No, she hadn’t seen him, but she’d felt his evil all over her like a blanket of doom.
Nina rolled her tongue along the inside of her cheek. “Well, he was definitely a fucking demon. I know for sure now, but even with my eyesight, I only caught a blurry blip of the fuck before he disappeared again. I swear to Christ, if I get my hands on him…”
“Did you recognize his voice, honey?” Wanda asked, dripping melted snow all over the gorgeous hardwood floor.
“If I tell you he sounded like every demon in a bad horror movie ever, would you laugh at me?”
Wanda chucked her under the chin with a sweet smile. “Nope. That’s what most of them sound like when they’re fresh from Hell. It must be all the heat and smoke messing with their vocal cords.”
“Yeah,” Nina said with a nod. “It’s fucking shitty-hot there, and that’s coming from someone who can’t even feel the heat.”
Was she really having this conversation? One about demons and the temperature of Hell? How many people knew someone who’d been to Hell?
Rather than spewing her disbelief, George said, “Then that’s what he sounded like. I’m not sure why I’d recognize his voice even if he didn’t sound like a demon, though.”
There was a defensiveness in her response, and that was the last thing these women who were so willing to help deserved from her.
She felt as though they were implying she knew demons from Hell, and her response had been colored by that conclusion hop.
Marty rubbed her hand over George’s arm in a warming gesture. “You never know, honey. We have to ask all the questions. That’s all. It’s what we do. We’re not accusing you of anything, if that’s what you think.”
She looked down at her sneakered feet in regret before she met Marty’s gaze. “You’re right, and I’m being ungrateful and rude. I’m sorry. First, thank you both for going after him.” She glanced at Nina and Wanda. “I was so stunned, I froze, but I don’t know that I could have done anything about it anyway. His grip was like Superman’s and unfortunately, I hear super-strength isn’t one of my super powers.”
Nina jabbed her in the arm with a playful punch. “No sweat. That’s why we’re here, Wings—to watch out for your fucking feeble ass.”
George openly rolled her eyes with a knowing grin. “How about I go grab some towels so you can dry off and shut my big mouth while I do it?”
Wanda chuckled and gave her a wink. “How about you make me some tea and I grab a hot shower instead?”
She nodded, rolling up her sleeves. “That I can do, and I think I can do it without screwing it up.”
“You didn’t screw anything up, Wings. Knock off the fucking self-deprecation. It’s not a good look,” Nina chided.
Dex latched on to her arm. “Let’s talk later, okay?” he asked, and she sensed hesitance in his tone, which served only to worry her more. What else didn’t she know, and did she want to know what else she didn’t know?”
She smiled and nodded, squeezing his hand. “Yep.” Then she turned to the vampire. “Nina? You want me to heat you up a bag of blood? Or maybe find a small woodland animal for you to eviscerate?”
“Wings got jokes, huh? Shut the fuck up and go make some tea.” She pointed to the kitchen with a cackle, where George happily escaped so she could panic in peace.
Because knowing a demon was chasing after you, trying to steal your wings, and as a result, you could lose your soul?
That was cause for panic, wasn’t it?
“Who the fuck is it again?” Nina asked as they drove just outside of town to the address the voice she’d heard in her head—this time relayed to her in Morgan Freeman’s famously dulcet tones—complete with directions to the assignment’s location.
Which was comforting. It was good to know where you were going for a change.
Speaking of not knowing… She’d tried to contact Effie today after she’d sent her flight information and dates, but she hadn’t gotten back to her, leaving George still stumped about how to help, and what she needed help with.
So instead of fretting, she’d decided to use her lunch hour to submerse herself in her latest assignment, until she could find Effie and have that chat with Dex he said he wanted to have. A chat she was very curious about. But he’d had to leave rather suddenly last night after the attack, and today he’d been tied up with work, so they hadn’t had a chance to talk.
“Yoo-hoo, George? You in there, honey? Where are we going and who are we going to spy on?” Marty called from the backseat of the car.
“His name is Justin Daniels. He’s fifteen,” she replied, intent on her mission to find this boy and figure out what kind of Heavenly help he needed.
