“Live long enough,” she says, “and you pick up all sorts of things.”
“She’s being modest,” Jeremey says. With his voice. Because he is a talking fox. A talking fox wearing a tracksuit. “Deb has a real head for languages. And she’s a whiz with song lyrics. She can hear something once on the radio and sing the whole thing.”
She swats him. “He’s exaggerating.”
“Maybe you could just give us your best guess,” I suggest, “even if you’re not sure of the precise translation.”
“I could…” Debbie says, standing up straight again and taking off her glasses. I would have described Debbie as a white woman in her 50s with a brassy blond ponytail—if not for the extra limbs and things. Now I don’t know how to sort her … Is she human? Was she human? Why doesn’t a magickal forger live in a nicer house? I keep thinking about what my mother would say about all this, but I don’t get past, “Get out of there, Penelope!
Right now!”
“The thing is”—Debbie shifts her attention to Shepard’s other arm—“I don’t want to accidentally summon the demon. I wouldn’t read any of this out loud.”
“Surely, the demon won’t show up without a proper summoning,” I say.
“Ashes, blood, et cetera.”
“I wouldn’t want to risk it.” Debbie pokes Shepard in the shoulder. “What got into your head, lad? There are easier ways to live forever.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” he says. “I just wanted to talk.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to talk in hell,” she says, more sympathetically than he deserves.
“Talk about some trouble and strife.” Jeremey shakes his head.
“I don’t think it is hell, so to speak,” Shepard says.
“Well, you’ll be an expert,” Debbie says, “won’t you.”
Kipper has sat down next to me at the table. She’s leaning on one hand, staring at Shepard. （Staring at his surprisingly fit arms, I suspect.） “I think you should help him, Mum. Translate what you can.”
Debbie rests two hands on her hips. Another appears holding a Coke Zero. She takes a sip. “How will having his bad end explicitly spelled out for him make it any better?”
“If we knew the terms of the contract,” I say, “we might find a loophole.”
“Demons don’t leave loopholes.” Another of Debbie’s arms emerges to point at me. “Sometimes they leave things that look like loopholes that are actually ways to further fuck yourself.”
“We could do the translation inside a protective circle,” Kipper says.
“And we could leave out any words that make you nervous…”
Her mum snorts. “This whole thing makes me nervous.”
“I could lend some extra protection,” I offer.
Debbie narrows all eight of her eyes at me. “Could you now … Debbie.”
Jeremey gets his car keys out of his pocket. “Well, I’m hooking it. I’m not trying to get engaged to a demon today.” He pats Shepard on the back. “Best of British, mate!”
Engaged …
Engaged?
I look over at Shepard. He’s rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses.
I cast some protection spells. Who knows whether they work.
Debbie wouldn’t do the translation in her house. （More credit to her.） She took Shepard out to a shed in the back garden and made space for him to stand in the middle of the floor. Then Kipper drew an extremely artful protection circle around them both. The plan was to write the translation out on notebook paper, apparently leaving out the most dangerous words—like the demon’s name and address, I suppose, and “with this tattoo, I thee wed.”
Shepard tried to talk to me before we left the house. I wouldn’t let him. I wouldn’t even look at him. I followed Debbie out to the shed, waited for Kipper to draw the circle, cast my spells as quickly and quietly as possible, then went to sit on Debbie’s front steps. At the moment, I don’t much care if all three of them end up cursed.
I can’t believe I put myself out like this for a Normal …
That I cast spells in front of strangers … That I spent the morning with dark creatures and criminals, all because I thought I owed him something.
Because I thought, at the very least, that he had been honest with me.
Why am I even sitting here, waiting for him? I should hook it, too! I’m sure Old Kipper could help Shepard find his way back to my flat. Or back to hers. Or back to Omaha, for all I care.