By the Pale Moonlight (Book One of the Moonlight Series) (36 page)

This house had been in our family for
generations. It was where I’d grown up; it was my entire
history.

But it was more than that. It was where my
mother had disappeared, where she would reappear...if she
could.

Fiddling with a stray strand of yarn that
dangled from the side of the hat, I pulled open the silverware
drawer and picked out two spoons.

“Do we have savings?” I asked, hoping I was
being casual.

Nana, busy sliding a can of tomato soup under
the can opener’s blade, stilled. “We have the house. That’s
enough.”

“But what if...?”

She plopped the open can onto the counter and
turned. The lid slipped into the can, and soup slopped onto her
hand. “What’s going on, Lucinda? Why are you asking me this?”

I couldn’t tell her about the letter. She
would have known I’d been snooping. “Someone called, from the
bank.”

“The bank...” She shook her head and reached
for a towel. “It’s nothing.”

I swallowed. “They said we owed taxes, and
that the house was getting run down. They said they could take it
from us if we didn’t take care of things.”

She waved the towel in the air, but not
before I caught the flash of worry in her eyes. “Nonsense. They
can’t do that.” She turned back to the can and poked her finger
into the soup to retrieve the lid.

Her hands were shaking. “Forget about the
bank, and get bowls. Get yourself a TV tray too. You can eat in
front of the TV.”

We never ate in front of the TV.

“Where are you eating?” I asked.

Busy dumping the soup into a saucepan, she
looked up. “I’ll eat later. There’s something I need to do.
Something I forgot at the store.”

After turning the burner to medium, she
hobbled from the room. A few minutes later she had on her coat and
was headed out the front door. She didn’t say anything as she left,
and I didn’t either.

Nana and I had a long history of pretending
bad things didn’t happen.

Unfortunately, pretending never made them go
away. Not really.

The next day, Nana didn’t bring up the bank
and neither did I. She’d come back the day before looking drawn and
worried. She’d spent the rest of the day in the attic, rummaging
through boxes.

This morning, I’d found the phone book lying
open. An ad for an auctioneer popped off the page at me, and there
was a stack of boxes by the front door.

When I stopped to stare at it, she made a
shooing motion with her hands. “Spring cleaning. There’ll be men
coming this afternoon. Don’t get in their way.”

I didn’t mention spring was long over.

She walked past, her cane making a solid,
determined sound as it struck the wood floor. At the piano, she
stopped. She laid a hand on the lid.

Nana didn’t play. I didn’t either, but my
mother had and so had Nana’s.

My grandmother stroked the old wood like she
was smoothing a child’s hair. “Your great grandmother taught your
mother to play on this piano. You know that?”

I hadn’t, but it made sense.

“Don’t guess we have much use for it now
though.” Her voice cracked. She picked up her hand.

“I can learn.” I’d never wanted to play. I
had actually fought the suggestion more than once.

She turned, her fingers folding into her palm
and her cane landing on the floor with a thump. “Not who you are,
Lucinda. Not who you are.” Then she hobbled into the kitchen.

Not who I was
.

I wasn’t sure Nana knew who I was as well as
she thought, or maybe I wanted to believe there were parts of me
she hadn’t seen. That there was more to come from me.

And maybe it was time I stepped out of my box
and found that something more.

o0o

I waited until the men had left and Nana too.
She’d gone to the store. We’d run out of peanut butter. Nana
couldn’t last a day without a PB and J. She’d taken the bus,
instead of our unreliable car, which meant I had at least an hour
and a half until she got back.

I went to the closet first.

The book was still there, and my hand still
tingled when I touched the leather, but the feeling passed. In
fact, after only a few moments, my fingers seemed to curve around
the spine naturally, like they’d been meant to hold the book, and
the tingle switched to warmth.

Comforting, like when you hold a cup of hot
cocoa after being out in the cold. I didn’t want to set the book
down. I tucked it under my arm; the warmth spread to my body.

It wasn’t a good thing. I had enough sense to
know that. A book about demons...any good feelings it brought
couldn’t truly be good.

But instead of setting the volume down, I
hugged it tighter.

Nana was selling her things, but her things
were limited. I had to do my part. It was time, past time.

I’d lived with Nana all my life. She was the
only person who had never left me. My mother left. I wasn’t even
sure she didn’t choose to leave. No, correct that. She did choose
to leave, by choosing to call demons, constantly.

My grandmother had warned Mum about calling
them as much as she did. She told her it could be addictive, but I
think Mum was lost from the beginning.

The rush she got from that circle was
impossible to miss, even for a 6 year old.

After she’d spent time in the basement
calling, she would glow for days afterward. But eventually the rush
would wear off. Then she’d crash, get the shakes—show all the
classic signs of withdrawal. And she’d be back in the basement,
inside her circle, chanting.

Times would be perfect then, for a while. I’d
get gifts; Mum would be happy and kind. Life in general would be
good—for months, weeks... days. The time kept getting shorter,
until one day she went down into the basement and never came
back.

Calling demons was stupid. No doubt about
it.

But sometimes, stupid is all you got.

I wedged my body behind the old furnace. It
was made of iron and huge. Behind it was a door my grandmother
thought was hidden. And it was—if you didn’t know it existed. But
I’d watched my mother go in and out of it on too many
occasions.

