Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

The encounter with Sparkles rocked me more than I’d care to admit. How could somebody so vile have a child as sweet as Lydia? She’s definitely cute, I can tell you that much. And smart. And astute. I can tell she has my genes in there somewhere.

And, like me, after a few minutes swabbing at the counters with a washcloth and the like, she was bored.

“Right, let’s go shopping,” I told her, and then I sprayed her down with sunscreen. Hey, even out here in the Northwest, you can’t be too careful. Demons and sunburn and cancer, oh my. Not my little girl.

I ran a dark red lip stain around my mouth, pulled tall boots up over my jeans, and threw on my sunglasses. Suddenly, I was a femme fatale, a woman of mystique. And all under ten minutes.

Lydia had pulled out her pigtails, so we did them over again, and that took nearly ten minutes right there. She has a knack for yanking beautiful doodads out of her hair. For this, I blame her father.

“Ready, Princess Pretty Fingers?” I asked her. She pursed her lips and twisted her chubby wrist in a wave.

“Mama,” she said.

“No, Luna. Luna.”

“Mama.”

“Have it your way, kid,” I said. I buckled her into her car seat and lugged her out to the car. It was heavy, and I had to use both hands.

I like taking Lydia to the grocery store, quite honestly. I like showing her off. People always peer and coo at her, and Lydia takes it as her due. And I like it because she can usually put a smile on the face of the most dour crone and codger. Lydia has charm.

It’s me that gets us into trouble.

“What a beautiful baby,” the woman next to us exclaimed. Lydia flirted from her seat in the cart.

“Thanks, she’s my brother’s,” I said, and the woman narrowed her eyes and scurried away from me, still glancing back over her shoulder from time to time.

Anyway, I was standing there comparing prices on ground beef when I felt a presence. I turned around, and again, there was nobody there.

I firmly ignored it. If it wasn’t going to be polite enough to show itself, then I wasn’t going to give it the time of day.

“What do you think, Lydia? It’s never too early to learn about economics.”

Lydia apparently didn’t care about the state of our food supply because she was smiling and peeking out from under her lashes. At who, you ask? Well, so do I because I couldn’t see the darn thing.

“Lydia, ignore it, darling.”

Lydia ignored somebody, all right, but it wasn’t the mysterious presence. It was Luna Mama.

“Lydia, I’m being serious. Talk to me about hamburger, okay? Don’t pay any attention to that thing.”

Lydia waved at the empty space. “Hi hi hi hi hi,” she said.

I tossed the hamburger back into the case and whirled around to address the presence.

“I know you can hear me,” I hissed. I was absolutely furious. “I want you to know it is completely unacceptable to hang around a baby girl, do you understand me? I simply won’t have it, you freaking perv. Back off!”

“Did that beef do something to offend you?”

I spun around, and faced the green-eyed, bland-haired man from the clinic earlier. He was trying valiantly not to smile, and if I hadn’t been half blind with protective rage, I would have given him props for it.

“It started it,” I mumbled and grabbed the cart to push it away.

Lydia pointed at the presence. “Pretty,” she said. “Pretty.” Then she started to cry.

I looked at the presence, but of course there wasn’t anything there. Bland-haired Reed Taylor was eyeing Lydia quietly, but that wasn’t what made her cry.

“What about her?” I heard him ask, but he wasn’t talking to me, and my attention was elsewhere.

“Oh good heavens,” I said under my breath. Reed Taylor tore his eyes away from Lydia and looked at me curiously. I didn’t have time for him.

“Duck,” I said, and the strain in my voice startled even me.

Reed Taylor hesitated only a second and then hit the supermarket floor like a pro. I’ll have to give him props for that later too.

Behind him, darkness was gathering. Right there in the refrigerator section, the very jaws of Hell were opening up. This wouldn’t be good.

It had happened before, so I knew what to expect. Nastiness. Complete and utter nastiness. The first time it had happened, the darkness had been so consuming that I was overwhelmed. And out of that darkness had climbed an even blacker shadow who hated me. Hated me. I had never been on the receiving end of so much hate.

The idea of it happening now, right in the middle of the Turk’s Goodie Grocery, was enough to make me puke. The idea of it happening in the presence of my sweet and pure Lydia was enough to make me tamp down the sickness and stand up and fight.

“What’s going on?” Reed Taylor asked from the floor. I didn’t have time to answer him.

The darkness had gathered fully, and I couldn’t see the rest of the grocery store anymore. A cold wind blew past me, and I felt my hair ruffle in it.

“Holy crap,” I heard from the floor, but I ignored him again.

A featureless form was zipping forward out of the darkness. It came at me in short, diagonal bursts. I felt my breath become too heavy for my chest, felt the strength pulled from my body as the shadow tried to feed on it in order to take shape. This was trouble. A demon is one thing, but a demon that’s fully formed and can manipulate things in the real world? It’s the proverbial double-edged sword. On one hand, if it has enough substance, then I can usually beat the crap out of it. On the other, well, it can do the same thing to me and anybody else that’s around. I couldn’t chance it with baby girl. I pictured my essence as a rope and tried to mentally pull it back into my body. It wasn’t coming easily.

The thing slowed down a little bit but still continued toward us. My teeth began to chatter.

“Get back. Get back. Get back get back!” I shouted and continued my invisible tug-of-war. The wind grew colder and blew harder, and my hair and clothes whipped around me like I was standing in a hurricane. The shadow wasn’t slowing down any more, not at all.

It’s stronger than I am, I thought, and despair overcame me.

There was a sound from the floor, some type of order, and suddenly the unseen presence rushed out from behind me and tackled the thing coming out of the darkness. The shadow seemed enraged and panicked, and I saw it grappling against air. Its struggle pulled me out of my trance.

I growled, willing my body to absorb all of the power that the demon had leached from it. I felt it weaken.

“Get back,” I commanded, my voice strong and low. The thing turned its head in my direction, and the invisible presence used this distraction to literally stuff it back into the darkness. It howled angrily, and the darkness wafted in all around it and was suddenly gone.

“My hero,” I said to the presence, and then I blacked out cold.