No matter how big of a guy he was, Moose was acting like a pouting child. He sat with his arms crossed and stared out of the passenger's window like a 2000s emo kid contemplating the unfairness of life. My attempts at conversation earned me a grunt that I took to mean he was feeling better, a scowl that may have meant he was thankful to still be alive, and multiple monosyllabic answers that gave me no real information whatsoever.
I found the whole act ridiculous. I never asked to be a babysitter... or babysat... or whatever, but it didn't seem worth the effort to have an argument, so I cranked up the radio and let Paul Cauthen fill the awkward silence by singing about "Everybody Walkin' This Land."
He sang about praying to make it through the day, and I echoed the lyrics in my heart. I'd never considered my own mortality much in the past, but things being what they were, I was starting to think about it more. Then he got to the bit about believing that a wide variety of assholes could find redemption, and I smacked the power button to shut it off.
Moose rose far enough out of his stupor to look at me like I'd lost my mind.
"What if Sathanas is seeking redemption?"
"He's a demon."
Because I have the willpower of a saint, I did not answer by thanking Captain Obvious. "Do demons have emotions?"
He rolled his eyes and directed his attention to the landscape beyond the window again.
"If you don't answer my questions, I'll just ask Mx. Landry," I threatened.
"Mx. Landry thinks you're a flat-out liability," he answered without looking at me.
Rude. True, but rude. I played the only card I had. It had worked for me pretty well so far. "The more I know, the less of a liability I am."
He sighed like a man asked to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. "I don't know if demons have emotions. Probably. I mean, they feel anger, hate, rage, all that, right? Those are emotions."
"But if they're capable of all that, maybe they're capable of love, too."
"They're not," he said.
I braked at a red light and tapped my fingers on the Honda's steering wheel. "Why do you think that?"
At last, he turned to look at me. "Because they're demons."
"So?"
"So, demons, by definition, are apart from everything that's good and love is good, so they can't feel love because then they wouldn't be demons anymore."
The light turned green, and I accelerated. I left the radio off, hoping the thought that hovered just out of reach would show itself, but the longer I drove, the fuzzier it all got until I realized I was wondering if Chantelle still had her old buffalo chicken dip recipe.
I needed to work on my focus issues if I was going to stay in this line of work, or else I might get myself killed. Again.
I peeked over at Moose. "Why did you tell Nick not to heal you?"
He continued to stare out of the window. "Because of the second law of thermodynamics."
We turned left and passed an old lady going five miles an hour under the speed limit. "Explain it to me like I'm five years old."
Moose looked at me then, and I saw the sarcastic comment trying to form on his swollen lips. To his credit, he didn't disparage me. "Everything in the universe is moving toward rot. In an isolated system, activity causes the movement to speed up."
So far, so good. I assured him I was following.
"Your usual bodily functions... Let's say they require an energy output of five units. Given no interference from outside sources, you're moving at a rate of twenty-five miles per hour toward death."
"That's grim," I said.
"Reality is dark," he replied.
I was beginning to think Moose had some real issues.
"You get hurt, you get sick, start smoking two packs a day or drinking a case of Budweiser every night after work; that's interference. Now you need an energy output of ten units. Speeds you up to forty-five miles per hour, you see. The bigger the interference, the faster you move toward death."
"All right. So... say I got slammed into a tree at a hundred miles per hour and my spine shattered. Hypothetically speaking."
He watched me through narrowed eyes. "You'd be traveling toward death at warp nine."
"Right. What's that got to do with Nick? He... like... absorbs the bad stuff to make people slow down? That makes him move toward death faster? Is that it?"
Moose laughed then, a deep, thunderous, mocking laugh. "Girl, you so ignorant it's amazing you lasted this long."
I refrained from mentioning that we'd already covered this ground and, further, I had, in fact, not lasted this long. If he didn't know what happened to me, I wasn't going to be the one to tell him.
"Nick ain't from around here, if you catch my drift. He don't move toward rot like the rest of us. He feeds on it. He eats death for breakfast, and that ain't no fancy metaphor," Moose said.
"So, healing people doesn't make him weaker?"
He shook his head. "The more rot he consumes, the more powerful he gets, but that kind of power comes at a price. Ever see that Batman movie where the guy sucks up all the knowledge in Gotham City and it makes him deformed and crazy?"
"Yeah."
"Everybody has a limit as to how much power they can manage. Even Nick."
