Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
EWAN
Kieran’s hair is standing on end in what might be the most comical visual known to man. Although, he’s lucky it’s just messed up. With as many times as he’s run his hands through it, it should be falling out in chunks by now.
I bite back my smile as I mop up the last of the spaghetti sauce with a chunk of bread.
I’m not the fanciest cook, but I excel at some of the basics, and this was the easiest thing to do after a long day to feed five people.
Arissa begged off for a date with her new guy, but we have her approval to proceed with whatever the group decides on.
“I don’t approve of this plan,” Joe declares, frowning so hard it looks like his bushy old-man eyebrows might actually touch his nose. “Consulting a stranger will only bring disaster.”
“We’re not going to tell them anything about us,” Kieran says for what must be the dozenth time, a lot more patiently than I would have. “Josh is going to have a cover story. This Demon person won’t even know his real name, much less anything about Mannix Estate.”
Joe, the only one of us not eating—for obvious reasons—doesn’t look convinced.
Josh told me that he and the other ghosts were excited that we’d found the diary.
Carter, Johnny, and Maisie wanted to try “reversing” the ritual Emma Marie Harper performed so long ago in the hope that doing so would suck the dark spirit back through the vortex and then close it.
Thankfully, Joe, Hattie, and Freddie have slightly more sense and explained to them that it wasn’t a good idea.
Kieran hasn’t let the diary out of his sight since.
“Let’s go over it again,” Skye suggests. “Emma had a crush on Greg, who was an associate at the law office where she worked in the typing pool.”
“Right,” Kieran agrees. “The first month or so of the diary make her seem sweet, maybe a bit shy?”
“And then Greg notices her back,” Skye continues. “She’s excited when he asks her out, and their first few dates are good.”
“She mentioned more than once what a gentleman he was,” Josh volunteers. “Never pressured her for anything, not even a kiss. Held all the doors, pulled out her chair, ordered for her.”
“Did people really do that in the seventies?” Daniel grimaces. “I get not letting a door slam in someone’s face, but when I was at college, I tried to impress a girl by racing ahead to open the door, and she was not impressed.”
We all look at Joe, who’s the only one of us who was around during the seventies. He scowls. “I haven’t left this estate for nearly two hundred years. You’re asking the wrong person.”
“Anyway,” Skye says, “Emma was obviously impressed by it. She and Greg were dating, and she thought he was something special.”
“And then it all started to change.” Josh sighs in frustration. “Whatever was happening, Emma was writing less in her diary and her tone was very different. She mentions Greg’s friends a few times, and I can’t tell what’s going on there.”
“It sounds like she’s impressed by them but also hates them,” I agree. “Intimidated, maybe?”
“I wish she’d written it all down.” Kieran’s frown is epic. “She just starts writing regularly again in the middle of April and says she’ll never speak of his betrayal but is determined to wreak vengeance.”
“She should have just keyed his car,” Skye says sagely. “Or ‘accidentally’ spilled coffee on his suit right before a meeting. Summoning demons seems like overkill for a guy dumping you or sleeping with someone else.”
A terrible thought strikes me. “It couldn’t have been worse than that, could it? Like… he didn’t…”
Wide eyes and horrified expressions meet mine. “Fuck, I hope not.” Daniel shudders. “Is there any way to find out? If he did, I vote we find this Greg guy and introduce him to the demon.”
Joe grumbles, but since we’re now fairly sure it actually is a demon in the basement, he doesn’t insist we call it a dark spirit.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Josh muses, paging through the diary.
“Look, here she says she doesn’t understand how he could betray her like this while still being such a gentleman.
‘Shouldn’t someone who’d plan something so vile behave like a lout?
He was always so respectful to my face but plotted behind my back.
’ She wouldn’t still think he was a gentleman if he’d assaulted her, would she?
” He looks up. “Maybe we need a woman’s perspective on this. ”
“I think you’re right,” Kieran says slowly. “That part about being nice to her face but plotting behind her back… that implies that he was using her, right? Maybe for something at work? Did she have access to information that he wanted?”
“She was in the typing pool. What even is a typing pool?” I ask, but I’m met with shrugs and confusion. Skye gets out his phone to look it up.
