Warning: Spoilers Ahead!!! This is a recap blog which means I read the book and tell you everything that happens so you don't have to read it yourself. Do NOT continue to read unless you want to know who the bad guy/girl/minion of hell is.
Tag Line: Sleep no more...or face an evil beyond your worst nightmare.From the Back of the Book: Left for dead...The last thing April remembers is running, running...for her life. And then nothing. Now only she knows what happened that night she got into a red Trans Am and it sped down a deserted road. Adrift in darkness...Now her body lies comatose...but she dares not relax her guard. She moves - but no one sees. She cries out - but no one hears. Trapped in a horror beyond her worst nightmares, April can escape only by confronting an evil force that yearns for her very soul.
This book was published in 1994 and this is my first time reading it. I'm pretty sure it's my first time reading Favors in general. And it shall be my last..............
We begin with our protagonist but
Favors doesn't tell us her name. The book is written in first person
so it's not immediately obvious. The back of the book talks about an
April so I'm just going to assume that's who this is. Her
12-year-old cousin Sherman (who is a senior in high school)
wants to hire her for an ESP project. She's reluctant because it
will mean skipping two days of school but he offers her $60 for her
assistance. She's been panting after a teal dress forever and $60
will allow her to finally buy it. She wants it in case her crush
Doug ever asks her out on a date.
The experiment consists of April laying
in bed and watching TV or reading while Sherman tries to read her
mind from afar. His cat Sekhmet will be in the room with her
because Sek (as I'm going to call her) can attract and conduct
Sherman's psychic energies. Wow. This book only took two pages to
get SUPER dumb. That has to be a new record.
Odds of this book getting better from
here: 10%
April has to promise to stay with Sek
and not step foot outside the house until Wednesday morning. If for
some reason Sek wanders away from April, April is supposed to chant
“babliga laga cabi lamac” until Sek comes back.
We get clear to page five before Favors
bothers to tell us April's name, by the way.
Later, April meets up with her friend
Patrick for a jog. She hates to run but Doug loves to run so
she's taking it up to impress him. She's also eating granola which
she detests but Doug loves. Someone should tell April that she
shouldn't have to change everything about herself to get a guy to
like her. Patrick and April have lived next door to each other all
their lives and they've always been friends. April tells us when
she's with Patrick she's sure of herself and her place in the world.
I hope they end up together instead.
Patrick isn't a fan of Doug. He tells
April that Doug is just stringing her along because she's going to
monitor the French exams or something and Doug is hoping she'll look
the other way when he cheats to stay on the team. April knows Patrick is probably telling the truth but it hurts and she wants to hurt him
back. She tells him that his girlfriend is only with him to make her
ex jealous. Patrick gets up and walks off.
April feels bad a few minutes later and
runs after Patrick. He won't stop so she football tackles him from
behind. She pins him to the ground and apologizes. As she's laying
on top of him she suddenly realizes that he has beautiful eyes. He
puts his arms around her in a hug and pulls her tighter down on him
and suddenly they both become very aware of their position. They
both turn super red and then jump up sputtering about how late it's
gotten. They go separate ways then, both a little shaken and unsure.
👽👽👽👽
(((I started to make a save file to
recap this book and realized one already existed. Apparently
everything you just read up there was written about a year ago when I
last attempted to recap this book. For some reason I must have
stopped and picked up a different book instead. Which rarely happens
because my manager doesn't let me rage quit very often. And to be
honest, nothing I read up there would have made me rage quit at all
so I don't even understand why I did. It makes me nervous though.
Obviously a year ago I thought this book was so bad that I appealed
to my manager's mercy to get me out of it. This does not bode
well.))) (((Note from future me: Oh, how I wish I had heededd this warning from past me. Sigh.)))
👽👽👽👽
When April gets home, she
finds Sek caught in a bush outside. She's tempted to leave the
foul-tempered cat out there but can't bring herself to do it. She
frees Sek and then catches a glimpse of her collar. There's a
crystal dangling from it – some kind of a prism with a star and
some ancient writing on it that she can't decipher. As she holds the
crystal she gets a premonition of doom.
Oh, goodie. Premonitions of
doom. I just love books with those. \\sarcasm font//
April finds her mother
making a triple-layer chocolate cake in the kitchen because her dad
has landed some big account or something. Her mom jokes that she got
an apple for April because she knows Doug doesn't approve of junk
food. April throws away the granola and licks the frosting spoon
instead. While they're just making small talk about April's day, her
Aunt Millie (Sherman's mom) comes in to announce that she and
Uncle Herb are going on vacation to New York for a second
honeymoon. April's mom is a little worried they're going to be asked
to babysit Sherman but apparently he's away on a senior class trip.
