Client from Hell: A Hellishly Magical Comedy (with a body count)

by R. J. Blain

I stopped my work to stare at him. “Did you just say she can summon Lucifer?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Remind me not to piss Diana off.”

  “I will endeavor to do just that.” Jonas transferred most of our stuff to the trunk. “Can you put a ward on the car so people avoid her?”

  Well, at least Jonas asked for the possible rather than the impossible. “Yes, I can. That will be more of a permanent thing, and it’ll result in people not wanting to park near the car. They’ll understand a car is here so they won’t hit it, but they’ll have an aversion to getting close to it. It’s not really my forte, but I did learn how to do aversions to keep unwanted suitors at a distance. I really, really do not want to become a statistic.”

  “You learned how to create aversions because you were wary of predators?” Jonas blurted.

  “Yeah. I had friends who were raped in high school. Both suicided in our senior year. Their rapists went around spreading rumors about them, and they figured death was better than torment,” I whispered. “It is part of why I want to become an attorney.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll have a chat with Lucifer, and those fucking assholes will be all yours when they make their way to his many hells. That won’t bring your friends back, but they’ll get justice after the grave.”

  “I’d like to get them justice here, too.” I wrinkled my nose. “But that’s not a possibility.”

  Jonas finished moving our stuff to the trunk and shook his head. “Don’t write it off as an impossibility yet. Do you know what it’s called when someone is driven to suicide?”

  “It should be murder, but everyone will just say they were sluts and deserved it.”

  “If an angel brings the case up for trial, and the angel testifies they were driven to suicide to cover the crime of their rape, it’s murder—and there’s little Lucifer loves more than bringing rapists down to their knees. You let me handle that. You won’t be able to be directly involved in the case, but justice will be acquired. Not only will justice be acquired, Diana and Darlene would be absolutely thrilled to help teach you the fine art of soul rehabilitation.”

  “Do you think it will work out that way?”

  “Absolutely. All I’ll have to do is tell Lucifer you lost two friends due to suicide following rape, and he’ll begin his hunt. Sure, sex demons like me test human morality, but we never force a human to indulge with us. We use magic that tests them, but they ultimately make the decision. We’re wired to seduce and enjoy our conquests. We’re often called rapists because we activate a human’s sex drive. But they’re ultimately the ones who take their clothes off and beg us for it. Humans can and do walk away from our power. But most don’t cling to their moralities in the face of arousal. And anyway, Lucifer made us well. We don’t like screams of pain or fear, only pleasure—and terror repulses us entirely. Where mortal rapists live for the hunt and thrive on the terror. Therein the difference lies.”

  I’d never put much thought into society’s inclination to forgive people who dallied with sex demons, but Jonas’s words would give me a lot to think about. “I never thought about it that way before.”

  “You never needed to, and humans are very good at putting the blame on somebody else, as you well know.” Jonas closed the trunk and gave Lucille a fond pat. “Shall we get this show on the road?”

  I nodded and went to work putting the finishing touches on the runes to create our shrouds, and all I could do was hope the illusions meant for the security cameras would do their part. To make certain the aversion on our precious car stuck, I drew the rune under the bumper using my blood, which would either require my blood to break or a divine with stronger magic than mine. “Let’s go.”

  Thirteen

  Intent mattered with my magic.

  As the illusions barred us from seeing each other, Jonas suggested I prowl around the outside and entry of the warehouse while he handled the interior, stealing anything of importance while I handled scouting and listening in on anyone making a visit to the place. With his ability to teleport, I supported his idea as safer than the original plan to knock on the door and turn myself into a target.

  We wanted information, and we might learn something if we kept quiet, lurked around the complex, and listened.

  Within ten minutes, I regretted having free will and opting to use it.

  The place absolutely reeked, and while they’d opened shop near a newly constructed sewage treatment plant, the smells coming from around the building implied they had a lot of animals. A dumpster located in a nearby alley confirmed my suspicions, as it was loaded to the brim with soiled cat litter and little bags inevitably filled with the pungent offerings from large dogs.

