Page 2 of Spit

Lexi gave the demon the candy bar, though her memories of the rest of the interaction were fuzzy at best.

The only thing she remembered clearly was the demon's name.

Beezlebub-Al-Satan-Iblis.

Years later, Lexi Boudaire watched her sister race from the house, dressed in a flowing pink ballgown with a corsage on the strap.

Lexi pressed her hand against the glass of her bedroom window. The lump in her throat made it hard to breathe. She kept her eyes open so she wouldn’t cry, but she felt tears bud at the corners.

At times like this, Lexi hated Beaux Bridge in St Martins Parish. She hated the duck egg blue antebellum, with a winding driveway to the private road past the trees. She hated being so close to her mother and twin without being allowed near. She hated being a null.

Adelaide had gone home to New Orleans to visit a cousin, and Lexi was alone in the cottage for the first time in years. The little house felt empty without Adelaide, though Lexi knew she was getting too old for a nanny—not that Adelaide would allow herself to be called that.

With a sigh, Lexi pulled away from the glass, her shadow her only company as it zinged around the cottage, searching for something to eat.

She had turned fifteen the week before, not a particularly important birthday by witch standards, but she wished she’d been able to celebrate.

Rosie, her twin, had held a party at the house with all the other children of the coven.

Lexi had been handed fifty dollars and told to watch a movie.

It felt like a raw deal.

At least Adelaide had made her favorite dish—hamburgers. The creole woman had muttered about Lexi’s choice of cuisine the whole time, but Adelaide had made the burgers, which had been delicious.

Something knocked against Lexi’s window on the other side of the cottage, the one facing the trees instead of the driveway.

Her stomach leaped as she raced through the cottage like her feet were on fire. She spotted his face in the window, the darkness of twilight closing in. He wore a motorcycle helmet and pulled up the visor to show his sparkling brown eyes. Thin with youth but cocky in the way only teenage boys could be.

“Dylan!” Lexi pulled open the sash window. “You can’t be here.” She glanced at the main house just as her mother raced down the driveway to take her sister to prom at the local High school, Beaux Hill High.

Lexi went to school across town, Wilmington High. She had to take two buses because she couldn’t drive yet, but that was the price of being a person-non-grata in a town filled with witches.

“I came to spring you from your tower, Rapunzel.” Dylan grinned. “My bike is over there. We should go for a ride.”

She chewed her lip before nodding and crawling out of the first-floor window. She would have used the door, but she knew the cameras at the front of the house would pick up the motion.

It didn’t take long for Dylan to get Lexi on the back of his dirt bike. Dylan placed the helmet on her head, leaving his own bare and revealing his buzzed head.

The sick feeling she’d felt when seeing her sister’s prom dress abated, just a little, but not completely.

Lexi wrapped her arms around Dylan’s stomach as they drove the winding roads as the sun disappeared over the horizon.

Dylan took her to Abbotts Ridge on the edge of town. A spot close to their school, where you could see the football field if you squinted and tilted your head at a certain angle.

It was a sheer drop, but the girls at her school claimed that made it more exciting.

Lexi hadn’t asked where they were going, but the moment she saw the trail signs, her stomach dropped.

Abbotts Ridge was a make-out spot.

Lexi had never kissed someone before.

For some reason, the thought summoned a name to her mind—a long and twisting word made of circles and slashes that belonged to no human language.

Beezlebub-Al-Satan-Iblis.

Lexi shook her head to clear it. She had no idea why she was thinking about stupid kid things. Memories that weren’t real and imaginary friends that made her make promises she couldn’t keep.

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