Mercifully, her voice trailed off as she turned through a door that I knew led to the kitchen. Never had I smelled something so fetid. So ripe, so dead, so overwhelming.
As Ivy stepped into the kitchen, she backed up almost immediately, stumbling, gasping, holding her hands to her face. She backed into the far wall. I think she even hit her head. Then she, too, turned and vomited.
Some heroes we are, I thought.
I had my phone in my hand before I realized it. My intent was to call the police. When you find a body, you call the police right? It seemed reasonable.
As I stood there in the entry hall, while Ivy, so brave, and yet, so foolish, vomited in the main hallway, I put my phone away. For now. Whoever was in there was dead. There was nothing we could do about that now. There was, however, still a chance that we could remove the entity responsible for all of this.
I took some deep breaths through my mouth, tasting vomit—but at least I wasn’t smelling the dead—I suddenly wished I had a gun, or that Samantha was with me. Or Smithy. Or Sanchez. Or the werewolf, Kingsley. Hell, I just wished I had a gun.
Ivy came back, wiping her mouth.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“I...I don’t know. A woman. She’s been dead for a few days, my guess. Bloated—”
I held up my hand, cutting her off. “Please.”
“Calm yourself, child,” said Millicent in my head, although I could not presently see her. “We have its attention. You will need to keep your wits about yourself. Go with Ivy and prepare the spell. I will distract it.”
Be careful, I thought. But Millicent was already gone.
I paused briefly, took in a lot of air, and forced myself to stay calm. That a horrific demon was slithering through this house somewhere, I had no doubt. Millicent would do her part, but now, it was time to do ours.
I pushed away from the wall and, still breathing through my mouth, cleared the living room floor, tossing aside the coffee table and pulling away the rug. We needed an open space for the containment spell. Ivy, who had recovered from her own shock, was by my side, helping.
“You okay?” I said to her.
She nodded and was about to speak, when a god-awful shriek shook the house to its very foundation. Ivy’s eyes widened in terror. I had a feeling that my expression matched hers.
I took her hands. “Are you ready?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “You’re on.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Ivy got busy.
She dug around in a pouch she had been carrying around her neck—it was an ancient leather satchel that she had found in an antique store and somehow, I knew it had been previously owned by another witch. It was old and crusted, and from within, she removed a glass vial filled with powdered ingredients. And then, more vials and jars came out of the satchel, as if it was bottomless and huge, like the proverbial magic carpetbag. Ivy used the biggest vial like a mixing bowl.
I knew there were two schools of potioncraft: there were some witches who followed spell recipes and got their ingredients decanted and mixed to a “T” and those witches who trusted their inner knowing and mixed potion spells by instinct.
Ivy was the latter type of witch—no, she did not use a spell book or any recipe. I watched her remove vials of wormwood and sulfur powder, jars of mandrake and kava kava. She added touches of this, dashes of that, and I watched in awe. Yes, she did seem to know what she was doing. But had she created an actual demonic binding potion?
Of that, I had no clue...and I could only pray that Millicent and I had recruited the right witch.
I watched as Ivy sprinkled the ingredients in what appeared to be a semicircle. She pivoted in the center as she spread the mixture, which came out as a blue powder which was strange, since none of the raw ingredients were blue. She paused in the middle and looked at her handiwork. Then she corked the vial again. She slipped it back in her pouch, and as she raised her hands and cast her gaze toward the ceiling—the lights in the house flickered...and then, went out completely.
We were plunged into complete darkness. It was the thickest darkness I had ever experienced.
“Oh, shit,” I said. The furious bellow from below seemed like it was getting closer. It seemed like it was, in fact, coming up the basement stairs to the living room.
“It’s coming!” I said.
But Ivy wasn’t paying attention to me. She was mumbling an incantation. She spoke faster and faster, repeating words and phrases and stringing them together in exactly the order they should go, instinctively knowing what to say.
Or so I hoped.
Badly hoped.
The floor shook as the demon clawed up the stairs, its nails screeching across wood like fingernails across a chalkboard. From behind me, something exploded and crashed across the kitchen floor. That would be, I knew, the basement door.
In that moment, Millicent appeared before me. If a ghost could look out of breath, she did. Mostly, she looked alarmed. It was the first time I had seen anything but a serene expression on her face. Fighting demons tended to have that effect on witches, dead or alive.
“He’s here, child,” she said. “Is Ivy ready?”
As her answer, Ivy’s mumbling turned into a shout and she raised her hands higher and turned in a circle—as she did so, the powdered ingredients erupted into blue flames.
And then, there was light.
I gasped and shielded my eyes.
Yes, it was only a semicircle. Ivy stepped out, breathless, and looked at me.
“Now you’re on, Allie,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-six
My heart hammering in my chest, I moved forward, standing before the flames, and facing whatever it was that was coming out of the darkness.
I knew, of course, what it was. I had seen glimpses of it, but I had never faced something like this, face to face, and out in the open.
A demon.
Millicent was behind me, giving me support and strength. I felt her own energy swim over me. Ivy was out of the burning semicircle, which flickered and roared behind me. She was behind me somewhere, too.
The house shook. The floor vibrated. The hallway walls, which glowed faintly from the blue firelight behind me, seemed to pulse. The Librarian had said that the demon possessed the house itself. And the land. He had said that it could, quite literally, come from anywhere and everywhere at once.
“Oh, shit,” said Ivy from behind me, and I could only imagine what she was thinking now. Surely she regretted her decision in joining us. Or not. The girl was kind of nuts. Of course, that could be an asset right about now.
In the hallway before us, as the walls pulsed and the floor shook, a dark mass appeared, and I nearly peed myself.