Hexed (7 page)

“So . . . where exactly did you get that?” Lucifer asked.

“Isis picked it up at the library. She found it in the rare books section.”

“Did she.” Lucifer seriously doubted an ancient book bound in human skin came from a public library. Even if a library did have such a book, it would never let it be checked out, especially by someone obviously looking for some cheap scares.

Olivia walked over and held out the book toward her. But just as Lucifer was about to take it, Olivia pulled it back. “Are you going to tell me why David was lying to me?”

“Lying? About what?”

Olivia tucked the book under her arm. “Please. I know when a boy is lying to me. Gina isn't sick. That girl is never too sick to text or e-mail. She's grounded, isn't she?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Olivia turned to the other girl and said, “Did I call it or what, Kenna? She wigged and told her dad we were at the Worcester House.”

The other girl, Kenna, looked horrified. “Do you think he'll call my parents?”

Olivia shrugged her shoulders and said, “Probably.” She then turned back to Lucifer, handing her the book. “Let me guess. Gina's dad is now part of this homeschooling cult of yours and you guys are going to have some kind of old-fashioned book burning.”

“My parents are dead and Gina's dad could care less about calling yours,” Lucifer said without even looking up. “But burning this book might not be such a bad idea.”

Lucifer took the book and began to examine the cover. The leather was old, scarred, and there was no printing anywhere, not even on the spine. The only marking she could find was a handwritten name toward the bottom of the front cover:
Helen
Peltier
.

The name was written in smooth, clean lines. Whoever had written the name—Helen herself?—had taken great care to do so. It was something Lucifer would definitely have to look into.

Lucifer walked over to the bed and sat down. Kenna shifted her weight away from her. “That book creeps me right the hell out,” she said.

Lucifer placed the book down and said, “Me too.” Then reached into her trick bag, pulling out a pair of novelty sunglasses. The sunglasses were bright green, and each lens was in the shape of a giant butterfly.

“Nice glasses,” Olivia said through a contemptible snort.

Lucifer put them on and gave Olivia a friendly smile before looking back at the book. “Ridiculous, right? But they do the job.”

Kenna leaned a little closer. “What job is that?”

“They let me see things that aren't visible to the naked eye.”

“Like a microscope?”

“No.” Lucifer put on the glasses and examined the cover of the book again. “More like polarized sunglasses that let me see under the surface of a lake.”

With the glasses on, Lucifer could make out dark, striated shapes on the cover, as if the veins in the skin used to make the cover had been rearranged to form symbols. But one symbol stood out among the rest. It was a circle with two jagged hooks spiraling away from its center. She hadn't even opened the book yet and already things weren't going well. Lucifer was going to have to take this home and study it thoroughly, but first, she had to deal with a much more pressing problem.

Lucifer took off the glasses and closed the book. “Did either of you open this book? Look inside?”

Olivia stepped over toward the bed and sat down next to Kenna. “Just the night we were in the Worcester House. Why?”

“You too, Kenna?” Lucifer asked.

Kenna nodded yes. Lucifer put the glasses and the book into her trick bag and pulled out her cell phone. With a couple quick swipes of her finger across the screen, she opened up a simple app and began scrolling through a gallery of symbols, picts, and simple images until she found the one from the cover of the book. She tapped it, and a symbol filled the screen. This one was a series of elegant lines all converging to a single point.

Lucifer held her phone up for Kenna. “Kenna, what do you see?”

“Oh, how pretty. It's like those old Spirographs my dad used to have. Did you draw that yourself?”

“No, but I did make the app.” Lucifer held the phone out toward Olivia. “Olivia?”

Olivia frowned as she folded her arms across her chest. “What?”

“On my phone. What do you see on the screen?”

Olivia rolled her eyes before leaning forward to get a good view of the phone's screen. She squinted her eyes before settling back. “I see your greasy fingerprints smudged everywhere. Seriously, do you ever clean that thing?”

“Take a look again. Do you see anything else? Anything at all?”

Olivia squinted at the screen again. “No.”

Kenna pointed to the screen. “It's right there! You can't see that? The lines go from here—”

“Please, don't trace the symbol, Kenna. That would . . . complicate things.”

