Disclaimer: I own nothing.
This is a blurb written over the course of an evening, brought on by an antiquing trip I took with my mother fairly recently. I always wonder about the lives of the antiques; where they might have come from and who might have owned them before they came to live in an antique store. The little girl cross-stitching is based on someone I know and am very close to. When we were children, she could not come outside to play due to her severe asthma.
Please R & R, so that I can improve my writing.
"Make a left here," John tells her, and Zed taps the left blinker on with her fingers.
"Christina's Antiques?" she asks, forehead crinkling.
"A friend of mine called yesterday and said that while he'd been out here with his girlfriend, he'd come across a wicked-looking doll and gotten a bad feeling. Not anything truly dangerous, nothing that would show up on the scry map. Something that probably shouldn't end up in the hands of a child, though."
"I haven't gone antiquing much," she admitted. "Too much energy. It gives me headaches sometimes."
"That's partly why I brought you. It's time for you learn to block some of that out, love."
Zed pulled the truck into a spot near the pale blue aluminum-sided building and put it in park. John opened the door, and a small tin cowbell hanging over the door clanged out. Just to their right, a large wooden counter stood with a pleasant-looking septuagenarian with freshly blued hair behind it, smiling when she saw them.
"Way-ell, hello they-er," she drawled, her voice thick with Old South. "Hay-ow can ah hay-elp you to-dai?"
"We're just looking, thanks," John told her.
Zed gave the lady a friendly smile before making her way deeper into the store, rubbing her hands together slowly, feeling the energy traveling through her fingertips and trying to ignore the buzzing in her head.
"Do you know what we're looking for?" she turned to ask him.
He nodded. "He texted me a photo. But relax, love, we're not in a rush. The more worried you get about it, the more difficult it's going to be to block."
They rounded a corner, to a lot that was full of antique kitchenware. Cheerful copper gelatin tins hung on the walls, Tupperware was neatly stacked in rows, and a Blue Willow china tea set had been displayed proudly in a corner what-not.
"Okay. Kitchenware. Seems innocent enough, yeah? Let's give it a shot." Reaching over, John picked up the teapot of the Blue Willow set and held it out in front of him. "I know you're having trouble concentrating right now. It's a large store filled with items that have belonged to other people. You could have a thousand people's energy signatures crossing waves through here right now." He took a step closer, and Zed forced herself to hold her hand out to take the teapot from him. "But right now, you're going to take this teapot. You're going to focus on one specific memory from it. You understand?"
She nodded, and reached out and took it from him. Instantaneously, the antique store faded around her. Whispers and lights swirled around Zed, voices and wind and smells, all around her, circling her, too much-
"One memory, Zed." She felt John's hand on her arm. "Just one. Focus on the teapot, the teapot only. Let everything else fade."
Zed stared down at the teapot. The outside was white porcelain printed with the Blue Willow pattern of blue pagodas and exotic birds, of bridges and fences. The inside of the teapot was slightly browned from many years of holding teas—Earl Grey, a voice inside her head told her, and suddenly, a sunny, warm kitchen bloomed around her. The walls were a cheerful pale yellow, and white lace curtains let light stream through a window. A woman in a long nightgown stood by the stove, pouring hot water from a kettle into the teapot, humming to herself. There was a faint smell of cinnamon rolls.
"See? Not so bad." Zed turned to see John standing next to her, and the kitchen faded from view, and she carefully set the teapot down in its place.
"I was in a kitchen," she told him.
"Odd place for a teapot, that," John said wryly.
She rolled her eyes, but couldn't help the smile that reached her lips.
They passed several stalls, and the buzzing began to return. Zed rubbed her temples.
"Come on, you're doing good. I'm going to push you, but I'm not going to give you more than you can handle," he encouraged her before offering his elbow to her. "Here. Focus on me – not my mind, not metaphysically. Just think about the shirt, the material."
She hesitated. A teapot, sure. Touching him was different. She wasn't sure if she could block out him. She'd been staying at the mill, but they didn't touch very often. By accident, yes, passing the salt at dinner or handing a book to him. He'd grabbed her arm when he was trying to get her to talk to him just before they had left for New York, but she had been focused on packing her things.
Tentatively, she reached out, grasping his forearm. Her eyes widened and there was a brief moment where she almost let go as a wave of concern washed over her—his concern, for her. There was a hasty flash of self-loathing, the smell of spicy aftershave, and a vision of John ironing and starching his shirt.
"Focus, Zed," he told her. "My arm."
Right. His arm. Zed was holding him at the elbow. She could feel the crispness of the material of his shirt, the roughness of the bit of skin she was touching, the muscle of his forearm. His skin was warm, and after a moment, she was able to relax her grip a little. The buzzing in her head had faded considerably.
