Free Demon Hunting In Dixie by Lexi George Page A

whatever it is.”
    â€œI see.” He sighed, as if reaching a decision. “I said I was going to break the rules, did I not? Telling you the truth will be my first transgression.”
    Evie prided herself on her intuition, and her instincts were on high alert. She was not going to like what Ansgar was about to tell her. She held up her hand to ward him off. “Look, mister, don’t bend any rules on my account. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, you know what I mean?”
    â€œBut I want you to know.” Ansgar stepped closer. Evie sidled back, and he stopped. “Brand and I are Dalvahni.”
    â€œWhat’s that, like Italian?”
    â€œNo. The Dalvahni are a tribe of immortal warriors. We hunt demons called the djegrali through space and time. We came to this place in pursuit of them. Several of them, in fact.”
    â€œDemons.”
    â€œThat is correct.”
    â€œUh huh.”
    Crazy as a Betsy bug. She might have known. Bitterness burned the back of her throat. No man in his right mind would think she was beautiful. Oh, well, it was nice for the millisecond it lasted.
    A man wearing a cheap blue suit with a boutonniere pinned to the lapel stopped in front of the plate glass window and looked in. Evie recognized him at once, in spite of his waxy, unnatural pallor and frozen features. He looked at her with glassy, unmoving eyes for an instant, and turned and shambled down the street in the direction of the funeral home.
    Evie stared out the window in shock. “Demon hunters, you say?”
    â€œI have told you so, have I not?”
    â€œYou sure did, and I believe you. Dwight Farris just looked in the shop window, and he’s dead.”

Chapter Six
    T here was scarcely time for Evie to activate the alarm system and grab her purse before Ansgar dragged her out of the flower shop.
    â€œWait, wait!” she protested. “Give a girl a minute to catch her breath, will you? I just saw my first zombie.”
    Ansgar looked down at her, a gleam of amusement in his silver eyes. “What you saw, in all likelihood, was a ghoul, a corpse made animate by a demon. Humans are so imprecise.”
    Evie pushed the hair out of her face. Nine o’clock, and already the heat and humidity were suffocating. It was like breathing under water, not that Ansgar the Magnificent seemed affected. Cool as a cucumber, he was.
    â€œGhoul smoul, call it what you want,” she said, “but there’s a dead guy walking around Hannah.”
    â€œDo not concern yourself. The matter will be dealt with. Where is this tailor?”
    She pointed. “On the corner at the end of the block.”
    Ansgar pulled her down the street, his long stride forcing her to break into a trot to keep up. The businesses along Main Street were beginning to stir to life. Two familiar wrinkled figures perched on a bench outside the Sweet Shop Café and Grill. Herbert Duffey’s moose-like countenance was hidden behind the morning paper. Beside him, Jefferson Davis Willis puffed on his pipe and watched passersby.
    â€œGood morning, Mr. Duffey, Mr. Willis.” Evie smiled at the octogenarians. “Warm day, isn’t it?”
    â€œHerbert, get your long snoot outta that paper and tell me who that is with Evie Douglass,” Mr. Willis said.
    Evie smothered a laugh and promptly tripped over a crack in the sidewalk.
    Ansgar’s grip tightened on her arm. “Have a care.”
    Her face burned. Why, oh, why did she have to be such a klutz? “Sorry. The—uh—tailor’s is on the corner at the end of the block.”
    There were three clothing stores in Hannah: Tompkins’s for men, the Greater Fair for women, and Toodles for children. They reached Tompkin’s and pushed open the front door. The shop was empty except for Brand and the sales clerk, Tweedy Gibbs. Tweedy, a slim wisp of a man in his early thirties with thinning red hair, stood toe to toe with Brand in front of