“And?” Nina prodded, pushing her sunglasses up along her perfect nose.
“And what?” she asked, distracted as she stopped at a stop sign in a pretty rural area with nothing but miles and miles of snow with a bunch of farmland and the occasional cow in a pasture.
“What else do you fucking know and why the fuck aren’t we waiting for Dexter to help us? Isn’t that what he said to do? He said to wait for him to help your ass on any more assignments, Wings. Or am I hearing stuff?”
“Because you always listen to what you’re told to do? Look who’s lecturing,” Marty chimed from the backseat, her floral perfume wafting to George’s nose.
“That’s not the fucking point, Blondie. We can protect her with our fists, but we sure as shit don’t know how to angel. What if she does it wrong? I don’t want to fuck up somebody’s life because she couldn’t hold her damn horses.”
Marty patted George on the shoulder from behind. “Shut up, Mistress of the Night, George is doing just fine. You heard what she told us about why she wants to investigate, and she did the right thing by bringing us with her. Besides, we couldn’t find Dexter anyway.”
George nodded, making an instinctive left onto Redrock Road. “Like I said, I just want to see what I’m working with. I’m not going to make contact or anything, Nina. But eventually, I’m going to have to do this on my own, right? I need to learn how. My way is to research everything to death before I jump in. All I want to do is scope this out. Plus, what else do you have to do? It’s not like you eat lunch. So why waste a good lunch hour doing nothing when you could be babysitting me and we could be doing some critical discovery on my assignment? The early bird gets the worm, right?” She smiled and batted her eyes at Nina for effect.
“What she said,” Marty agreed, opening a brown paper bag she’d brought with her, which George caught sight of in the rearview mirror. Stretching her arm over the driver’s seat, Marty handed her a sandwich. “It’s turkey and swiss on sesame roll with light mayo and mustard, no lettuce. Your favorite, right?”
George’s throat tightened. “You’re really awesome, Marty. Yes. That’s my favorite sandwich. Thank you.” She took the sandwich and smiled. It was so nice to feel nurtured.
She’d only mentioned her love of a turkey and swiss sandwich a couple of nights ago, when they’d all been talking about their favorite things.
But Marty must’ve heard her, and even though it probably appeared a small gesture to most, to George, it was enormous—it meant the world. Someone had remembered something she liked and had cared enough to take the time to listen. Someone had paid attention.
“I got you a peach Snapple,” Nina said, popping the top and setting it in the cupholder.
Another one of her favorites. “Thanks, guys,” she whispered, the warmth in her belly an unfamiliar but good feeling. She swallowed hard and fought the tears stinging her eyes. Blinking hard, George looked straight ahead and focused on driving.
“Now eat up, young lady!” Marty ordered with a giggle. “We can’t have an underweight guardian angel.”
She took a bite, munching on a sandwich prepared especially for her. “You know, Dex said I don’t need to eat. I can, but I don’t have to.”
The werewolf clucked her tongue. “Well, Mama Marty says if you enjoy it
, and it’s calorie free, what better way to spend an eternity than eating the foods you love? Food is the universal language of love. People cook to show their friends and family they love them—”
“Or in Blondie’s case, they wanna fucking kill them,” Nina said on a cackle.
Marty flicked Nina’s hair. “Hush. So I’m not Gordon Ramsey—”
“You’re not even a GD Lean Cuisine.”
Marty laughed out loud. “You know what, you’re right, Vampira. I’m a crappy cook, but when I order takeout for Hollis and Keegan—or anyone, for that matter—I order it with love, baby. L-O-V-E-love. And if you’ll recall, when you had that moment in time when you lost your stinkin’ mind and you could eat, who made fifty-two thousand trips to Buffalo Wild Wings for you? Me, Night Dweller. That was me.”
“You lost your stinkin’ mind and ate chicken wings?” George asked with a giggle before taking a sip of her Snapple.
Nina popped her lips. “I wasn’t a vampire for like a fucking blip a couple of years ago. It’s a long damn story, but it had to do with a baby and Calamity, and a bunch of bullshit, and it was nice while it lasted, but yeah, I could eat.”