Send the parents of a Main Character off on a trip early in the book? Check
April knows Sherman didn't
go on the trip. He obviously faked leaving so he could have the
house to himself for the weekend. She goes back and forth about
whether she should tell the adults this but ends up saying nothing.
It gnaws at her all evening though and she decides to go over to his
house and drag him back to hers. As she attempts to leave her room,
Sek blocks her path. They tussle but April is a human and gets the
upper hand. In their struggle, a small piece of Sek's crystal breaks
off and April puts it in her pocket to give to Sherman so he can glue
it back on.
April gets Sek outside and
lets her go. She's surprised to see Doug's car parked by her curb.
He's leaning against his Trans Am all casual like and she asks him
what the hell he's doing standing out there staring at her house.
She isn't happy to see him and that surprises her. He calls her
“babe” and tells her that he needs to talk to her. He invites
her to get a burger with him which she finds very out of character
for him. When she says she has to go ask her parents, he changes
tactics and says he just remembered an errand he has to run so he
can't go after all. But he asks her to sit in his car and talk to
him for a minute instead. I'm starting to worry that he's working
for Sherman or something and April is about to find herself abducted.
April gets in the car and
immediately is grossed out by the smell. It's like sour milk, cheap
cologne and old cigarettes. Doug gets in too and turns on the
ignition. She protests but he says he just wants the heater on so
they don't get cold. He's flirting with her and making kissy faces
but she can see he's pressed back against his own door like he
doesn't want to get close to her. Before she can react, he locks the
doors and the automatic seatbelt comes around her. When she tries to
remove it, it jams or something and she can't get free.
Doug speeds off and April is
terrified. He tells her not to worry because “the Master has given
me strict orders to bring you to the inner sanctum intact”. She
has no idea what any of that means but she knows it isn't good. When
they get to their location, Doug pulls open her door and the seatbelt
automatically opens. She hurls herself out of the car, headbutting
him right in the stomach. He staggers back but not enough for her to
escape. She pulls the cut piece of crystal out of her pocket and
rakes his face with it. It buys her enough time to run into the woods
where something completely unexpected happens. \\sarcasm font//
You guessed it. She trips
over a tree root.
Sigh.
This has never been done
before. \\sarcasm font//
Protagonist trips over
something stupid while running from the bad guy? Check
April wakes up in the
hospital laying on the floor. No one seems to react to her presence.
She can't believe they're just leaving her like this. She manages
to get up and walk to the nurses' station but it feels like she's
wading through knee-deep peanut butter. She makes repeated attempts
to talk to staff but everyone ignores her like she isn't there. I'm
pretty sure she isn't. She sees her doctor walking through the hall
and follows after him, trying to get him to help her. He goes into a
room and examines a teenage girl, calling her “pumpkin puss”
which......sounds gross and inappropriate to me. But April says he's
been calling her that since she was two. Still very concerning. I
don't like it.
April talks and talks but he
ignores her. She's stunned when she sees her mom come into the room.
She talks with the doctor and the doctor says they can't find any
explanation for the coma. It's only then that April realizes the
teenage girl in the bed is actually her and she's out of her own body
somehow. The doctor and her mom leave the room and April tries to
figure out how to get back into her body. When she touches it,
however, a jolt goes through her like she's been electrocuted and her
body immediately flatlines. The doctors and nurses are able to bring
her back though.
April goes off to the
bathroom and realizes she can conjure things up just by thinking of
them. Like she wishes for her purse so she can blow her nose and it
just appears. To test it out, she wishes for that teal dress and
suddenly she's wearing it. She realizes she can make things appear
just by believing in them or something stupid like that. I don't get
this part but whatever. She overhears two nurses talking in the
bathroom and realizes she's been in a coma for two days. She knows
she needs to find someone to help her and decides it has to be
Patrick.
On her way to find Patrick,
April sees a woman she babysits for on a regular basis. The woman is
sitting at a bus stop reading a newspaper and April sees an article
about her and Sherman. Apparently Sherman “ran away” in
reaction to April's illness or accident or whatever. April is
discouraged. I'm not entirely sure WHY Sherman running away
discourages her but it does. She sits on the ground beside the baby
stroller and reaches out to 'touch' the baby's cheek. Oddly enough,
the baby sees her and tries to take the candy that April is suddenly,
inexplicably holding in her hand.