  I gave the operation credit; they cleaned up after the animals, but the stench would do me in given time.

  Annoyed at the evidence of either a severe case of animal hoarding or a lab, I began checking windows. To my annoyance, someone had worked magic to prevent anyone from peeking inside.

  Well, if they wanted to play, I’d play. I ran my fingers over the wall, pleased to discover it was a dusty, filthy mess, and smeared a circle onto the glass before slicing through it with my finger. The magic barring me from looking inside shattered with a crackle, and the obscuration faded to reveal a ground-level lab filled with cages. Like the home in John’s Creek, the lab contained non-domestic species, ranging from cheetahs to wolves to odd, oversized rodents with a side dish of more otters.

  Fuckers.

  I considered the situation, determined I had dodged a potentially ugly situation by not going inside, and considered how I could empty the lab to get to the animals—or make it so Lucifer could empty the lab of animals.

  The answer, courtesy of Jonas, would earn him one hell of a kiss later, although I’d have to apologize to the incubus for the aversion he’d get smacked with before I paid out.

  Without him being nearby, I wouldn’t be able to work the magic and avoid catching him in its influence.

  Long before the aversion wore off, I’d be out of the area and giving the Devil a call to sneak the animals out before making use of a few other illusions to make them believe the animals were in their cages where they belonged.

  I’d use blood on those runes to make sure they lasted, and I’d borrow the same tricks I used on the Devil’s mansion to cover my tracks. But rather than make them think a man with glasses had done it, I would dig through mythology and bring out a terror, something warning them of a very brutal demise if they didn’t change their course.

  As Christianity’s big baddie didn’t offer much in the way of true terror, especially since I’d gotten to know the bastard, I dug into Asian folklore, which included various demons, spirits, and other nasties. One breed of vampire was a being consisting of a head and the spine only, which detached from the body in order to feed. As a floating spinal cord with a fanged maw in an almost-human head would scare the piss out of me on a good day, I fashioned the aversion to include the illusion that one—or more—of these beasties hunted those within the building. And since I could, I made the damned things whisper sweet nothings in the ears of anyone foolish enough to remain once I activated my magic.

  The tricky part would be making certain the aversion didn’t catch any of the imprisoned animals within. Discerning between various species took a lot of work, complicated the runes required to a ridiculous degree, and would require something a little more precise than a bloody finger to draw.

  Damn it.

  Fortunately for me, the place had seen better days, which meant it took me less than five minutes to find a broken piece of glass with a nice, sharp, and narrow tip I could use to draw the appropriate runes. Unfortunately for me, the only place with a large enough, flat surface was the concrete wall near the dumpster, which saw more cleaning than the rest of the building, likely because the stench offended the researchers’ noses as much as it offended mine.

  I regretted everything leading up to my decision to draw an aversion near a shit-f
illed dumpster, but I went to work.

  The glass piercing my finger hurt a great deal less than any one of my cancer treatments. Wrinkling my nose at the sting and my awareness I likely infected myself with even more illnesses, I began with a circle. Of all the shapes runes could be, I favored the infinite possibilities of the circle, its robust nature, and tendency to withstand mistakes and general abuse far more than the other shapes. Squares and rectangles tended to fracture if someone looked at them wrong. Ovals shared some of the properties of a circle, but I found they would cave under pressure much like the angular shapes. Triangles could take a beating, but they required more care than a circle.

  I’d have to use a triangle within my circle to protect the innocent animals trapped in the lab.

  Saving the hardest work for last, I inscribed my intentions around the outside of the circle, using smaller circles to link my magic with the primary rune. The main working, resembling a series of broken Celtic knots, linked to the main circle with ovals, would drive away anyone with sense. Once satisfied the spell would catch everything but mindless amoebas, I turned my attention to the space inside the circle. The triangle went in first before I dipped into Egyptian hieroglyphs to protect a broad assortment of animals. When I’d first started working practitioner magic, I’d selected a pair of wings as my symbol, which I used to engulf and shield the animals within the safety of the inner triangle.

