The Witch Wood Demon, Part 3

"I don't care if the name you give me is real or not. Only you know your real name." He was smiling at her, the sunglasses showing her back her own reflection. "So, what name do I use for you? I would call you Beautiful but that's taken already and I won't un-take it." Something in his voice changed slightly, which made Angelica look at him. His head was down and his brow was furrowed as if he was remembering something almost distasteful.

"Do demons love?" Angelica asked suddenly.

"No," came the answer, "but men do, and I was once . . . different."

"You were once human?" Tom nodded his head slowly. His handsome jaw was set firmly. "And you became a demon?"

"I had to pay a price for something I asked for." His head came up slowly and he smiled into the distance. "There is a cliff not very far away, we can just push him over the edge and when you get to town you can say you lost control of it. They will only find your footprints any way." He looked at her again and smiled that smile again. She didn't know why, but his smile made her shoulders ache.

"What did you have to pay a price for?" she asked, looking ahead of her again.

"That is none of your business, besides, it was a long time ago."

"How long ago?"

"Before you were born."

"Are you hundreds of years old?"

"Part of me is almost ageless," he said with some sadness.

"And part of him is about 75 years old," said a third voice. She froze in place, afraid to look around, mostly because that was what Tom had done.

Angelica watched what-ever-he-was look up slowly, cautiously. He dropped the cables and straightened to this full height and removed the sunglasses he had been wearing. His eyes were a warm brown, intelligent, and filled with turmoil, or so it seemed. Angelica followed his gaze and saw an old woman wrapped in a quilt and heavy clothes sitting astride a horse of all things! A gasp escaped from her before she could control herself.

"Hello, Johnny," the woman said softly. Her wrinkled face split into a bright smile.

"Hello, Beautiful," he said as the old woman slipped easily from her saddle and led it forward. It wasn't until the horse had reached them Angelica saw it was pulling a make-shift sled of it's own.

"Johnny, you still know how to make me smile." The old woman was shorter than Angelica by a couple of inches and looked to be nothing more than wrinkles and possibly bone, but Angelica couldn't see because of all of the wrapping and winterizing the woman had done. To Angelica she smiled, "I see you are prepared in your own right. No need for me to help you lug this fella onto the sled I have. I'll just hitch yours to Abner here and we'll get him to the house where we can look after him properly."

"How did you know this time, Edna?"

"A little bird told me." The woman chuckled as she unhitched the sled she had and took the jumper cables and tired them to the harness of the horse. "The road is closed going to town," she told Angelica. "But my house isn't far. You can rest up there and wait for the roads to clear."

"I know where you live, Edna." Edna raised to her full height with a slight groan and looked up into the handsome face.

"You should, Johnny. You built it."