Hellfire

by Lisa Manifold

  “Zane,” DeGroate said, “It’s time to leave.”

  I looked at Zane, and I knew my mouth must have fallen open.

  DeGroate laughed. “Did you think he would forget that he was my son?”

  I didn’t speak.

  “You’ve insisted that I pay your price. Now you must pay mine. Zane is my son, and he will be leaving with me.”

  “Zane?” I asked.

  “Zane is leaving,” DeGroate said. He turned, box in hand, and walked to the door.

  I looked at Zane. It was all a lie. All of it. Everything he’d said, done—a lie. I felt something break in me at the thought.

  Zane stared at me, and Goddess help me, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “Dad,” Zane said, “have a good trip. Don’t come back.”

  DeGroate turned so quickly I thought he might hurt himself. “What are you talking about?”

  “This is my home, Dad. You’re not welcome here because you showed up and tried to shit all over my home. You’ve treated my friends poorly, and even now that you’ve gotten what you wanted, you’re still behaving badly. You need to leave.”

  “I should have never given you a chance,” DeGroate sneered.

  “No, I shouldn’t have given you a chance,” Zane snapped. He strode to the door and yanked it open. “You made a bargain. You need to honor it.”

  “You will regret this,” DeGroate hissed as he walked out our front door.

  “I already am,” Zane replied. After his dad walked out, he slammed the door shut. Then he turned, his focus on me. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to get him to leave. I had to cancel. I didn’t want him to know that… well, I didn’t want him to know anything more than he already did. He uses everything he can.”

  I didn’t speak.

  “Desdemona?” Zane said.

  Dee walked up to him and slapped him in the face. “You need to go home, Zane,” she said.

  Zane was astounded. Not only due to the slap, the crack of which echoed around the room, but that he wasn’t instantly forgiven. He looked to all of us.

  Every one of us stood with stony faces.

  “Go home, Zane,” Daniella said.

  Through it all, I didn’t say anything. I’d crossed my arms when he started to explain, and hadn’t moved since. I didn’t know what I felt, but forgiving sure as hell wasn’t it. I turned, and walked to the stairs, making my thoughts plain without saying a word.

  “I’m sorry. You need to know that. I’m sorry.”

  I heard footsteps, and then the door shut softly.

  “He’s gone,” DeAnna said.

  I came back down the few steps. “Dee, I wasn’t expecting that.”

  Dee smiled, but it was a sad smile. “He’s a good guy, but he has been stupid, stupid, stupid. If you decide to let him back in, he needs to make up for it.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” I said.

  “He could have told us what he was doing. It’s not like we’re amateurs. We can handle a Brian Earl DeGroate any day,” Daniella sniffed.

  “She’s right,” Deirdre said, looking at me. “We’re with you, whatever you want.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I don’t know, yet.”

  “You don’t have to,” Dee said.

  I smiled at my family.

  “That was the slap heard round the world,” Doc drifted in from the kitchen.

  I wondered where it was he hung out that he was always coming in right next to the stove.

  “You saw it?” Dee asked.

  “I see everything, darlin’,” Doc said.

  “That is the beginning of a horror show,” Deirdre rolled her eyes.

  I laughed. “A couple of months ago, I would have hated to hear that,” I said. “Now I’m OK with it, despite the fact that you might see more than you bargained for.”

  “I am a gentleman,” Doc said. “No matter what, of that you can be sure.”

  “I’m not insinuating otherwise,” I said. “Where’s Granny?”

  “We do not spend all our time together. And she’s not as zen with her afterlife as I am,” Doc said.

  “Easy, smart ass,” Daniella said. “Listen, Des, go to bed. We’ll make sure everything’s ready for the funeral tomorrow.”

  “Shit,” I said. “I totally forgot.”

  “Well, we’ve had the agenda from Hell,” Dee said.

  “It almost feels too—” DeAnna started.

  “No!” Deirdre, Daniella, and I all shouted. “Don’t!”

