A Wolf at the Door

Gretchen glanced briefly at me to see if we were ready to go on, then took the rolled contract out of her purse. “We need this translated. I understand that you’re an expert with this language.” Good girl, smart girl, she displayed the paper to our new friend, but didn’t hand it over right away.

Cindy tilted her head, a small smile curving the corner of her mouth. “I don’t know that I’d say expert, but I’m familiar with it, yes. May I ask, where did you get it?”

Before Gretchen could offer up her story, I stepped in. “No. We just need to know exactly what it says, in minute detail.” With demons, every word has a dozen different possible meanings, all of which can drastically change what you think you’re agreeing to. If we were going to find this loophole, I couldn’t risk a vague translation.

The young woman held out her hand, and when I nodded, Gretchen passed the thick paper over. Cindy pursed her lips as she looked over the contract. “This is a lengthy document. It will take some time.”

“How much time?” New Year’s Eve was fast approaching. I had no idea what was supposed to happen then, but I didn’t think we had a lot of time to waste.

“A few hours? Three or four, I would think.” Her dark eyes flitted over the page as she spoke to us, and I could tell she was already translating in her mind. “There is a very good restaurant across the street if you want to get something to eat while you wait.”

That actually wasn’t a half-bad idea. I didn’t want to sit here in this oddity shop for three or four hours. “You wanna give us a price quote on the translation?”

Cindy looked up from the pages and gave me a sly smile. “I have no way of knowing that until the job is done. We’ll discuss payment when you return, all right?”

Man, I didn’t like that. It felt eerily like the favor that had gotten me into this mess in the first place. But who else did we know that could read demon script? She had us, and she knew it.

The restaurant across the street was Chinese—go figure—and was actually very good, as promised. The three of us ate with a minimum of conversation, either lost in our own thoughts or simply watching the people as they moved around us. It wasn’t the same before-Christmas hustle and bustle that I’d seen just a week ago. Now, they were people on a mission, with a destination. Going to parties, picking up supplies, spending Christmas loot. They were smiling people, people who weren’t worried about the credit card bills that would be coming next month, or anything really beyond what they were doing in the next few minutes. They had the happiness that comes with momentary blindness.

I think Gretchen picked up on it too. She seemed pensive, a faint crease drawn between her brows, and I almost asked her what she was thinking about. Almost. I wasn’t sure we were up to the touchy-feely-deepest- darkest-secrets phase of our relationship yet.

By unspoken agreement, after two hours had gone by, we all got up to return to Cindy’s little clutter shop. At least, I think it was a shop. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen a single cash register or anything there. No customers, either, except us. Maybe it was just junk she put in the way to keep people out.

The elderly woman answered the door again, escorting us back through the shelves as they swayed ominously over our heads. Cindy herself was curled up on the futon when we reached the open room, her sneakers discarded and her bare feet tucked under. She looked like a college student, hitting the books for some prefinals studying. She didn’t even glance up when we came in, typing one-handed on a small laptop as her other finger marked her place in the demonic script.

Tai and I let Gretchen take the chair, and while he stood guard over her, I explored the room a bit more.

The floor beneath our feet was plain cement, not even smoothed out properly in some places, but the majority of it had been covered with old rugs. Layers and layers of old rugs, actually, the ones on top worn through enough to reveal the patterns of the ones underneath. It made for uneven footing at best, and a fire hazard at worst. I wondered how the little old lady made her way through here on a regular basis without breaking a hip.

Aside from the furniture, which looked like it had been rescued from Goodwill at some point, there was very little else to see. A few lamps hung from the ceilings, their low lights almost drowned out by dark shades beaded heavily just like the curtains that marked the doors. In one corner, a small set of shelves stood, displaying various knickknacks, and one ancient portable TV, the kind with the black-and-white six-inch screen and the antenna half broken off. I found a small Buddha on the top shelf, carved out of jade or a good replica of it, and smiled a little. He looked just like the one that sat by the waterfall in my backyard, and it was like finding a friend in a strange place.

I might have even reached out to dust him off, but I caught the slightest hint of cloves in that corner. It wasn’t fresh, by any means. Old, musty, faint. Whatever the spell was, it had been cast so long ago that it had almost faded away to nothing. Most likely, it would no longer be functional at all, no matter what its intention had been. Of course, there was also the very rare chance that the old magic had soured over time, becoming something other than what was meant entirely. In those instances, the results could be…unexpected, and highly unpleasant.

Best to follow my mother’s advice, and look with my eyes, not my fingers.

“And there. Finished.” Cindy gave a few sharp taps to her keyboard, then closed the laptop. “This was an interesting job, to say the least.” A few moments later, the elderly woman entered, handing Cindy the pages from some unseen printer. She nodded to us all, her cheerful smile still in place, as she disappeared into the other room again.

“So what does it say?” Gretchen leaned forward, suddenly eager now that all the answers were within our reach.

The translator gave her a small smile, but turned her dark gaze toward me. “I believe there was the matter of payment?”

“What’s your price, then?” It hadn’t escaped me that Ivan said he didn’t trust this woman. I almost dreaded what was going to come out of her mouth.

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Hm. I think about five thousand dollars will suffice.”

“Done.” Gretchen whipped out her phone. “I can transfer that now.”

“Wait…what?” I blinked at the seemingly innocuous Asian woman.

She smiled at me, and while it was still saccharine sweet, there was something behind it. Something darker. “What did you expect me to ask for, Jesse? A lock of hair? Drop of blood? A soul? I can get those things easily, should I want them. But money for rent, for supplies, that’s a bit harder to come by. It turns out I really am a