The Devil's Fox by George Pollino

Author:George Pollino [Pollino, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bowsprit Press
Published: 2015-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Mama Odette felt like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, except this time Dorothy was a demon, the Tin Man was looking for a soul, and the Cowardly Lion was wearing a collar. “Three grown children,” she said. “That’s what you are—children. Messing around with things you’ve got no business messing with.” Thomas sat at the kitchen table looking like someone who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Akane sat next to him, staring at the apple pie that was cooling, and Nikolai, well, Nikolai didn’t look like himself at all. If everything they told her was true ... she shook her head, better not go down that road just yet.

Mama Odette had been a surrogate mother to Nikolai for most of his life, but she never knew he wasn’t blind until tonight. That kind of thing was enough to make anyone feel angry and betrayed. Hell, the truth was she was mad at all of them. But when she looked at Nikolai, she still saw that little boy with his shirt on backwards standing at the edge of the curb, and her heart went out to him.

“So,” she said, “there’s an honest-to-goodness demon sitting at my kitchen table.” Akane looked at her and smiled. Thomas did too, and Mama Odette gave him a sidelong glance even though he couldn’t see it. She had always wondered what type of girl Thomas would bring home when he finally stopped skulking around at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and moved on with his life. But she never imagined the girl would have horns and a pitchfork. Of course Akane didn’t either, which was why it was so hard to believe she was who she claimed to be. But it didn’t really matter. What mattered right now was helping Nikolai.

Mama Odette sat down at the table and wiped her hands on her apron. “You need to think very carefully about what I’m about to tell you, Nikolai, because your life depends on it. This isn’t some science project where you’re the smartest boy in the class. You may have conjured a demon and think you know all there is to know about the spirit world, and we’re going to have words about that later, believe me. But when it comes to the soul, you need to hear what I have to say. Understand?”

Nikolai nodded his head while he fiddled with a cloth napkin.

“I remember when Thomas was just a baby,” she said. “The Cruz family across the street had a dog named Dulce, and he was anything but sweet. Every Tuesday night, after we put our garbage out on the curb and everyone had gone to sleep, Dulce would sneak out and rummage through our trash for his favorite thing in the whole world—Thomas’s diapers.”

“Seriously, Mom?” Thomas said. “How is this helping anything?”

Mama Odette ignored him and continued talking to Nikolai. “In many ways, Dulce wasn’t all that different from us. He had eyes and ears, a brain and a body.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.