Gone With The Minion: Chapter 5
The burden of knowledge is a terrible thing...
Olivia trailed behind Tristan, unsettled by the way he moved. Damn, if the man hadn't inherited more than a resemblance to his grandfather. He'd also inherited the slight dip in his step and his great ass. Stop it, Olivia, she'd admonished herself. When they reached the bottom stair, Tristan turned on the light, and a flood of memories rushed over her. This was "David's Dungeon," the nickname she'd given the basement after spending numerous hours in the dark, damp space. It had also been a sanctuary. Off-limits to anyone but the two of them.
David kept the door locked when we weren't there. Clarissa, David's wife, had been unaware of her husband's deep involvement in the paranormal. She didn't ask, and he didn't tell. Even so, Clarissa hadn't appeared to mind that her husband spent time alone in the basement with another woman. David had told her that Olivia was his cousin and that they were conducting genealogical research on their family. Apparently, the explanation had sufficed. Clarissa had made hiding the truth easy. The woman had rarely stayed up past nine o'clock, thanks in part to her reliance on Valium. In her defense, it had been the '60s, and doctors prescribed so much anxiety medication to women in that decade that they might as well have handed them out with Pez dispensers.
Surveying the crowded bookshelves, Olivia noted there were several tomes similar in size to the book Moloch had described. Unfortunately, none were leather-bound, and most didn't appear ancient. Why was it never easy? She had to find the book quickly and get the hell out of David's house. The best thing for her and his only heir was to put as much distance between them as possible.
Next, she moved on to the piles of wooden crates filled with tools for demon hunting, some she'd helped David acquire, along with a spell-casting table still marked with soot and wax. Still no book. The two desks that she and David had pushed together during their second week of working as a team still occupied the same corner east facing corner. The convenience of facing each other as they delved into old scrolls and manuscripts, searching for ways to either kill Moloch, free her, or both, had been practical and stimulating. Until that piont of her unalived life, she'd thought research was the most boring activity in the world. Her desktop was clean and dust-free, but David's was as cluttered as she had remembered, and there was a fine layer of dust on his old punch-key typewriter. Once again, grief kicked her in the stomach. He'd kept her space tidy all the way until the end of his days. But why?
Because, dummy, Olivia thought to herself. This was the place she'd fallen in love with David, and he, if she was being honest, had loved her back.
The record player, a nostalgic fixture in the familiar corner behind David's chair, caught her eye. The powder blue Dansette record player sat on four spindly wooden legs, its white lid open. Unable to resist, she walked over and looked down at the vinyl currently on the turntable—Patsy Cline's "Sentimentally Yours." She had bought it for David in 1962 when it first hit stores, a frivolous expense but worth it. His face had lit up like a kid at Christmas.
Olivia walked away from the record player and, strolled to her desk and took a seat as the memories threatened to overwhelm her. Glancing at David's piled high workstation with opened books, a coffee mug full of pencils, and scattered Post-It Notes, she recalled how he used to write notes on any available paper, napkins, and gum wrappers and tape them all over the place when they had worked together. The introduction of Post-It Notes in the 70s had undoubtedly thrilled his inner research nerd.
"You look comfortable there," Tristan remarked. "Like you belong."
His astute observation about her comfort level made her decisively uncomfortable. She straightened in the seat. "Trust me when I say I don't belong here."
"Olivia—" He stopped, then shook his head. "Stay here. I'll get you the chest."
He ventured into another part of the basement, and she could hear some rustling, a crash and, what sounded like light bulbs shattering, and the muttering of a few choice words.
"You okay?" Olivia called to him. "Do you need help?"
"Nope," he hollered back. "All good." Less than a minute later, Tristan returned carrying an ornate carved wooden box about the size of a watermelon. "Here you go."
Their fingers grazed as the container passed between them. The light touch sent a shiver of excitement across Olivia's skin as her gaze locked on his. Sharply, she looked away. There was so much about him that reminded her of David, but Tristan wasn't his grandfather, and her attraction to the man felt like a betrayal.
