Like the Common Cold by Alexandra Brandt

Author:Alexandra Brandt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tangled Sky Press

“So, that wasn’t great,” Sally said in the car on the way back to my motel, after she’d wrapped up conversation with Josiah and the other members of the group. She had implied something about me getting cold feet and her having to come out and talk me through things, and promised we’d be back next week. In the meantime, I’d smuggled everything back into my backpack and into the car.

Was she kidding?

“I thought it went really well. I’ve never seen a Devoted work like you, but we got three demons. What’s not great about that?”

“We didn’t change anything. That group is going to keep calling demons to them until someone gets hurt. Josiah was so excited because the whole group could feel when a few of the demons ‘were vanquished,’ and that was our doing. We just made things worse.”

“Sally, we did our jobs. We killed demons and no one got hurt. That’s what we were there to do.”

She pulled the car over to the side of the road and parked it. I started to say something, but she held up her hand. “I was hoping I could avoid this,” she muttered.

I tensed, and reached up to flick on the overhead light. I wanted to be able to see her face. And her hands.

“Avoid what?”

She sighed and rested her head on the wheel, not meeting my eyes. I decided not to reach for a weapon. “Do you have any guesses about my beliefs yet, Eva?” she asked.

“Not a clue,” I said, “but you were right about it not mattering.”

“But it does,” she said, “in some sense it does, because—I want to destroy demons at their base.”

“I am assuming you don’t mean a demonic secret lair. Because they don’t have one.” She was working on swinging back toward crazy in my estimation. And things had been going so well…

“No, no,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I mean the base of what makes demons what they are. I want to prevent demons.”

“That is both ambitious and impossible,” I said frankly. “And I don’t know what that has to do with your beliefs.”

“It will sound weird and stupid.”

“Okay, but we’ve established that a lot of things you say sound weird and stupid to me. Whatever it is, it works. I trust you.” The words surprised me, coming from my mouth, but they were true.

“I believe in…belief.”

I took it back. “Never mind⁠—”

“No, no! Listen. I believe that human belief is a powerful and deep force. Think about it—it’s why the Devoted are so effective, no matter their creed. If there was one true way, if only one group was right, how would anyone else be able to do the work they do?”

“The Higher Power—” I started, but she kept going. I had been about to give her the old “only seeing parts of the elephant” analogy Jordan had given me, but she rolled right over it.

“First, think about my so-called ‘weird’ methods. No chanting or praying, right? And I noticed you staring when the demons got close to me—they looked weird to you, right? My belief shaped them.

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