“Don’t you want to kill me again?” he said hopefully.
Okay, that put another spin on kill.
“I’d love to,” I said, “but I have to see what went wrong.” I hooked a thumb toward the door and my traumatized roommate. “I don’t suppose you can magic this mattress fixed?”
Mutt looked at the damage he’d done and frowned. “I don’t know.” There was something else I had a feeling he didn’t admit to often. “I can try.”
“Never mind. That’s what Sears is for.” I scrambled on the floor for a pair of pajamas. “I’d better get out there now.”
I gave another look at the mattress and sighed.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Mutt said quickly. He sent me a look of hope and swallowed. “I am yours to command.”
Then he vanished.
“Damn,” I said.
Chapter Four
I WENT OUT INTO the living room to see what Keek’s latest disaster was.
“He’s an angel,” she said to me five minutes later, when I’d got her down to the hiccuping stage. For the first time, she didn’t say that like it was a good thing.
I handed her more tissues. “What did he do?”
“He said I’m a fuh-fallen woman.” Keek gulped. “And he was so forgiving about it. I could have clocked him.”
“Did you?” I said, picking up the piles of tissues on the floor, the couch, and the coffee table.
“I socked him on the arm. And he forgave me for that, too. He said violence doesn’t solve anything. I socked him again and I told him that wasn’t violence, but he could see some if he wanted. He got all sorrowful and said, ‘No, thank you,’ and then I screamed at him and he disapp—disapp—he just—” She broke down again and sobbed into the tissues I handed her.
I thought about Mutt, who was clearly capable of tearing a car in half with his hands, apologizing like a four-year-old for ripping up my bed.
I shook my head. “This is very confusing.”
She looked at the bedroom door, finally. “I’m sorry. You have company…”
“He left,” I said.
“How?”
“Same way he came. Well, not exactly. I didn’t send him away this time.” I remembered Mutt promising to serve me and I smiled a very Keek-like smile. “I know how to get him back.” I glanced at Keek’s swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks. “You can probably get your guy back the same way.”
“I don’t want him back,” she said crossly. “He’s a holier-than-thou butthead.”
“But a good-in-bed butthead.”
She began to moan. “Oh, he’s the most amazing, ohhhh so gooood—” After a bit more of this she sighed, caught her breath on three little gasps, and sighed bigger. “Yes. He’s phenomenal.” She cocked a speculative look at me. “How’s your, uh—”
“Sex demon?” I smiled, then gave a laugh. “He’s in training.” My smile widened. “He’s getting there.” My whole body stretched on its own, and I felt a little afterglow rush. “He’s hell on the furniture, but I think he can be housebroken.”
Keek looked envious. “At least he doesn’t tell you that you were born in sin, and then forgive you for it.”
I frowned. “How does a guy get good in bed who has no social skills?”
She choked on a laugh. “I have no idea. Maybe I can duct tape his mouth shut. No,” she added, “that won’t work. I have some use for his tongue.” She giggled. “What do you do to get Mutt back? Because I’d like to try it on Jeff.”
“Say his name three times and tell him to come to you. But maybe you’d like a shower and a great big ice cream cone first. Have you eaten since Pauline’s?”
Keek frowned. “I can’t remember. Ice cream does sound good. And you can tell me all about your demon.” She jumped up from the couch. “I do need a shower.”
“Fight you for it,” I said, and raced for the bathroom.
Half an hour later we were at the A&T Grill on Ashland Avenue.
“But you love him anyway, right?” Keek said. I think she wanted to know I was as messed up as she was.
“Of course. But I don’t let him get the upper hand.” I spooned my strawberry sundae.
She looked at me with deep skepticism. “He’s a demon, Mella. You showed me those claw marks in the mattress.” She shuddered. “How can you?”
“I’m not really sure. It ought to scare me. When Mutt raises his dark red bat wings over me and glowers that way, I ought to panic. But he’s just a big baby. I know he’s as scared as I am, so why should I be a bitch about it?”
“I am not being a bitch!” Keek sputtered.
“Sure about that?”