Where the hell did the candy
come from, Favors?
April takes the baby being
able to see her as a good sign and sets off to find Patrick again.
She makes it to the school and goes into the class where Patrick
should be. He's not there and she wonders if he's too heartbroken by
her condition to attend school. April obviously thinks very highly of herself, y'all. A punk-cliche character named Ziggy
asks the teacher if there's been any change in April's condition and
mentions going to visit her after school. April leaves that
classroom and drifts through the hall hearing people theorize about
her. Drugs and a suicide attempt seem to be the prevailing theories
among her peers for her condition. One girl says she saw Patrick and
April making out in the part a few days ago so clearly April is
pregnant and either tried to kill herself because of it or Patrick
tried to do away with her and the baby. Patrick is currently being
questioned by police so there goes April's tragic hero theory.
April decides to try to
teleport to the sheriff's office to somehow implicate Doug and free
Patrick. She closes her eyes and concentrates but ends up falling
into some kind of nothing world instead. She thinks her body might
have died but this doesn't look like Heaven. It feels cold and
there's this weird slithering sound going on. Suddenly she senses
something dark and evil nearby so she starts to say that little
prayer we all said when we were little.
“Now I lay me down to
sleep
I pray the Lord my soul
to keep
And if I die before I
wake
I pray the Lord my soul
to take.”
It's actually quite morbid
for a kids' prayer and it makes me wonder why our
parents/grandparents taught it to us. Anyway she screams out “what
do you want from me” and a voice answers “your soul to
keep” because of course it does. April is so scared she finds
herself screaming out her cousin's name.
The thing is not amused by
her antics. When she starts to pray again he laughs and tells her
that no one “up there” gives a damn. She's just a pawn in
the Master's quest to gain control over the “small one”.
The Master needs her alive and that's the only reason she hasn't been
zapped straight to hell. She thinks she hears Sherman's voice in her
head urging her to chant the words he taught her for their
experiment. She does and finds herself standing outside the police
station.
April manages to get inside
the building and find the room Patrick is being questioned in. She
says something out loud and is overjoyed when Patrick seems to hear
her. But he looks right through her so she thinks maybe she imagined
it. A second later, though, she tells him to tell the cop that Doug
did it and then Patrick speaks up and says that maybe Doug was
involved. The cop dismisses it and says that he was fishing with
Doug and his father when April disappeared. This is pretty shocking
to April. She remembers the weird smell in the car and wonders if
she was tricked into thinking Doug was there when it was something
else.
Patrick's father – a very
powerful attorney – shows up and reams into the cop for questioning
a minor without an adult present. That's actually a huge no-no,
gentle readers. They leave the station and April just sticks with
Patrick. His father goes back to work and Patrick goes for a jog.
April runs with him, telling him everything that happened to her so
far while he pretends not to hear her. At one point he stops and
sits on a bench and starts to cry. She moves toward him and he
flinches and she realizes he can see her now too. He's worried that
he's losing his mind.
Eventually Patrick just
surrenders to the fact he's being haunted by an out-of-body April and
asks her where's she's been for the last few days. She has no
fucking idea. They go to the hospital to visit April's body and then
leave. After hearing the entire story, Patrick wants to confront
Doug. April says he should have a scratch on his cheek from where
she scratched him with the prism. As they leave the hospital, Sek
comes running up. Apparently the cat has been sitting outside
April's hospital window since she was admitted. April notices that
the prism is complete again. Someone glued the missing piece back
on.
Doug drives up and Patrick
immediately goes to confront him. As Patrick is throwing a punch,
April realizes Doug has no cut on his face. Patrick notices it too
but hits him anyway because Doug is a jerk. Doug seems a little
afraid of Patrick and gets in his car to go back home. Patrick and
April head over to the burger place so Patrick can eat. He's just
low-key talking to himself wherever he goes right now because no one
else can see April. So......I guess we're going to have a “Patrick's
crazy 😵” storyline going pretty soon.
