Page 47 of Demon's Desire
I walked across the room and stood next to the window. I peeked around the edge of it as slowly as I could, trying not to be seen. At first, I didn’t see anything. There was a van parking across the street, but the entire damned street was covered in cars, so that wasn’t unique. Not at first, anyway.
I squinted to get a better look at the van. It was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Not until the driver rolled down their window. I suddenly backed away and took a deep breath.
“He’s watching the apartment,” I said softly. I recognized his van from the night of the fire. “He just pulled up and parked across the street. He could be there for hours.”
“Fuck!” he hissed, slamming his fist into the wall.
I jumped when he did that and turned around to face him. “What the hell do we do now?”
“Stay away from that window,” he muttered, rubbing his knuckles. “I need to kill him, but I’ll have to be careful about it.”
“What?” My eyes went wide. “Suldeargan, you aren’t killing anyone! I won’t let you! There has to be another way! I can talk to him, I can tell him you’re all right and that you won’t hurt anyone beyond minor inconveniences!”
“If you speak to him, the first thing you’ll do is ask him to kill me for you,” he sneered. “Then you’re free of me.”
“I–” I won’t lie. That had popped into my head. I sighed and rubbed my face. “All right, at this particular moment, I’m more on your side than his because he was being fucking creepy. So… right now, let’s relax until we can come up with a better plan than just being pissed off.”
He looked at me with what I could only describe as a confused expression. “Why?”
“What do you mean, why?” I asked. “Why am I not going to go ask the demon hunter to kill you?” When he nodded, I sighed. “I don’t know. Now… sit down and watch TV with me before I change my mind.”
He hesitated for a moment, then sat down on the end of the couch farthest from the window. I grabbed my laptop and sat beside him, opening it up as I grabbed the remote.
“I’m gonna try to work on my resumé while we watch something,” I told him. Not that I could really imagine getting an actual job at the moment, not with Suldeargan following me around and freaking people out.
Still, I was afraid that if I couldn’t find anything to do besides sit and worry, things would only get worse.
11
“What are you doing?” Suldeargan asked about half an hour later.
“The same thing I was doing when you asked me the first three times,” I sighed as I stared at my laptop screen. “I’m working on my resumé.”
“Why do you even want a job?” he pressed.
“I would actually love to not have a job,” I muttered. “But unfortunately, jobs are necessary for things like eating and living and existing.”
“Not for everyone,” he countered. “There are a lot of people your age in this city who don’t have jobs.”
“Their parents are probably rich.” I nodded, still looking at the screen. I was having trouble thinking of… anything. In college, I’d been in the work-study program and worked at the library, and after I turned twenty-one, I’d started bartending at a bar down the street from campus. Aside from that, I had no job experience, and those weren’t the most impressive things to put on a resumé if you wanted a serious job. I liked bartending, but Chicago was more expensive than the small town I was from, so I was hoping to find something more stable.
“Why are you just watching the screen?” He leaned closer to look over my shoulder.
I groaned and shut my laptop, setting it on the coffee table. “I’m having trouble focusing.”
“Oh. Well, watch this television with me then.” He shrugged and draped his arm over the back of the couch. It wasn’t exactly around my shoulders, but I was suspicious of it, nonetheless. “Tell me their names again.”
I took a deep breath. “The oldest girl is D.J. The smaller one is Stephanie, then the little one is Michelle. And the tall guy is their dad, Danny. The funny one is his friend, Joey. And the handsome one is Jesse. He’s the girls’ uncle, their mom’s brother. After their mom died, Joey and Jesse moved in to help take care of the girls.”
“That’s why it’s called Full House?” He looked at me. “There are too many of them?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. The episode that was on ended, and another one started automatically. I smiled slightly as the theme song came on. “When I was little, they used to play reruns of this all week. If I obeyed my mom, she’d let me sit and watch it for hours. I did everything she said just so I could watch this.”
“It’s that funny?” He raised an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “It was to me. At the time, I was an only child, so I liked the idea of living in a house with a big family and siblings. And sometimes, an episode would come on where Stephanie was having a problem I could relate to. It was my favorite show that wasn’t a cartoon.”
“What was your favorite cartoon?” he asked.