Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon Hunting Soccer Mom

Chapter Four

“Excuse me?”I held the phone out as I spoke, glaring at it as if the handset had just personally delivered the bad news. “I can’t handle this. I have kids. I have a car pool. I have responsibilities.”

“You have always had responsibilities,” Father said.

“Oh, no, no, no.” I kept my voice low—a concession to my sleeping family—so I wasn’t sure that I was adequately displaying the depths of my displeasure. Ranting and screaming would have been so much more effective. “I’m retired, remember? Forza isn’t my life anymore. I’m demon-free, and I like it.”

“Apparently, child, you are not.”

I thought of the demon in my pantry and had to admit Father had a point. I kept quiet, though, waiting for him to say something else. When he didn’t, I kept quiet some more, in the foolish hope that I could outwait him.

Nothing.

“Dammit,” I said, when I couldn’t take it anymore. “Why is this my problem?”

“The demon came to you. That makes it your problem, no?”

“No,” I said, but without conviction. I was caving. I knew it, and he knew it.

He said nothing.

I sighed, anger finally succumbing to a much stronger surge of exhaustion. It had been a hell of a day. And from the sound of things, it was shaping up to be one hell of a weekend, too.

“Okay, fine.” I finally spoke, in part to quiet the overloaded silence emanating from Rome. “But at least tell me why I’m on the hot seat.” I asked the question even though I didn’t really need an answer. Whatever the reason, I already knew the only part that mattered—no one was coming to help me, and I had been, quite without fanfare, unretired. The why of it was completely academic.

Still, I was curious, and I listened with a perverse fascination as he explained in depressing detail the recent dwindling of Forza Scura’s resources and the unsettling implications that followed.

“Young people today,” he said. “They are more interested in television and—what do you call it?—Nintendo. The life of a Hunter has no appeal, and the Forza’s numbers are dwindling.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Have you watched television? Played those games?”

From what I could tell, it was a rare kid that wasn’t willing to plunk his or herself down in front of the television and do the dirty work.

“Many young people have the desire,” Father admitted after I spewed out my theory. “It is the rare student, however, that has the stamina.”

That made a little more sense. My own daughter’s attention span tended to increase or diminish in direct proportion to the number of boys in the vicinity. “All right,” I said, conceding the point. “I’ll buy that recruiting has fallen off. But I can’t believe there aren’t any Hunters. I mean, there’s still a need, right?”

That was my not-too-artful way of asking if demon activity had fallen off in the last few years. I couldn’t imagine that it had, though. I might be retired, but I still watch the evening news. And believe me, there are demons among us.

“Numquam opus maius,” Father said. My Latin sucks, but I got the gist. The need was greater than ever. “And, yes, there are other Hunters, though not many. As you are aware, the mortality rate is high. We have fewer Hunters now than we did when you were active.”