"I'm not even supposed to be here. Do you have any idea how lucky we are to be alive? My God, I should've been neck-deep in a hot bath waiting for my boyfriend's shift to end. Getting the Governor's wife for storytime was the sort of move that would put our little library on the map. All we'll be getting now is a shit-ton of teenagers looking for a cheap thrill, and that's if we open before Halloween. Sandelene? Ms. Jhel? You aren't hearing a single word I'm saying, are you? Great."

By the time Sandelene found her voice, there was nothing in the gutter, and she didn't dare check. The keys to Smudge felt heavy and cold in the sweat of her palm. "You don't have to come in," she said. "I only need one hand to hold the box. Think I can manage."

"I damn well will," Margery declared, wrapping his scarf, the second of tonight after the first had been confiscated as evidence, around his neck like a security blanket. "I don't even know how I'm walking around right now. You said it's safe, didn't you?"

"Contained."

Margery pursed his lips. "No, I'm pretty sure you said safe."

"Theoretically," she agreed through the clenched teeth of a false smile. She shoved the key in the lock, turned the handle, and stepped inside. In a routine gesture that felt anything but, she flipped on the light. 

Somewhere near her left ear, Margery gasped. "You've been robbed!"

The main shop had been turned upside down and inside out, as if a cyclone had whirled through. Nothing was intact. Everything had fallen, snapped, shattered, or broken. Thousands of dollars of product, a lifetime of work, ruined in the time it took her to go to the hospital and back. And while it made her want to cry, it made her angry, too, and thankful that she'd left.

Her eyes moved past the upturned register and scattered dollar bills. There was simply too much to take in at that moment, but there was one spot that had drawn her eyes and earned all her attention. The colorful terrarium light flicked and buzzed. One of the smallest toads sat on a rock beneath it. The newts were gone, the other fire-bellied toads no where in sight. She rushed over to it, turned the sloshing landscape back on its proper side and gently lowered the one toad inside.

"The coin," Margery was saying. "They left the petty cash. Oh, God, what was I thinking? We can't live on Noah's salary alone. We've got expensive taste. Oh, shit."

"We have to find Neville," she told him calmly. The terrarium light creaked and went out. 

Margery stiffened at the sight of the toppled tank. "Neville doesn't have a forked tongue, does he? Not that I'm afraid of snakes, it's just that tonight's been feeling a bit biblical in scope and I don't like the idea of the devil's minion on the loose."

"He's a toad," she said, rolling her eyes. Just a toad, she reminded herself, counting to ten under her breath. Her fingers found the handle of the broom she kept behind the desk for sweeping the storefront and, occasionally, knocking the boots of a sleeping drunkard. Neville can take care of himself. Don't be stupid. It wants you to look for him, like it wanted you to look for Officer Peabody. Instead of looking for her pet, she nodded at Margery. Together they headed to the back office. One step inside and Margery screamed. Sandelene jumped, whirling around to face him.

"What is it?" And then she went pale.

He was pointing at her.

She turned, knuckles white against the broom handle. "I don't see anything."

"No," Margery said, shaking his head. "Your neck! Holy hell. We've gotta get you help."

Sandelene took one hand off the broom and made her way to the cabinet with the box. "What? No, I've had this since earlier. It's okay. Stings, but it's okay."

His wide-eyed 'Uhm' brought new panic. She started to reach a hand toward her neck, but before it got there a splotch of red carpet caught her eye. A fat, sudden trickle of blood rolled fresh over the stain.

"It's not real," she said, fumbling for the smooth willow box. "I feel peachy. You don't bleed like that and feel peachy."

"It's called being delusional from bloodloss," he hissed, grabbing her hand. "C'mon. Hurry. This isn't good for my heart. I'm not supposed to-"

The high peel of altar bells cut him off. The entire display, at least the ones still hooked on their racks, wobbled and rang in the dying overhead light. And as they ran past it all, armed with a broom and carrying a plain little box, the toad in the terrarium saw them off with a fanged grin.

*

There was no where to go but church. Margery wanted her to go to the hospital, but Sandelene didn't want the quiet silver box in her possession one second longer than necessary. She wanted to start the healing, not prolong the pain. Getting rid of the box would stop the bleeding, she reasoned. And the blood, no matter how much leaked from the injury, didn't seem to belong to her. She didn't feel anemic, just hurt.

Margery sacrificed his scarf so she could stop looking like a vampire's victim enough to hail a cab. It was only within the storied cathedral walls that she felt any faint amount better, and that was mostly because the wound had stopped weeping.  Monsignor Clayton was on holiday in Belize, wouldn't be back until Tuesday. The resident priest, a younger man who gave no indication that he believed that the devil existed outside the minds and hearts of humanity, accepted the box. He claimed not to recognize the name of the priest Margery had first hired. As the young father carried it out of sight and Margery called for paperwork to be written up for its transference and tracking, Sandelene did the only thing she could think to do- drag herself back into a cab (on Margery's dime no less) and head to Ronnie's apartment.

