead before being resuscitated.
Like I said, nothing useful. Same things I found the last time I googled this, after August.
Bottom lip between my teeth, I try something else. Can a demon be saved?
“I didn’t mean by Jesus,” I mutter as I change my wording.
Can a demon be resurrected with a soul? I scroll through article after article telling me that demons were never human (wrong), about the concept of reincarnation, and whether or not a soul can be destroyed.
I keep going until I am so deep in Google, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to dig myself out, when I notice something familiar—a name. Dr. Nerys Gray. The same woman who wrote the article Matthias found, with the anti-demon sigil.
The paper is speculative. It doesn’t even look published.
It was clearly typed up, printed, and then scanned into some college library in the middle of nowhere Missouri.
However, I find it fascinating. She’s working on the theory that demons who are created from tortured human souls can, in fact, be brought back to life.
A spell is included in the paper, or an experiment of some sort.
The spell itself is difficult to make sense of, the words written in what looks like Latin.
However, the instructions appear straightforward enough: (1) create a circle using the listed ingredients, (2) recite spell three times, (3) restore human soul. But…
I lean forward, squinting at the screen, rereading a sentence that confuses me.
I mutter to myself, “An identical, yet original form will be created around remains of the soul.” Does that mean this spell is essentially creating a new body for the demon—a body that belongs solely to the demon? Or, reformed demon, rather.
That’s impossible. Even the writer doesn’t seem one hundred percent confident in the theory. She is very clear about how this has never been attempted and would not recommend attempting it.
The theory goes on to explain that this is something that can only be done for demons who remain pure of heart. Demons who still have a significant amount of their soul left. Demons who never should have been made demons in the first place.
“It will never work,” a voice next to me says.
“Mother fucking fuck!” I shriek, leaping up from the couch, my laptop crashing to the ground.
The cat stares back at me.
I get right up in his face. “Oh, I fucking knew it, you asshole! I knew you were in the cat!” I lean back and cross my arms. “How’d you enjoy watching me shower, you pervert?”
If a cat could grin, I’d swear he did. “I didn’t see anything, I promise.”
The voice is…well, wrong. Cats aren’t supposed to speak human languages. It’s high-pitched and scratchy, the vocal cords being forced to do something they shouldn’t. Ugh, why doesn’t he sound like Salem?
“It won’t work,” he says again. “There’s none of my soul left. And even if there was…what does this person know? This was written back in the ’90s. Don’t you think if they had anything more substantial on this, they would have published that by now?”
“She could be dead,” I say weakly as I sit back on the couch, picking the laptop up from the floor, glad I have carpet in my living room that cushioned the fall. “So, she didn’t have the opportunity to do more research.”
“There’s no way, Lace. This is just a theory. And, I hate to break it to you, you aren’t a witch.”
“Matthias is.”
Surprise fills his face. “Okay, but how powerful is he? I couldn’t sense anything from him, so my guess is that he’s pretty new to the game? Not strong enough to pull this off—even if it were possible.”
I sigh. He’s right. I’ve never seen Matthias perform magic. I have no idea how powerful he is. And Kit’s a cat. I groan and put my head in my hands.
“Please leave me alone. I don’t know what you are expecting from me.”
He nuzzles my hand with his head, and I instinctively move it to stroke him. A rumbling purr emanates from his little body.
“I want to apologize for what I put you through. I didn’t mean…I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You were trying to protect me. I understand. Though, I’m not too jazzed about you ignoring my direct request to leave me be.”
“Sorry. Demon. Low sense of moral integrity.” He lies down with his little head on my lap.
My lips press together as I peer at him. God, he’s a fucking cat. “I’m sorry I sent you to Hell. Really. I know how much you hate it down there. I know what that place did to you.” My fingers continue to brush over his head. “I’m glad you got out.”
“As soon as possible.” He lets out a little sigh that is absolutely adorable.
“I should have stayed, though. I was already down there. I should have…never mind. Doesn’t matter.
” He picks up his head. “I’ll get out of your hair.
You’ll never see me again. I know that’s what you want.
” He backs away from me. “Oh, and this cat doesn’t belong to anyone.
You can keep her.” Kit offers me one last long look, eyes going fully dark, tiny horns appearing on his head. “Goodbye, Lacy.”
“Bye, Kit,” I whisper as yellow smoke explodes out of the cat’s body.
When he’s gone, the cat looks around confused before jumping down from the couch and hiding underneath it. Now that is typical cat behavior.