Olivia sat down at her old desk and shoved down the unwanted feelings. Instead, she focused on the task in front of her. She had to find the Sefer HaShedim and fast if she wanted to keep Moloch away from her sisters. She prayed the mysterious box held the answer. There were runic symbols lining the edges, along with an assortment of alchemy symbols. On the lid, there was a raised disc with a carving of a serpent, an apple, and a naked woman. The woman's mouth was shaped like a large "O," with the keyhole nestled inside it. Gruesome, raunchy, and familiar.
She glanced at Tristan and said, “It’s an unholy lock. The Devil’s temptation of Eve."
Olivia had encountered an unholy lock eighty years earlier while hunting down the djinn responsible for the death of twelve people in Crawlton, South Dakota.
Tristan nodded. "So, the woman with the big mouth is Eve."
She rotated the box, studying the symbols for a clue. "Maybe."
Djinns, a rare demon variety, could attach a part of their essence to an object, typically a container like a glass bottle or a stone box. Even if they left their human receptacles, they wouldn't return to Hell. They bided their time, awaiting the day another unsuspecting human would free them. The djinn she'd dealt with had secured his gold lamp with an unholy lock—a much smaller one made of onyx in the shape of a pomegranate with four tiny irregular holes drilled into the fruit's center. To unlock it, she'd had to yank the djinn's back, bottom right molar and place the roots into the perforations. After destroying the lamp and the djinn's connection to the world, she had tossed the unholy lock into Lake Oahe, the deepest body of water she could find in the state.
In this instance, however, Olivia prayed that no dentistry would be necessary. The idea of yanking one of her own teeth out made her jaw hurt. But if not a tooth, what was the trigger? She mused aloud, "The apple is the fruit of knowledge, the serpent is the devil, and—"
"The keyhole is Eve's mouth," Tristan interjected. "Do you know how to open it?"
Brushing her thumbs across the bottom of the disc, Olivia felt shallowly carved lines she hadn't noticed before. "Do you have a flashlight?"
Tristan grabbed a lamp from David's desk and held it over the box. "Will this do?"
With the extra light, she could see the lines, but they were hard to discern from the woodgrain. She reached past Tristan, her shoulder brushing his chest, took a pencil from the old coffee mug, and grabbed a clean Post-it. She put it over the lines and used the lead tip to shade the surface. When she finished, the stick-figure-looking letters scribbled under the carved scene were legible. She recognized the ancient symbols. "This is Aramaic."
"You know Aramaic?" There was something in Tristan's voice—amusement, she realized. The same amusement she had heard in David's voice when he'd found out she could read Aramaic and some Hebrew. A girl could learn a lot in fifteen decades if she had a mind to do so.
Tristan pulled a chair over from David's desk and sat down next to her. "So, what does it say?" he asked.
"Dema," Olivia leaned back in the seat. "Blood. Huh." She grunted. "Well, that’s simple enough." Today's science and technology leaders believed DNA locks were the new Holy Grails for security, but, in reality, blood was the original Holy Grail, and had served as a binding and releasing agent for enchanted objects and spells since ancient times.
From a leather-lined pocket in her purse, Olivia retrieved a push dagger. Using its sharp tip, she pricked her finger. A bright crimson drop formed on the surface and darkened rapidly to an almost tarry black--a side effect of being demon-bound.
Tristan stared at the ick welling up on her fingertip, then pivoted his gaze to hers. She couldn't decipher the expression on his face, but he looked more curious than confused.
Returning her attention to the box, she tilted the lock up and carefully filled the small opening, effectively feeding Eve her blood. The mechanism clicked twice, and the lock released.
Tristan scooted closer as she rotated the freed circle and prepared to open the box. The heat of his breath made the fine hairs on Olivia's neck stand up. She tried to ignore the stir of longing, concentrating on whatever secrets would soon be revealed. Was it fair to expose David's grandson to those secrets? If David had wanted Tristan to know about the supernatural side of his world, he would've indoctrinated him into the Psychical Society of Paranormal Researchers. Knowledge of demons and other creatures could get a person killed. Maybe she couldn't spare Tristan from the dangerous world she lived in, but she had to at least give him the option.
