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No thank you.
Page after page went by with exciting new horrors that I now knew were real. It got me to wondering what kind of person would be crazy enough to call up one of these things. Demons forced their way onto the mortal plane in a lot of different ways, but they were also summoned. After about sixty pages of the demon encyclopedia, I couldn’t fathom why.
Which begged the question, how did one get into the sorority house? Had one of the girls been playing with magic she didn’t understand? Or was this an intentional attack? If someone was targeting the Delta Phi girls, calling a demon up from the fiery pits of hell was a pretty big deal. Not exactly a normal reaction to a breakup or not getting picked as a pledge.
Then I remembered my one brief experience with a sorority during my freshman year at Tulane, and I wondered if it was really a stretch to think a slighted rushee might go over the edge. Some of those girls based their whole identity on joining a sorority.
They’d only invited me because having a werewolf in the sisterhood made them look more inclusive.
Seriously.
I took a drink from my coffee, which was now more lukewarm than hot, and turned the page again.
I choked, coughing so hard I sputtered the coffee right back into my cup, narrowly avoiding doing a spit-take on the antique book.
Setting my cup down and wiping my chin, I eagerly tapped the page and pointed dramatically at Magnolia with my other finger. “Phone. Phone.”
Wilder was standing directly behind me now, one arm braced on the back of my chair as he inspected the page I was poking. The tiny Latin font didn’t tell me anything, but the drawings had a closeup of the thing’s face and a full-bodied sketch as well. Guess this wasn’t its first trip to our world.
I hoped it would be the last.
Its eight hideous eyes seemed to be watching me even from the still-life representation on the page, and there was no doubt in my mind this was the same creature that had tried to attack us at the Delta Phi house.
Magnolia handed me my house phone, and I found the scrap of paper with Santiago’s number on it tucked inside the cover of the book.
I half-expected it to go to
voicemail, since Santiago didn’t strike me as a daytime kind of person, but after two rings his already familiar voice came through the line. “Hello.”
“I know what it is.”
“It took you this long? I expected you to call me from the car on the way home, you seemed so eager. Not changing your mind on our arrangement, are you?”
My gaze darted to Wilder, but he’d left the kitchen and was in the living room now, casually prodding the broken coffee table with one toe.
“If you don’t think you can handle the demon, that’s fine, but don’t project your insecurities onto me,” I replied, keeping my voice cold. I hated that his every word sounded the way velvet felt, soft and lush and insanely touchable.
When we were done with this demon, I was going to make damn sure I never crossed paths with Santiago again. If you’re afraid of sharks, don’t swim in the ocean, right?
He chuckled softly. “I like it when you growl at me, brujita. Your blood is full of fire. Now tell me what kind of creature it is.”
“Gamigan?” I didn’t think the name itself looked particularly Latin, and I was hoping I didn’t completely mangle the pronunciation.
The line went quiet, and for a minute I thought Santiago might have gotten disconnected. Then he made a small huh sound and said, “I don’t know if you’re the praying kind, but if you are, pray for those girls.”
He hung up.
I stared at the phone for a few seconds before handing it back to Magnolia, unsure what the subtext of that parting line had been. Could he save them or not? Were they already dead or maybe just wishing they were?
I mulled these thoughts over, not finding an answer I liked no matter how I considered the facts. Now we had a name for the beast, but would that be enough?
Sick of staring at the drawing, I snapped the book closed with a loud thwap.
Magnolia was pretending to type something, but I could see her eyes lifting to me periodically.
“What does brujita mean?” I asked, needing to break the silence somehow.
“Little witch,” Wilder, not Mags, responded. “He gave you a nickname.”