  Intent mattered with my magic.

  Then, as I needed to dodge detection, I etched in the runes I used to create illusions, making my protective wings disappear from the awareness of those under my spell.

  Jonas might forgive me later—once he left my field of influence and remembered that I existed.

  To activate the working, I breathed onto it and willed it to come to life.

  The animals inside remained quiet, but within moments of the magic taking root in the concrete wall, footsteps and muffled curses within warned me my magic had done something. I peered into the nearest window to spot men in white lab coats hurrying towards an inner door, leaving everything behind in their wake.

  I smiled, straightened, and circled the building to get a closer look inside and learn just what Modern Miracles Pharmaceuticals was up to.

  My aversion worked well enough that those within the building had left without taking any precautions, including securing their access badges. As such, in the lobby, after poking around the security desk, I located a key card able to get me through the automatic doors.

  Their security system needed work, and I used magic to reveal the codes needed to enter the few places barring entry with keypads. The animal lab proved to be such a place, although in the researcher’s hurry to get out of the building, one of them had left the door jarred open with a fallen box. To make sure the entry stayed open, I piled on a few extra boxes after taking a moment to investigate their contents. Two contained various brands of canned cat and dog food.

  One contained a briefcase with a bunch of unmarked vials, which I decided would come with me when I left. I put it on one of the metal examination tables inside the cage-filled room.

  As intended, the animals didn’t seem to notice the aversion, and they ignored my presence. I could only assume the workers kept them drugged, as they made minimal noise and showed no evidence of discomfort. Like the horror house in John’s Creek, the lab had a bunch of otters of different species.

  Unlike the horror house, several of the cages were loaded with baby otters, and their feeding schedule indicated they still drank milk and would need to be bottle fed in an hour.

  I wondered if I could get all four cages of baby otters to fit in my Lamborghini.

  Scurrying around the lab, I stole a pair of latex gloves to help keep my fingerprints off everything, snagged a bottle of cleaner to remove the evidence of my presence, and blitzed through the place in search of incriminating evidence, suppliers, and other useful names and numbers to help me put an end to their operations. In an adjacent office, I struck gold.

  One of the workers had been going through a file of people on his desk, and one of the folders included Diana’s picture. Snagging a clean sheet of paper, I drew a linked pair of circles on it, stole as much blank printer paper as I could find, and duplicated the sheets to take with me without tipping the fucking assholes off I’d been helping myself to their files of interesting people and places.

  To my disgust and dismay, I realized I would be able to take the data or the animals, not both.

  Hating myself for what I needed to do, I made sure I fed the baby otters and other animals with a delicate feeding schedule, careful to follow the instructions to the letter. I duplicated every feeding and care sheet I could find and added it to my pile.

  Then, because I was a bitch and had room in my bra for a hitchhiker or two, I snagged a pair of baby white otters with red paws, as I’d never seen anything like them before. I pocketed enough of their food to last a few days, used a clean hand towel to create a nest for them in my bra, and grabbed my stolen goods, creating one final rune to destroy the rest of my workings, including the aversion I’d left in blood on the wall.

  I made sure to be at least a block away before activating the magic, and I took a convoluted path to Lucille.

  The aversion I put on the car had done its job as far as I could tell, but I took the extra five minutes to do another working to cover my tracks and make certain nobody noticed anything unusual about the car beyond the Lamborghini being excessively expensive for the area.

  My new pets squeaked and played in their towel, which I set on the passenger seat. I set the temperature controls to similar to the lab’s conditions, started the car, and headed back for Athens.

  Calling Lucifer would reveal my hand in the burning of his house, so I opted to confess my sins to Diana. I called the woman, grinning over my infiltration of the warehouse-turned-lab.

