Demon Hunting In the Deep South (19 page)

Shep glared at him. “No shit, you think?”

“You do not understand. Thralls do not possess emotion. That Lenora feels anything is significant. Momentous, even.”

“Ansgar is right,” Brand said. “It is most unusual.”

“Whatever.” Shep jumped to his feet. “I gotta find her and talk to her. Maybe she’s down by the river. She likes the river.”

He dashed out the door.

There was a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass. Miss Vi stood in the middle of the dining room, a tray of broken dishes and ruined food scattered at her feet.

“Lord have mercy, Jesus,” she shrieked. “Did you see that? That woman just up and disappeared. Del, get out here.
Del.
”

Several of the other patrons looked stunned as well. Ansgar and Brand exchanged glances. Lenora’s sudden disappearance had not gone unnoticed.

“Brother?” Brand said.

“I will handle it.”

Ansgar sighed. The Directive Against Conspicuousness had been violated. Again. Memories would have to be adjusted.

’Twas a small enough matter for a demon hunter . . . unless the memories happened to be his own.

Chapter Eighteen

E
vie felt a spasm of panic at Muddy’s announcement. Trish and Blair were coming to the shop? Oh crap. She was
soooo
not ready to face the Twats.

Trish and Blair had been running buddies of Meredith’s. As teenagers, the three of them entertained themselves by making fun of the socially awkward and physically imperfect.

Since Evie was both, she’d always been their favorite target.

Things hadn’t changed much since graduation; the Twats still loved to pick on her. Both Trish and Blair had married well—although Blair was newly divorced—and they ran in more elevated circles than Evie, so they had fewer opportunities for torture.

Thank God.

Of all the people Evie dreaded running into today, Trish and Blair were high on the list. Meredith had been their friend, and the women’s viciousness would know no bounds.

But if Muddy said Trish and Blair were coming to the shop, they were coming. Muddy had some kind of weird radar. She could tell you who was calling before the telephone rang and who was at the front door before they knocked. She’d cut short her world tour and come home early because she somehow knew Mr. Collier had quit drinking after more than thirty years.

Addy even swore Muddy had a psychic connection to her freezer.

So it was with a feeling of dread that Evie looked out the window. To her relief, the sidewalk was empty.

“I don’t see them, Muddy.” Evie relaxed. Maybe being engaged at long last to the love of her life had scrambled Muddy’s radar.

“They’re coming.” Muddy took a seat on a stool at the counter. “Get ready. They got their ugly on.”

“Huh,” Addy said. “What a surprise. They’ve had their ugly on since 1992.”

Addy was right. The Twats had started out as twits at the age of eight and spread.

A minute later, a Cadillac Coupe pulled up to the curb in front of the shop. The doors opened, and Trish and Blair got out.

So much for Muddy’s psychic equipment being on the fritz.

Trish and Blair were attractive women in a Southern Slut Barbies with Money kind of way: well groomed and well dressed, nails and hair perfect, makeup expertly applied. Trish was blond and Blair was a brunette. Both women exuded an air of self-satisfied confidence Evie could not begin to understand.

They breezed into the store like they owned the place. Evie looked around for a place to hide, but it was too late. Trish saw her standing by the counter and stopped dead in her tracks, teetering on the five-inch heels of her slinky lace-up boots.

“Murderer,”
she said in tones of loathing. She pointed a manicured nail at Evie. “You’ve got a nerve, Blimpo, showing your face in this town after what you’ve done.”

“Yeah, you got a wagonload of nerve,” Blair said like a good little sycophant. Blair rarely had a thought of her own. “I hope you get the chair, you fat slug. I hope they fry you till your eyeballs pop out.”

Waves of self-righteous hate poured off Trish and Blair. Evie wanted to crawl into a hole and pull the dirt in over her head. And the Twats were the tip of the iceberg. People she’d known all her life were going to point and hiss and talk about her behind her back.

Addy’s face went red. Uh-oh, Addy had an ugly bone of her own, and she was fixing to beat the Twats to death with it.

To Evie’s surprise, Muddy got there first.

“My, my, aren’t you girls a breath of fresh air and Christian charity,” Muddy drawled. “If you spent half as much time filling your minds with knowledge as you do filling those blowed-up lips of yours with collagen, you’d know the Yellow Mama’s been retired since 2002. We use lethal injection now in the state of Alabama.”

