Page 17

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

D emetrius turned over a rock and smiled as a key glimmered in the dirt. He held it up and faced the Cadillac where the rest of their group watched through the windows.

“It’s still here,” he said.

He turned back to the door and slotted the key into the lock. Behind him, he heard the others getting out of the car. No alarm beeped when he pulled the door open, and no lights came on when he flicked the switch just inside. He’d canceled all of that the previous year when they’d closed down the office. But the space was still for lease, and Demetrius had forgotten about the hidden key until today.

“Come on, come on. Watch your step.”

He waved everyone through the back entrance of what had once been the Critter Catchers office. Cody came last, and they shared a sad smile.

“You kept a key?”

“I actually forgot I had hidden one until shortly after we closed shop. Then I kept forgetting to come get it.” He shrugged. “Best place I could think of for us to regroup and make a plan.”

“You’re amazing.” Cody got up on his toes, and Demetrius leaned down to meet him for a kiss.

Cody ran his hand down Demetrius’s chest, smiled, then stepped through the door. Demetrius followed, closing the metal door behind him, locking it, and pocketing the key. He walked up the short back hallway, past the utility closet and the bathroom on one side and the small break room on the other. Light from the pole lamps in the parking lot filtered in through the front windows, casting the rest of the group into silhouettes. The place smelled of dust and cleaner and the new industrial-grade carpet the realty company had installed once he and Cody had cleared out their furniture. With the desks and file cabinets gone, the space looked bigger. Now the only furniture was a cheap card table by the glass front door and a few folding chairs. Some inkjet printed pages with details about the office were scattered on the card table.

“This was such a good space for you boys,” Amelia said, smiling as she looked between them.

“Yeah.” Cody said, looking at Demetrius. “It was.”

Demetrius could see Cody’s pain and guilt just beneath the surface of his expression. He knew Cody felt responsible for them losing their business license, but Demetrius had never held it against him. Standing here now in the empty space that had once been such an important part of their lives, however, had opened a chasm of loss he hadn’t realized had been festering within him. They’d spent so many hours here, talking and laughing, arguing and making up, eventually touching and kissing once their relationship deepened. They made so many plans for their business, for themselves. And now it was all packed away in the basement of their house.

The toilet flushed, and the bathroom door opened. Tracey stepped out, the flashlight on her phone lighting her way as she dried first one hand then the other on her torn and dirty jeans. Everyone was looking at her.

“What? I haven’t had the chance for a pee break in a while.”

“Good thing the water was included in the rent,” Cody said. “Let’s all try to get as comfortable as possible, and then we can talk about next steps.”

Greg and Alice approached him, and Demetrius had to remind himself he was supposed to be Cody. The weight of exhaustion came down on him, and he decided it would be easier for them all if they just came clean about everything to everyone. For God’s sake, they’d been chased out of Parson’s Pines by a demon-possessed tree, so he was pretty sure Cody’s parents would be able to understand they’d swapped bodies.

“This was your office?” Greg asked.

“Yep, this was the home of Critter Catchers,” Demetrius said, then looked over at Cody. “I think we should all talk. In the break room.”

Cody frowned. “Should we?”

“We should. It would be easier for all of us,” Demetrius said. “And they deserve to know everything that’s going on.”

Cody’s shoulders sagged, but he nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

The others watched as Demetrius and Cody led the Bowers into the heavy shadows of the break room. They both activated the flashlight app on their phones and set them on the counter to provide light.

Demetrius turned and smiled at Cody’s parents. “This may be hard to understand.”

“Harder than understanding how a tree could uproot itself and chase us?” Greg said.

“Yeah, good point.” Demetrius looked at Cody who shrugged and nodded. Turning back to the Bowers, Demetrius said, “Something weird happened to us out in the woods…”

* * *

They understood what had happened faster than Demetrius had expected, though they had a number of very detailed questions. Afterward, there were several hugs and a lot of head shakes before the four of them left the break room. Amelia and Otis stood with Tracey, looking at something on her phone. Eileen and Dieter had moved the card table closer to the big window and sat in folding chairs, using the light from the parking lot to look through a binder.