“But how come she can't see it?”

“Because there's nothing there,” Olivia insisted.

“Is it like some color-blind kind of thing?” Kenna asked.

“I'm not color-blind!” Olivia shouted. But then she looked at Lucifer from the corner of her eye. “Am I color-blind?”

Lucifer quickly put her phone away and turned to squarely face Olivia. “The good news is that no, you're not color-blind.”

Olivia turned to Kenna. “I told you I wasn't color-blind. I've had LASIK surgery.”

“That doesn't have anything to do with—” Lucifer started to say before Kenna interrupted her.

“Wait, you said, ‘Good news.' That kind of means there's bad news, doesn't it?”

“Bad news?” Olivia squeaked. “What do you mean
bad
news
?”

Lucifer grabbed both of Olivia's hands. The gesture was meant to calm her, but it seemed to only make Olivia even more anxious. “Okay, you know how sometimes things sound a lot worse than they really are? This is one of those things, so I need you to not panic, okay?”

“Panic? Why would I panic? What things are you talking about? I don't know any of those things. What sounds worse than it really is?” Olivia was squeezing Lucifer's hands hard enough that her fingers were going numb. “Why couldn't I see it?”

“All right, this? This right here? This is the panicking thing that I didn't want you to do. You have to calm down,” though as soon as the words left her mouth, Lucifer was fully aware that the horse had already left the barn on that one.

“Oh god, it's eye cancer, isn't it?” Olivia whimpered. “I have eye cancer!”

Sometimes it was better to just yank the Band-Aid off as quickly as you could. “No, you don't have eye cancer, Olivia . . .

“You're possessed.”

CHAPTER 7

Olivia shared a glance with Kenna before looking back at Lucifer. “Possessed? Okaaay . . .” Olivia let the word hang in the air, not even attempting to mask her contempt. “You should probably go now.”

Lucifer understood her skepticism, but there was something about Olivia's dismissive attitude that really rubbed her the wrong way. Part of her wanted to leave and just let Olivia deal with this herself, but that would be completely unfair. Olivia didn't grow up in a world of demons and magic and monsters, human or otherwise. She didn't know any better. As far as Olivia knew, Lucifer was just some crazy zealot come to preach the evils of her lavish lifestyle. Still, educating her might be a bit of fun.

Lucifer rummaged through her trick bag until she found a silver Zippo lighter engraved with the image of broad, feathery wings. She reached toward Olivia, but she jumped from the bed when Lucifer got close. “What are you doing?” she asked, holding her arms up in a decent facsimile of a defensive position. “Get out of my house! I have a purple belt in tae kwon do, so you better run if you know what's good for you!”

Lucifer held her hands up in submission. “Well, lucky for me I have a black belt in running for my life. I just want to show you something. But to do it, I need a hair from your head.”

“Is this part of your crazy cult thing? You use your phone to trick me, then try to fix me with your creepy homeschooled . . . voodoo or whatnot?”

Lucifer held out her hand. “Olivia, please. Just one hair. I swear, if I can't convince you, I'll leave and you'll never see me again. I promise.”

Olivia stared at Lucifer's outstretched hand, thinking. Eventually, she said, “Fine,” and plucked a strand of perfect gold from her head. “Take it. Little Miss Cray-Cray.”

Lucifer took the hair, ignoring the insult. “Kenna, come closer so you can see, too.” Lucifer opened the lighter and flicked it to life. She slowly lowered Olivia's hair over the flame until it began to curl and smolder in the heat.

“Oh, yes,” Olivia said, her voice flat and mocking. “Burning hair. I've never seen
that
before—”

The hair suddenly split open at the end, peeling back on itself like the skin of a tiny banana. Thick black smoke rose from the withering hair and formed tiny wisps of fangs and claws born on sharp, angular wings before dissipating into the air with a foul and acrid stench.

Both Olivia and Kenna stood in stunned silence until Kenna excitedly shouted, “Do it again!”

“NOOO!” Olivia shot Kenna a look of utter shock and disgust before recoiling into the corner of her room, hugging herself.