Trish made a dismissive gesture. “Whatever.”

“A pungent riposte,” Muddy said dryly. “With a command of the language like that, you must be scintillating company at the dinner table. I can hardly wait to hear what you have to say next.”

“I can.” Addy glared at the Twats. “What do you want?”

Blair swished up to the counter on her Manolo Blahnik’s. “Now, now, that’s not very nice. Especially since we’re here to order flowers for Meredith’s funeral.” She shot Evie a venomous look. “Meredith was our
friend,
in case you didn’t know.”

“Yes, I seem to recall you two yapping at her skirt tail,” Muddy said.

Trish’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you being so hateful to
us
? She killed Meredith.”

“I didn’t kill Meredith,” Evie surprised herself by saying. “Somebody put that knife in my car.”

Blair rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Like anybody’s going to believe that.”

“If you’re here about Meredith’s funeral, the arrangements haven’t been announced yet,” Addy said, returning her attention to her arrangement.

“Yes, we
know
.” Trish made a gesture of impatience. “But we’re in a hurry and we want to get this over with. We’ve got better things to think about than some dreary old funeral. Like the dance at the club tonight.”

“We want a big arrangement.” Blair waved her hands to demonstrate. “Something tasteful, but not too expensive. Mostly carnations, you know, with a sprinkling of roses. I
hate
spending money on dead people.” She shot Trish a coy glance. “Although, in this case I don’t mind so much, since it’s the Petersons.”

“You mean Trey.” Muddy nodded wisely. “He’s a catch, and that’s for sure, although I hear he’s got a little dick.”

“Oh, Lord Jesus,” Addy said.

Muddy gave Blair a wide smile. “Not that it matters. He’s got money and looks. Women will be climbing all over one another to get their hooks in him.” She paused, her expression thoughtful. “Course, most of them will probably wait until after the funeral. But you’re too smart to let something trifling like common decency stop you. So, you go, girl.” She made a Z snap in the air. “Jump on that thang before they dump the dirt on Meredith. Never mind she was your friend.”

Blair’s lips tightened. “Meredith would understand. She’d want Trey to be happy.”

“Are we talking about the same Meredith?” Addy said. “ ’Cause the Meredith I remember wouldn’t share jack. She’d snatch you baldheaded over a stick of Juicy Fruit, much less her husband.”

“Meredith is
dead,
” Blair said. “There’s nothing she can do about it.”

An ambulance siren wailed in the distance.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Evie said, listening to the whine of the siren draw closer. “Meredith was a witch on a broom when she was alive, and death doesn’t seem to have changed her all that much.” She paused, remembering Leonard Swink. “Of course, she
is
in counseling, so maybe therapy will help.”

Evie didn’t know who looked more shocked at the sudden emergence of her testicles, Addy or the Twats. Addy stared at her like she didn’t know her. To the Twats it must have seemed like their favorite chew toy had grown teeth and bitten them back.

Evie had shocked herself, too. She’d actually talked back to the Twats and called Meredith a witch! Wow. On the scale of zingers maybe it wasn’t much, but for her it was huge. So what if she had to wait until Meredith was dead to do it. She did it. The doormat spoke.

The adrenaline rush left her feeling shaky and a little scared by her uncharacteristic temerity. But another part, that brave voice she seldom heard or listened to, the part of her Addy had rubbed off on, shouted
Hell yes, free at last, and about dang time.

Trish found her voice first. “How dare you talk about Meredith like that, you little worm.”

Trish, Evie noticed, made no comment about Meredith being in counseling. Of course, Trish probably didn’t know about therapy for the dead or PTDD. Or maybe she thought Evie was a nut job. Probably wasn’t a big leap from loser to nut job in the Trish universe.

In any case, it didn’t matter what Trish thought. The room got cold, the lights in the shop flickered and went out, and Meredith appeared with a bloodcurdling howl.

Addy and Muddy saw the ghost and Nicole and Frodo, too. Evie could tell, because they looked right at her. Addy’s brown eyes grew round, and Muddy had an arrested expression on her face, like seeing a ghost was the coolest thing since the invention of the toaster. As for Nicole and Frodo, Mullet Woman went whiter than a bar of Dove soap and the demon dog snarled, his eyes glowing like fog lights from the depth of his zebra cone.

