Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 59 -

The news that Damian's grandmother would soon be arriving in New Orleans was a source of both great relief and great anxiety. All this time I had waited in hope of her coming, as if she were the second Messiah to deliver salvation. But now that the time had come and her arrival was imminent, I found myself growing more and more worried.

"What if she doesn't like me?" I finally blurted one day, while Damian sat at the table with a mouthful of a soup and a rainstorm battered the windows. Thunder, wind, and lightning had been assaulting the city for days, and the gray weather cooping me up indoors was wreaking havoc with my mental state. "What if she hates that I was a whore or that I wasn't a virgin or that I say crass things or-"

Damian finally managed to swallow his soup. "Indeed, what if she doesn't like you?" I quieted, blinking rapidly in confusion. "First of all, she won't dislike you. I know my grandmother, and none of the reasons you've given would cause her to dislike you. She will be cautious with you, as she is with everyone." He smiled reassuringly. "Besides, even if she detested you, it would make no difference. She would still seek to help you, and my opinion of you would not change. So don't fret."

I wasn't good at "not fretting." Nevertheless, with the poor weather keeping me indoors, I had to turn my attentions to something. I practiced my reading and found that I had a great liking for Damian's collection of penny dreadfuls from England. The String of Pearls quickly became a favorite, with the nefarious Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. Reading about horrific things gave me a lovely respite from focusing on the all-too-real horrors that seemed prepared to accost me at every turn.

Much to my surprise, Alex stopped coming to sit with me throughout the day. I had of course suspected that he would not be able to pose as my nanny indefinitely, but I had expected there to be some kind of replacement for him. Instead, Damian kissed me farewell before work and left instructions on how to contact him at the college using his strange telephone device.

"The moment something feels wrong," he insisted. "Telephone me."

Luckily for me, the demonic beasties had quieted again after the Gray One's violent display. Distracting myself with reading and cooking was certainly effective, but I'd also discovered some stranger method of calming myself. I would go into Damian's office, to his toy cabinet, and with painstaking care would clean his instruments of discipline, waxing the wood and oiling the leather. When the time neared that he would be arriving home, I would await him in his bedroom, kneeling eagerly at attention beside the bed, the ache in my knees and difficulty not to touch myself keeping me focused until his arrival. And of course, to see the pleasure on his face when he walked in and saw me thus never failed to put butterflies in my stomach.

Then it came: December the 3rd. The day Balthazha's ship was to come to port. My stomach was in knots from the moment I woke up, and I could hardly manage my breakfast. I remained undecided between what dress to wear all morning, until I had emptied the wardrobe across the bed in frustration. I could not recall the last time I had worried so much over what someone thought of me - save perhaps Damian himself. But Belthazha was an extension of him. She raised him, helped make him who he was. I knew, by the way he spoke of her, that he held her in his highest regard. Of course I wanted her to like me! Here I was living in her son's house, sleeping in his bed. I thought of his home as mine now.

Then of course, there was the fear of the impending exorcism. We had waited all these weeks now, desperately hoping for her arrival: it was as if my doctor had finally arrived for surgery, but there was to be no anesthetic, no barrier between myself and the pain. My memories of casting out Krahia as I lay on that chapel floor felt distant and vague now. Trying to remember it left me with a lingering sense of foreboding. I did not know what had happened to me in the real world during that time - only the horrors within my own head. But now I had seen an exorcism with my own eyes, and the sight frightened me more. The idea of willingly going back to such a state was terrifying.