Free Second Grave on the Left by Darynda Jones

down into the basement to prove to us nothing was there.”
    “And?”
    “Nothing was there,” she said with a shrug.
    “Did you show him the wound?”
    “Oh, hell no.” She shook her head like I’d just asked her if she ate children for breakfast. “They’d already filed me in the F ’s for ‘freak of nature.’ I wasn’t about to confirm their suspicions.”
    “Holy crap, Par,” I repeated.
    “Tell me about it.”
    “So, what makes you think it was a demon?”
    “I don’t. It wasn’t a demon. Or, well, I don’t think it was. It was something more.”
    “How do you know?”
    She twisted the leather straps at her wrist. “Mostly because I knew its name.”
    I froze for a moment before saying, “Come again?”
    “Do you remember what I told you about my accident?” She glanced at me, her brows drawn together.
    “Sure I do.” Pari had died when she was six in a car accident. Thankfully, an industrious EMT brought her back. After that, she could see auras, including those of the departed. She’d learned that if she saw an aura with a particularly grayish tint and no body attached, it was the soul of someone who’d passed. It was a ghost.
    “When I died, my grandfather was waiting for me.”
    “I remember,” I said, “and thankfully he sent you back. I owe him a fruit basket when I get to heaven.”
    She reached over and squeezed my hand in a rare moment of appreciation. Awkward. “I’d met him only once,” she said, wrapping both hands around her water. “The only thing I remembered about him was that he had Great Danes taller than I was, yet I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he was my grandfather. And when he told me it wasn’t my time, that I had to go back, the last thing I wanted to do was leave him.”
    “Well, I for one am glad he sent your ass packing. You would have been hell on wheels in heaven.”
    She smiled. “You’re probably right. But I never told you the strange part.”
    “Most people find near-death experiences pretty strange.”
    “True,” she said with a grin.
    “So it gets stranger?”
    “A lot stranger.” She hesitated, drew in a long breath, then rested her gaze on me. “On the way back, you know, to Earth, I heard things.”
    That was new. “What kinds of things?”
    “Voices. I heard a conversation.”
    “You eavesdropped?” I asked, a little amazed such a thing was possible. “On celestial beings?”
    “I guess you could call it that, but I didn’t do it on purpose. I heard an entire conversation in an instant, like it just appeared in my head. Yet I knew I wasn’t supposed to hear it. I knew the information was dangerous. I learned the name of a being powerful enough to bring about the end of the world.”
    “The end of the world?” I asked, gulping when I did so.
    “I know how it sounds, believe me. But they were talking about this being that had escaped from hell and was born on Earth.”
    My pulse accelerated by a hairsbreadth, just enough to cause a tingling flutter in my stomach.
    “They said that he could destroy the world, he could bring on the apocalypse if he so chose.”
    I knew of only one being who had escaped from hell. Only one being who had been born on Earth. And while I knew he was powerful, I couldn’t imagine him powerful enough to bring about the freaking apocalypse. Then again, what was? I totally should have paid attention in catechism.
    “And so the night of the séance, in all my teenaged wisdom, I decided to summon him.”
    I gaped, but only a little. “Right. Because that’s what we want to do. Summon the very being who can destroy every living thing on Earth.”
    “Exactly,” she said, spacing my sarcasm. “I thought I might convince him not to. You know, talk some sense into him.”
    “And how did that work out for you?”
    She stopped and pursed her lips at me. “I was fourteen, smart-ass.”
    I tried to laugh, but it didn’t quite make it past the lump in my throat. “So, for real? This being is going to