Death's Hand by S M Reine Page B

Today, she wore a shirt that was swooped low in the front to reveal a lot of cleavage that he had to struggle not to look at. She was wearing gloves again—she always wore gloves—and cutoff shorts.
    He cleared his throat and tried to find his voice. “Hi, Elise.” He shouldn’t stare at her legs, either. Really. “You and James... Are you okay?”
    “Yeah. It’s just a stupid disagreement.”
    “It looked kind of bad,” he said. She shrugged and sat down at the reception desk, dragging a squat filing cabinet to her side. Elise favored her right arm.
    “What are you doing here? Did you feel like taking up ballet all of a sudden?”
    “No,” he said. “I’m picking up Betty.”
    “The coven’s not done for another half hour.”
    “I guess I lost track of the time.”
    The corner of Elise’s mouth twitched. “That’s fine. You can hang out with me while we wait for the witches to finish. They’re boring when they’re meditating.”
    “Awesome,” Anthony said, and he tried not to sound too enthusiastic about it. He took the second chair and moved over.
    The door between the entryway and the dance hall was open and James’s voice echoed through the studio. “How did that meditation make you feel? Ann?”
    “I felt in tune with the Earth,” she responded. “It was relaxing. Finals have been crazy.”
    Others made assenting noises. Elise made a face at Anthony, and he grinned.
    “You feel like working? There’s a lot of paperwork to go through,” she said. “I need to find where James stashed last year’s registrations that came through the workforce education program. They have to be here. He’s organized, but in the most obscure way possible.”
    “I would love to help,” he said, and Elise turned the filing cabinet to face him.
    Anthony absorbed himself in his search, trying to forget how tedious he found paperwork. She focused on her laptop, fingers ticking away at the keyboard, and Anthony shuffled through the folders. Elise’s bare legs occupied the corner of his vision.
    The seconds dragged. She hadn’t been joking about James’s bizarre methods of organization—everything was neatly tagged and labeled, but with indecipherable codes. He had no idea what “G-3B” had to do with receipts for cleaning supplies, or why the thick folder full of yellow-tabbed sheet music was marked “T6” (or why it was between the receipts and what looked like coven inventory lists), but it meant that Anthony had to read everything to figure out what it was.
    He distracted himself from his chore by scooting his chair back enough to peek through the door to the next room. An assortment of women and men rested comfortably on cushions around a small altar. Smoke rose from a censer between them.
    Anthony’s cousin sat beside James, her blonde hair pulled into loose pigtails. She listened raptly to the high priest, nodding along with everything he said.
    “As we discussed last week, Marisa’s family is facing some troubles right now,” James said. “An exorcist determined that Lucinde may be possessed. I believe we should partake in a cleansing ritual.”
    Elise began typing with renewed vigor. “Do you hear this?” he whispered.
    “I don’t listen to their crazy witch nonsense.”
    “Who’s the exorcist?” Ann asked.
    “She prefers to preserve her anonymity,” James said.
    “It would be so interesting to talk to her for my thesis. It’s on the supernatural and old-world religion in modern times.”
    “I can pass along questions for you.” His tone left no room for argument. “What do you all think of my proposal?”
    “An exorcist,” Anthony murmured. “It’s like they think they’re in a movie or something.”
    Elise typed harder.
    “Do you mean actual demons, or the kind of demons we regard as goddesses, like Lilith?” asked a man whose voice Anthony didn’t recognize.
    “The two aren’t mutually exclusive,” James explained. “This one may be little more than an angry