“‘A collection of people, usually women, who undertake typing and secretarial tasks for executives and managers who don’t have a permanently assigned secretary.’ I guess that’s the kind of job that disappeared when people started doing everything on a computer.”
“So potentially she might have known something, seen something while typing letters or whatever that Greg wanted to know.”
“Yes! He was an associate, right? If I’ve learned anything from watching The Good Wife and Suits, it’s that law firms are cutthroat and associates will do anything to get ahead.” Skye sounds way too excited about this.
“I think we’re getting off track,” I interject, even though I’d love to know what Greg did to Emma. “Regardless of what he did, and I really hope it was just use her for information, it’s not important now. What we need to focus on is what Emma did once she’d vowed revenge.”
Skye pouts, but nods. “Fiiiine. But in my head, there was some epic drama at the law firm.”
“Mine too.” Daniel winks at him before turning to look at me. Over his shoulder, I see Skye blush.
Uh-oh. It’s looking more and more like he has a crush on Dan. Poor guy. Crushing on straight men never works out well.
“Okay, Ewan,” Daniel drags my attention back to him. “What do you think Emma’s plan was?”
“That part’s pretty clear. She wanted to summon a demon to… how’d she put it, Josh?”
He flips a few pages and clears his throat. “‘I hope whatever foul being responds to my call rips his guts out and feasts on them while he cries and begs for mercy.’ Emma was definitely pissed off.”
“Yep. I thought my ex who had all her friends spread a rumor that I was impotent was vicious, but at least she didn’t summon a demon to murder me.” Daniel grabs another roll from the bread basket, then glances up to see us all staring at him. “What?”
“Is it actually a rumor?” Kieran teases.
Dan rolls his eyes. “Of course it is.”
“If what Carter says is true, it’s definitely a rumor,” Joe adds, then scowls at Daniel. “And you should be stricken with the clap.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Speaking of things I wish I didn’t have to think of,” I break in, “why did Emma decide to summon a demon?”
“We’ve covered this,” Skye says patiently. “Greg betrayed her, and she wanted revenge.”
“Yeah, I get that. But why revenge by demon? At the beginning of the year, she was this kind, shy young woman with hopes of becoming an executive secretary or even a paralegal. She talked about Sunday dinner with her parents and sister and maybe going with her friends to the beach for a week in the summer. Do people like that immediately think ‘demon feasting on his guts’ when someone hurts them?”
Silence.
“Well,” Skye says slowly, “it’s not my go-to.
It seems like a lot of work? Like… where do you even find out how to summon a demon?
We’ve all been looking hard for this information for a week, and the closest we’ve gotten is someone online who maybe seems like they know what they’re talking about.
And Emma didn’t have the benefit of the internet. ”
“Demon summoning is still considered garbage, right?” Kieran asks, looking around the table. “I know I thought it was. I wish I still did,” he mutters. “So what I’m saying is, there probably aren’t many—if any—reputable publishers who would put their name on a guide for summoning demons.”
“Makes sense,” Josh agrees. “And this was before the days of self-publishing being so easy. So even if someone had written a guide like that and paid a printer to run off a few hundred or thousand copies, they’d have to hand sell them.
The only way to get a copy would be to know someone who knew the author…
or if the author convinced a bookstore to stock some? ”
Kieran shakes his head. “I worked at an indie bookstore during college. Even then, at the beginning of the self-publishing revolution, we’d rarely stock anything self-published, even on consignment.
Shelf space is at a premium, and there are already so many publisher books that have serious marketing dollars behind them.
Those were the ones that got priority. Something as obscure as a demon-summoning manual would never get a look in. ”
I bite my lip and think about what Josh said about Hattie getting quartz from a store in town. “What about new age shops? Or somewhere that focused on the occult?”
“Maybe.” Kieran shrugs. “But that still doesn’t answer your original question of why she went looking for a store like that to begin with.
January Emma didn’t have any interest in the occult.
Heck, the only candles she mentions are the ones she lit so she could write in her diary during a blackout.
I don’t think she was spending a lot of time in new age stores. ”
Josh gasps and grabs the diary, flipping pages in search of something. “We’re so dumb.”
“Probably,” Daniel agrees. “Why?”