"My blood was the key to an unholy lock," she told him. "Are you sure you want to stick around and find out more? It’s probably safer if you walk away now."
"I’m not walking away," Tristan said firmly. "Not now. Not ever."
Olivia looked at him, finding familiarity in those storm-gray eyes. You’re the wrong Jensen, she thought. "You have no idea what kind of mess you're walking into."
"Open the box," was his answer.
Olivia shrugged, then flipped the lid open. Her breath caught in her throat at the contents. At the very top was a picture of herself and David standing outside a Five & Dime. She'd been wearing a pair of men’s jeans, rolled up at the bottom, and a white tee-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. Everybody smoked back then, and, considering that tobacco was a tool to send the bastards back to Hell, it had also been practical.
"God, my hair was so short." She'd styled her hair in thick, full curls, as was the fashion. Olivia had shoved her hands in her back pockets, where she kept her push knives ready for action. David's arms were crossed against his chest with his own pack of stogies in his front pocket. He’d loved those front-pocket tees. She remembered that day as if it were yesterday. They’d just taken down a demon outside of Hannibal, Missouri, a town famous for being the childhood home of Mark Twain, and were commemorating the moment with a photograph.
She picked up the picture and ran her thumb across David’s young face. Glancing at Tristan, she couldn't help but feel a shiver. Her gaze returned to the photo. Moloch had insisted on a clean break, leaving her without a single memento of their time together. In other words, this was the first time she'd looked upon David's face in too many decades. The image of him mesmerized her.
“Wow,” Tristan whispered.
She turned her watery gaze to the near doppelganger of her lost love.
Tristan looked from her to the old black and white photo, then back to her. “You haven’t aged a day,” he said. His reaction was surprisingly composed for a normal human discovering his grandfather's past with a woman who looked in her twenties but so much older.
Suspicion wrinkled her brow. “You knew about me already, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “I know you made a deal with a demon named--”
“Don’t say his name,” she admonished, then frowned at him. “So, you knew about your grandfather’s work. Why not just admit it?”
“I’ve learned you can’t always believe your eyes,” he said softly. “And sometimes, you can’t even believe your heart."
Oliva frowned. “You really are his grandson. He loved saying that same kind of crap.” Trying to play it off, she couldn't deny the goosebumps raised on her arms. The eerie presence of a lookalike-David in this place was almost too much for her to handle.
"Grandpa told me I had to be sure it was you and not a demon wearing your skin. Don't worry about invoking the demon's name here. The old man had the entire place demon-proofed in the eighties."
Hearing David referred to as "the old man" wrankled. Olivia shook her head. "I'd rather not take any chances." Carefully, she placed the photograph on the desk and picked up an envelope that had been underneath it in the box. It had turned yellow with age. On the outside, David had written, “Liv.” She sucked in a breath, then exhaled noisily as she opened the envelope and pulled out the handwritten letter.
Dearest Liv,
I go out walking after midnight—searching for you. And I’d hoped that, maybe, you were searching for me, too.
It’s useless, I know, to go outside and stand in the moonlight and hope that you might appear. As you told me once, the heart wants what the heart wants.
And, God help me, I wanted you.
You are the most selfless person I’ve ever met. You bargained your soul to save your sisters, and then you bargained your freedom to save my family and me.
I want you to know that I will never stop fighting to find a way to free you from the demon's bargain.
If you’re reading this letter, then I’ve failed in my lifetime to break the devil’s deal. I hope that’s not the case. I hope you never have to read this letter because you're with me.
And yet, if you are reading these words, then I’m sorry. I’m sorry I failed. I'm sorry I couldn’t save you.
Everything I have in the office I’ve always thought of as ours. It belongs to you now. I wish you well, my dearest Olivia.
