AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Misha
We arrive at Winterhaven early in the morning. Even in the heat, there’s a rolling fog, and it takes a while for us to get there, since traffic is so bad. There’s a huge accident on the interstate and traffic slows to a crawl. By the time we’re there, we’re all tense, and I spot Trine’s car parked next to the house.
Her windows are tinted. I know she’s in there and I’m not sure how long she’s been waiting for us.
As we get out of the car, I watch her do the same thing, leaning against the door and playing with her phone. She picks up her head to nod at us, but other than that, there’s no greeting.
I can see how nervous she is. She’s wearing sunglasses that cover most of her face, and I wonder if that’s because she was drinking yesterday.
She doesn’t make a move to approach us. She just waits for us to come over to her, and I shake my head at the guys so they can go in before I do. I need to brief Trine before we go in. I don’t want her to be shocked, and seeing someone who’s possessed is a lot. Especially when you know them. Especially when they’re your friend.
She sticks her phone into her purse when I walk toward her. She tilts her head up to look at me. I can’t see her eyes, but she twists her lips and crosses her arms over her chest.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi," she replies in a whisper. "You’re late."
"Traffic. But it’s okay. Demons don’t mind," I say, smiling at her. "They don’t seem to have a set schedule."
She takes off her sunglasses and glares at me. "Is that a joke?"
"No," I reply. "I mean, they really don’t have a schedule. They can work around us."
She cocked her head. "So there’s no real urgency, huh?"
"There’s definitely some urgency," I reply. "The longer we wait, the worse it’ll be for him. It’s like a progressive disease, except, you know, it doesn’t just affect your body."
"So what else does it affect?" she asks.
"Everything. It isn’t just about their soul. Their bodies start to feel it. It’s like…I don’t know, an infection. They fight against it. Fevers, pain, it’s all part of the process," I tell her. "It’s…not good. It looks bad. They look sick. Like they’re dying. In a way, they are. We’re their last line of defense before they succumb to this, and the stakes are higher than usual. If someone dies before we can exorcise them…"
"Do they go to hell?" she asks, her voice trembling.
I walk toward her, leaning against the car by her side and looking up at the cloud-covered sky. This city is so fucking hot. I don’t understand how it can be this hot and humid when the day is so overcast. "I don’t know," I say. "Nobody knows. This might be a better question for Salinas."
"Salinas?"
"Luke," I say. "The priest."
"Oh," she says. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure. What’s up?"
"You say you’re a demonhunter," she says. "But you don’t seem all that committed to this belief, and you don’t look like a person who is insane. So what got you into this?"
I sigh, exhaling hard from my nose as I do. "It’s a long, complicated story."
"Good thing demons work around our schedule."
I chuckle, shaking my head. She’s good. I guess my best bet here is honesty. I just don’t know how much she can take, so I tell myself to be gentle. "My parents were religious when I was growing up," I start. "They adopted me a few years after they adopted my sister when they realized they couldn’t have any natural-born children. The first few years of my life were…"
She turns to look at me, her eyes narrowing as she rakes her fingers in her hair. Her sunglasses are hanging on the front of her top, and I have to strain myself not to look down at them. At her cleavage. I make myself look into her eyes instead, and her pupils dilate the moment our gazes meet.
"They were fine," I say. "They were nice. Then we grew up, and we weren’t babies anymore, and something in my parents flipped. It’s hard to say what it was, exactly, but…anyway, that’s not the point of this story. I turned eighteen, moved away. It was contentious. They adopted another couple of children when my sister and I were gone, and the only reason I talk to them is so I can talk to my little siblings."
"Okay…"
"The point is, I decided to try to help other people who were stuck in situations where it felt like no one was listening to them," I say. "And I did. I helped a lot of people. As many as I could. Then I realized that there was this subset of the people I was trying to help that I couldn’t reach, no matter what I did. The worst part of that job was how powerless I felt sometimes. It doesn’t matter how often you hear a victim give a statement, it always hits you hard. That’s why so many social workers burn out. Well, that, and it doesn’t pay."