I cleared the lump out of my throat and asked, "What is Nick, exactly?"
Moose pointed at an open parking spot on the curb between the insurance agency and the holy woman's house. "Nick is the best man I've ever known. That's all the information I ever needed."
We walked up to the rickety purple structure and the holy woman answered the door right away, which was a surprise to me, but not the only surprise. I'd been expecting a hunchback and a hooked nose. The woman who stood before me couldn't have been past her mid-twenties. She must have been just about five feet, five inches tall because she stood nose-to-nose with me. Her copper-colored hair hung in silky waves from a high ponytail and she wore glittery pink gloss on her full lips.
"I specifically told you I would sacrifice you under a full moon and use you for fertilizer if you set foot on my land again," she said to Moose with eerie calm.
Moose opened his mouth to respond, but I'd already given this some thought and I jumped in before he could get himself hexed. "It's my fault. I asked him to come here with me. I wanted very much to speak with you, but I had a frightening experience in this neighborhood recently and I was scared to come back alone."
"What kind of frightening experience?"
"I was attacked by a demon possessing the body of the insurance lady down the road."
The woman paled and scanned the road behind us as if looking to see if the demon was still lurking. He probably was, but I was trying not to think about that too much.
"I already told him everything I have to tell," she said, pointing at Moose.
I gave her my very best we-women-need-to-stick-together expression. "I thought maybe I'd have a different perspective on things."
She inched back from the door and pushed it toward closed and I threw a total Hail Mary pass. "After all, men can't wrap their minds around what a mother will do to protect her child."
The next thing I knew, she was running into the recesses of the house, muttering in Latin. Vines exploded up from the earth. Moose was on the ground, holding his junk and moaning, and everything from furniture to knick knacks was trying to insert itself between the holy woman and me. I left Moose where he lay and followed her through a swinging door into a kitchen with cheerful yellow wallpaper and spotlessly clean stainless-steel appliances. She snatched a glass jar off the counter, sent the cork lid flying, and scooped a handful of blue powder out. The fine grains rained from between her fingers, leaving a trail on the floor.
I stumbled to a halt and held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. "I swear to you I'm not here to hurt you or the baby. Moose must have told you that Sathanas skipped bail. We're looking to get him re-bonded, but I've come to question his arrest in the first place."
She didn't move.
"I can see that something is off. Someone—is it a god?—is chasing him and he's just trying to get free from them and protect you. It's his baby, right?"
"You've got it all wrong," she said.
I could live with that. I didn't mind being wrong. After a while, a person gets used to it. However, I was pretty seriously concerned about what that blue powder was and what she meant to do with it. Seemed like keeping her talking was better than prompting her to take further action. "Tell me. I want to help you."
"You want to bring in your bounty."
Certain she would see right through me if I lied, I told her, "You're right. That's my job, but if we're in the wrong, I want to know that."
In the silence, I could make out the faint sounds of Moose, muttering a string of curse words and disjointed prayers on the front porch.
"Are you in danger?" I asked. "We can protect you." Overstepping? Again? Yeah. Probably, but I knew we had the resources, if only I could convince everyone to use them.
She didn't answer or move, so I hazarded another question. "Are one of the gods after you?"
"You're in over your head," she said.
"Most of the time," I admitted. "Why did you get so mad at Moose for damaging one of the plants in your backyard?"
"I planted that bush as an offering."
"Okay." My mouth was moving much faster than my brain. "But you let Moose in before and you opened the door for us now. Why? On some level, you must know you need our help. Are you in danger from the demon?"
The hand holding the powder trembled. "I don't traffic with demons."
"What is your religion?" I asked.
"What's yours?" she shot back.
Heat bloomed in my cheeks. "My grandparents are very Catholic."
"So, your version of God vaguely consists of a giant disciplinarian in the sky?"
"I have found myself being very open-minded to new ideas of late."
"I don't traffic with demons," she told me again.
"Yes, you've made that clear. I'm just trying to figure out why a demon is lurking around your house. Any answers at all would be greatly appreciated."
She didn't speak.
"I, myself, know what it is to be attracted to a man who is... other."
The slim lines of blue dust continued trickling from between her fingers. "Walk away from him."
I spread my arms wide in a what can I do gesture. "It's not always that easy."
"You seem like a nice lady, even if you're a little clueless. I'm going to help you." She whipped the blue dust in my direction, and I exploded into atoms.