Eileen looked up. “They caught up?”

“They are,” Cody said, putting an arm around his mom.

“It’s hard to believe, but we know what you all know,” Alice said.

“Doubt that,” Tracey said.

“What’s going on?” Demetrius asked.

“Finalizing the plan,” Dieter replied with a smile. He’d loosened his bolo tie and opened the top button of his white shirt.

“And what would that be?” Cody said.

“To end all of this once and for all,” Amelia said. “Hasn’t that been the goal all along?”

“Well, yeah,” Demetrius said. “But other than the ritual, I didn’t know we had even the beginnings of a plan.”

Tracey frowned. “We’ve always had the beginnings of a plan.”

“Care to share it with us?” Cody said. “From the beginning?”

“Seriously?” With a sigh, Tracey closed the app on her phone. “Fine. Everybody listen up, because I’m tired of explaining this.” She looked around, and when she was certain she had the attention of everyone in the room, began to speak. “During the vampire infestation at Halloween?—”

“The what?” Alice exclaimed.

Tracey glared at Demetrius. “I thought you’d caught them up?”

“We did,” Demetrius said, feeling sweat break out across his body under the force of her glare. He made a face and said more quietly, “About this situation. Not about, you know, all of it.”

“Mom, Dad,” Cody said in a gentle voice. “Try to hold your questions until after, okay? I know it’s a lot, but we’ll talk more once Tracey’s done.”

“Sure, okay,” Greg said, then shook his head as he looked between them. “Still so strange.”

“Tell us about it,” Demetrius said.

“Everybody finished?” Tracey said, her voice edgy with irritation. “Good. During the vampire infestation, we learned the vampires had been invited to Parson’s Hollow, but we never discovered who invited them until very recently.”

“Baron,” Demetrius said.

“Right. Baron Chambers, who is actually an ancient and power-hungry witch.”

“Oh my God,” Alice said, shaking her head. “What is happening to this town?”

“Clarabell and I have been doing a lot of research into that as well,” Tracey said. “Rita is… was a member of a Wiccan group in town who have been helping as well.” Tracey paused and grief flashed across her face. She dropped her gaze and, a moment later, looked back up, her expression hard and determined. “Rita became a good friend. She was the one who told us about the ley lines crossing near the site of Parson Stone’s church, out by the hollow. We all learned about the five members of the coven who had settled here as well, and the truth about the paternity of the children born to each member of the coven.”

“Oh?” Greg said. “One father for them all?”

“Parson Stone,” Cody said.

“Oh my word,” Alice said.

“One member of the coven was a Hedge witch, exploring and testing the boundaries between dark and light magic. She unwittingly summoned a demon, and it took all five members of the coven to imprison it inside the old oak tree by the church.” Tracey looked around at each of them. “That demon has been freed by Baron. From what we understand, he wanted to harness its power to supplement his own. But the demon didn’t want to be controlled. It cannot survive for long outside a host made of organic matter, so it has been possessing people.” She hesitated and swallowed. Removing her glasses, she held the fingers of one hand pressed to her eyes, gathering her resolve.

Demetrius picked up the explanation. “Her boyfriend, Heath, was possessed by the demon. If I understand it correctly, Tracey, Rita, and Heath had gone out to the site of the old church to explore and came upon Baron performing the release ritual. Heath was possessed and Rita didn’t make it. But the demon can’t possess a host for long because it, um, it burns through the host’s organic tissue quickly. So it’s been jumping from host to host. It was in Heath, then, from what it said, a squirrel. That happened when we got swapped. It apparently knows about the line of descendants from the original coven and has been seeking them out. Which is why it possessed the mayor, who tried to run the Bowers off the road.” He cleared his throat. “And then it became a tree.”

Tracey, having collected herself, put her glasses back on. “Right. So it’s most likely burned through that tree by now, and we have no idea who it will be next. We’ll have to be careful when we leave here.”

“Leave?” Alice said. “For where?”

“The old church site and the graveyard,” Tracey said. “We need to perform the ritual there to bind the demon again and end Baron’s attempt to gain more power.”

