Demons are Forever: Confessions of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom Read Online Free PDF Page B

Forza. You’re rogue. And that’s a complication I just don’t need.”
    “That’s a bullshit excuse and you know it,” he said, taking a step closer. “It’s not that I’m rogue that’s complicating matters.”
    “No?” I countered, my voice breathier than I wanted. “Then what is?”
    I watched his eyes, saw him hesitate, and decided to go for the jugular. “How far are you willing to go, David?” I pressed, stressing his name. “How complicated do you want things to be?”
    I watched his face, frustration coupled with anger. It was the pity, however, that surprised me. “Katie, I’m sorry. I swear, I never meant to hurt you like this.”
    I reeled, his unexpected words like blows. “David,” I stammered. “You don’t have to—”
    “I should have told you the truth at the museum. I should have just gotten it over then.”
    I couldn’t move. My feet weren’t accepting signals from my brain. Either that, or my body had been transformed into ice. I didn’t know. All I knew was that no matter how loudly I was screaming inside my head to run, my feet were staying firmly planted on the boardwalk.
    “I know what you think, Kate, but it’s not true.” He cupped my chin in his hand and looked me straight in the eyes, his never blinking. “I’m not him, Kate. I’m sorry, but I’m not the man you loved.”
    His words seemed to come at me from under water, and as I moved, I was certain I was slogging through Jell-O. I’d moved from the real world to some surreal place, where nothing quite made sense. Not even the words David spoke to me.
    “What?” I finally managed. “But... but you—”
    “I knew him,” David said. “That’s all. I knew the man, and pretty well, too. I’m sorry, Kate. Truly sorry.”
    I wanted to say something, but words wouldn’t come. The tears, though, had no such qualms. They trickled quietly down my face in silent mourning to a fantasy that was finally dying.
    “I realized that day at the museum that you’d gotten the idea fixed in your head. I should have told you then but I couldn’t. I thought maybe you needed to believe that Eric had come back to help you save Allie. After a week or so, I figured you’d realize the truth. But when you started avoiding me, I knew I had to tell you the truth once and for all.”
    “Oh,” I said, since that was about all I could manage. “Right. I understand.”
    I took a tentative step, decided that I was relatively stable again, and started to walk slowly down the boardwalk. I needed to move. Needed to feel the solid earth under my feet and find my grounding again.
    He fell in step beside me. “Are you okay?”
    I drew in a breath and considered the question. “No,” I said. “But I will be.” His words had killed something inside me. And yet maybe he’d freed me, too. Because as much as I hated to admit it, the specter of Eric had been haunting my marriage.
    “You’re sure?” he said.
    “Yes.” And then, because it was true, I added a simple, “Thank you.”
    He didn’t answer me, and I took his silence as both an acknowledgment and closure. And as he quickened his pace and pulled ahead of me, I used the pad of my thumb to wipe away the last of my tears.
    We patrolled the next half hour or so in silence, each alone in our thoughts, our attention focused not on each other, but on our surroundings, and the ultimate question of just what was out there with us.
    By the time we’d circled back, I was ready to pack it in. “No demons,” I said, as much to break the silence as because I believed it. “Maybe they’ve moved on.”
    I was only mouthing my discouragement, but he seemed to seriously consider the possibility. “Maybe they did. You were here for, what, fourteen years before you caught whiff of a demon?”
    “Literally,” I said, remembering the first demon I’d sniffed out in the pet food aisle of Wal-Mart.
    “Then two in quick succession.”
    “And both times the demons wanted something that was