The regular waitress seems
different today. April notes that she's wearing perfume which is odd
because the waitress is allergic to perfume. Trying to cover up an
odd sour smell perhaps??? Her usually bitten down nails are also
long and painted. She hits on Patrick pretty hard, telling him she
knows he must be upset about April. Then she goes into this long
speech about how it would be better for everyone to just let April
slip away quietly because it's not fair to keep her lingering like
this. April suddenly smells the sour smell of Doug's Trans Am and
the thing in the nothing place and she yells at Patrick that they
have to get away.
Patrick's main theory is
that aliens are doing some body-snatching. I mean......it's not
stupid considering the circumstances. I don't know what's going on
and I really don't care. I can't believe I've had the bad luck to
stumble onto two fantasy books in a row. There should be a law.
Odds that this is an
alien/body-snatching book: 40%👽
Odds that this is some kind
of demon book: 40%👿
Odds that there is nothing
supernatural at work here and we have Scooby syndrome: 20%😱
Patrick and April manage to
get on a bus. They're shocked when the waitress is there too but
this is the real one with no perfume and bitten nails. She
approaches Patrick and says that Sherman paid her brother $10 to pick
him up and pretend they were going on a class trip. He had the
brother let him off at the park behind the library but Sherman's
backpack spilled when he was getting out. Waitress noticed canned
food and flashlights and candles in there as well as several discs
and cassettes. One cassette got left behind and she ended up
listening to it when Sherman disappeared. It just had some weird
singing on it. She gives the cassette to Patrick.
After she leaves, April
theorizes that Sherman must have been the one to save her from the "Master" on Friday night. He's the only one who could have gotten
close enough to the temperamental Sek to glue the crystal back
together. She thinks they need to find Sherman because he's the key
to all this. They go back to Patrick's house to listen to the tape.
It's odd and April hates it but Patrick detects a pattern of words
that seem to reoccur: “camera
eye back agile agile babe” and the word “zanthoo”.
I thought maybe the first set was hieroglyphics but I have no idea
what agile might be. There's also a number that sounds like a Dewey
Decimal number from a library book.
They fly to the library but
the librarian tells them that the book isn't on the shelves and it's
much too valuable to let them have access to. It's about “necromany
during the Middle Ages”. So basically talking to the dead.
The librarian has a huge soft spot for Sherman and Patrick exploits
it, telling her that they were working on a paper together and
Sherman would have wanted him to finish it. She reluctantly agrees
to take them back to the room where the book is.
Apparently the book and
several like it were found in the basement of the library. They
appear to be part of the “Beauregard collection”. Both
Patrick and April know the story of the Beauregards but they ask the
librarian to retell it anyway so we can hear it too. Apparently
Lucius Beauregard was a very well respected member of the
community who owned an enormous mansion in town. One day he just
killed his entire family with an ax and then hung himself from the
chandelier. The governess alluded to devil worship but no one
believed her.
Great. So demon book then.
Fabulous. 👿
The librarian leaves him to
his research. The book in question is in Celtic and there is no
translation. They discover that something is glued under the back cover
though and carefully cut it open to find a very old manuscript. It's
called “Merlin's Enclosure” and it was written by Lucius.
April immediately spots the word “Xanthu” and
recognizes it as the “zanthoo” they thought they heard in
the cassette. They look up Xanthu in the "ABC's of the Occult" book
that just happens to be laying nearby and find out that he's the
cousin of Satan. The manuscript details Xanthu's adventures as he
helped shape history along with his shape-shifting sidekick Mu.
April decides that fake Doug, fake waitress and the thing in the
nothing place must be Mu acting on Xanthu's behest.
The little chant is also in
the manuscript. It's to keep Xanthu and Mu at bay. Patrick realizes
that Sherman taught it to April to protect her. They also hate cats
which is why Sek is guarding April. Patrick is pissed off that
Sherman manifested a demon but April reasons that maybe the demon has
always been in town and Sherman just accidentally found him. Which
is so stupid I can't even stand it.
They go to leave the room
and the doors won't open. Patrick has been fighting back
claustrophobia the entire time they've been down there and he just
loses it when he realizes they may be trapped there all night. April
doesn't want to cause him any trauma so she tells him she'll teleport
out of there and into the librarian's house to try to get her back to
the library somehow. Patrick reminds her that the last time she
tried teleporting, she ended up in the nothing place but she feels pretty secure
with her mantra. He wants to hug her before she goes but she can't
really touch him without passing through him.
