Page 5 of Spit

“The old hag sentyouto dispatch me?” A raspy voice crept from the poltergeist’s mouth. “You? You don’t even have the proper equipment. You probably can’t even see me.”

The corner of my lips twitched with a smile that I struggled to hold back.

“Better witches than you have tried. With their psychopomps and their sage. You can’t be rid of me.” He cackled. “If you can hear me, know that I am endless. You cannot dispatch me; all you can do is move me on to another place.”

Death and darkness—he was cocky. But then again, they always were.

The general rule of magic (and the universe) was that energy couldn’t be destroyed. It could be moved and change form, but energy could not be created from nothing or brought back to nothing. It always had to go somewhere.

My shadow split in two, affecting a pincer movement like the practiced hunter it was. It crept closer to the blathering spirit, uninterested in its ranting. My shadow struck fast as it took a bite of the poltergeist. Just a taste.

The poltergeist rippled, bowing away from the wall, its rotting teeth bared in a snarl.

“What is this?” It shrieked. “What kind of witch are you?”

I looked at my shadow, and it shrugged as if to say:I couldn’t help myself.

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Abomination!” The poltergeist screamed, pointing a bony finger at me. “Demon whore!”

I didn’t speak to it. Speaking to spirits on the Other plane never went well, especially for witches. It brought them across and allowed them a foothold in reality. Instead, I ignored it as I stopped in the center of the room, closing my eyes.

“Get him,” I whispered to my hungry shadow, loosening the tight leash I kept on my demonic counterpart, feeling my hunger wrench itself free like a dog at the greyhound races bursting from the gate.

The poltergeist didn’t have time to scream as my shadow swallowed him whole.

Babette hadn’t allowed me to leave until my arms were filled with enough baked goods to put an army into a sugar coma—though the offer to sit on her couch and watchThe Real Housewives of the Red Citywas tempting, I’d had to beg off.

I trudged up the stairs to my apartment to drop them off before heading to work. Babette must have known that my weakness was blueberry muffins. I’d wager that she’d heard from Mr. O’Tooley on the fifth floor after I helped him get rid of aCogit. This supernatural pest liked to possess mirrors and steal a piece of the person’s vitality one sip at a time.

Few people could afford the exorbitant rates of a licensed exterminator witch, and our building, The Magnolia, was old enough to attract all sorts of beasties.

When Adelaide lived in the building, she would wander the corridors and cleanse the building. Adelaide hadn’t been a witch, to my knowledge—she had been hired by my mom because of her lack of magic—but Adelaide knew how to keep spooks out of her way.

I’d never expected to leave Beaux Bridge for New Orleans, but Adelaide had made it possible. When she died, I inherited her apartment.

She had saved my life in more ways than one.

Before my time, the golden Gates of hell had opened, and demons had flooded the earth—magic and the knowledge that there was something other had become the new normal. When I was a child, my Meemaw often talked about thebefore, when she had to hide her magic. When demons lived in hell instead of the Red Cities, and the Fae were just children’s stories.

I grabbed a muffin and took a bite, leaning against the kitchen island in thought. Rogue, my tortoise shell cat, jumped up on the island and sniffed the Tupperware. I waved her away, and she let out a subdued meow.

“I’ve already fed you,” I told her.

She replied with a pleading meow as her yellow eyes blinked at me.

“No.” I wiggled her finger at her. “You eat more than me, I swear.” Once upon a time, I’d downloaded a calorie tracker on my phone to see how much I actually ate. The developers probably didn’t account for a demon-cursed witch and her shadow with a KitKat addiction. I got all kinds of alerts about my sugar intake.

I deleted the app when I went past 10k calories in a day.

Rogue sniffed before sitting back, her tail swishing from side to side as she lifted her paw and began to groom herself.

I sighed, catching a glimpse of the calendar hanging on my fridge was marked in red. Ordinary girls tracked their periods. I tracked the new moon—he always came when it was a new moon.

I kept my Toyota Corolla in my allotted space in the Magnolia’s resident parking lot. My space was close to the gate, which was terrific, though it butted against a brick wall on two sides, making it finicky to park in, which was why it had been available.

I palmed my keys and patted my leather jacket to check that I had my phone and my wallet.

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