The therapist nodded gravely. “I know exactly what you mean. The ritual took over to such a degree that you were figuratively imprisoned by it.”

“Exactly.” She exhaled. “That’s exactly what happened. I finally stopped when I just wore myself out. I was covered with the stuff—it had gotten all over my blouse, my hands, my vanity.”

“Here,” the therapist said, leaning forward with a Kleenex box.

“Oh, I’m not…” Except her eyes were watering. “Oh. Thanks.”

As she mopped up, the therapist sat back. “That can be truly terrifying.”

“It was. I wasn’t in control of it—and you know, I’d always been, like, a little OCD-ish. I mean, I like everything perfect, and I like my things where they should be. I like my things, period. I feel … safer … like, when I have the perfect number of lipsticks with me.”

“I remember. It was hard to throw one of them out in our previous sessions.”

“Yes.” Devina drew her hand through her hair, reassuring herself that it was all still in place, that talking about this hadn’t magically revealed her true ugliness. “But that morning was the first time I had the sense that it could cripple me—and that terrified me. It’s so fucked-up. It’s like your best friend turning on you, you know? Like, the thing that makes you feel better all of a sudden … owning you.”

“That’s very common, Devina. Very, very common.”

“So I took a shower. I had to, I was a mess. And I was staying in this loft at the time. I’m not a big TV person, but it had one of those wide-screen things? I came out of the bathroom and the screen was on. I guess I’d turned it on at some point. I was standing over the remnants of those empty foundation bottles, feeling like I was going crazy, when there you were. On the TV. Veronica Sibling-Crout. Funny, I haven’t seen the ad running since. But it was the perfect time for me.”

“Sometimes things happen for a reason.”

Devina stared at the woman. “You really have helped me. I mean, I still struggle day to day, but you’ve made me realize I’m not the only person with this … problem.”

“You know, a lot of my work is just making sure people know they’re not alone. That and teaching them structured ways to deal with behaviors they don’t want and think they can’t change.”

“You really have … saved me. From myself.”

The therapist frowned. “Devina, why does this sound like a good-bye?”

Because it might be. “Things are going to change. Well, for me they’re going to change. You might not notice a difference, though.”

Although if Devina won, the woman would absolutely know it. And no doubt, if the therapist was aware of what was at stake in the war, she’d pray that Jim won this last round.

“In what way are things going to change for you?”

“The promotion. It’s time for the position to be decided. Either I or the other guy will get the vice presidency.” Again, the parallel she’d constructed wasn’t an exact match, but it was the closest she could get without blowing the woman’s mind. “And if I don’t get it, I won’t be able to come here anymore.”

“Why? Are you going to be transferred?”

Almost certainly, and not in a good way. “Yes.”

The therapist frowned. “You seem … resigned to some kind of fate.”

“I guess I am. This can’t go on forever.”

“Devina, let me ask you something. Do you believe in God?”

Hell, she’d met the guy. “Yes. I do.”

“Do you believe He loves all His children?”

“Aren’t we getting a little religious?” Not that she minded it, necessarily, it was just a shift in—

“Do you, Devina?”

She thought over her long relationship with the Creator … and all the things she’d put Him through. “Yes, I know He does. Even the broken parts of His world … He loves even them.”

“So be not afraid of any fate that awaits you.”

She laughed harshly. “I wish.”

“If you believe in the traditional notion of God, then He is all-powerful—so no part of Creation did He not contemplate, and no turn in any destiny is not one He engineers.”

“On that theory, He’s probably after me. Or should be. I’ve done a lot of very…” Evil. “…bad shit.”

“But He created you, too.”

Devina shifted in her puffy chair, feeling like things were getting a little too real all of a sudden. It was as if … “Should we go back to talking about lipsticks?”

“If that makes you feel better, sure.”

Devina narrowed her eyes on the woman. Same as she’d always looked, same voice, same Mother Earth body and sixties-holdover clothes.

It seemed impossible that someone like her had made such an impact.

Devina crossed and recrossed her legs. “I don’t know. I guess I just want to thank you for everything you’ve done with me. It’s … been really helpful.”

“That truly touches me.”

There was yet another long, long silence. “I don’t have much more to say.”

“That’s okay. We can sit here and just see if anything bubbles up for you.”

And that’s what they did. Until Devina glanced at the discreetly set clock on the side table. “I guess our time is up.”

“So it is.”

Getting to her feet, she grabbed her Prada bag and slung it onto her shoulder. She didn’t bother to get out her checkbook. If she won the war, she was going to own the woman’s soul, so if she needed help, it was going to be free and then some. And if she lost? What was the therapist going to do? Sue her?

Ha.

The therapist used her hands to push herself forward to the edge of the couch and then she heaved her body up off the cushions. With quick efficiency, she pulled her loose clothing into place as if her size made her feel self-conscious and the wardrobe was her way of covering things up.

Devina knew how that felt.

“So, bye, then.” Devina lifted her hand. “Yeah. Bye.”

Without waiting for a response, she went for the door, but something stopped her from leaving.

Pivoting around, she couldn’t fight the absurd conviction that she needed—

As if the therapist knew exactly what she wanted, the woman held her arms out. Devina walked over and bent down … and allowed herself to be wrapped in an embrace that seemed to burrow in deep, penetrating her outer lie to her inner case of hump-ugly—and accepting her nonetheless.

Closing her eyes, she just stood there and accepted the shelter she was offered.