  “You are something else,” Diana said instead of a proper greeting. “Jonas was supposed to accompany you to keep you safe, yet he’s literally hiding under Lucifer’s bed right now. What did you do?”

  “I may have used an aversion to clear out the building, as they have an active lab going. I’m guilty of two counts of otter theft, and I stole a lot of paperwork from the back. The paperwork has information on you. The aversion also had an illusion to make people forget I was there or not notice my presence.”

  Diana sucked in a breath. “You’re serious. They had paperwork about me?”

  “I’m very serious. My trunk is loaded with a copy of the information, and I stole a briefcase filled with vials they had in a box. But the otters look really odd, so I stole a pair of the babies along with their food. They’re white with red paws. Really cute.”

  “Yes, I am aware you think otters are cute. But white with red paws?”

  “Yes, that’s their color. I thought it was strange, and since I couldn’t fit all the animals into the car, I stole two.”

  “How did you get them out of the lab?”

  “I stuffed them down my shirt,” I announced with pride. “And with the aversion going, it wasn’t a big deal.”

  “I had no idea you could use aversions.”

  Crap. Wait, no. I hadn’t used any aversions with my hit of the mini mansion. “I learned because I didn’t want people figuring out I did more than a few parlor tricks with my practitioner magic,” I confessed.

  “That’s fair. First, you accidentally discover how to shroud, and then you essentially reinvent aversions because you’re shy? You’re going to make all other practitioners look bad. Please tell me what you did to Jonas so Lucifer can coax him out from under the bed. Darlene’s freaking.”

  “I only made the aversion link to a tooth-filled maw with a spinal cord still attached in some gruesome Asian folklore about nasty ghosts or vampires or whatever that thing is. I saw a picture on the internet when I was bored one day and looking up various folklore. Christianity’s beasties didn’t seem scary enough, and honestly, if I thought a floating hea
d with a spinal cord attached to it was coming after me, I’d leave the building, too.”

  “That would do it,” Diana conceded. “Hold on. I’m going to go tell Lucifer what you did so he can get that poor incubus out of hiding.”

  “Jonas will be fine. I already broke the actual aversion. He might have forgotten I exist for a little there, though. It was pretty complicated.” While I hadn’t meant to terrify the incubus into hiding under the Devil’s bed, the whole incident would amuse me for years to come. “Is he really hiding under Lucifer’s bed?”

  “He teleported into Lucifer’s study, bolted for the bedroom, and crawled right under the bed. He was so spooked he’s showing his wings, too.” Diana giggled. “Conversion tends to leave a mark, and unlike a lot of the demons and devils Lucifer converted, he took care of Jonas in his private study. The converts, at least the ones like Jonas, tend to view where they were converted as a safe haven, and since Lucifer converted him, that’s where he went.”

  I giggled. “I’m really sorry I scared him that much, but that’s pretty funny. I wasn’t trying to terrify him. I just wanted everybody to clear out, and I needed to give them a reason to leave. I thought a flying head with a spinal cord would do the trick.”

  “Honestly, if he wasn’t quite so freaked out, I’d be laughing in his face right now. But now I know why he’s so spooked, I’ll enjoy some amusement at his expense later. Really, Sandra? A disembodied head with the spinal cord still attached? That sounds gross. And terrifying.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything really and truly scary about the Christian faith. I think of Lucifer, and I start laughing. I’m literally going to hell, and I deserve it.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re comfortable.” Diana sighed. “Lucifer? Sandra placed an aversion so she could steal more otters, and it seems she caught poor Jonas in it. What sort of Asian thing is a floating head with a spinal cord?”

  “That would be a variant of Rokurokubi, a yōkai of rather frightening reputation, though they aren’t typically depicted with the spinal cord still attached. They’re usually apparitions,” the Devil replied. “They were influenced by Chinese folklore, but the Rokurokubi are Japanese.”