Keek started to take a bite, and then she frowned, her spoon in the air. “Jeff’s not a baby. He’s a holy roller and a—”
“I thought you said he’s good in bed.”
“He’s outstanding. In bed. It’s his out-of-bedside manner I object to.”
“What exactly did he say to piss you off?”
“Well, at first I thought he was going to ask something about sex. But then he said, ‘Since you’re a more experienced sinner than I am—’ That’s when I lost it.”
“Ouch.”
“No shit.” Keek glowered at her Diet Coke.
I said, “If he took it back, would you take him back?”
“I suppose so.” Keek put her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “I just wish I knew what he really thought of me.”
“Keek, he’s a goner. He yearns.”
“Yeah, but what’s going on in his head? When he’s just feeling, I trust him. It’s when his so-called brain kicks in…”
“Oh, cut him some slack.”
She looked at me in puzzlement. “This is not the conversation we usually have.”
“No, it isn’t, is it? I’m Miss Hypercritical and you’re the slut.”
“I’m Miss Give-’em-a-chance and you’re Queen Off-with-their-heads,” Keek said, grinning. “Does Mutt know why you’re so picky?”
“Shut up,” I said.
“I mean, just because your first experience sucked doesn’t mean it’ll always suck.”
“Shut up,” I said again.
“You were in college. Nineteen-year-old guys haven’t got a clue. Frankly, I didn’t have a clue myself until I’d been around the block. You haven’t even made it to the corner.”
“Will you shut up?” I pleaded. “How did I get on the hot seat here?”
“You’re always on the hot seat. You worry what everybody thinks, and you’re convinced they think badly of you. And what’s worse, you think they might be right. This takes your mind off your own needs.”
“Back to Jeff,” I said firmly. “What do you think he needs?”
Keek frowned, looking across her ice-cream spoon with a faraway gaze. “What worries me is,” she said finally, “what if Jeff’s one of those kinky guys who has to believe sex is evil in order to have fun with it? Bad’s okay, but I won’t go all the way to evil. I mean, I’ve done that role-playing thing with the schoolgirl skirt or the whips and leather.”
I squeaked.
She made a “what?” face at me. “With some guys. Once in a while. It’s a game.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“That’s kind of the point. It’s a game, not a lifestyle. I’m not sure I’m up for a lifetime of pretending I feel guilty for being in the sack, just because my partner can’t get it up unless he thinks I feel guilty.”
“I doubt he thinks you feel guilty,” I said dryly. “You’d know that by now.”
“Because that way lies escalating pseudopunishments and autoerotic asphyxiation,” she said in an expert’s tone, and I cringed, looking around the restaurant. “Even that’s manageable unless he’s, like, you know, scarred. Scar a guy deep enough, he shoots himself and his girlfriend one day.” She shuddered.
“I don’t think he’s scarred, Keek. He seems kind of like a baby. Maybe he’s just dumb as fuck.”
She consid
ered this suggestion. “Well, dumb’s one thing. Superior and dumb is just annoying.”
“I can see that.”
“Excellent. You’re making progress,” she said.
“Oh, now we’re back at me.”
“Yes, you, Mella. You think you don’t deserve a great guy—or any guy—so you don’t have one. I swear, if you had one, you’d give him away.”
“Oh, I would not,” I said, although I remembered backing right off when my neighbor had hissed, He’s mine, at me. “Mutt seems more, I dunno, more reluctant than your Jeff. He flinches when I touch him.”
Keek frowned. “Are you hurting him?”
“God, I hope not. I think he’s just not used to being touched.” I laughed, thinking of our morning together. “Do you know what he said to me? ‘Thank you for not killing me.’”
“Did he really expect you to kill him?”
“Apparently.”
She squinted. “Doesn’t he like sex?”
“He loves it. He comes in two minutes. Thank goodness he’s back up right away or we’d have had a problem.”
“Sexual starvation,” diagnosed Dr. Keek, the expert. “Before yesterday, if you’d asked me, do I want to be an angel or a demon, I’d have considered it. Not any more! Clearly they have to make do with harps and hellfire, ’cuz these guys have never had any regular nookie.” She leaned forward. “Know what I think? We’re buying these guys cheap, Mella. They’ll do anything for sex.”
