Familiar Spirit

“Why did you erase my magic circle?” Valerie asked, her voice plaintive. “Did he make you do it?”

“I got rid of it because I thought it might help banish the . . . demon. You called it Jade? Is that its name? I thought it might be holding the spirit to this house, somehow, providing a link.”

Valerie shrugged. “It was supposed to protect me. It didn’t work well enough. But I thought I might be safer if I stayed there. Oh, well, I don’t guess it matters. I’m going.” She came down the steps.

Sarah moved quickly to block her way. “Wait a minute. I’ve got some questions . . . you’ve got to help me.”

Valerie stopped short. She looked bewildered. “Me, help you? What do you mean?”

“You can help me get rid of the demon . . . Jade, you call it?”

“It’s what he told me to call him. I don’t know what it means.”

“Well, it’s a name, and names are important. It might be useful,” Sarah said. “All right, that’s a good start. I want you to tell me everything you know about Jade, and how you summoned him.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because he’s evil, and we have to destroy him.”

Valerie shrugged. “I don’t see . . . you got away.”

“Yes, I got away, but the next person might not be so lucky. As long as that thing is loose in this world, it’s like . . . like the germ of some horrible disease. And if his power grows, he might not be restricted to this house, as he seems to be now. There’s no telling what he might not do.”

A faint, unpleasant smile appeared on Valerie’s narrow face. “Well, he’s not in the house now,” she said. “He’s got a body, not that it will do him much good.”

Sarah felt a mental chill, and moved away from Valerie. “What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s trapped. Jade’s trapped in a sick, dying body, and when it dies . . . well, I hope he dies, too. If he doesn’t, I don’t want to be here to find out what happens. I’m going.”

She walked past Sarah towards her car, but Sarah grabbed her arm. “Wait a minute. You’ve got to tell me what you mean.”

Valerie looked down at Sarah’s fingers and she pulled away, her whole body seeming to shrink and recoil from contact.

“Let me go,” she said sullenly. “I’ll tell you.”

“Not here,” Sarah said. Her eyes went to the house, half expecting to find some visible sign of Jade’s presence, like a face at the window. But if the demon still lurked in the form of a rat or a cat or some other animal, it was not showing itself. “We have a lot to talk about. Let’s go somewhere . . . I know a coffee shop nearby.”

Valerie gave her head a jerk, presumably in agreement. She was staring fixedly at the ground, her body rigidly pulling away from Sarah’s grasp. Feeling a little sorry for her, Sarah let go her arm. Immediately, Valerie went to the gleaming black Ferrari.

“Let’s go in my car,” Sarah said quickly. “I’ll bring you back here afterwards.” She saw Valerie’s bony shoulders hunch, and then she backed away from the car. Feeling like a teacher with a backward child, Sarah said, “Don’t you want to bring your purse?” She could see the soft brown leather bag on the front seat. She remembered it from the first time she had seen Valerie because, along with Valerie’s knee-high boots, it was obviously expensive, and she had envied it.

But instead of simply reaching into the car for the bag, as Sarah expected, Valerie turned around to face Sarah, a look of dumb suffering on her face. “Yes,” she said. “Of course I do.” As if in slow motion, she leaned back into the car and got the purse. Slipping the strap over her shoulder, she held the bag close, almost cradling it against her body.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Valerie would not make a comfortable ally, Sarah thought as she let her into her car, but she might be useful. She made no attempt to break the silence between them, but drove swiftly to the coffee shop on Lamar Boulevard. There they settled into a corner booth and, after the waitress had brought them two steaming cups of coffee, Sarah finally spoke.

“Now tell me what you mean about Jade being trapped. What did you do? What happened? And what exactly is Jade, anyway? How did you summon him?”

Valerie glared at her sullenly across the gold-speckled formica table top. “What do you want to know first? I don’t know much about Jade . . . just what little he told me, which I don’t believe, or what I could guess, which turns out to be mostly wrong.”

“Start at the beginning,” Sarah suggested. “Where did Jade come from?”

“I don’t know. I just called him up and he appeared. I painted the magic circle on the floor like the books said, to protect myself, and I said some invocations, which I found in the books, and I made a blood sacrifice.” Her lips twitched upward in a tight little smile.

In her lap, beneath the table, Sarah’s hands clasped each other. “What sort of sacrifice?”