Pat made no attempt to hide his hands.
“Those are Theban symbols,” Zoe said. It was also known as the Witch’s Alphabet, but she wasn’t about the share that info or they’d somehow use it against her. All she said was “Its origins are unknown but it was used as a substitution cipher to encrypt magical secrets.”
“Or vampire secrets. The left hand spells out
“Where did you learn how to read Theban symbols?” Zoe asked Damon.
“From Eve,” he replied.
“I had no idea Silas became a demon,” Pat said. “Not until a few minutes ago when you told Neville the name.”
“You never noticed those symbols on Pat’s hands before?” Zoe demanded of Damon.
“Of course I noticed them, but usually they aren’t facing me,” Damon said. “They face him. I’m standing beside and slightly behind him now and it’s only then that I recognized them.”
“So Silas is after Pat.” Her witch’s intuition made her add, “Does this all have something to do with the funeral home?”
“Why do you keep asking about the funeral home?” Damon demanded.
“You’re vampires living next door to a funeral home. And now there are demons in underground tunnels. I just put two and two together and got—”
“The wrong answer,” Damon said curtly. “Forget about it.” He glanced down at the screen of his smartphone then reached out to take hold of Zoe’s arm. “You’re coming with me.”
“Wait a second!” she said. “What are you talking about? Where are we going?”
“There’s trouble at the funeral home,” Damon said.
“You and Pat go ahead. I’ll wait here for you,” Zoe said.
“No, you’re coming with me,” Damon said.
“Why?”
“Because there’s a problem.”
“I didn’t cause it.” Had she? All she’d done was ask to look up something in the Book of Spells. That was a very limited spell that shouldn’t have had any impact beyond the book itself. “Besides, a second ago you told me to forget about the funeral home.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before we got a demon possession,” he said. “Come on!”
“Wait, why can’t Pat go with you?” Zoe said. “He knows Silas.”
“The demon wants to talk to you,” Damon said.
“What about Gram? I can’t leave her here alone,” Zoe said.
“Pat is here.”
“He’s not a Demon Hunter, is he?” she asked.
“No.”
“One vampire isn’t enough to protect Gram,” Zoe said.
“So we’ll get another one.” Damon opened the door to a slightly heavyset man wearing impeccably pressed gray trousers and a crisp designer white shirt. “Invite him in.”
“He’s a vampire, too?” she said.
Bruce nodded and smiled.
“Don’t worry about your grandmother. Pat and I will take good care of her,” Bruce said.
“Fine. Come in, but I still don’t understand why can’t I stay here,” Zoe said.
“Because your services are needed at the funeral home,” Damon said.
“I don’t like funeral homes,” she said. That was putting it mildly. Ever since her father’s funeral when she was very young, she’d had a thing about them. “They give me the creeps.”
“Too bad,” Damon said.
“You can’t compel me to go,” she said.
“A human’s life is at stake.”
“Maybe you’re lying to get me to the funeral home so you can torture me or something,” she said.
Damon responded by lifting her in his arms and moving with vamp speed the two blocks to the Evergreen Funeral Home. Zoe’s head was spinning when they arrived. He dumped her back on her feet, but she had to hang on to him a moment until she regained her balance.
“What if someone saw us?” she said.
“We moved too fast for human eyes to see us.”
Zoe fixed him with her best angry-witch stare. “Do not just grab me like that again. I do not appreciate being taken places against my will.” She looked around. They were in a hallway. “Where are we?”
“In the basement of the funeral home.” She belatedly realized that Nick and Daniella were standing farther down the hall.
“What’s going on?” Damon asked Nick.
Daniella answered. “It’s Phil. He’s our embalmer. Well, not mine, as I didn’t go into the family business but started my own cupcake business, as you know. Sorry I’m babbling. I do that when I get nervous.”
Zoe could sure relate, which was another reason for her to like Daniella.
“Anyway, Phil has been possessed by a demon,” Daniella said.
“I can’t just kill him like I did the cable guy,” Damon said. “If I do, then the human dies. The cable guy was not human. He was all demon. Possession is something else.”
“I tried to exorcise him but it isn’t a power that I have as a druid hybrid,” Daniella said. “His head actually spun around, which can’t be good for him. He has back trouble.”
Head spinning did not sound like a good thing. “Shouldn’t you call for a priest or something?” Zoe said nervously.
“You’re the ‘or something,’” Damon told her.
“I don’t know how to do exorcisms,” she said.
“The demon demanded to speak to you,” Nick said.
“Can’t we do that on speakerphone or Skype or something?” Zoe asked.
“No,” Damon said emphatically.
“Phil is contained in the embalming room where we prepare the bodies,” Daniella said.
“What about your family?” Damon asked Daniella.
“They don’t know a thing about this and we need to keep it that way. They have a big funeral they are arranging with the family of the deceased in the office upstairs. We have to move fast.”
“We?” That made Zoe feel better. At least there were four of them.
“You,” Daniella corrected her.
“And me,” Damon said.
“The embalming room is in here,” Daniella said, leading them to a door.
“Do not rush me in there,” Zoe warned Damon.
“If you don’t hurry, Phil could die. Do you want his death on your hands?” Damon said.
Zoe didn’t want anything to do with the embalming room in a funeral home on her hands.
Damon took her hand in his. “Let’s go.”
He opened the door and entered the room but kept her behind him as he assessed the situation. Zoe jumped nervously as the door slammed shut behind them.
“Who are you?” Zoe asked the man in the white coat. Actually she was asking the demon possessing the man in the white coat.
“Guy.” His voice was something right out of a horror movie. “Your time is running out.”
