Why would a tunnel with ancient arches be connected to a Hellhole underneath Calamity Jane Realty? I knew that Masterson and his ilk had been around for a long time, but was he “ancient”? Or was this something left over from even before his time?
“Where are your sister and Kelly?” I asked, distracting Layne for now.
“They’re upstairs practicing squealing.”
“Why would they be practicing that?” Natalie asked.
“Because they’re crazy girls whose screws have come loose,” he said, as if the answer were as plain as the nose on her face.
Doc laughed and held out his hand for a fist bump, which Layne gave with a proud grin in return.
“I like the way you shoot square, Layne,” Cooper said, eyeing Natalie with a grin.
She pointed at him. “Watch it, hot cop, or I’ll shoot you square in the derrière.”
“Why did she call you ‘hot cop,’ Coop?” Layne asked. “Did you get burned or something?”
“What were you going to tell me earlier?” I asked, changing the subject before Natalie answered that. “You said you were thinking about something. What was it?”
“I was thinking about that lidérc we talked about on New Year’s Eve.”
The blood drained from my face. I thought he’d been too engrossed in his television show to hear my whispered tale in between bites of pizza.
“Why would you be thinking about that right now?” Doc asked, wearing a poker face.
“Because I overheard somebody say its name during a commercial.”
Oh. Damn.
“What about the lidérc?” Aunt Zoe asked Layne.
He shrugged. “I just wondered what would happen if it looked at itself in a mirror.”
Aunt Zoe and I locked wide eyes.
The mirror! The old one with weird symbols on its frame in her workshop that had been handed down through our family for generations. The same one Mr. Black had seen last month and called a “special mirror,” saying something about it being a gateway. The very one Aunt Zoe had warned him not to touch, saying that the time hadn’t seemed right to teach me how to use it yet.
Maybe, just maybe, Layne was onto something with that mirror idea.
“I saw a movie about a demon once,” Layne continued, oblivious that he’d stumbled onto a possible solution to a very big and dangerous problem. “When the demon looked in the mirror, it got distracted staring at itself. The hero was able to catch it inside the mirror and then drop it out a window where it shattered, and the demon died.”
Cooper shot me a hard glare. “You let him watch that movie Constantine?”
I raised my hands in defense. “Not knowingly.” I pointed toward the living room. “Aunt Zoe gets all sorts of channels. I’m a single parent. I can’t patrol him every waking moment.” I turned to Layne. “Why in the world are you watching shows about demons?”
He shrugged. “Harvey and I watched it together. He said there were no naked girls in it, so I could see it if I wanted to, and I did.” He grinned at Cooper and Doc. “It was really cool! There was this kid in it who was training to be just like …”
I spaced out on Layne’s movie highlights while finishing my drink in a couple of gulps. The tequila burned on the way down, making my chest warm.
Tomorrow morning Aunt Zoe and I were going to have a talk about that mirror. The time had come for her to teach me about that family heirloom so we could determine if it might help me catch the damned lidérc.
* * *
Later that night, I stood looking at the bruised face staring back at me in the bathroom mirror. The tequila’s liquid bravado had worn off mostly, leaving me bouncing back and forth between nail biting and swaggering. With the makeup all washed away, my black eye shined in the light. The purple, dark red, green, and yellow looked like a kaleidoscope tattooed on my skin. “Eat your heart out, Mona Lisa,” I joked and grabbed the dental floss from the drawer.
Layne and the girls were in bed, the latter still giggling off and on while the former had his nose buried in a new book he got from the library on medieval sorcerers. I swear, if I had not been there to witness that boy popping out of my birth canal, I’d think he was switched in the hospital nursery with someone else’s kid. Although his obsession with creatures and weapons did ring true for our family line.
Aunt Zoe had returned to her workshop, determined to finish this glass order in the next day or two so she could relax for a while and take the kids ice fishing. When I asked when she’d learned how to ice fish, she’d mumbled something about old dogs learning new tricks. When I kept squinting at her, she added that Reid had suggested it, which made me smile.
I liked Reid a lot. So did she, but her fear of getting her heart broken again by him wasn’t loosening its grip on her sensibilities. My fingers were crossed that time and persistence on Reid’s part would eventually pay off for him.
Flossing done, I squeezed some toothpaste on my toothbrush. It seemed so mundane to tend to my teeth after what I’d faced tonight. I could have died at the hand of a Hungarian devil, yet here I stood brushing like any old Jane Doe. My dentist would be proud of me.
Did that freaky thug with the sharp pike-like teeth who’d been hiding behind the other gray door ever worry about getting cavities? Probably not, judging by the stains I’d noticed on its choppers when it stepped out of the shadows. The infection from his bite alone would probably kill me within a day. Rabies would be a welcome parting gift compared to the other deadly bacteria that I imagined were swarming in its mouth.
Shuddering, I decided to brush my teeth extra well tonight and gargle twice with antiseptic mouthwash.
Meanwhile, my thoughts returned to Natalie and