  “Don’t what?” DeAnna looked mystified.

  “Don’t jinx us,” I said. We never commented on how easy things were. It was the death knell to any plans, even well-thought out plans.

  DeAnna looked to each of us, and then realization dawned. “Oh. Oh! I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all good,” Daniella said. “But we never say that kind of thing.”

  “Got it,” DeAnna said. “The lessons never stop.”

  “No, they never do. Which isn’t a bad thing,” I said.

  “It’s not. Go to bed, Desdemona,” DeAnna said. “We got this.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I found that I was tired, and bed sounded like the perfect thing. Normally, I liked to be in the thick of things, but not today.

  And honestly, I could feel good about letting someone else take the reins today. We’d stopped our zombie plague. We’d kicked the dangerous necromancer out, and kept him from getting a dangerous object. We’d banned him from Deadwood.

  He’d try to come back in. They always did. But both the bargain that he made, and the box that Catallah had crafted would kick him right back out.

  We’d helped Deana get the hell out of Los Angeles in one piece, and—I turned and went back downstairs.

  “We need to call Deana, let her know what we’ve done,” I said. “I forgot about it in the midst of all our demon visits.”

  Dee called her, and we gave her the details of her new life. Deana was sad that Deana Holliday would be a thing of the past, but after tomorrow, the rest of the world would think she was dead. We had to keep the rest of the world thinking that—which meant that she had to be someone else.

  So we’d made someone else for her.

  When Dee hung up the phone, despite the tears that everyone had shed during the call, I felt good. One more problem down. Now I could go to bed.

  And try not to think about the way my life had gone. It sucked when what you thought was happening didn’t.

  Part of being a Nightingale. I would shake this off. Eventually.

  I had to.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was up early again, up before the sun, and I started the tea kettle. No one else came down, although Doc drifted in.

  “How’re you doin’, darlin’?” Doc asked.

  “I’m here. I’m doing. I’m sad, which will work well for today.”

  “I don’t like that we’re having a funeral for someone not dead.” Doc shook his head.

  “We’re protecting her,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  We were having the service at the same church we’d had Meema’s service at. Then we were having the wake, so to speak, at our shop. Normally, I’d be running around like crazy. But my whole family was here, and they’d take care of it.

  I made another cup of tea. It was nice. “We really need to find Mariah Connors or her offspring,” I said.

  “I have a feeling you will,” Doc said.

  “Did you know her?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “With my own illnesses, I stayed away from everyone who might even think about being sick.”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  Deirdre came down the stairs. “You’re up early,” she said to me. “Morning, Doc.”

  “Deirdre,” Doc said politely. As he always did.

  “Ready for today?” Deirdre asked. “It’s going to be a long day.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I’ll
be sure to make a long tribute post to Deana,” Deirdre said. “You know, to twist the knife a little.” She was referring to Alfonso Delgado, who Deana suspected was behind a great deal of her woes, and the destruction of the Carroll Canal house.

  “He sounds perfectly disagreeable,” I said.

  “All the more reason to annoy him,” Deirdre said.

  “Because you find yourself light on things to do?” Doc asked, still polite as ever.

  Deirdre and I laughed. Doc had a way of breaking things down.

  Daniella got up as Dee and DeAnna came downstairs.

  Before we knew it, it was time to go to the church. We made it before people started streaming in—I didn’t know whether anyone would be there. But people came, because even though Deana hadn’t been well known, she was a Nightingale, and she was one of us.

  As the church filled, Dee wiped tears away. “This makes me all weepy, people coming because of you three.” She spoke in a whisper.

  “Nightingales are part of Deadwood,” I said.

  That only made Dee cry a little more, and I thought part of it might be relief. Either way, it looked totally appropriate.

  After that, the day flew by, and as the sun went down, the last of the mourners left our shop. We cleaned up and went back to Pearl Street.

  “I’m exhausted,” Daniella said.