April gets to the
librarian's house but can't make the woman hear her. The woman has a
pittie who can see April because animals and babies (and apparently Patrick) can see weird
shit. April is able to use the pittie to lead the librarian back to
the library by throwing imaginary treats from her imaginary purse for
the dog to follow. The cop from earlier meets them outside of the
library to see what's going on. Librarian thinks the dog has led her to
the library like Lassie because little Timmy's fallen in the well. I
mean, she thinks there might be a burglar who got in through the
broken latch on the basement bathroom window. The cop says it's
probably Patrick because he was seen robbing an electronics store
earlier in the evening.
They go in and the cop has
the librarian open the special room by remote while he goes down to check it
out. April takes a shortcut and gets to Patrick who is a little
freaked out about the doors suddenly opening all on their own. She tells him he has
to get to the broken window and get out of there before the cop finds
him. They manage to make their escape and they end up in April's
empty house. Patrick is soaked from running out in the rain and
freezing cold. He dissolves onto the floor and April thinks he's
crying but he's laughing his head off at the absurdity of the
situation. I can't blame him. This is all very stupid.
While Patrick was alone in
the library basement he found another manuscript hidden in another
book. This one talks about Xanthu's and Mu's powers. They can only be
on Earth between the Spring Equinox and the Winter Solstice. Their
powers are highest in June but start to weaken in the fall, By the
end of October (which it is now) they are so weakened that they have
to go to hell twice a day to recharge. They must go back to hell by
Christmas (which is fucking AFTER the solstice, Favors) or the first
snowfall, whichever happens first.
So the summoner has to
compete in a challenge of his choice. If he can win or at least
amuse Xanthu to the point that the demon concedes, he will be granted
a wish of his choice. They reason that Sherman might be challenging
Xanthu to a video game in order to get his wish. That's why the
electronics store was robbed. Xanthu needed video game manuals or
something to compete in the challenge. If Sherman loses, he will
lose his soul and the souls of everyone he loves.
Patrick is super pissed at
Sherman for risking April like that. They repeat what they've been
saying FOR CHAPTERS ALREADY – they need to find Sherman. They find
a blueprint for some kind of magical charm they can draw on the
ground. If they stay in the middle of it, Mu can't get them.
Patrick paints in on April's floor under her rug and then she
persuades him to lay down inside it. He's suddenly running a fever
because running through the rain automatically makes a person sick,
dontchaknow.
While Patrick sleeps the
night away, April has plenty of time to think. She realizes that
she's made of energy and she can manipulate that energy to influence
people. Patrick fell asleep watching the home shopping channel so
she decides to try to use her psychic energy to change the channel.
It finally works but it zaps her to the point that she floats to the
ceiling all useless leaving Patrick unprotected. From humans at
least.
Patrick wakes around dawn
and freaks out by the nearly transparent April floating by the
ceiling. They're both a little worried about what might happen if
her energy completely depletes before she gets back in her body.
Sherman calls and tells Patrick he needs something from his house.
Patrick is not inclined to help. Sherman says April will be fine as
long as she stays in the magic symbol thing Patrick made and she
doesn't use up all her energy before the contest is over. He
recommends putting her under a light bulb and getting her some
sunlight.
Patrick insists that Sherman
perform the ceremony that will put April back in her body. Sherman
says the separation had to be done in the first place to protect April because Mu was sucking her
soul out of her body. Or something
like that. He says he'll give Patrick the instructions to reunite her parts later this
afternoon by calling April's hospital room but he wants Patrick to
get a package out of his freezer and hide it in April's closet in
return. The call ends before they get anymore info.
April remembers fake Doug
taking her to a cemetery and they wonder if Xanthu might be based
there. He can't be on holy ground so that limits things. Patrick
says they'll have to ask that Ziggy guy because his dad is the local
mortician. So they head to his house. April is surprised to see
Ziggy is quite normal looking away from school. Without all the blue
mousse and punk clothes he looks like a preppy country club kid.
They explain their problem to him and after a bit of convincing he
leads them to his grandpa who knows every burial spot in the area.
Grandpa is over 90 and he
can see and hear April just as if she was real. I don't think that
bodes well for Grandpa's longevity. Anyway, Ziggy asks him if
there's a cemetery that's never been blessed by a holy man and
Grandpa tells them there's this place where alleged witches were
buried alive and a massacre took place. Seems like a bullseye to me.
It turns out it's the cemetery behind Lucius' mansion because of
course it is. They really should have guessed that one without the
assist.
A new problem emerges.