Nana had boarded the door up after Mum
disappeared, but I knew her calling tools still lay somewhere
behind it. I knew, because Nana wouldn’t have touched them. She was
afraid of them.

I slid the tip of a crowbar under the top
board and leaned. The wood creaked. I stopped and checked the
damage.

No cracks. That was good. I’d need to board
the door back up when I was through, so Nana wouldn’t know what I’d
done. I wouldn’t need to get in here again. I just needed Mum’s
tools. I’d be doing my demon calling outside the house.

That was an important part of my plan—calling
places outside of this house. Mum had used the space too often,
weakened the veil here. I figured that’s how she’d got caught:
something nasty, maybe even a demon lord, had got through and
snatched her.

Secure my work so far would be easy to cover,
I continued sliding the bar under the wood and leaning until the
first board popped loose. I continued working on the remaining two
until the door wiggled under my hand.

The door stuck a few inches in, but I put my
shoulder against it and pushed. It scraped over dirt as it inched
inward. The basement had a cement floor, but this little room was
still dirt, walls and floors. Cobwebs grabbed onto my hair and face
as I stepped inside.

The space was tiny, probably originally meant
as a root cellar, or maybe not. Demon calling was in the blood.
Generations of Dents may have used this space for the same purpose
my mother had. Nana might know, but I sure wasn’t asking her.

I pulled the string on the lone light bulb
that hung from the ceiling. Amazingly, it worked. I’d brought a
flashlight just in case, but was pretty happy I wouldn’t need it.
The glare of the stark bulb felt warm, gave me a tiny sense of
security. Enough that when the door creaked closed behind me I
didn’t jump, at least not visibly. Feeling stronger than I’d
thought I would, I left the door closed and turned to face the
room.

A circle drawn with white paint dominated the
floor. It was impossible to miss. I knew it was paint without
touching it. My mother had made a lot of jokes about people who
drew their circles with chalk—said they were one smudge away from
“home.” Most people thought of home as a good place, but I’d known
by how she’d said the word, it wasn’t.

Mum must be “home” now too. I drew in a
breath and let my body adjust to the cold clamminess that had
suddenly formed on my skin. There was moisture in the corner of my
eyes too. I blinked that away. Even when I was six, Mum hadn’t hid
the dangers of what she did from me. She’d raised me to be
pragmatic.

Mum was gone. Nana and I were here... in this
house. I needed to keep it that way.

I stepped closer to the white line. I let my
foot break the circle. My feet were bare. I didn’t like wearing
shoes when I didn’t have to. My toes looked strange poking into
that circle, made the whole demon thing seem like something I’d
dreamed, but then I looked up and saw my mother’s leather pouch
lying open on the other side of the room. It was flat, empty.

I looked in the circle then. An athame and
stone bowl lay near the center. The athame was shoved hilt to dirt
into the floor, but the bowl was turned over. The dirt was darker
around it. I didn’t want to think about what had been in that bowl
that the stain was still there 10 years later. So I shoved that
question into a little box in my head where I kept my grief, shut
it off too, and concentrated on finding the rest of Mum’s tools
instead.

They were all there, but they were
scattered—as if a big wind had exploded from the center of the
room... the circle... and blown them to the four corners.

I didn’t think about that, either. I just
went about picking everything up and shoving the items into Mum’s
leather pouch.

When the bag was bulging, I turned to leave.
I got as far as the door before I stumbled. My bare toes made
contact with something hard and cold. A shiver shot through me, and
it took all the courage I could muster to look down and see what
had stopped my step.

It was a statue, about six inches tall and
carved out of something white: bone. Had to be from a big animal—or
a human. I gripped the bag tighter. My hands were sweating now. If
Mum had been there, she would have laughed. Here I was wanting to
call demons, and the sight of a little bone statue almost sent me
running.

Not just the sight, I corrected mentally, the
touch too. It had been... slimy. Crawled up my leg and wrapped
around my calf. I could still feel it, even though the object was
no longer in contact with my skin. I picked up my foot and shook my
leg.

It was a silly thing to do, but it made me
feel better, broke the tension somehow.

I managed a chuckle at myself then, and
ordered my knees to bend so I could get a closer look at the
figure. It was one of Mum’s tools. I might need it.

I should take it.

I reached out, thinking if I grabbed the
thing fast, I’d get past the part of my brain that was screaming
no, but it didn’t work. My hand stopped three inches above the
small statue and hovered there, shaking.

I started humming, a bad habit I was trying
to break. I managed to stop the sound, but gave up on picking up
the figurine. I lowered my hand to the ground beside the thing
instead and stared at it.

I knew instantly I was looking into the face
of my mother’s killer. Horns sprouted from his forehead and curled
down the back of his head, ending at his shoulders. His face was
long and angular, but strangely attractive... aristocratic.

A demon lord
. Where had my mother
found the object? And more important, why had she called him
up?

His eyes seemed to glimmer, to watch me.
Something urged me to pick up the statue. My hand even moved toward
it. I curled my fingers into the dirt. A nail broke off into the
packed earth, and pain shot through my finger. I winced and glanced
at my hand.

Blood beaded where the nail had been; it
mixed with the dirt.

Someone exhaled, sighed. I thought for a
second it was me, like my humming, but then the statue turned his
head and his tongue, skinny and white, flicked from between his
teeth and lapped at the blood-stained earth.

I picked up the bag and ran like hell—from
hell or “home” or whatever lived in my basement.