  “But you did great,” Deirdre said. “I’ll be able to write about this with great detail and feeling.”

  “It’s a good thing we found her a new identity,” DeAnna said.

  “It will give her time to hide, and to see if anything shakes out now,” I said.

  The next few days were quiet. We’d closed the shop, and everyone stayed close to home. We made sure to send a package full of new identity items to Deana, who we now needed to refer to as Delilah. DeAnna had come up with that one.

  And because we were supposedly in mourning, people let us be.

  Even Zane, I noted sadly. He was still in Deadwood, because I saw lights on in his house. I was fairly certain his dad was gone—if the magical bargain hadn’t forced the issue, the box we gave him would.

  I wondered if anything had gone awry for Brian Earl DeGroate yet; Zane hadn’t come down to pound on our door and yell about the unfairness of it all. Part of me wished that he would, just so that I could see him.

  Three days after the funeral and wake, there was a knock on the front door after dark.

  “Who could that be?” Dee asked.

  Doc and Granny were hanging out with us, and they faded back into the woodwork. Literally.

  Deirdre went to the door, and Daniella and I were right behind her, magic coiled and ready. I hoped it might be Zane.

  As Deirdre opened the door, I was poised to blast anyone not friends.

  A woman and two men stood there, all of them holding up their hands.

  They were vampires.

  “What do you want?” Deirdre asked.

  “We come from Alfonso Delgado,” the woman said.

  Dee and DeAnna got up, and I felt the magic from the five of us moving around. It was mixed with anger and a desire for revenge.

  “We should just blast you right now and call it a night,” I said.

  “Please don’t,” the woman said. “We come to make peace.”

  “Are you going to rebuild our home?” DeAnna stepped forward. “Give us back Deana?”

  The woman was a cool customer, I’ll give her that. “We can rebuild the home.”

  “You’re admitting that you blew it to bits in the first place?” Daniella asked angrily.

  “Alfonso admits that he might have known it was happening and he didn’t do anything to stop it,” the woman said cagily.

  Damn vampires.

  “And what does that do for us?” Dee asked.

  “It doesn’t do anything, but Alfonso wanted to express his sorrow at the loss of Deana. He was very impressed with her not only as a Nightingale, but as a witch. She had recently been of service to him.”

  “Yeah, and he killed her for it,” Deirdre said.

  “He is very sorry for your loss,” the woman said.

  I’ll give her credit. She was going to get her task done, no matter how uncomfortable it was. “You were right,” I whispered to Deirdre, even as I knew the vampires could hear us. I didn’t care. Let this crew report back that Alfonso Delgado was on our radar, and not in a good way.

  But Deana was right. Making a big deal of this, not hiding it—it had rattled Delgado.

  And hopefully he was suffering due to the wish we’d made with Catallah. He was a jerk, and deserved every bit of whatever trouble came to him.

  “Why does he send you?” I asked.

  “So that you know of his sorrow,” the woman kept a straight face, although I wasn’t sure how, “and to let you know that he wishes to ease your sorrow. If you need anything of him, he asks that you contact him without delay.”

  The woman inclined her head. It was a little formal, but vampires tended to be kind of formal. Manners, as I’d told Deana, were important to them.

  “We will keep that in mind,” I said loftily. It was better that Delgado be unsure about how his offer was received.

  “Thank you,” the woman said. She and the two men turned around, and they zoomed off into the night.

  I waited until I was sure they were gone, holding up a hand so that no one spoke. Vampires had great hearing. Deirdre shut the door, and all five of us burst into laughter.

  “Whatever Catallah did to him, combined with everything you’ve posted online is making him nervous as hell,” I said.

  “Good,” DeAnna said. “He deserves it, the little shit.”

  “Yes, he does,” Daniella said.

  It was a small bright spot against a somber week.

  Coloring it all for me was the fact that I hadn’t seen Zane. Dee whispered to me during the funeral service that he’d been in the back of the church, but I hadn’t seen him myself.