April has lost her sense of smell (she already had no sense of touch)
and now she can't smell Mu when he's pretending to be someone else.
Patrick is so stuffy from his cold that he can't smell anything
either but I'm not entirely sure he ever could. Ziggy disguises Patrick with tons of mousse and a lot of leather which April seems to find
pretty pleasing and then they set out. Patrick is borrowing Ziggy's
badass motorcycle which has a very non-badass sidecar attached. I
guess the plan is to get April's body to the cemetery somehow. I
don't understand why. It seems like a risky move to me.
Ziggy rides in the sidecar
on the way back to Sherman's place and after Patrick almost crashes
into a house or something, he points out that maybe Patrick shouldn't
transport April's body in the sidecar. He says he'll handle
transport which will probably involve a hearse. They part ways at
Sherman's house. It's already past the time where Mu and the big guy
return to hell to recharge so they could be anywhere at this point.
They get into the house and go downstairs to find the package in the
freezer. It takes them a bit to identify it and for some reason
April seems to be losing steam fast. She drifts up to the ceiling
again and can't manage to make any sounds.
Patrick's dad shows up in
the doorway. April is worried it's Mu but she can't be sure since
she can't smell anything. His dad tells him that Ziggy ratted him
out which doesn't seem likely. He also says that April died an hour
ago. April is sure this is Mu now. He doesn't have the mole on his
cheek that Patrick's dad has. As soon as the thought crosses her
mind, the mole appears. She remembers that Mu can read minds. She
starts to think to herself that Patrick and his dad should take their
new motorcycles on a cross-country trip to help Patrick get over his
loss and sure enough, fake dad voices just that sentiment a minute
later.
Patrick gets the clue because he's not a fucking idiot. His
dad – his real dad – hates motorcycles and would never let
Patrick have one. Patrick screams at Mu to go back to hell and then
throws a hunk of frozen meat at him. April sees Mu react in fear but
can't figure out why. Patrick then grabs a shotgun and blasts Mu's
arm off. Mu begins to shift and Patrick says out loud that he hopes
Mu won't turn into a snake. Of course that's exactly what Mu does
and Patrick is able to grab him by the tail and sling him into the
freezer. Mu doesn't like cold. That's why he can't be on earth
during the winter.
They take some time to
charge April up in the sun and then head to the hospital. Ziggy
shows up looking more punk than usual. He tells Patrick that
volunteers in Halloween costumes are decorating the hallways for
Halloween and they'll blend right in. He's already left a wheelchair
outside of April's room and he gives Patrick a ghost costume to put
over April's body so no one will think anything of her leaving the
hospital. Patrick and April go up to the room to wait for Sherman's
call. It never comes so they decide to just grab April's body and
head for Lucius' place. Sek comes along with and Patrick keeps hold
of the crystals since Sherman didn't uphold his end of the bargain.
Ziggy, indeed, has a hearse.
He's decked it out with bundles of garlic and had it blessed by a
Catholic priest so it's hallowed ground and should be protected. He
even has a thermos of holy water under the passenger seat. Patrick
gives him a crystal to wear for added protection. Something happens
to the hearse as they approach the mansion and Ziggy loses control of
it. April manages to turn the key to get it to stop but it crashes
into a tree anyway. Both Ziggy and Patrick are thrown out the
driver's side door. Patrick is fine but Ziggy has either sprained or
broken his ankle. He can't continue on with them so he stays with
the car where it should be safe.
They find Sherman in a
hidden passageway inside Lucius' burial crypt. He's in some kind of
magic circle singing. Patrick demands that Sherman re-unify April
and he hesitates at first but then agrees to do it. As April is
preparing to get back into her body, she hears Patrick declaring his
love for her in her head. It gives her strength and courage. She
gets back into her body without issue.
There's a lot of
conversation here but it basically amounts to the fact that if
Sherman loses the final game he has to destroy the crystals. If he
does that, Xanthu will leave Sherman's soul and the souls of those he loves
alone. But destroying the crystals means that in about 100 years,
Xanthu will be able to come to earth without being summoned, he won't
be stuck to his summoning place and he won't have to return to hell
in the winter. Basically human civilization will be ruined. Sherman
is okay with his because he won't be alive in 100 years but Patrick
and April aren't of the same mindset. They demand to know the ritual
to send Xanthu back to hell permanently. Sherman says they'll need
holy water and all the crystals.