But the Twats couldn’t see Meredith. Evie knew they couldn’t, because they looked right at her and kept going, and the Death Starr was not a sight to be ignored. Her eyes bulged and her face distorted into a ghoulish, unrecognizable mask. With a spine-chilling shriek, she rose in the air, her figure assuming a series of twisted shapes in rapid succession as if she was too pissed off to decide which nightmarish form to take.

If this were her first encounter with the ghost, Evie would have been terrified. The spectral show Meredith was putting on was ghastly and fascinating at the same time, a metaphysical train wreck.

Evie couldn’t look away. But the Twats could. They looked everywhere but at Meredith, which confirmed Evie’s suspicion they couldn’t see her.

Judging from their expressions of terror, they
heard
her, though. They’d have to be deaf not to; Meredith was shrieking like a factory whistle at quitting time. They smelled her, too. The citrusy scent of Meredith’s favorite perfume,
Happy,
choked the air, making them gasp and sputter.

Personally, Evie always found Meredith’s choice of fragrance ironic. To be fair, they probably didn’t make a perfume called
Abject Misery,
which was the emotion the Death Starr had most often aroused while alive.

Dead Meredith had an altogether different effect on the Twats. She scared the pea turkey out of them. Their mouths sagged, they turned pale beneath their tans, and their heavily mascaraed eyes bulged in cartoonish fashion. Evie squelched the urge to laugh because that would be mean.

She didn’t want to be a twat.

“Meredith, is that you?” Trish squeaked as a potted plant sailed past her head and crashed against the wall. She raised a shaking arm and pointed at Evie. “If you’ve come for the Whale, there she is.”

That was Trish, self-sacrificing to the end.

“Noooot Ev-i-e-e,”
Meredith said with a tortured groan.

Meredith was being silly and theatrical, acting like a caricature of movie ghosts. But Meredith had been a total drama queen in life, so why should death be any different?

A bunch of pens and pencils flew out of the metal container on the counter and whizzed through the air at Blair like so much shrapnel. Blair screamed and ducked her head, crying out in pain as she was struck by the zinging missiles.

“What’s happening?” Blair shrieked, and covered her head with her arms. “Meredith, it’s me, your Care Blair. Why are you doing this?”

The doors of one of the flower coolers flew open and slammed shut. Moisture frosted the glass at the abrupt temperature change, and a message appeared in the condensation.

Stay away from Trey, you tramp,
an invisible finger wrote on the glass in Meredith’s unmistakable curlicue script.

“Screw this, I’m outta here,” Trish said, bolting for the door.

Wild eyed, Blair tottered after her. “Trish, wait!”

The bell on the door jangled behind them. A moment later, the Cadillac screeched away from the curb and down the street.

Her narrow face lit with triumph, Meredith watched them leave. “Sluts,” she said.

To Evie’s relief, Meredith had dropped the
Amityville Horror
routine and returned to her normal size. She looked cool and collected in a ruffled skirt, a pale pink blouse with turn-back cuffs, and snappy red leather platform pumps on her slender feet.

Evie glanced at Addy. Addy’s lips were pressed tightly together, and there was an almost panic-stricken look in her eyes. Addy couldn’t stand Meredith when she was alive. Dead Meredith seriously freaked Addy out.

“That’s kind of like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it Meredith?” Addy said.

It was so like Addy to play the smartass card. That was how her BFF dealt; she took the world head on. Evie was that way, too, brave and strong and kickass . . . in her imagination.

“Har-dee-har-har.” Meredith put her hands on her hips. “I’m trying to think if you’re funnier now that I’m dead.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling as if contemplating. “Nope. You’re still lame, Corwin.”

“And you’re still a toxic bitch,” Addy said. “What a surprise.”

“I have issues.” Meredith shrugged. “But I’m working on them. I want to get better for Trey.”

Better for Trey? Oh, dear, Meredith seemed to have a disconnect; she was dead and Trey wasn’t.

But Evie wasn’t about to tell the Death Starr her relationship with Trey was kaput. Let Swink explain it to her, the poor sap. He had forever, which is what it would take.

“Therapy’s working out for you then?” Evie said, hoping to skirt the tricky subject of Meredith’s dead-i-tude. “I’m glad.”