Together, they strode down a long aisle of stalls with neatly set-up goods. One was set up to look like a bedroom, another showcasing western rustic items, one advertising antique Coca-Cola products, another one with someone who obviously hadn't cared about appearances and had randomly tossed their garage-sale cast-offs on shelves, very few genuine antiques mixed in with old McDonald's Happy Meal toys.
"Here. Try this one." It was a booth full of hand-made crocheted doilies and home-sewn aprons, cross-stitched handkerchiefs and heavy-weighted quilts.
Zed raised an eyebrow at him. "You really are taking it easy on me today."
His countenance darkened. "Just for the time being. The bad things have to come, Zed, but I'm not going to let them come until you can control the good."
Zed bent down to look at the cross-stitching. There were several works of flowers, of cheerful-looking gnomes and mushrooms, of music, Christmas scenes, Bible verses, and encouraging messages, like hope and faith. Selecting a stitched picture of a scarlet rose, Zed let go of John's arm, running her hands over the pattern.
The antique store melted away. She was in someone's living room. An ugly-patterned but comfortable-looking sofa sat next to a large window, and the wooden paneling on the walls screamed the mid-eighties. A young girl, about seven or eight, platinum blond and straight-haired, sat on the edge of the sofa. Her mother sat next to her.
"The doctor says your asthma is too bad to be outside right now, sweetheart. I know you'd rather go swimming, but it's not worth it to have an attack," her mother spoke gently, stroking her daughter's hair. "But I'm going to show you how to cross-stitch today. Once you get the hang of it, you'll love it."
And patiently, she showed the girl how to thread the needle.
"Zed?" John's voice pulled her out of her trance.
He stood in the living room. She blinked, and it faded away, leaving her back in the booth with all the carefully hand-worked creations, made over the years by a young girl who could not go venture outside to play because of her lungs.
"You all right?" he asked, his hand on her shoulder.
She nodded jerkily, clutching the rose to her. He noticed, but didn't say anything, when they moved down several rows, and she was still holding the needlework piece. The humming in her brain started up again like a car engine, and wordlessly, he stuck his elbow out again. She took it, holding on tightly. The edges of her vision were beginning to blur, and the slight headache was developing into a definite unpleasantness.
"I think that's enough for today," John told her. "Let's go and get this doll."
She let him lead her down the row of booths, but felt it before she saw it. Stopping in her tracks, Zed looked up at him with wide eyes, breaking the contact between them as she let go of his arm. "You're sure this thing isn't dangerous?"
He shrugged. "Relatively speaking. But any evil you come into contact with most likely isn't going to feel...minor." He took a step back to her. "It's not anything near Pazuzu's level, if that's what you're meaning."
She relaxed a little, but could not ignore the heavy weight in the atmosphere, nor the smell that began to emanate from the booth. She wrinkled her nose. "It smells like something died," she told him. "And was cooked with rotten eggs."
"I love the smell of demons in the morning," John muttered.
And then, to her surprise, he offered his hand out to her. Not his elbow. He stood, holding his hand out, palm facing up, waiting. She did not hesitate, but took a step forward and gripped it.
They stepped into the booth.
"Oh, dear God," Zed uttered under her breath.
It was full of dolls. There had to have been at least a hundred. Dolls on stands, dolls sitting down on little doll chairs, naked and clothed Barbies, eight-inch dolls with their little dresses spread out around them, pink, purple, blue, frilly lace-covered clothes, linen-faced dolls with embroidered eyes, and dozens upon dozens of glassy-eyed dolls, all staring and seeing nothing. And in between them, Zed could sense something watching, waiting, something dark, something like the shadows on the walls that used to – and too often still did – frighten her as a child, the way they moved, shadows with bone hands and grinning teeth.
Zed shivered. John's hand tightened around hers.
"We're looking for one in—" John began.
"That one," Zed told him. She didn't need him to tell her; an inky darkness was emitting in heavy waves from one of the medium-sized dolls.
She was dressed as Little Bo Peep, which made her seem all the more innocent. However, the vinyl material of her face was shiny and scratched. Her eyes were black and murky, and her lips were molded to quirk slightly to the right, pink paint peeling.
Zed reached out a hand to pick her up, but John caught it.
"Not this one, love. You're not ready." Fishing in his pocket, he pulled a plastic sack out. Removing the tag from the doll, careful to not actually touch it, he yanked the sack expertly over the doll, whisking her into the bag without touching her. "We're off, then."
Zed had to admit that she felt a little ridiculous walking back to the counter with a full-grown man carrying a doll in a Walmart sack, herself holding onto a cross-stitch rose.
The woman positively beamed at them. "Deed yuh fahnd whut yew were lookin' foe-or?"
"We did, thanks," Zed answered.
John put the doll sack on the counter, handing her the ticket. He looked over at Zed, and plucked the cross-stitch piece from her fingertips. "This, too."
