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“I tried going home, but… I couldn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at me!” she exclaimed, her eyes turning glassy like she was about to start crying again. “How am I supposed to show up at my grandma’s house when I look like this? It would send her to an early grave. And my little sister? She’d never be able to stand the sight of me. I’d give her nightmares…”
Her shoulders slumped, and she hung her head in her hands.
“Maybe you should try calling them?” Scooching a little closer, I wrapped my arm awkwardly around her shoulders. Despite my plans to go into social work, I had never been great at comforting strangers. Or people in general. “Just tell them you’ll be away for a few days so you can buy yourself some time and get this… fixed.”
“I lost my phone when that… that monster…” She trailed off, and I felt her shiver.
Right. Shit.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Mine’s gone too. You didn’t see it anywhere near where we were attacked?”
“I saw yours—or at least, it was probably yours. It was broken though. Should I have brought it?” she asked, her eyes going wide.
“Nah. What the fuck am I gonna do with a broken phone? But here, do you want to use my laptop to email your… your grandma, you said?”
I wondered if her folks were out of the picture like mine were. Sounded like it. It was nice that she at least had someone who cared about her though, who would notice and grieve if she went missing. Colin had been the only person I would’ve worried about leaving behind if I had to go into hiding for a while. And after last night? Well, I wasn’t worried about him anymore.
The girl’s face lit up like I’d just offered to give her a fucking yacht. “Can I? That would be amazing. Just so they don’t worry.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I walked over to the rickety kitchen table and grabbed the laptop, then deposited the ancient machine on the couch cushion beside her. While she tapped out a message, I went to the bedroom to throw on some new clothes. The tail presented a bit of a problem—I wasn’t a huge fan of stuffing it down one pant leg like a man with the world’s biggest cock, but I didn’t really want it out either. I finally compromised by grabbing a pair of loose-fitting sweats. Hopefully if I tucked my tail into those, it’d be a little less noticeable.
The girl sniffled quietly while she typed, and she obviously couldn’t think of much to say. It took her five minutes to compose what sounded like a ten-word email.
When I returned, she looked up at me, her relatively human eyes looking out of place in her green-tinged face. “Okay. I sent it. What now?”
“Now, we try to fucking fix this.” I plopped back down on the couch beside her, plucking my computer off her lap. “If I’ve learned anything in college, it’s that the internet has the answer to just about every problem you can think of.”
My fingers hovered over the keys, trying to think of what the hell I was supposed to Google at a time like this.
Woke up as a demon—how do I undo?
What makes a human grow a tail overnight?
How to snap out of a waking nightmare?
None of those search phrases really seemed like they’d help. I wasn’t sure anything would, honestly, but I wasn’t giving up without at least trying to reverse this insane bullshit.
“I’m Hannah, by the way,” the girl said rather abruptly after a couple of moments of silence.
“Piper,” I answered automatically, my hands still poised unmoving over the keys.
I could feel her eyes on me, and it was making it harder to think of something. Even with her demonic green skin, she looked eminently fragile and lost. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to come up with something. Anything.
“Demon-ectomy?” she suggested half-jokingly.
“Worth a shot.” I huffed a mirthless laugh but typed it in.
That search didn’t turn up shit, but once the ball was rolling, it got easier to think of search terms to try. It took a lot of digging and backtracking, but I finally turned the screen to Hannah to show her what I’d found.
“What do you think? This occultist woman does demon exorcisms. That sounds like about what we need right now.”
Her gray brows furrowed over her worried eyes. “Face-to-face consultations only?” She looked up at me in terror. “We have to go back outside?”
