Chapter
One
“You wanna tell me exactly how your house blew up?” I ask and toe at a board that’s been burned to a crisp. It had to have been part of the door from the semi knob shaped hunk of metal that rolls out from under the blackened wood.
“Demons,” Charlie says, like that explains anything.
I put my hands on my hips and pray to whatever deity listening for serenity. “What?”
“A demon blew it up,” Charlie pauses and taps his chin as we survey the smoking ruins that used to be his perfectly respectable two bedroom house, “or mini demons? There were more than one but they weren’tthat big.”
“Mini-demons? Like how mini?” I wonder if it’s like a miniature pig my Granny Jean used to carry around in her purse. It was loud for being so small. She called it her purse pig.
Charlie brings his hand up to his knees. “About yea tall.”
I nod. Bigger than a miniature big but smaller than a normal sized demon. “Okay, that’s pretty mini for doingall of this.”
“There was an army of them. I lost count of them. They were feral, Meadow.” Charlie clutches his games book to his chest. “IfI hadn’t been working on my latest campaign they would have blown me and my book sky high.”
He’s not wrong. Sky high and in a million little pieces would track for the scene. The house looks like a bomb went off, there isn’t a single part of it that’s still standing. The chimney is half falling down and part of the roof is blasted straight over the fence and into the graveyard that butts up to Charlie’s blown up house. The house was a really sweet spot with a porch and a white picket fence. That picket fence has now been reduced to toothpicks and litters the ground that has been burned to a crisp. The fire burnt a pathway straight through the graveyard. Beyond the graveyard is the forest and a few trees are smoking. I see a plume of dark smoke in the distance.
The mini demons that blew up Charlie’s house came from there. Huh. Why would they come from the woods? I lift a hand to shield my eyes against the midday sun to get a better look. There’s nothing out there, or at least nothing that I’ve ever seen for myself. There’s a town—I know that logically but my world has been nothing but Sweet Tooth my entire life. It’s difficult to think about what’s really out there. It’s been a month since the cult fell and my life suddenly becamemine.
Freedom is sweet but it’s also daunting.
No one tells you what to do after the cult that raised you tries to sacrifice you on your wedding night to a demon god, gets decimated by your best friend who gets super powers and ends up marrying said demon, gets a whole gang of super-powered friends and and now you’re trying to help rebuild and maintain the infrastructure for thenew cultyour superhero bestie created to keep the kind of still brainwashed townspeople safe. Okay, it’s not a cult, per se. I mean, I guess there isn’t a handbook for that sort of thing so it makes sense. Still, a little help would be nice.
“It’s called deprogramming,” Nina told me two weeks ago at dinner when I was struggling over frowning.
I scrubbed a hand over my mouth and slumped in my seat. “It feels wrong.” Every time I did it, I was…I got too anxious. My lips went up into a smile, not down. The whole thing just made me angrier about it all. “I feel like there’s two versions of me and they’re fighting about everything.”
Buffy squeezed my hand tight. “It’ll be like that for a little bit but one day your smile will be your own, Meadow. I swear it. You’re stronger than them.”
The ‘Them’ is the Founders. The elders of the Cult of Wrath. The ones that made our lives a lie.
I don’t know if Buffy is right. I don’t feel stronger than the men I listened to all my life. I can feel their words rattling around in my brain, the shame and worry that kept me obedient creeps over my shoulders and pulls me down like a weighted vest. Some days are better than others though. Today’s one of those days.
I straighten my shoulders. “Does Buffy know yet?”
Charlie holds up his phone. “I sent her a photo but she hasn’t-” The screech of tires makes him shut up and a second later there’s the telltale sound of tires hitting a curb before the jeep comes to a stop. I don’t have to look to know who it is. There’s only one person in Sweet Tooth that drives and parks like that.
“Buffy!” Charlie waves his arms over his head like she can’t see him or his blown up house.
“Are you shitting my dick, Charlie?! What happened to your house?”
“It’s not like I did it. You shit the mini demons’ dicks that did it! I’m innocent.”
Buffy makes a face as she rounds the car. “Mini demons? What?”
“They’re bigger than a mini pig,” I tell her, gesturing at my knee.
Buffy nods in understanding. “Ah, like Granny Jean’s purse pig.”
I snap my fingers. “Exactly.”
“I love the both of you but what the mulberries are you talking about? What’s a pig got to do with any of this? Are the demons pig demons now?” Charlie sounds bewildered. Understandable.
“Pig demons would be weird, so I hope not,” Buffy says before she lets out a whistle. “Wow, they really left nothing. How many demons did this?”
