Gail nodded. “Yes, I imagine I do. They might restrain a werewolf and keep it from changing.”
“You could use them and not have to worry about changing and hurting someone.”
“Yeah, it’s possible, but just because they restrain me now doesn’t mean that they’ll actually work on a full moon. Maybe they’re just spelled to identify a werewolf. That’s a pretty good spell by itself.”
“It’s more than that,” I said.
“But you can’t be sure,” Gail said, giving me a curious look.
Well, I knew that eventually, I was going to have to tell her the truth and it seemed like the time had come. “Ah, I can be sure.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice deepening as she turned fully to face me.
“Promise you won’t be mad?”
“Mad about what, Jesse?”
“Promise?” I repeated.
“Why would you think I’d be mad at you?”
I didn’t respond for a few moments and I could see that the longer I took, the higher my chance of catching a knuckle sandwich was.
“Okay, I sort of had a vision when we were fighting the spirit last night.”
Gail’s eyes widened. “You what?”
Once I started, the words flowed out of me faster than I thought I could talk. In less than five minutes, I had related everything that I had felt and seen while the spirit had been in contact with me. I finished and waited for Gail’s reaction.
She just stared at me for a few moments. Then she said, “So you knew what would happen when you put the bracelets on me last night?”
I tilted my head a little to the side, frowned, and then shrugged.
“I wish you would have been honest with me before,” Gail said.
“Yeah, look, I’m sorry, Gail. I know I should have.”
She shrugged. “Well, spilled milk and all that. Nothing to be done about it now.”
“And you’re still certain you want to try an exorcism on the bracelets?”
“Yeah, we have to send the spirit packing or it’s just going to keep killing everyone that broke whatever curse it put on the artifacts they dug up. We’ll just have to take our chances that the exorcism won’t break the spell.”
Well, she took my revelations a lot better than I expected.
“Your call,” I said. I set the bracelets at the top of the small marker and stepped behind Gail to watch the process. She opened the glass flask and sprinkled a little water on the bracelets—I guessed it was holy water—and started reading from the book almost immediately. I was a little surprised that it was in Latin. Maybe it worked better in Latin than English.
She finished up and closed the book.
I stepped closer and stared at the bracelets.
“Ah, shouldn’t there have been a puff of smoke or the scream of a damned soul?”
“Why?” Gail asked.
“I don’t know. I just expected something flashy.”
“Exorcisms of people are usually ‘flashy.’ Even in animals demons can be pretty determined not to leave, but in objects and with spirits, not demons, you usually don’t know if it works unless the EMF goes away.”
“Animals? Really?” I said.
Gail shrugged. “It happens. I haven’t seen it, but Dad mentioned it once. It’s sort of a way station. A demon released in daylight has to find a vessel quickly or return to hell. If there aren’t any impure people nearby, then they can possess and animal until they find one.”
Gail picked up the bracelets and went back to her van. I followed, still confused. “Okay, two more questions: Impure? You mean they can’t possess pure people? What about that old movie about the little girl being possessed?”
“I don’t know the movie, but if the girl was a virgin, in reality and not technically, and baptized, then she couldn’t have been possessed.”
“Not technically?” I queried.
Gail creased her eyebrows at me. “Do I need to explain that?”
I thought about it for a second and shook my head.
“Then what’s your other question?”
“What? Oh sorry, still going over the possibilities of being technically a virgin.”
Gail snorted out a laugh. “You would.”
“Humph, oh you said that if they couldn’t find another host or what did you call it, a vessel?”
Gail nodded.
“Right, vessel,” I continued, “but you said that if it was daylight and they couldn’t find a vessel, they’d return to hell. What about at night?”
“At night a demon can stick around awhile, as long as they’re in a vessel by dawn.”
“So, we don’t want to do an exorcism at night,” I said.
“Right, but if you do it correctly, the demon will be forced back to hell by the exorcism. If you screw it up, then you may get it out only to have it grab you.”
“Say what now?”
“Remember I told you not to let the spirit touch you,” Gail said.
“Well, sure, but you said it wouldn’t matter if it touched you.”
“Good memory,” Gail lifted the left side of her shirt high enough to reveal her bra—she was back to wearing a sports bra—and the partially covered tattoo. The ink was a black pentacle with a cross in the center.
“See this?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed it.”
“Good, because you’re going to have one just like it before dark.”
“Oh, yeah.” I said nodding. “You mentioned it last night. You call it a sigil?”
She dropped the tail of her shirt back and turned to the van. “Because that’s why spirits and demons can’t possess me. Most hunters have this tat or another one that works the same.”
“And a tattoo is all it takes?” I asked.
“Well, I have to mumble a spell of blessing over it. Otherwise, a wound to the area would destroy the protection. With the spell, even if the pattern is broken there are lines of protection that will still bind the pattern together.”
She pulled back from her bag and I saw she had the EMF detector. Gail set the bracelets down and triggered the switch on the side of the small meter. It immediately began to chirp, getting louder as she
