Sometimes I thought I had gone mad in the jungles outside the Temple of Luxis. That seemed the only explanation as to why my life was so good and why I hadn’t yet sent this demon back to the Stygian.
And yet...we owned a suicidal parrot who demanded snack cakes in exchange for fealty.
“So what if it smells like fresh paint and linens?” Krystan said, eyeing our cream walls with suspicion. “It’s too clean in here. Our house has character.”
Emma walked back into the living room with a fresh bottle of antiseptic and a perfectly blank look on her face. I recognized the expressionless mask she wore to keep from reacting to Krystan’s comment. Emma stopped to shoot me an accusing look when she saw me feed Snarp a second gooey chunk.
“You feed him too much and he really will keel over,” Emma warned. “And then he’ll possess some poor human and run around in their body stuffing it full of Hostess and Little Debbie until they pop and then do it all over again to some other poor sucker.”
The parrot began to dance on the counter in excitement. “Yessss, yessss, yessss.”
I stuck the rest of the Twinkie in the fridge. Snarp flew off to his cage to pout but would likely fall asleep since the sugar made him crash.
Travis took the antiseptic from Emma and continued his deep clean of Krystan’s cuts. Emma took a seat next to them, her brow furrowed as she stared off at the far wall.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
“Yeah, never better,” she said a little too brightly. She pushed her can toward me, sharing her drink. Then her smile faded. “Okay, maybe not. I’m a little freaked out by what happened. What am I now?”
After taking a sip, I slid the can back to Emma. I didn’t quite understand the draw of these bubbly waters, but Emma said I was ruined by having to drink rainwater out of gutters on my missions.
“You are Emma,” I said. Though part of me wondered as well. But Emma didn’t need more stress or question marks right now. Despite her healthy glow, I knew she’d been suffering from night terrors and the wedding preparations had gotten under her skin.
“What’s the big deal?” Krystan chimed in. “You use your powers for good. How can destroying evil shit from the Stygian be a bad thing?”
Emma shook her head, still not convinced.
“Calan can exorcise demons. It’s like you are both Knights of the Light now,” Travis said, still focused on Krystan’s left arm.
“It’s not the same.” I said. “I can cast the darkness back to the Stygian, send it to rejoin with its own dimension, but Emma is somehow absorbing the entities themselves. Seeing as she hasn’t had any ill effects, I can only guess that the darkness dissolves once it’s within the light of her soul. Otherwise we’d see negative consequences of her holding all of that evil inside. She’d be driven mad or feral.”
“So you basically deport demons and Emma is dissolving them like sugar in water?” Krystan said, then hissed when Travis blotted antiseptic on her laceration.
“In very rudimentary terms, that is accurate enough,” I said. “But it’s only a theory,” I pointed out.
Emma chewed on her bottom lip.
“What?” I asked. Since the Stygian and the Reckoning, Emma often became distant or distracted. “Are you feeling any dark impulses?” I asked.
Emma scowled and the can slightly crunched under her hand. “For the four hundredth time, no.”
Travis and Krystan pretended not to notice the sudden tension which made it all the more apparent. I met Emma’s defensive glower with an even, measured look that projected I wasn‘t trying to start a fight.
Emma rolled back her shoulders with a sigh and said, “Sorry. I know you’re concerned. That's just it,” said Emma. “It doesn’t feel wrong at all. I want to suck the darkness out of these creatures, and it feels right, like...like spring cleaning.”
“You’re like the Dr. Pimple Popper of demons,” Krystan said with a wicked grin. Emma choked on her water. Based on Emma’s reaction, I would pass on looking up that reference.
“They’re right, Emma,” Travis said this time, finishing up with the last bandage on Krystan’s arms. It was strange to see Krystan let him fuss over her. They had both changed. We all had. Even I had been adapting to civilian life. I still slept with a knife in reach and meditated two hours a day after physical conditioning at the crack of dawn. But our days were spent deciding what food we should get or what movie to watch. I never knew life could be so good or easy. But it seemed Emma was the one who couldn’t completely buy into our new normal.
Travis went on. “You smited that guy.” He stopped, his face twisting up. “Smote? Smitted? Whatever, you kicked ass and saved the day along with my insanely reckless girlfriend and our unborn child. Where’s the bad here?”
Emma shrugged as if losing her internal fight. “The unknown? That things are finally going well for once? It’s like I haven’t caught up to the fact the world isn’t ending or my responsibility to save. My brain has been a heat seeking machine for all that could possibly go wrong.”
“You need to relax—ow,” Travis grabbed his leg where Krystan had landed a swift kick.
She glared at him. “What did we say about the R word?”
Travis rubbed his shin, but clamped his mouth shut.
