Page 46 of Death Wish

“And how long would that take?” asked Cole.

“Two weeks maybe? If I worked all night and day and ran off nothing but that beer you owe me and Red Bulls.”

“Two weeks!”

“Hey, I have all these books to reference.” He swept a hand toward the mess of papers, boxes, and shelves cluttering his living room. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore.”

“You have Sean to help.”

“Oh no.” Sean shook his head frantically. “I’m not getting mixed up in this mess. I’ve sworn off the supernatural. It only leads to trouble, and me getting hurt. My ankle still isn’t the same from the last problem you dropped at our front door.”

Cole’s grin widened.

“Besides,” Sean went on, “I’m trying to get Pop out of this stuff. He needs to retire.”

Wyatt snorted at that. “I’ll retire when I’m dead.”

Knowing a good deal about the afterlife and what kind of person Wyatt was, I severely doubted death would be enough to stop him from getting involved in supernatural business.

“Can I see that again?” I asked, taking the piece of skin before Cole could even answer. I pushed down the bile rising in my throat at the weird feeling of dried, mummified skin against my palm. Even though most of the color had faded to gray, there was still a pinkish hue to it in some places. God, I hoped this was from some kind of animal, like a pig, and not from a human. Either way, please let the poor soul to have been dead before having his skin ripped off and written on.

My throat burned as more stomach acid clawed to the surface.

I had to suck it up. There was something going on with this box, something about me. Not only did it have the same marking on it as my tattoo, but Sean had said it had been sealed up for decades and then it had popped open just for me? That was more than just a coincidence.

Scanning over the strange branded symbols, a twinge of recognition hummed through me. But this was my first time seeing these scribbles. Wasn’t it? The more I stared at the symbols, the more my temples pounded. I tried to search my memory for any recollection of the box and came up empty, except for the painful pinching behind my eyes.

The longer I stared, the greater the pain got. Digging deeper and deeper into the pit where my memories once were stored was excruciating, but just as I was about to give up, the shapes readjusted and moved to form words—words I understood.

I could read it.

“It’s a list,” I thought aloud, amazed that I had even known that much information. “It’s a list!”

Cole’s face lit up with excitement. “A list of what?”

I kept staring at the symbols. The words sprang up from my darkened memory, like little balls of floating lights, guiding the way into my past. Giddy at the find, I almost squealed with joy. “Something about the four elements being needed…to save a damned soul? Does that make sense to anyone?”

“Holy shit.” Cole balked. “Could this be it?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Sean said, his voice calm and collective.

I glanced between the men. “What? Did I miss something?”

“Cole thinks this is the cure he’s been looking for.”

“You’re shitting me.” Finally, Wyatt lowered his gun. The faster he spoke, the more his southern accent came out. “You’re telling me the demon cure was sittin’ in my wife’s bedroom all these years? Just sittin’ there, underneath her socks and T-shirts? In this house? It’s not supposed to exist.”

“It would explain why so many things have been trying to get into this trailer,” said Sean. “It could be something they’ve wanted.”

“Not because of the other thousands of spells and enchanted talismans I have stored away in here?” Wyatt replied.

“That, too. It certainly doesn’t help your case any,” Cole said.

“And this is why I want you to retire.” Sean threw his father a hard look. “Normal families don’t go through this kind of shit. Other families worry about who’s bringing what to Thanksgiving dinner, not when’s the next time an all-powerful demon will be blasting through their door.”

Wyatt waved the comment away. “Those families are boring as sin. The people in them don’t even want to be part of them.”

“But boring is safe.”

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