Back at the mill, John instructed Zed to make a wide circle of salt. Holding the cylinder package, she turned round and round, making a nice, thick layer.
"Should be enough, there," directed John. Kneeling, he upturned the sack, depositing the doll into the center of the circle before taking a bit of chalk and drawing some design around her.
There was a rustling. The fire in the hearth crackled and receded, going from a bright orange glow to almost embers. John chuckled.
"Trying to hold on, this one," he told her, before his features darkened. Holding his palms out, he began to chant, some verse in Latin that Zed could understand some of the roots, but not every word. Something about being banished, pushed out of this plane of existence.
The light bulbs overhead flickered, went out. Ever-prepared, Chas opened a glow stick packet, bent it, shook it, and handed it to Zed calmly while John went on chanting.
There was a faint growling, similar to the sound of an angry rottweiler or doberman snarling. In the unsteady remains of the fire, Zed could see something moving in the darkness, yellow eyes reflecting.
"John," she whispered.
He kept chanting and did not answer, but a quick glance at her with his eyes reassured her. Chas stood near her as the thing growled again before stepping closer, talons clicking on the floor.
John continued to chant, dousing the doll with holy water. The creature snarled again, emitting a constant, low growl, before changing shapes, slowly, slowly, into a lanky mist.
You should not have disturbed me. The thought grumbled out in her head. She gasped.
"It's saying we shouldn't have disturbed it," Zed said shakily.
Without warning, the shape rushed her. Zed scrambled backwards, shaking the salt in an arc before her. The creature shrieked, a terrible, blood-curling sound, swirling like a smoke through the room, running straight into John, knocking him to the floor. Chas rushed over to help him, trying to make a grab at the shape, his fingers swiping through it.
Zed clambered to her feet, ran to the circle where the doll was, and made a grab for it.
"No!" was the last thing she heard John shout, and then the world went black.
She woke groggily, with a nauseating headache. Before opening her eyes, she realized and was vaguely thankful for the face that she was lying on something soft. A bed. Definitely a bed, with something warm next to her. Scratch that. Make that someone warm. Opening her eyes, she turned to see John lying next to her, arm draped around her middle, dozing.
Zed shot up, and the wave of nausea that hit her was so strong she almost gagged.
"Easy, easy there," John said soothingly, drawing her back down against him. "You've had quite a day."
"What happened?" she asked, trying to calm the beating of her heart as she turned over on her back to look up at him.
"That thing – it was a minor demon. The more minor the demon, the bigger the tricks. It tried to make itself look more dangerous than it actually was. You tossing that salt on there, really hurt it. You picking up its vessel, it forgot all about me and went after you. Was trying to suck the breath out of you, it was. Chas flung the bloody doll into the fireplace."
"Why didn't you just do that to begin with?"
"Because I was trying to consecrate the vessel first. You destroy the vessel, the demon just wanders around and tries to find a new host. But it's okay. We pulled out the bloody thing and it's found a new residence in a vat of holy water, until we can decide what to do with it next."
"It was trying to suck the life out of me?"
"Eh, more or less. This isn't Harry Potter. But it can put you into shock, which is what it did. That's why we had to get you warmed up."
Zed finally understood why they were in bed together, and why she felt so chilled. A tremor went through her spine.
"Come here," John told her.
She scooted towards him, allowing him to pull her close once more.
"I know you were trying to help," he told her. "But don't try to do that again, touch something when it's in the circle. The circle binds it. If you move it from the circle, you're letting it out of jail." He pulled back a little. "Do you trust me when I say that I'm not going to let anything hurt you?"
Zed looked up at him. This was the hard part, the scary part. She could face the underworld and all its inhabitants, face men like her father, spit in their faces and hold her head in defiance until the end of the world, but staring into John Constantine's eyes while he asked her to trust him was completely terrifying.
"I want to trust you," she said finally.
"Good enough," he answered, and in the next moment, before she could really process what was happening, his lips were on hers.
His lips were warm, and the whiskers on his beard tickled her chin, but to her own surprise, she did not push him away. She closed her eyes, hands snaking around him, moving onto her back so she could pull him on top of her, feeling his weight. His mouth moved against hers, tongue seeking entrance. She opened her mouth and moaned softly, and he moved to nip at her throat before moving back to her lips. She sighed, hands moving down to lift up his shirt and do what she had always wanted to do since that first day she had broken into his hotel room, sliding her hands up his flat stomach. He felt her smile beneath his lips and he smiled back, gripping her hips as he sighed against her.
"John?" he heard Chas call.
He kissed her, and kissed her again before forcing himself to pull away, answering. "What is it, mate?"
"John, is Zed up? The scry map is bleeding again."
He rested his forehead in the hollow of her shoulder, cursing. "We never get a break, do we?"
She ran a hand through his hair. "Come on. We've got work to do."