Patrick leaves the crypt to
go back to Ziggy to get the last crystal and the thermos of holy
water. Sherman writes out the “exorcism” ceremony for
April. For some reason she has to be the one to do it. They have to
dip all the crystals in holy water and then put a drop of her blood
on them for it to work. Before Patrick returns, Xanthu turns up
looking like an “investment banker”. April was expecting
something a little more demonic and she's disappointed. Xanthu tells
her that he's going to enjoy removing her soul from her body which
is....wrong. According to their agreement, if Sherman loses Xanthu
won't take April's soul (or anyone else's) as long as the crystals
are destroyed. Sherman and April are sitting inside the magic circle
which means that Xanthu can't read their minds so he should have no
idea they're planning on using the crystals instead of destroying
them. Learn your own rules, Favors.
Patrick comes running back
into the hidden room and he asks Sherman to do the chant that will
make him safe to enter the magic circle thing. Sherman is reluctant
because Xanthu admitted to freeing Mu which means this might be a
fake Patrick. Sure enough, a second Patrick comes running in and
then we get an entire inane chapter of the two of them trying to
convince April that they're the “real” Patrick. It's
exhausting.
Xanthu tells April she's
been such a plucky little heroine that it's amused him. He'll give
her a choice – either her boyfriend or her cousin can stand with
her during the final showdown but the one she doesn't pick will die.
April can't possibly make that choice so she challenges Xanthu to a
shell game instead.
She challenged a DEMON to a
shell game.
Sigh.
Why does this book exist?
So this “shell game”
isn't even a shell game. April bets she can tell the real Patrick
with 5 questions. Xanthu protests that it's a 50/50 shot and that's
not exactly challenging. She basically calls him a chicken and he
gets a little offended. He says she can have 3 questions and if she
loses, she has to destroy the crystals and he gets all their souls.
If she wins, Patrick comes inside the magic circle and....I think
that's it. So her prize is definitely not as good as Xanthu's. She
should have negotiated for their souls or something. Idiot.
She asks her questions and
the last one is about the corsage for prom. The real Patrick is
thinking roses in his head so that's what fake Patrick says even
though April hates roses. Xanthu promptly goes back on his word and
tells Mu to get Patrick. Patrick manages to roll the thermos of holy
water into the circle and then throws one of the crystals at Xanthu.
Xanthu cowers from it and orders Mu to let go of Patrick and come get
the crystal instead. As he does, April throws the anti-Mu crystal
that Sek had been wearing and it goes right in Mu's mouth and he
disintegrates.
God this book is stupid.
April begins the exorcism
now. She chants the chant that Sherman wrote down for her.
“I take upon my
shoulders the weight of Merlin's mantle and the power of his
marvelous creation. Thou art now mine, Xanthu, and must bow to my
will. But I reject thy servitude because thou art accursed of this
earth. Thy breath despoils the very air around you. Thou art
ananthema: No longer shall thy vile presence bring trouble to this
world and evil to its people.”
April then fills cups with holy water
and washes each of the crystals in one. She arranges them in a fan
shape with the points in the center and then does another chant.
Sigh.
“Spawn of Satan, as the rainbow
signals the end of a storm, so shall the light passing through these
blessed prisms foretell the end of your reign.”
How the absolute fuck are they getting any light into a burial crypt with no windows?
Xanthu tries to distract her by killing
Sek and threatening her parents but she knows it's all fake and she finishes the exorcism by slashing her
palm to drip her blood over the crystals. And then she does the rest
of the chant which I'm not going to type out because I'm over it.
Something about bidding him to go and never return.
Xanthu swears he will be avenged as the
crypt begins to crumble around them. They all make a mad dash for
the outside. As the whole place caves in amid Xanthu's screams of
anguish, Patrick kisses April.
They all head back toward the hospital
trying to figure out how they're going to explain the suddenly
conscious April, Ziggy's sprained ankle, Patrick's clawed up leg from
his fight with Mu and the hearse's dented bumper. April falls asleep
en route and dreams she's back in the crypt with Xanthu. He tells
her that before three summers pass, she'll be back there in front of
him and this time her souls will belong to him. She hopes it's just
a nightmare.
I hope there's not a sequel. If there
is, I refuse to acknowledge its existence. This author is dead to
me.
Oh, and if you were curious about what wish Sherman was going to ask Xanthu for if he won.....he wanted to be a big dumb jock to make his father proud.
Because that makes sense.
Sigh.
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