Devil's Soul

Chapter 52 (just an average night of demon hunting)

***Happy 2017, everyone!!! My resolution is to write more regularly. So far so good, right?***

The laughing man was clutching at his chest, with eyes bulging and snot flying from his nose. We found him sitting at the bottom of the steps inside the mall entrance, chortling like his life depended on it.

"Looks like we found our guy," Abhinav noted, as he came in behind the rest of us.

A frothing sea of laughter began to echo from the depths of the mall.

"I'd say so," I confirmed.

"Okay, guys, the Prudential is big, so it's probably best if we split off into teams," Remy said, shaking out her arms like she was preparing for a friendly game of capture the flag. "I'll go with Mavis."

"I get Desmond!" Abhinav declared. Chung gave him a look, but Abhinav just shrugged. "Sorry, dude. Come back with demon powers, and I might reconsider."

Chung rolled his eyes.

"Why don't we just stick together for now? We won't need to search the whole mall if we can just follow the trail of laughing people," I suggested.

It was a solid but short-lived plan. As soon as the mall opened up to diverging pathways, it was pretty clear that everyone in the mall had been infected with laughter.

"Tricky little bastard," Desmond muttered, almost happily. "He must've used the distance he had on us to run all over the shopping center and throw us off his trail."

"The good news is that he probably has less distance on us now," I pointed out.

"Let's keep it that way, shall we? Come on, Abhinav," Desmond said, slipping me a playful smile before the two ran off. I wondered if he had caught the longing in my eyes.

"Chung, you go with Remy," I said, hoping she would realize it was silly for two demons to go together, leaving the human unprotected.

Nope. Apparently it was silly to leave me unprotected. "Mavis, now that you have a new power, you can't count on your healing ability to still be there. You're coming with me."

"But I do still have a power," I complained.

"To talk to dogs."

"And maybe cats," I added, as if that helped my case.

"You tried talking to a cat, and it didn't respond."

"He was ignoring me. It's the way of cats."

"Either way, Chung's gone now, so I guess you're stuck with me!" Remy grabbed my arm, and pulled me down the hall, grinning from ear to ear.

I struggled to look over my shoulder. "What are you talking about? He's right there..." Huh, I don't see him. But now that I think about it, I guess he could have slipped away while I was focused on Remy.

Remy saw my perplexed expression. She responded with a smug smile and a secret glint in her eye. "He's a slippery fellow, that one."

We did a quick run through of every store we passed, checking adjacent stores to each other to optimize time, while remaining in earshot. At one point, I heard Remy scream. I ran over to her store. "What is it?!" I asked, spastically throwing my gaze between the clothing racks.

"I made the mistake of looking at the price tag on this dress," she said with disgust.

I straightened, just now realizing I'd been crouching in an attack-ready stance. "All of these stores are like that. That's why I never shop here." I peeked over at the laughing cash-register lady, as if she were in a position to judge me, but she was too busy sharing a laugh with a woman who'd been making a purchase. Okay, "sharing" was a stretch of the imagination. They looked like they could barely breathe.