  Despite it all, that made me sad. Damn it.

  But on another small bright spot, we had time to finally, finally track down Mariah Connors. Or what we thought were her descendants. The final big task on our to do list.

  “Should we email them?” Daniella asked as we sat around the table together.

  “Or will it just piss them off?” Deirdre asked.

  “You think they know about Mariah?” Dee asked.

  “I’d tell my story to my family if I were her,” I said. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “All right. I’m going to email them,” Deirdre said.

  “Goddess, go gently,” I said. A thrill of fear rushed through me. We’d been operating on the idea that either I was doomed, as one of the Desdemonas, or that those I loved were doomed, given what had happened to Granny, and Meema, and Jack Fitzgerald and our stepfather Burnsie, and maybe even DeAnna, as someone who had been named Desdemona.

  Some clarification would be nice.

  Although the lack of clarity would be the best curse of all, I realized.

  We’d taken off the entire week, and tomorrow was our last day off before we had to be seen to get back to life.

  Deirdre sent off a carefully worded email. All there was to do was wait.

  Which sucked. I hated waiting. But there was nothing we could do.

  This was beyond our control.

  Which also sucked.

  On our last day off, just after breakfast, there was a knock at the door.

  Deirdre and Daniella and I looked at one another, and we moved as one.

  “At least it can’t be vampires,” Daniella said.

  “Well, that’s one good thing,” I agreed.

  Slowly, Daniella opened the door.

  Two woman were on the porch. They looked to be mother and daughter. Neither were smiling.

  “You’re looking for us,” the older of the women said.

  “And you are?” I asked.

  “Mariah and Rebecca Connors.”

  Dark Pact

 
Dark Pact

  Book One

  The Mostly Open Paranormal

  Investigative Agency

  It begins, as it always does, with the best, most friendly, helpful of intentions.

  The road to utter Hell, that is.

  Isn’t that how most people get there?

  My aunts in Deadwood might have a different opinion, but they’re the exception. Most people didn’t have a grandmother making deals with demons. I did. Even though that grandmother (known as Granny) is long gone, her choices live on to plague her descendants.

  That’s not the point. The point is, here I am, fresh off a tangle with a really immense ass of a demon, and I’m right back in the hot seat of a supernatural tangle.

  Let me back up a little bit. That road, the one to Hell? For me, it started with a phone call. On what had already been a weird day.

  I’d been back from Deadwood for about two weeks. I’d helped my aunts (who were over one hundred and twenty years old and essentially immortal, as long as they stayed in Deadwood. My great grandmother, also named Deana, had left her sisters and mother and gone to Los Angeles, never to return to Deadwood) defeat a gross demon named Ashlar and discovered just as we took a breath that my aunt Desdemona, and my grandmother, who was originally named Desdemona before she legally changed her name, were both cursed.

  Did you get all that? There’s a lot of D’s in that.

  Me being me, I’d insisted that I stay, and help them sort yet another mess out. But all five—all three aunts and my mom and gran—had insisted I come home to Venice.

  Before we’d gone to Deadwood for the funeral of my great aunt Meema (the first time I’d ever been to Deadwood, or known much about Great Gran’s family), I’d been in the process of opening my private investigative business. I’d gotten my license and had saved enough money to rent a place and open. I even had clients waiting.

  So that’s what I did. Left Mom and Gran in Deadwood with the aunts who could never die. Opened the Holliday Private Investigations as I’d planned. Everything was going well, going… normally. Until this morning.

  This morning, I’d gotten up early and made a pie. I didn’t know why, but the pull to get up and bake had been so strong, I hadn’t been able to stay in bed. And not just any pie—Smokin’ Hawt Cherry Chipotle pie. I’d bought cherries just yesterday on a whim. I had no idea why I had to bake, but I did. I hadn’t baked pies since before Derek, my fiancé, had died. Before he died, I baked all the time. And they hadn’t even been for Derek. They’d been for one of the members of his band.