That didn’t feel good. “Buying?”
Keek sighed. “It’s an expression, Mella.”
I gave her a straight look. “No, you meant ‘buying.’ I don’t want to own him.” Mutt’s face came back to me, stiff with terror and bravery and wonder. Mutt’s body naked on his back in my bed, digging his claws into the mattress. “I want to have him, but that’s different—that’s—”
“That’s love, Mella. I love Jeff. Jeff, when he’s not being a butthead, loves me. You love Mutt, and it sounds like he’s got it bad for you. The only thing that gives us even a pinch of control is the fact that they have to slow down a little after they have an orgasm, and we don’t.”
“I don’t want control!” I blurted.
“You said you had to have the upper hand, because he’s a demon.”
I covered my face. “Oh my God, I do. I’m so confused, Keek. I’m happy and I’m scared stiff. What is he? What am I even doing with this man? What’s going to happen to me?”
“I have no idea,” Keek said. Suddenly her voice sounded desolate.
I flew back to the Lair in a state of jubilation. I had met Mella and survived! And that black thing in her mouth—it wasn’t her teeth after all. The relief I’d felt when she took it out had left me too weak to fight, which had turned out to be a good thing. I might not suck as a sex demon after all! I couldn’t wait to tell Baz.
I found Baz and a sniveling Jeff in the bathroom. Jeff was scouring the mildew off the tile walls. Baz, of course, was supervising with a beer in his hand.
“You told her what?” Baz was saying.
I looked longingly at the beer. He pointed a foot at a six-pack sitting in the doorway. I grabbed a bottle.
“Well, I became an angel when I was four,” Jeff said. “I didn’t have time to commit a lot of sins.”
“You fucked this woman for five and a half hours, and then you told her you were holier than she was. Literally.” Baz said.
“She asked,” Jeff said stubbornly. “She did.”
“Uh-huh,” Baz said.
Jeff sat back on his heels with his scrubby in his slack hand. “She said, ‘I bet you think you’re holier than I am,’ and so I said—”
Baz rolled his eyes at me. “C’mon, Mutt. I need something stronger after listening to this horseshit.”
“Wait,” Jeff said, looking over his shoulder at us with panic in his voice. “You didn’t tell me what I’m doing wrong!”
“Contemplate that question,” Baz said from the doorway. “While you do penance for being a butthead.” He gestured at the scrubby in Jeff’s hand.
“She is a bigger sinner than I am,” Jeff said stubbornly.
“You’re not an angel any more,” Baz reminded him. “You’re a sex demon now. And considering that you’re still wet behind the ears in that department, holier-than-she is not a selling point.”
Jeff sprinkled bleach on his scrubby. His brow furrowed. “You mean I have to be more of a sinner than she is, to be a good sex demon?”
“I mean you don’t throw stones…sheesh, am I actually quoting scripture to an angel?” Baz rolled his eyes again and led me down the hall to the kitchen.
“I need a bed,” I said urgently when we were alone.
“The one upstairs isn’t good enough?” Baz said. “Go to her place. We never bring women here. Except when there’s absolutely no other option.”
“No, she needs a new bed. I kind of destroyed the one she has,” I added proudly.
Baz grinned. “Good for you.”
I couldn’t help smirking. “I think so. She didn’t send me away this time.”
Baz nodded over the mouth of his beer bottle.
“So how do I get a new bed?” I said.
“Money is the usual way,” Baz said. “You got any?”
I frowned. “I think I have a credit card in my fanny pack.”
“Let’s see it. Question is, does it still work now that you’re erased from Hell’s computers?”
I fetched my fanny pack from my room.
I’ll say this for Baz, he didn’t bust my nuts. He helped me find a really good bed online, and then we figured out how to have it delivered, and he even checked the account balance for me. When he handed me the card again, he said, “They really outfitted you nicely. You’ve got a thirty thousand dollar limit. Of course, how you’re gonna pay the bill, I have no idea.”