“If he wanted all this power,” Demetrius said. “Why did he invite the vampires here?”

“My guess is he was hoping to strike a deal with them,” Tracey said. “Use them to help him keep the people of town in line. Or he could have thought of them as a distraction or a test to see how you two fared.”

“We showed him,” Amelia said with a single nod.

“I remember something,” Demetrius said. “I saw one of the vampires, Aldrik, act like he was going to bite Baron out on the street in all the chaos. But then Aldrik said he was too stoned or something and released him.”

“Probably putting on a show,” Tracey said. “To give credence to why Baron wasn’t being attacked.”

“So, what’s involved in this ritual?” Cody asked. “Do we need to gather supplies?”

Tracey moved to the large bag she carried and pulled out the jar. “I have some of them, and Clarabell has the rest.” She sighed. “But with the mayor dead, we’ll need to figure out another descendant.”

“You’ve got one,” Amelia said, avoiding Demetrius’s glare.

“Who’s that?” Tracey asked.

“Me,” Amelia replied. “I was telling Demetrius earlier that my sister and I have traced our roots all the way back to the 1700s and this town.”

“I don’t like this,” Demetrius said.

Amelia finally looked at him, but her expression was tight, determined. “Your dislike has been noted, and we’re moving on.”

“What’s this about descendants?” Greg asked.

“For the spells to work, we need one descendant from each lineage of the original coven. We had four with the mayor, but now there’s three: myself, Margie, and Cody.”

“Can I be counted, too?” Greg said. “Felicia was my mother.”

“One descendant per lineage,” Tracey said.

“All right,” Cody said. “We’ve got four again, with Amelia in the mix. How do we find the last one?”

Someone knocked on the back door. All of them jumped, and Demetrius looked down the heavily shadowed hallway. The light stopped just beyond the door to the bathroom, leaving the rest of the hallway dark.

“What do we do?” Amelia said.

“I don’t know,” Demetrius replied.

Tracey’s phone buzzed and she pulled it from her back pocket. After a moment, she went to the back door and unlocked it.

“What are you doing?” Cody said.

Clarabell came down the hall, followed closely by Lucia. Tracey closed and locked the door behind them.

“What in the fucking hell is going on?” Lucia demanded. She stood with her hands on her hips, shifting her glare between Cody and Demetrius. “I’ve got a homicide crime scene for the mayor and a vandalism crime scene spread across three blocks out at Parson’s Pines. Meanwhile, there’s a massive elm tree, half-burned from the inside out, blocking 118. The tree needs to be cut up and removed by the DPW. But our town no longer has a DPW, so I’m trying to coordinate that clean up with fucking Harriettville, all while trying to make sense of what I’m hearing from the residents of Parson’s Pines that the mayor was driving like a bat out of hell and trying to run someone off the road before she collapsed. After that, the goddamn tree uprooted itself and caused a shit ton of damage as it chased the Widow Monroe’s Cadillac out of the area.” She turned to Demetrius. “Which happens to be owned these days by you.”

Demetrius made a face and pointed toward his original body. “Actually, him.”

“Traitor,” Cody said with a grimace, then he looked at Lucia. “You know what’s going on around here. Why does any of this surprise you?”

Lucia’s shoulders slumped and suddenly she looked as exhausted as Tracey. “The sad part about it is, it doesn’t. But Jesus trout fishing Christ, it makes my job so much more difficult.”

“Everyone here okay?” Clarabell asked, looking around. She squinted one eye as she studied Demetrius. “You still Demetrius in there?”

“Yep,” Demetrius said.

“All right.” Clarabell reached into the messenger bag she wore around her shoulder and pulled out a ring binder. “We’ve got some time before he figures out where we’re at. Let’s dig in and uncover the other two descendants so we can finish this once and for all.”

“We just need one more,” Tracey said.

Clarabell looked surprised. “Oh?” She looked around the room. “Who’s replacing the mayor?”

“I am,” Amelia said, stepping forward.

Demetrius let out a breath and hung his head. He really hated that it was the best plan.

“Okay,” Clarabell said. “Let’s double check that and make sure. Then we’ll find the last one.”