“What the hell was that?”

“Calm down, Olivia—”

“Don't tell me to calm down! What did you do? How did you do that?!”

“Kenna, why don't you grab that chair and put it in the center of the room for me, please,” Lucifer said as she pointed to the small wooden chair in front of Olivia's desk. Lucifer walked over to Olivia and gently put her hands on her shoulders. “Olivia, look at me. Look at me.” Olivia's wide blue eyes slowly rolled back to Lucifer. “It's okay. You're going to be okay. There's nothing to be afraid of. Now why don't you come over here and sit down in the chair.”

Olivia pushed Lucifer out of the way and began violently tearing at her hair, yanking out thick blonde hunks with every pull. “Get it out of me! Get it
OUT
!” Lucifer grabbed her wrists and spun behind her, pinning her arms to her side in a bear hug. “Kenna, the chair!”

Instead of getting the chair, Kenna was slowly backing toward the door. “Is . . . is that the demon?”

“No, this is just your friend panicking like I asked her not to. Now please, grab the chair and put it in the center of the room before I have to do something drastic!”

“Drastic like what?”

“Kenna!”

“Okay, okay!”

Kenna rushed over and grabbed the chair. She slid it to the center of the room and then took a few tentative steps back as Lucifer led Olivia to the chair and sat her down.

“Is her head going to start spinning around?” Kenna asked.

Olivia shot her friend a terrified glance before Lucifer said, “No, that's not how it works.”
Usually
, she thought. Lucifer grabbed Olivia's shaking hands. “I know you're scared and that's okay. I was scared the first time it happened to me until I realized how easy it is to fix.”

“You've been possessed before?”

Lucifer smiled. “Not me personally, but someone I knew. And by something much nastier.”

“What . . . what is it?”

“A filcher demon.” Before Olivia could begin another frantic freak-out, Lucifer put her hand up to stop her and continued. “It sounds bad, I know, but trust me. As possessions go, this is weak sauce. You only looked in the book a few days ago, and it takes weeks if not months for a filcher demon to eventually get control of you. The longer you wait, the more difficult it is to get it out of you, but anything less than a month or two is cake.”

Kenna stood next to Olivia, wringing her hands. “Am I possessed, too?”

“No. You saw the symbol on my phone. And filcher demons are Fibonacci-blind.”

“Fibo . . . what?”

Lucifer opened the drawers in Olivia's bureau and started going through their contents. “Fibonacci. There's something called the Fibonacci sequence. 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 . . . it's a ratio thing. It shows up everywhere in nature, but filcher demons have a hard time seeing
unnatural
things with that sequence. Like the symbol I showed you.” She pulled out a handful of scarves and some long socks then turned back to Olivia. “How you doing, Olivia?”

“I'm freaking the Mack Truck out and you guys are talking about math!” Olivia's hair was stuck to the side of her face by sweat and tears as dark streaks of mascara streamed down her puffy cheeks. A tiny ball of guilt sat in the pit of Lucifer's stomach. She wanted to get back at Olivia for her condescension, but she didn't want her to be
this
scared.

Lucifer gently pulled Olivia's arms behind the back of the chair and started tying her wrists together with one of the scarves.

“What are you doing?”

“This is just so you won't hurt yourself. Kenna, use the socks to tie her ankles to the chair legs. Tight.”

“Hurt myself? Why . . . why would I hurt myself?”

Finished, Lucifer stepped in front of Olivia and put a comforting hand on her arm. “This is just a precaution. Sometimes the extraction can be . . . violent.” Lucifer didn't think it was possible, but Olivia's eyes opened even wider.

Lucifer opened her trick bag and pulled out a small glass jar filled with a rusty powder. “Kenna, sit here on the bed behind her. Whatever you do, don't get in front of her. Understand?”

Kenna nodded.

“What's that?” Olivia asked, nodding toward the jar in Lucifer's hand.

“It's just paprika. See? Nothing to worry about,” Lucifer said.

Olivia jerked back wildly, the wooden chair creaking under the sudden strain as it teetered on two legs. Lucifer reached out and caught Olivia before she fell over, but the poor girl was still struggling to get away.