Page 56 of The Wolfing Hour
When the song was over, I turned off the car and made my way down the main gravel road into the cemetery and over to a small dirt mound of a recently cremated paranormal. Sexton watched me approach.
“Betty. To what do I owe the?—”
“Help me.”
Sexton craned his neck to get a closer look at my face. Normally, I hated when he did that. It was so alien and inhuman, soother. The closest thing I could liken it to was a cobra sizing up prey.
“You are suffering, granddaughter?”
Again, his words were cold and sharp-edged, not of this universe, and yet they comforted me. Mainly because I had the sense that he very muchwantedto comfort me.
“I almost killed my friend today. She was keeping a secret from me—spelled to keep the secret. The only way to break aspell like that is to make the person believe you’ll kill them if they don’t tell you. That usually entails hurting them badly, driving them to the brink of death.”
“And this is what you did to your friend?”
“Me? No. Demon Betty did it. I told my friend I’d kill her if she didn’t tell me everything, and she looked deep into my eyes and believed me so much that I didn’t have to lay a finger on her. I bound her with magic, squeezed the breath out of her, but nothing she couldn’t have fought had she really tried.” My voice lost power, weakening as sorrow gripped me. “She saw my demon side and justbelieved.”
“So, you did not have to hurt her. It sounds as if things worked out well.”
Well, yeah, they had, but that wasn’t the point. “The spell they’d put on her wasn’t weak, Sexton. I acted like it was, but I felt its steely grip. Whoever cast it knew what they were doing. It shouldn’t have broken so easily.”
“Forgive me, but I do not understand.” Sexton’s brow bone dropped low over his eyes. “You did not harm your friend. What troubles you about this?”
“Not even a month ago, I risked my life to save this witch. I would havediedto save her.” My voice hitched on a sob. “So, what troubles me is what in the world made her believe today that I would straight up murder her?”
“That’s not your question. You already know why she believed.” Sexton straightened, clicked his tongue at me.
“Because it was true,” I said dully.
“Precisely.” He began walking in the direction of his shed-like home. “What you really want to know is, what made you willing to kill her?”
The thing about truths is they often hurt. This one stung like a son-of-a-bastard.
“It’s as if I lose my humanity. When I’m Demon Betty, I don’t feel at all. She strips the world right down to the basics.” I jogged to catch up with him. “Today, I needed my friend to tell me everything. The most expedient way to get what I needed was to make her see that I’d kill her if she didn’t give it to me.”
“Is that so bad?”
“Yes,” I said. “Threatening to kill someone is wrong. On top of all that, it was so easy.”
He dropped a desiccated rose into his bag. “Human emotions complicate things. The longer I remain on this plane, the more I find myself susceptible to them.”
This from the being who had, more than once, frosted the interior of my lungs over the phone. “You do?”
“I have told you the story of your grandmother and me. Why do you sound so surprised that I might be at the mercy of softer emotions?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t doubt you have feelings.”
“Strong ones, if we are being sincere with each other. The belladonna tea helps to remind me of who I am, but the ways of this world are very persuasive. In the demon realm—Hades, as you call it—decisions are made decisively. There is little contemplation in Hell, because there is no need to ruminate on the implications of an act. There is no right or wrong. There is only I want, I take.”
We were at his door. The mid-afternoon sun beat down on my back, and I was suddenly exhausted and desperately thirsty.
“It is tempting to strip yourself of emotion, is it not?” he asked. “To consider how best to proceed using only logic? Simple. Clean.”
“No second-guessing,” I said.
“There are no mistakes when you have no moral qualms.” He tossed a crumbling carnation into the bag and dusted hishand on his khaki slacks. “There is only acceptable incidental destruction.”
“Collateral damage,” I whispered.
