Insurrection (Nevermore #1)(23)

Okay. I have sold my soul to the devil.

She had no response to that. Face it, it wasn’t exactly something someone dealt with every day. At least not normal people.

“Well, it’s a good thing I come from a basketload of crazy.”

And that was being generous. Crazy had kind of looped around her family a couple of times. Rebounded back, decided it really liked them and then moved in, and planted some serious roots. Then, because she was really Southern, it had remarried a few cousins, committed incest, and decided to never branch off her family tree. So the lunacy had just quadrupled with each subsequent generation, until it was no longer eccentric, it was downright felonious.

Yeah, that was her family.

And that was her insanity.

In Randolph County, Alabama where her family hailed from, she could get someone killed for a simple keg of beer. No questions asked.

Which was why she’d moved to Huntsville when she married. Although her ex had often claimed that three hours away just wasn’t far enough.

Sometimes, she agreed.

But right now, she needed that kind of crazy. Because they were the only ones who could make this seem normal. And who wouldn’t have her committed when she called them.

Anna started to dial her father, then stopped herself.

After all, she was in Satan’s apartment.

Um, yeah. She’d seen enough horror movies to know how this would play out. It always ended to same for the idiot on the phone.

Grizzly death.

She slid her phone into her back pocket. “I’m just going to the grocery store to get some milk. I’ll be back in a minute.”

As calmly as she could, she grabbed her keys and pocketbook, then headed for the door. “Hey, Satan? Could you turn out the lights for me? Thanks!”

She headed out, and tried not to freak as she got to her Jeep, and saw the lights in her apartment turn off.

Never let it be said that the devil didn’t have a wicked sense of humor.

Trying to stay calm, she got into the Jeep, and drove to the store as if all was right in the world. Just in case she had an unseen visitor keeping her company.

She’d seen that movie, too.

Once she was inside the store, and had found a place where nothing too hard or sharp could fall on her, and where she had a good line-of-sight on anyone who might get possessed and come charging after her, including devil or zombie dogs, rats or insects, she dialed her dad.

Luckily, he wasn’t out bowling with his buds or watching a game. He never picked up the phone on game nights.

“Hey, sweetie. How’s my girl?”

“Hey, Daddy. I have a little problem.” She glanced around the store, and lowered her voice so that no one could overhear her and think her nuts. ‘Cause honestly, she thought she was pretty crazy herself. “Turns out, you’ve been wrong in your sermons lately. The devil isn’t coming up in those hell-pits down in Georgia that’s been causing their interstates to rise up and buckle. He’s actually here in Richmond. Living in my apartment building.”

“Say what?”

“Uh, yeah. Apparently, I accidentally sold my soul to him when I signed my lease.”

Now most fathers would have probably committed their daughters over such a statement. At the very least, would have laughed it off, and thought it a prank.

Lucky thing for Anna, her daddy was a Southern Baptist preacher who specialized in spiritual warfare. In fact, her family came from a long, long line of such men and women who were famed for scaring the devil out of generations of parishioners and farms.

And one old rusted-out moonshine still from back in the days of Prohibition when it’d supposedly gotten possessed by an angry demon who was running amok in an Appalachian hill town . . . but that was another story.

The good news was that when it came to things like this, her father didn’t blink an eye. But he did rush to action, and he always took it seriously.

“All right, baby girl. You know what to do. The cavalry’s coming. You hold tight and we’ll be there by morning.”

“Thank you, Daddy!” Normally, it would take about nine-and-a-half hours to make the drive from where her daddy lived in Wedowee to her apartment in Richmond. But given her dire circumstances, and her father’s propensity for ignoring the posted limitations on speed, she’d expect him in about seven.

Her daddy was awesome that way.

And she knew he wouldn’t bother to pack. He always kept a bug-out sack of clothes and his exorcism bag in his old Army HMMWV for just such emergencies (or a zombie apocalypse, ‘cause one could never be too careful).

Yeah, Old Scratch had no idea what he was in for.

Then again, given that he’d gone a few rounds with her father in the past, he probably did. And for once, the demons had picked the wrong person to muck with.

Smiling, Anna started back for her Jeep in the parking lot, then remembered that she actually did need milk. Given that the devil had recently moved into her apartment, it kept spoiling on her.

By the time she returned home, Anna saw a dark figure in the driveway.

Hmm...

Demon or thief?

Human or ghoul?

She grabbed her Bio Freeze spray from under her seat—which was legal and more effective than pepper spray—as well as her holy water, just to cover all bases, and got out of her Jeep.

Making sure that she had her keys ready to open the front door, she headed for the stoop.