Second Grave on the Left

I chuckled as she fumbled for her sunglasses. “You said you needed light.”

Pari was a graphic designer who’d turned to body art to keep the bill collectors at bay. Luckily, she’d found her calling, and she did the profession proud with full sleeves of sleek lines, tiger lilies and fleur-de-lis. And a couple of skulls thrown in to impress the clientele.

She’d designed the grim reaper I now sported on my left shoulder blade. It was a tiny being with huge, innocent eyes and a fluid robe that looked like smoke. How she managed that with tattoo ink was beyond me.

She slipped her shades on, then looked back at me with a sigh. “I said I needed light, not a starburst. I swear you’re going to permanently blind me one day.” As I said, Pari could see auras; mine was just really bright.

She grabbed a bottle of water off the counter and sat on the broken dentist’s chair, propping her hiking boots onto two crates on either side of her and resting her elbows on her knees. I grabbed a water out of a small fridge and turned back to her, struggling not to crack up at her indelicate position.

“So, what’s up, Reaper?”

“I can’t find the flashlight!” the guy yelled from the back room.

“Never mind,” she called back before grinning at me. “All beauty, no brains, that one.”

I nodded. She liked beauty. Who didn’t?

“Okay, so you’re pretending to be all cool and collected,” she said, studying me with a practiced eye, “but you’re about as serene as a chicken on the chopping block. What’s going on?”

Dang, she was good. I decided to get right to the point. “Have you ever seen a demon?”

Her breathing slowed as she absorbed my question. “You mean like a hellfire and brimstone demon?”

“Yes.”

“Like a minion of hell demon?”

“Yes,” I said again.

“Like—”

“Yes,” I repeated for the third time. The subject made my stomach queasy. And the thought of one torturing Reyes … not that the little shit didn’t deserve to be tortured just a tad, but still.

“So, they’re real?”

“I’m going to take that as a no,” I said, my hopes evaporating. “It’s just, I think I have a few after me, and I was hoping you might know something I didn’t.”

“Damn.” She glanced at the floor in thought then refocused on me. At least I think she did. It was hard to tell with her shades on. “Wait, there are demons after you?”

“Sort of.”

After she stared a long time, long enough to be considered culturally insensitive, she bowed her head. “I’ve never seen one,” she said, her voice quiet, “but I know there are things out there, things that go bump in the night. And not just the prostitute next door. Scary things. Things that are impossible to forget.”

I tilted my head in question. “What do you mean?”

“When I was fourteen, a group of friends and I were having a slumber party, and like most fourteen-year-olds do eventually, we decided to have a séance.”

“Okay.” This was going nowhere good.

“So, we went down into my basement and were all séancing and chanting and conjuring a spirit from beyond when I felt something. Like a presence.”

“Like a departed?”

“No.” She shook her head, thinking back. “At least I don’t think so. They’re cold. This being was just sort of there. I felt it brush up against me like a dog.” One hand gripped the opposite arm in remembrance, a soft shiver echoing through her body. “No one else felt it, of course, until I said something.” She glanced up at me, a dire warning in her eyes. “Never tell a group of fourteen-year-old girls having a séance in a dark basement that you felt something brush up against you. For your own safety.”

I chuckled. “I promise. What happened?”

“They jumped up screaming and ran for the stairs. It freaked me out so, naturally, I ran, too.”

“Naturally.”

“I just wanted away from whatever had materialized in my basement, so I ran like I had a reason to live despite my suicidal tendencies.”

Pari had been Goth when Goth wasn’t cool. Kinda like now.

“I thought I was in the clear when I reached the top stair. Then I heard a growl, deep, guttural. Before I knew what was happening, I fell halfway down the stairs, spraining a wrist and bruising my ribs. I scrambled up and out of there without looking back. It took a while for me to realize I didn’t fall. My legs were pulled out from under me and I was dragged.” She lifted her pant leg and unzipped her knee-high boots to show me a jagged scar on her calf. It looked like claw marks. “I’ve never been so scared.”

“Holy crap, Par. What happened then?”

“When my dad found out why we were all screaming, he laughed and went down into the basement to prove to us nothing was there.”

“And?”

“Nothing was there,” she said with a shrug.

“Did you show him the wound?”

“Oh, hell no.” She shook her head like I’d just asked her if she ate children for breakfast. “They’d already filed me in the F’s for ‘freak of nature.’ I wasn’t about to confirm their suspicions.”

“Holy crap, Par,” I repeated.

“Tell me about it.”

“So, what makes you think it was a demon?”