Crazy for you,
David
Olivia's hands shook as she folded the letter and dropped it on top of the photograph. Blinking through tears, she turned her gaze to Tristan. He put his hand on hers, and the warmth of his skin softened the chilly edge of regret inside her.
“I’m not asking you to believe any of this is real. The burden of knowledge is a terrible thing,” she admitted, glancing down at the bloodied mouth of Eve—an expert on burdens. “I’ll take the chest and go. You never have to see me again.”
Even as she made the offer, a part of Olivia cried out to stay. Tristan wasn’t David, but he was a part of him. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Truthfully, there was something about Tristan, aside from his good looks, that made her want to stay. She missed having a comrade-in-arms. The only people who knew about her past, the sacrifice she'd made, and understood the reasons why were her sisters and they were dead. David had been the only living person to know the real her—and he'd accept her, demon bargain and all.
And here was his grandson. Alive. Smart. Kind, and looking so much like David.
Was this mere loneliness? Did Olivia want to tell Tristan everything, to make him believe, so that she wouldn’t have to face Moloch and his lesser demons by herself? David had been her one and only partner in her quest. Not even his friends in the PSPR knew the truth about her. When she had been forced to give him up, she had given up on the idea of having any human companions at all.
Finally, she withdrew her hand from his. She rose to her feet, fighting the urge to run away. Unfortunately, however far she ran, she couldn't outrun her feelings. “You should pretend we never met."
“I'm pretty sure you're not all that easy to forget.” His voice was low, soft, and edged with emotion. He stood up and faced her. “I won’t abandon you.”
Gah! He was just as stubborn as David had been. At the end of the day, Olivia wouldn’t bring the same demonic heat on Tristan that she had on his grandfather. All Moloch wanted was the damned book. David said everything in the office was hers, so it had to be here somewhere. But where would it be that Moloch couldn’t find it? "I have to get to work, so I need you to leave. You’ll just get in the way."
"Let me help you."
“Why do you care?” Olivia asked, desperation making her tone caustic.
He looked down at the desk, his gaze perusing the closed box. He sighed, then looked back to her. “There’s something else in the box,” he said, adeptly changing the subject.
Olivia reached in for the last item tucked into the box. It was a rectangular object swathed in a cream-colored cloth, frail with age. As she unwrapped it, relief flooded through her. “It’s the book.”
“The book?” Tristan asked, his brow furrowed. “Have you been looking for it?”
“Uhm.” She didn’t want to lie to him, but how could she explain that she planned to hand over to Moloch the one thing David didn’t want Moloch to have? Instead, she studied the book. Handing it over to the demon lord would negate the one-way ticket to Hell for her sisters. Her stomach clenched. The idea of giving Moloch power of any kind made her nauseous.
But what choice did she have? She'd gotten them into this mess, and she would do whatever it took, pay whatever price she had to, to get them out. Besides, better the Sefer HaShedim than some poor soul who didn’t deserve a permanent vacation at Hotel Brimstone.
Tristan took a measured step toward her. “Why were you looking for the book, Liv?”
His use of her nickname startled her. “I, well, I just want it.”
“I think you’re lying.” He grabbed her arms and pulled her forward until she found herself two inches away from Tristan’s stormy expression. Her breath hitched. Swirling in that gray gaze was fury—and something else. Longing.
A longing that echoed her own.
“Stop it.” She pushed him away. “Do you want me to smite you? Because I can totally smite you.” She couldn’t actually smite him, but what did he know?
“Go ahead.” He stepped toward her again, and she moved farther out of reach. Maybe he knew more than she thought.
"You stop that right now, mister," admonished Charlotte. She'd materialized on Olivia's left, taking her hand. Eliza shimmered into existence on her right, grabbing the other hand, and then Elisa popped up, holding Eliza’s. Their ability to appear to humans was a newer skill. Over the past three decades, they'd perfected the trick of becoming visible when they touched Olivia. They resembled holograms, slightly see-through but visible. It was odd because, for Olivia, they only looked like ghosts when they were visible to other people. All the rest of the time, they looked as solid as Tristan, who had gone ashen.