“Yeah, she could,” Marty snickered, covering her mouth with a gloved hand.
“Shut your piehole, Miss Clairol!”
George could sit and listen to these two women all day long. Add in Wanda and she was in Heaven, no pun intended. They argued, sure. They were chaos in Charlie’s-Angels-like packages, but they were the good kind of chaos. The kind that always had your back. The kind that would literally help you bury the body.
In her whole life, she’d never experienced that kind of loyalty—no one had ever put her first. She’d always seen it from afar, but never this up close, this in her face, and as she ate her sandwich and listened to Nina and Marty alternately razz each other, mingled with chatter about their children and husbands, George felt that lonely tug in her heart.
She felt the empty hole more deeply than she ever had before. And all she wanted to do was fill it up so it didn’t always hurt so much. Mind, she’d tried a million different ways. Parties, book clubs, rock climbing classes, yoga…you name it, she’d done it.
But she always ended up feeling like a misfit. Though, it explained why she threw herself headlong into everything she did—because she wanted to belong. She wanted to fit somewhere—anywhere. She wanted to fit the way these women fit—each other, their lives, their worlds.
And if it killed her, she was going to do her best to fit the role of a guardian, no pun intended again.
“Hey, looks like it’s up ahead, George,” Marty said, tapping the window with her nail before handing her a napkin so she could wipe her mouth.
George slowed on the snowy road, where nothing but an old rundown, peeling, white and black farmhouse sat in the middle of a snow-covered lawn the size of a football field.
As they turned into the driveway, snowdrifts on either side almost as tall as her, George didn’t turn off the car.
They all sat in silence for a moment until Nina read the cute painted sign on a post by the shabby front walkway. “The Furry Gates Animal Rescue. That’s pretty fucking funny.”
George nodded slowly. Yeah. It was.
Marty leaned forward in the backseat, poking her head between the two women. “Okay, so now we’ve done the recon, let’s get back so we’re not late. I don’t want Mrs. Neely to bite my head off if I’m late for her wash and set. I don’t want to say she’s a bit of a curmudgeon, but she’s a bit of a curmudgeon.” Then she giggled. “She reminds me of Nina in thirty years but with pin curls.”
Nina nudged her arm. “Kiddo? We did what you wanted, but Marty’s right. We gotta blow. I have like a bafrillion pudding cups to fill, and that Duckworth dude’s a real pain in the ass about them being filled all the way to the top.”
But George wasn’t ready to blow quite yet. “This is an animal rescue,” she murmured.
Probably the second-best thing she could think of as an occupation, aside from working with her seniors—being an animal rescuer.
“Yep,” Nina agreed. “And I need to get the fuck outta here before I leave with every damn thing that has fur. I love the shit out of ’em, but we work a lot. I’d never want to leave home. Then people stuck in a jam like you’d be shit outta luck. Can’t have that, can we? So pedal to the metal and all that shit. Put your foot in the kitchen and let’s roll.”
But George wasn’t ready yet. She was too enchanted by the wide front porch with the stone pillars, and the crooked stairs, and the possibilities of this sagging, neglected farmhouse. But mostly, she was enchanted when she read the sign and the mission of the rescue.
Special-needs animals.
Nina grabbed her chin and forced her to look her in the eye. “Did you hear me, Wings? We gotta go. Dex said to wait for him before starting an assignment, and that’s what the fuck you’re gonna do. Recon over and out.”
George sighed as she stared into the gorgeous vampire’s deep, dark, almond-shaped eyes. “Speaking of Dex…”
Her nostrils flared. “What about him?”
George pointed out the passenger window. “What do you suppose he’s doing here at the Furry Gates?”
“George? What are you guys doing here?” Dex asked when Nina rolled down the window. Still in his green vest from work, his dark hair made even darker by the purple-bruised sky of the cloudy day, he appeared truly perplexed.
She clutched the steering wheel with both hands, confused. “Is that really the question, Dex? Or is the question what are you doing here?” she volleyed back.
He gave her the oddest look, but then he drove his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants. “I…I own Furry Gates.”
Ah. The plot.
She thickens.