Something told her it might be the only respite she got for a very, very long time.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Well, wasn’t this the day for trips down memory lane, Sissy thought as she stared out of the Explorer’s back window. Too bad it wasn’t in a happy-Christmases-of-the-past kind of way.

As Jim pulled up to one of the many warehouses in the old wharf area of Caldwell, she had to brace herself for going into yet another place she had no interest in ever seeing again.

“Are you sure we have to do it here?” she asked, looking up at the five-story-high, block-wide building.

As a light rain began to fall, it seemed like the cloud cover up above had arrived only because even the sun didn’t want any part of what was about to go down.

Eddie leaned around in his seat. “The closer we get to where the infection entry happened, the more successful we’re gonna be.”

Her eyes flipped to the rearview mirror. Jim was staring at her from behind the wheel, his blue eyes remote—but it was funny. She could read him now. He was viciously angry and trying not to show it … and that made her love him even more.

He nodded. Once.

“Okay,” she said, pushing open her door.

Her hand went to her stomach. Already, the skin was beginning to burn—and she didn’t need to lift her sweatshirt to check to see what it was. She already knew. Those cuts in her skin, the symbols that the demon had carved into her flesh as part of whatever ritual had been performed on her, were back, activated by the proximity to where she’d been killed.

The horrible scars had done this before when Jim had taken her here, in hopes of helping her understand what had happened to her.

Guess this was proof she had something in her still, huh.

The trip up to the demon’s former loft was a blur. Or maybe she was deliberately blocking out all the cultivated-rustic, faux-distressed-style decor as well as the fact that those angels were magically getting through any door that was locked.

Good thing, because there were seven dead bolts on the loft entrance they were after.

After those were sprung one by one, she walked into the vast, open space—and that was when she realized they’d all gone invisi: There were no echoes of footsteps, no rustling of those plastic Hannaford bags, not even the sound of Adrian breathing hard from having dragged himself up the stairs.

She stopped dead as she looked over to the far corner and saw the open door to the gray marble bathroom.

Something was pressed into her hand. A blue carton of Morton Salt.

“Come on,” Jim said. “Help me.”

It was exactly the kind of diversion she needed, and she followed his instructions to the letter, going over to the nearest wall and starting to pour out a thin line of sodium that was supposed to go all the way around the space.

“I’ll do the bathroom,” he told her after he watched her for a bit.

The hiss of the falling granules sounded like a snake, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get the white rush to fall in a perfectly straight line.

Further, the loft was so large, she needed two whole things of the stuff.

Just as she was finishing up, the scent of something clean and fresh brought her head around. Eddie and Jim had lit up what looked like cigars, and were exhaling pale smoke as they walked around her line. And inside the bathroom, she could hear liquids being poured into the sink and sloshed around.

Heading over to that horrible room and leaning in, she had to rub her stomach as the burning sensation got even more intense. Adrian was pouring witch hazel and hydrogen peroxide into the basin, empty bottles of white vinegar and crushed plastic lemon juice containers littering the sink next to him.

Something glinted on the closed toilet seat and she frowned. “Are those…”

“Guns?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah. They are.”

Sissy approached slowly, as if the things might decide to think on their own—something that seemed reasonable considering the barrels of both were pointed at her. God, they were unlike any kind of pistol she’d ever seen, the entire grip and body of the weapon made of glass.

They were like the daggers, she thought.

And they had stoppers on them.

“Water pistols?” she asked.

“Special water.” Submerging his hand into the brine in the sink, Ad began to stir it slowly in circles. Words left his lips, spoken so quickly and softly they were unintelligible to her.

“What are you saying?”

Abruptly, another scent reached her nose … it was that of a fresh field, as bright and clean and vivid as something that could be seen. And that was when he stopped, took both guns, and submerged them, bubbles rising up as their bellies were filled.

“Okay, now we need to get set up in here.” Eddie came over to her. “’Scuse me.”

As she stepped aside, the angel took out a compass and held the thing up. Walking around the bathroom tile, he stopped and took squat votive candles out of his pockets.

“No,” Jim said. “In the tub. We need to do it where she was … you know.”

“It’ll be easier here.”

“Tub faces north.”

“I need to walk around her.”

“I’m doing it.”

Eddie gritted his teeth like he was determined not to say the first thing that came to his mind. “Jim. You’re too close to all this.”

“I’m doing it, and she’s getting in that fucking tub.”

On that note, Jim popped the top on some more Morton and made a circle around the room, stretching over the tub to make sure a line went around the far edge against the marble wall. The only place he didn’t hit was the windowsill.

By the time he was done, Eddie had placed candles at the four compass points along the lip of the tub. He lit them with a Bic lighter that she’d seen Jim use and then he took one of the crystal guns for himself and gave the other to Adrian.

Jim puffed his cigar a couple of more times, the air becoming saturated with the smell of ocean breezes, spring sunshine, fresh rain. And then he dropped the stub to the marble floor and crushed it with his heavy boot.

“Let me help you in there.” Putting out a hand for her, he looked at Eddie. “She’s not getting naked.”

Naked?

Eddie nodded. “That’s okay.”

Oh, God, it was time, she thought.

Gathering her courage, Sissy accepted Jim’s help—needed it, too. As she put one leg and then the other over the high side of the tub, she started shaking all over. But that wasn’t the real problem. Her stomach burned so badly, she had to curl in on herself.

“It hurts,” she moaned.

“What hurts?” Eddie leaned in. “What’s going on?”

Jim just shook his head. “You don’t have to tell him—”

“The symbols,” the other angel said. “I’m right, aren’t I?”