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“Don’t mention it. Let me know how this goes and if you need anything else, okay?”
“I will, thank you,” I say.
Back at Idylewylde Hall, Joseph stumbles upon me, digging through the hall closet after dinner.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to find a bucket. We need to cleanse this place to tell Beatrix to get out. Evan told me to start by washing the floors. Aha!” I find a large, red bucket and hoist it into the air.
Joseph plucks it out of my grasp.
“Really? A deep clean? That’s where we’re supposed to start.”
“Yes, if Beatrix and the house are so intertwined. Now, help me heat some hot water and pour the herbs in.”
Joseph opens his mouth to protest.
“Do you have any better ideas?”
That shuts him up.
We walk into the kitchen together, and I grab a large pot from under the counter. I fill it with water and add the herbs once it boils. The kitchen is soon overwhelmed with the scent of peppermint and juniper.
“At least it smells good,” Joseph says. We pour the mixture into the bucket, and Joseph grabs two sponges from underneath the kitchen sink.
“Where should we start?” he asks.
The most obvious answer is the attic, but we wordlessly agree that we’d prefer not to go up there at night.
“Dining room?”
“Sure.”
Joseph and I don rubber gloves. We get down on our hands and knees and scrub every inch of the floor. I grunt as I work at the baseboards. My necklace clanks against my chest softly as I move.
The dining room is freezing even though the contractors recently installed new windows. I can see my breath. I pant from the exertion. The babies are growing faster than my body can keep up, pressing against my ribs and lungs.
“Push out when you’re scrubbing. We’re trying to expel this,” I instruct. Joseph adjusted accordingly. I swallow as I scrub. A metallic taste has lingered in my mouth for the past week, no matter how much gum I chew. It tastes rough and slimy like my mouth is constantly coated in blood. My gums bleed constantly.
Above us, the chandelier sparkles and dims before shutting off completely with a zap.
“Don’t tell me we blew a fucking fuse again,” Joseph says.
The floorboards creak.
Iphigenia is upstairs reading in the study. I feel as if someone is standing behind me. I whip around, sponge in hand, as the world’s most useless weapon, but no one is there.
Many websites insist that when casting out malevolent entities, it’s best to focus on the positive. So, for the rest of the night, I try to do that. Joseph and I successfully reset the breaker in the basement. I dump the rest of the water, mixing it with the dirt floor.
When we make it back upstairs, I practically sprint to the refrigerator. I’m ravenous. Joseph watches in awe as I eat handfuls of pulled chicken from the rotisserie chicken I’ve kept in the refrigerator.
“The miracle of life,” he jokes as I gnaw on a bone, content with the feeling of my teeth scraping up the remaining bits of flesh.
Once Iphigenia goes to bed, we retire to the study. Joseph pulls me onto his lap.
“You still smell like peppermint,” he mutters, kissing my shoulder. I turn around and straddle him. We keep kissing. I tug my sweater over my head. Joseph reaches around to free my breasts from my bra. He takes my nipple in his mouth and sucks. His nose nudges my crystal, and he stops.
“Where’s that from?”