Ronnie rented and worked out of a small, two-bedroom home on the eastern side of the river. It was a gaudy purple shack, with pink shutters and more dandelions than lawn. A little sign over the door flashed a neon pink heart. It took her a bit of work to find the little gnome wearing a Titan's jersey (Ronnie never really liked gnomes, but people kept buying them for her as jokes and she kept putting them out and now she had a veritable army standing among the weedy yard).

The interior, except for the dining room and sitting area where she kept her clients surrounded shrouds, mystical objects and curiosities, had the same level of care as the exterior, which was to say that it was filled more or less by layers of carelessness and trash. Ronnie slept here, and worked here, and sometimes made a sandwich if she felt so inclined and happened to have gone grocery shopping that week. She was the sort of woman who loved being out rather than in.

So Sandelene, after cleaning herself off in the bathroom, taping what felt like a roll of papertowels to her neck, didn't feel bad about slipping into Ronnie's twin bed. She slept better than she thought she would've. Her neck didn't hurt, but that could've been the combination of pain killers and alcohol that upset her stomach around eight the next morning. With a bit of coffee in her system, she checked her phone. No messages, no chaos.

Of course, Smudge was in ruins and she dreaded taking inventory (and finding Neville's poor squished body) perhaps slightly more than she dreaded walking back into a place that might still carry the stink of evil. Smudge was her life. If the shop didn't bring in money, if she had nothing to her name, she'd have to move back in with her parents. She'd have to tell them that she'd failed.

The police had to know, she decided. She'd go over there and pretend like it was as Margery had called it: a break-in. She'd tell them about the teenagers the night before, that maybe they were upset with her booting them out and had come back later to trash the shop. And she'd tell Officer Peabody the truth, and maybe they could work something out with his captain.

Yes.

That was the plan.

If she could only make herself leave the safety of Ronnie's house.

After coffee. After cleaning her dishes. After her phone charged up to 100% because she'd forgotten to throw it on last night. After the rain let up. After the laundry was done.

Sandelene didn't consider herself particularly skittish, but in the grey light of a cloudy day every time she went to leave she felt herself pull back. Going out there, going back to Smudge, meant seeing it all again, reliving a night she hadn't completely processed and honestly didn't want to.

Things that shouldn't be real were real.

While Ronnie's sheets rolled through the dryer, she grabbed the broom she'd toted from Smudge and set to sweeping the disgusting crumbs off the kitchen floor. She'd propped the window open over the sink to air the stench of ancient garbage. When a tidy pile of dirt had been swept into the center of the kitchen, she retreated to the closet in search of a dustpan.

A sharp, metallic shriek echoed down the hall. Sandelene poked her head out of the closet, listening, one hand clenching the broom handle. "Ronnie?" she called, knowing it wasn't Ronnie. She crept down the hall, broom raised, ready to strike. The kitchen, where the sound had originated, was quiet as she stepped across the threshold. Something had pushed in the screen and knocked the bent panel into the sink.

She walked up to the sill, broom leaned against her shoulder. It was different, in the light. It was different, knowing that the willow box coin was someone else's curse now. It was different, letting a creature burst into a house that someone had kindly let you stay in. You couldn't just invite a bear in somebody's apartment and leave them to discover it, after all.

And this, this didn't feel evil. Her heart hammered in her chest because she remembered last night, and because she'd had maybe too much coffee.

And then a sleek white bird with the talons of a raptor and black swallow's tail swooped down from above the fan. With a startled scream she swung the broom at it. The bird collided with the bristles in an angry screech. She rushed at it, for a second had it pinned and flapping against the wall, and then it slipped down and shot through the rest of the house. She followed it through the rooms, shooed it back the way it'd come, until the dumb thing had hooked its black claws on the faucet over the sink, where it slipped and balanced and slipped again over the stainless steel.

"I'm really not in the mood," she panted. The bird seemed to breathe as heavy as she, tiny beak parted, black-inked wings slightly outstretched.

No kidding, it croaked.

The broom wavered in Sandy's hands.

Folding its wings more neatly, the bird turned one red eye on her. Sandelene Jhel, it cawed, clear and cool as the rain. Mistress of mine, guardian of my soul, keeper of my spirit. He bobbed into a feathered bow. Your Essex is here to serve.

"Nope!" she said, and swung.

'Snails!  came the muffled screech just before its feathered ass shot through the open window.