Chapter 14
“You own a rescue for special-needs animals?” Nina asked before George could get the words out of her mouth.
His nod was oddly curt and very un-Dex-like. “I do,” he offered with a stiffness she wasn’t accustomed to.
So? He owned an animal rescue. What was the big deal?
Unless…
Her mind began churning the possibilities. “Why didn’t you tell me?” George asked, flabbergasted by this turn of events.
“Because I’m your guardian angel, not the other way around,” he snapped before looking over his shoulder as if someone might pop out the front door of the farmhouse.
Wait. Was he married? Maybe had a girlfriend?
Le gasp! He’d kissed her!
And who was he afraid was going to hear him? Son of a biscuit, was Dex the guardian angel a lying cheat? Could you even be an angel and be married?
Her eyes instantly narrowed as she put a hand over Nina’s chest and pushed her back against the seat so she could lean across her body and stick her face in Dexter’s.
“What are you hiding, Dex? Are you…are you married?”
Nina peeled George’s fingers from her torso and set her back in the driver’s seat, then pointed at Dex. “Hey, don’t talk to her that way, motherfucker. Change that tone fast or I’m going to beat the shit out of you with one of those logs in that wood pile, hear me?”
He threw his hands up in surrender, his face softening. “You’re right. I’m sorry, George. You just caught me off guard.”
George sucked in her cheeks and decided not to quibble. “Apology accepted. Now what’s going on?”
“Respectfully,” he replied, almost defiantly eyeing Nina, “it’s not really any of your business.”
“Okay, Mom and Dad are fighting. How about me and the werewolf get out and let you two dipshits talk this crap out so we don’t have a big misunderstanding and you end up breaking up over something abso-fucking-ridiculously stupid.”
“We’re not dat—”
Nina cut off her protest with the clamping of her fingers pressed together under George’s nose. “Shut it. I don’t give a shit what you are. Figure it out. We’ll go take a walk or some crap.” She
hopped out of the car on long legs and popped open the back door, holding her hand out to Marty. “C’mon, Werewolf. Bet there’s a million acres of deserted pasture you can take a nice, quiet dump in.”
Marty rasped a sigh of disgust, taking Nina’s hand. “God, Nina, don’t be so crass. We don’t use a pasture as a bathroom,” she scolded, giving Nina a shove as she got out and slammed the door behind her, the two of them taking off at a rapid pace toward the back of the rambling farmhouse.
“Get in,” she ordered, surprising herself with her sharp tone.
It was time for some answers. Why had she been sent here to this specific locale, and why did Dex think it was a big deal that he owned a rescue? And why, in all the time they’d known each other, had he hidden it?
And the biggest question of all—why was he so stupid cute, no matter the hour of the day or the circumstance? Why was he so virile and sexy with his freakishly tanned-in-the-winter skin and his green vest and khaki pants?
He was making it really hard for her to stick to the plan, which was to get this angel gig right.
Ahem.
Get back on task, George.
She’d thought they were allowed to keep their worldly possessions if they were angeling. So what was the problem? Why was it an issue if Dex had an animal rescue? And the way he was behaving said there was a big issue.
Dex slid into the passenger seat, his long legs ridiculously contorting to get into her compact car, but he didn’t say a word.
And that annoyed her. She wasn’t in the wrong here. “Am I going to do all the talking? Because you’re the boss of everything and I’m not supposed to question the boss?”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant and you know it, George.”
Shifting in her seat, she pushed her misbehaving hair out of her face and eyeballed him. “Then what did you mean?”
His jaw went tight, which meant he was annoyed. Another unfamiliar expression for him. “I meant I don’t want to involve you.”
“Involve me? In your life? In animal rescue? Knowing how much I love animals? Or wait…” She patted his arm, pausing before she said, “Is the animal rescue thing just a front? What are you really doing in there, Dex?” Then she gasped, never giving him the chance to respond. “Are you experimenting on them? Making fur coats out of them?” Then another thought hit her, and George recoiled, her eyes wide. “Or is this like a Pornhub situation?” Yeah, that would likely be a problem for the people in charge upstairs.
Accidentaly Divine Page 14
