Emmy unlocked another recently-occupied room and pulled her cart inside, humming "I Will Survive", scooped the used towels off the bathroom floor and dropped them in with the laundry, picked up a stack of fresh towels, and as she turned to hang them up a column of black smoke smacked into the glass of the bathroom window. Emmy jumped back, slammed the door shut, but the smoke was already hissing between the window and the sill, through the crack under the door, and upwards and down Emmy's throat.
Emmy glanced down at the towels, dropped them on the bed and grabbed a sheet of motel stationery and scribbled a note against her arm, took the towels and hurried out of the room and along the hallway past a few motel patrons, her eyes and arms and legs moving without her consent. That man hadn't had that face behind his face when she saw him check in, had he?
Silent, Emmy screamed.
Emmy's hand knocked on a door. "Housekeeping," called Emmy's voice.
"Not now," answered a man inside.
"Sir, I've got clean towels," Emmy's voice called back, and Jesus fuck—Emmy's body shuddered, and still, Emmy smiled—Jesus fuck was this all it was about? Emmy wasn't doing her job fast enough?
The door opened to one of the handsomest men Emmy had ever laid eyes on, and if she were fifteen years younger and twenty years stupider—and could work her own damn fingers—but Emmy was none of the above as proven by the way her body was ignoring her mind and pushing past the man to close the curtains and turn to the man's handsome friend. "I'm at this address," Emmy's voice said as Emmy's hand passed the note, and ignored what the friend said next to continue "go now, go through the bathroom window, don't stop, don't take your car, don't pass go. There are demons in the hallway and in the parking lot."
Demons?
Emmy caught flashes of how the room was supposed to look, crystals of sugar or salt in a thick line along the windowsill and something Satanic drawn on the ceiling above the door, remembered the face, and Jesus fuck. Demons.
"—so I've gotta hurry back," Emmy's voice said. "See you when you get there. Go!"
Emmy's body marched back to the room she'd left, and the black smoke poured out of her as quickly as it had come. Emmy slumped to the floor and lay there for a minute, an hour. She opened her fingers, pushed against the floor, and her body moved as it ought. "Jesus fuck," she said, and leaned against a bed to just breathe.
Emmy stood and it was proof that her body was her own. Hers. Not a demon's.
Emmy took her cell out of her pocket and hit speed dial. Two rings, then "Casa de Emerald y Latisha Johnson."
"Spanish homework?" Emmy asked.
"Sí. You're still at work. Is something wrong?"
Emmy opened her mouth and closed it. "No, no, baby," Emmy reassured her. (Liar.) "Just wanted to hear your voice, is all." Emmy tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and stripped the used sheets off the bed, every movement under her control and no one else's.
Three days later, Emmy walked past the New Age store like she did most days and glanced in the window like she did in every store she passed and saw a necklace on display, a five-pointed star in a circle, like the Satanic design the demon had expected to see in the room where the handsome men who knew about demons were staying. Emmy walked in the store and asked a few questions and walked back out wearing one of those necklaces and with another tucked in her pocket to give to her daughter.