"Your—your sisters?" he asked.
"In all our Southern glory," drawled Charlotte. "And you should know better than to lay your hands on a lady."
Tristan staggered as if his knees had given way, but he managed to stay on his feet. "I've never seen real ghosts before."
"Well, aren't you having a heck of a day," Olivia remarked, regaining some of her bravado. "Now, you can say you've met a demon's minion and three ghosts."
"Sister," Charlotte said, "I believe the man has the vapors. You best get him a chair, or he is going to plum pass out."
Olivia released their hands, confident they would vanish from Tristan's sight. Though no longer visible, her sisters stayed close by. Charlotte turned to Olivia. "Are you all right?"
Olivia gave her sister a nod. "I'm okay." When Charlotte narrowed her eyes at her, Olivia added, "I swear it."
"Then we shall depart," Charlotte declared. "But we'll be back in the flick of a lady's fan if he even thinks about touching you again."
Her sisters vanished, and Olivia focused on Tristan, who still looked worse for wear. "You better sit down," she said. "I guess I have some explaining to do."
"Yeah." He returned to his chair and ran his fingers through his hair.
They hadn't brought the bottle of bourbon downstairs, but Olivia remembered that David used to hide hooch under the floorboard. Olivia walked to the far corner and moved some boxes out of the way. She found the loose board on the floor and easily tugged it up. Inside the nook was a pint of amber liquid. No label. She uncorked the bottle and sniffed. Definitely whiskey of some kind.
She held it up for Tristan to see. "How about a drink?"
He gave her an incredulous stare. "I forgot about that." He frowned. "I mean, that Gramps liked a drink every now and again. Is that stuff any good? No telling how long it's been down there."
"I have no idea." She handed him the open bottle. "Here you go."
Tristan put the bottle near his nose, then made a face as the scent wafted from the opening. "Christ. Are you sure this isn't paint thinner?"
"Same difference." She shrugged. "David never drank less than one hundred and eighty proof."
"I'll risk it." He took a drink. His face turned red as he swallowed, and then he handed Olivia the bottle. "Jesus. It feels like I just drank fire. Again."
She chuckled and took a quick drink, the amber liquid burning all the way to her stomach. "Nobody, light a match," she wheezed. Damn, the I. W. Harper hadn't had this kind of kick. She re-corked the bottle and put it on the desk.
"Where'd they go?" Tristan asked, waving at nothing in particular.
"Who?"
"Your sisters."
Olivia smirked. "How do you know they left?"
He hesitated, his eyes going wide. "Are they still here?"
"No," she said, placing the leatherbound tome in front of her. "Let's see what David left for me." She emphasized the word "me" just in case Tristan got any weird ideas about trying to take it back. There wasn't any writing on the front, so she opened the cover, careful of the delicate binding.
Tristan leaned over her shoulder and studied the inner page. "Looks like Greek to me."
She shook her head. "Close. It's definitely Hebrew, though weirdly archaic." She pointed to the word embossed on the first inside page: Shedim. "That's Hebrew for demon."
"So you know that language, too."
"I know a few words. Enough to get me into trouble." She scanned the first page, recognizing an older dialect. It wasn't a historical record or an instruction manual. "Huh," she said.
"What?"
"I think this is a Jewish fable. A folk tale. But it's not one I've ever seen before."
"What's it about?"
"Demons, obviously, something about a conflict. And here, where it says Lemolek, I've seen that referenced before." She hoped Tristan was right about the wards. Otherwise, her next words were going to get her in trouble. "It was a sacrifice to Malkam, a great demon king. Usually children."
Tristan looked appalled. "Who is Malkam?"
"Moloch." If she had any reservations about whether this was the right book or not, they went out the window at the mention of his other name. She winced, hoping he wouldn't suddenly appear. "It's one of several names used over the centuries to describe the demon lord who owns my soul."
If you’re enjoying Gone With The Minion, check out Grimoires of a Middle-aged Witch, the complete Elemental pentalogy.