“Pay the bill?”
“I take it you don’t want Marshall Field repossessing the bed from her if they find out the credit card’s stolen,” he said.
I felt myself go cold. “Uh, no. That would be bad, I’m pretty sure.”
He laughed in my face, but I realized he wasn’t being mean. “You’re gonna need a J.O.B., my friend.”
“I thought I worked for you,” I said.
“You earn your rent and your Mary Jane by doing chores around the place. But you will also need some clothes and a car. And, oh yeah, beer is not free.”
I glanced at the bottle in my hand with alarm.
“Hm.” Baz drummed his fingers on the kitchen counter. “Maybe I can get you back on the payroll through the back door.”
“With the Regional Office?” I said.
“Sure. We’ll get you a new IIDN, a fake. Contribute your bit to the monthly reports—” he began, and stopped. “Shit. I forgot. Our last man with a legitimate file just got wiped off the system.”
“This would be Archie? The guy who shot fifty demons and fifty angels out of the sky with a love spell and wiped them off the system, too?”
Baz nodded slowly. “I hadn’t thought about how his exit screws up our paycheck. Damn. Those thirty pieces of silver plus bonuses really came in handy. Shit,” he said again, looking perturbed for the first time since we’d met. “I may have to work extra days at the Amphitheater.”
“Bad?” I said.
“Not acceptable.” He took the empty beer bottle from me and lobbed it out the kitchen window. I heard it clank sharply into the Dumpster outside. “We’re gonna have to put you guys in play immediately.”
“I thought sex demons got paid,” I said, trotting behind him back to the bathroom.
“A pittance. Well, at today’s silver prices, better than a pittance. But not enough to maintain this place,” he said, waving a hand. “Yo, Jeff,” he said in the doorway of the bathroom. “Your lucky hour has arrived. Get up off your knees.”
Baz explained the financial crisis to Jeff.
Jeff seemed to have soured in the past half hour of cleaning th
e bathroom by himself. He interrupted Baz with a snarl. “So you want us to sell our bodies.”
Baz blinked.
I understood his surprise. This was not our fluffy-bunny angel.
Baz said, “Rent. Just rent.”
“Fine,” Jeff said. “Do you have a list of customers already, or do I go stand under a streetlamp?”
“It’s daytime,” I said. “And what do you know about prostitutes, anyway?”
“I’ve watched PBS,” Jeff snapped. “Someone breaks your heart, and then you sell your body. Fine. I’m ready.”
Baz looked at me. “He’d be a fucking gold mine, but I’m having a qualm here.”
“You’re a demon,” Jeff said, still snarling. “You’re not allowed to have qualms.”
“I’m retired, and you’ve been living with the rule book too long,” Baz said.
“It is a thick rule book,” I said. What was Jeff’s problem?
Jeff looked tight and miserable and pissed off.
“I need a beer,” Baz said, and led us back to the kitchen. “Have you ever had alcohol?” He paused in the act of handing a bottle to Jeff.
“No,” Jeff said. “But I’m willing. I’m going to be a big sinner so I can be worthy.”
Baz shrugged. “Knock yourself out.” He handed Jeff the beer.
“Is that the hoppy one?” I said. No point wasting the good stuff on the angel, who wouldn’t know the difference.
Baz gave me a bottle of the hoppy beer. Then he looked from one to the other of us, frowning. “You really want this? We can find you something legit, you know. It won’t pay as well, but you guys still seem a little, uh, otherworldly.”
“I have to pay my way,” I said firmly. Plus I wanted to learn some sex-demoning technique with someone besides Mella, so I could surprise her with my moves.
Jeff put up his chin. “I can learn.”
Baz raised his eyes to the ceiling and shook his head. “I wish Archie hadn’t left,” he muttered.
Kama came in at that moment. “’Sup?”
Baz explained.
Kama snapped his fingers. “Take ’em to Cheaters. It’s ladies’ night. Turn ’em loose on the foosball table. They’ll be a big hit.”
So that’s what Baz did.
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