Exes and Exorcisms by Keira Blackwood (uplifting book club books .txt) 📗

Like a bus crash was just a part of Forbidden, Kentucky’s charm?

A man with gray hair and cracked spectacles shouted, “Yeehaw! This is the best ride in town!”

“Um, a little help here?” I gasped.

Xavier tried turning the wheel to move the bus, but it wasn’t budging. Maybe it was hooked over a part of the curb; it was impossible to tell in the snow.

“Hold on, Kelly, I’m coming!” he called.

He couldn’t exit the bus through the regular door because it was currently pressed against me. He pushed his way through the aisle of tourists to the rear emergency exit, and came outside.

“Kelly, my angel, I have brought you some victims!”

“Victims?” I stared at him. Surely I’d heard him incorrectly.

Marla was on her phone, shouting at Grayson, “Get your ass outside! We’re just down the block from the parlor, and there's been an accident.”

“This isn’t an accident,” one of the men in the bus shouted, “this is the best live, interactive theater I’ve ever witnessed!”

“But that woman was hit by the bus!” a woman with a cane said, her cheeks pink. “Maybe it is an accident?”

“Nonsense,” another tourist said, this one a plump man with the kind of jowly facial hair one would expect to see in a Regency film. “No one could survive this in real life, yet she has. Look, she’s even smiling.”

I was not smiling, I was grimacing. This was my resting bitch-help-me face.

Marla came over and started pushing on the bus. Xavier helped her, while eyeing the spray bottle hooked to my belt loop.

“What are you doing with that?” Xavier asked.

“Um...making more vampires?” I said. “It’s very strong vampire juice.”

He nodded. “Oh. Good.”

He should know I was lying—he was a shifter, after all. But it seemed the demon inhabiting his body didn’t have the same lie detection skills.

“Wait, don’t move her!” a woman in a velour tracksuit called out. “I want a selfie first!”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Marla said. “Go away!”

But the woman was already using her cane to whack other tourists out of the way. She clambered out of the bus, her phone held aloft, her eyes shining with a combination of glee and determination.

“Take this photo, now,” she said to Marla.

Marla raised her eyebrows at me in question.

“Go ahead,” I said, waving with my one free arm. “What’s another few seconds of agony?”

“Loving the melodrama,” the lady said, getting close enough that I could smell her Chanel No. 5.

I sneezed just as Marla took the photo, and Marla laughed as she looked at the resulting image. “Do you want me to take the picture over?” she asked, showing it to the woman.

The woman howled. “No, no, this is perfect.”

“Get me out of here,” I growled.

Xavier was already working on it, his muscles bunching beneath his long-sleeved tee. He shot me apologetic looks all the while, and pointed to the tourists. “You can make them your children,” he said. “You will be a vampire queen and all will serve you.”

Finally, he pushed the bus off of me with a screech.

Now that I was free, I grabbed the spray bottle, took aim at Xavier, and sprayed. Noxious black liquid shot out in a fine mist.

Xavier coughed. “What is this? It isn’t vampire juice, is it?”

“No,” I said. “It’s demon juice!”

He tried to scramble away, but Grayson rushed up and lunged for him. Xavier pulled away just in time and started to make a run for it, but the selfie lady stuck out her cane. Xavier tripped, falling to the cold sidewalk in a heap.

I continued spraying him, shouting like Ben would do. “Begone, demon! Begone!”

My ribs and stomach were in agony from where the bus had plowed into me, but I could tell they were healing.

“Stop!” Xavier said, trying to scoot away on his ass, then lifting up so he could crab-walk. I limped after him toward the tattoo parlor.

“It’s not working,” I said, spraying so hard that my finger was getting sore and cramped. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Marla shook her head. “Something has to be different, maybe. We need to banish it, not just get it out of Xavier.”

Banish. The banishing dildo would work one time, Cordelia had said. A touch to the forehead and proclaim who or what I wanted banished, and he’d be gone.

“Marla, get the dildo!” I shouted.

“Get the dildo!” the tourists called after me.

I glanced over my shoulder to see that they’d all exited the bus and were following along. They really seemed to think this was live theater.

One man hung back away from everyone else, watching with intense interest, but not enthralled like the rest.

Marla ran ahead to the parlor, went inside, and came out a second later with the Louboutins box. She opened it and pulled out the dildo. “Here, Kelly, catch!”

The dildo whipped through the air like a throwing star before I reached up and caught it with my free hand. It was still slippery with the spell Cordelia had imbued it with.

I touched it to Xavier’s forehead. “Demon, this is a proclamation of your banishment! Begone!”

Xavier cringed on the ground. “My queen,” he said, “my queen!”

“It still isn’t working,” I said, spraying him and whacking his forehead with the dildo.

“How about true love’s kiss?” Grayson asked. “He’s your mate. Save him!”

“Save him with the dildo and a kiss!” one of the tourists shouted.

I was glad these people were from out of town, because otherwise I’d never be able to show my face in Forbidden again. If death couldn’t stop true love, then a demon sure as hell shouldn’t, either.

Kissing Xavier was a no-brainer. I didn’t know if it would solve anything, but I missed him. I loved him—I’d loved him for so very long, and missed him so very much.

Dropping the dildo and the spray bottle on the ground, I bent down, took his face in my hands, and pressed my lips to his.

He smelled like the demon spray, but as I kissed him, he shuddered dramatically, shaking his arms and legs to the