How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend (Necon Modern Horror Book 9) Read Free

button and pulled up through
her chest, gathered in her next breath. She pushed out and opened her eyes.
    Angelique stood with her eyes
closed, smiling. Brenda could feel her light mix with Angelique’s and drift
into the air around them.
    “You see,” Brenda said.
    Angelique opened her eyes and
took a deep breath. “What was that?”
    “Me reaching out to you. What did
it feel like?”
    “Like electricity and light and
warmth, like a dream.” Angelique held her hands up, looked at each finger.
    Brenda saw the warm glow of gold
light outline Angelique’s hands and it was clear that Angelique finally saw it
also.
    “This is no more of a dream than
any of us see when awake. Grandmom says God is dreaming us all the time.”
    “That was just a trick.”
Angelique stepped backwards away from Brenda.
    “You know that’s not true. You
can feel it inside, whether you believe it or not.”
    “Well, I did feel something. And
that glowing...” Angelique sat down on a trunk. “Even if I have this power
— what good is it?”
    “What do you wish for more than
anything?” Brenda asked.
    Angelique picked up her mother’s
rag doll and held her close to her face. She closed her eyes. “I wish–I
wish my mother would love me.”
    “We could do that, Angelique. You
and I together could do it.”
    “You think so. Really?”
    Brenda nodded. “She’s your mother
so she already loves you. It’s just locked away inside of her. We can make a
gris-gris to open her to you.”
    “Even though we’re here and she’s
in North Carolina?”
    “Distance don’t mean a thing.
We’ll need something that’s been close to her.”
    They both looked at the doll.
    “And I have a handkerchief of
hers in my suitcase,” Angelique said, hugging her mother’s doll.
    Brenda rubbed the sliver key on
the chain around her neck. “Good, then we’ll make the charm tonight. I think
some of my mother’s toys are over there. Let’s check it out.”
    Brenda put the conjure ball back
in the dresser. They spent the next two hours going though the trunks, trying
on clothes, and setting up old dishes and glasses for pretend meals, until
their grandmother called them for dinner.
     
    That night they sat on the back
porch eating ice cream while Brenda’s father had some friends over after
dinner. Jazz played in the background as the adults talked and laughed in the
living room. The lightning bugs drifted above the grass and herb garden like
stars while the girls ate their ice cream. Crickets sang from the bushes along
the back of the yard.
    “Make a wish on the next
lightning bug and it’ll come true,” Brenda said.
    “Is that more magic?” Angelique
asked.
    “Naw, just a saying, but it
couldn’t hurt.”
    They both whispered wishes and
laughed.
    Brenda stood up from the wicker
chair and peeked into the kitchen window. No one was there.
    “Want to make that gris-gris for
your mother now?” she asked Angelique.
    “Tonight?”
    “Why not? It’s as good a time as
any.”
    “What if something goes wrong?”
Angelique asked.
    “First lesson in using the power:
your intent makes the magic. It’s not a complicated spell anyway.”
    “I don’t know about this–”
    “Of course you don’t. That’s why
I’m going to teach you. Come on.”
    They entered the empty kitchen
through the back door. Brenda found a small brown paper bag in the cabinet and
sprinkled sugar in it.
    “We’ll put it together in our
bedroom,” she whispered.
    They walked quickly through the
dining room. Larry and his friends were in the living room, laughing and
talking over the music. The girls dashed up the stairs. They tiptoed past their
grandmother’s room, where they could hear her talking on the phone.
    In the bedroom, Brenda put a
bracelet with little bells on the doorknob. “So we can hear if someone opens
the door,” she said.
    She put the desk lamp on the
floor and used the two bedposts to make a tent out of a sheet. They crouched
under the