Page 126 of Play Nice

She sees it. The smiling face on the wall.

Leda turns around, and the two of them exchange a look.

“I didn’t do that,” I say. “The demon did.”

If they stay in the house long enough, maybe it’ll show up. Maybe it will say hello.

“Um, okay…” Daphne says.

“What’s this?” Leda goes through the saloon doors. I think she’s going for Mom’s book, but she goes for the lighter. “Why do you have this?”

“I was smoking. Cigarettes, like a true degenerate.”

Leda scoffs. “Do you realize how traumatizing it was for us to watch you hurt yourself? We were helpless then. And I resent that you’re making us feel the same way now. You don’t give any consideration to our feelings. You act out, and there’s nothing we can do. And then you do the Mom thing. You point to something to blame, something that no one can see but you, and when we question it, you freak out.”

“I can’t see it. I can only hear it. In the house,” I say. “And you said, ‘Mom.’ ”

“What?”

“You didn’t say ‘Alexandra.’ You said ‘Mom.’ ”

She picks up Demon of Edgewood Drive and stares at the cover. She ignores what I said, starts flipping through the pages of the book.

“What do you mean, you hear it?” Daphne asks.

“It communicates,” I say, going out through the saloon doors and pointing to the wall. “At first, without a voice. Then with a voice. One time.”

“Do you recognize how that sounds to us? Do you—” A door slams somewhere in the house. “Wait. Fuck. Is someone else here? There was another car in the driveway.”

“Connecticut plates,” Leda says.

Right. Roy.

I reach up to my face, gingerly feel my nose. The pain is nuclear. A mushroom cloud erupts between my eyes.

“I called Roy,” I say.

“Roy is here?” Leda asks.

“I can’t find him. That’s who I’ve been looking for. Not the demon.”

Another door slams. Startled, Leda drops the book.

“What do you mean, you can’t find him?” Daphne asks. “That scumbag is somewhere in the house slamming fucking doors, trying to scare us.”

“That’s not him, Daffy.”

“Meet me halfway. It’s the middle of the night, and I came here—to this place I never wanted to be ever again in my life—to come get you. We’ve already been through hell. Don’t drag us back through it.”

“Wha…what?” Leda says, distracted by something. She steps to the side to look down the upstairs hall. She narrows her eyes. “He’s in our room.”

She storms forward. I follow her.

“He isn’t,” I say. “I looked. He’s not in there.”

“He is. He’s opening and closing the door,” she says, throwing her arms up as she makes her way to the end of the hall, to her childhood bedroom. I look behind me, and Daphne stands at the other end of the hall, her shoulders hiked up to her ears, arms crossed in front of her like a shield.

She’s afraid.