Once more, he had to shove down the uneasy feeling that there was far more to Marcella than she let on. “There’s nothing to focus on. She’s not demonic anymore. She’s a ghost.”
“Now, that’s something I know very little about. If Lucifer shunned her, I don’t know if that works the same way as when the big guy does it. But I can ask around. And don’t bother to tell me you don’t want me to. Then you’d be lying and my resurgence of pathetic hope in the male species would be dashed.”
Kellen didn’t bother to beat around the bush. He wanted to know. No, he wasn’t being honest. He needed to know. “Okay. Ask around.”
“Done. I’ll also see if I can get any background on her.”
“You’d do that for me? A knuckle dragger from the barely evolved?”
She pointed to the counter. “You did hook me up with some fine Texas bat shit.”
“That’s just how I roll.”
Catalina chuckled, scooping up the box of bat feces, and gave him a waggle of her fingers before she slid into the shadows of the living room and disappeared.
He stood for a moment in the kitchen, fighting the unwanted anticipation of hope that Marcella wasn’t what she’d pretended to be all these years. Yes, she’d saved Clyde and Delaney, but she’d done it as a demon. But what if she’d become a demon for reasons that were just as selfless?
If she turned out to be one of the good guys, that’d be some error in judgment on his part.
That would mean he was a chump of the worst order. He’d always been able to keep himself from her sultry charms when he thought about what one had to do to become a demon. It never failed to stop him short, no matter how often she popped into his lusty dreams.
If the choice that led her to opt for Hell had loopholes, it would also mean ten years of not allowing himself to give in to his wild attraction to Marcella had been foolish time wasted.
Worse, she was further out of reach as a ghost with no earthbound privileges than she’d ever been before, leaving him feeling a deep hunger.
Like, deep.
five
Marcella sat on a bench in the park, watching the brittle leaves of winter skip over the pavement while she fought more tears of embarrassed outrage. The sun faded with a fell swoop, leaving her in the pinkish dusk of early evening. The dark purple-and-blue-streaked sky settled into a chilly midnight blue as another day came to an end. Letting out a long sigh, she glanced up at the sky.
Like the end of a day made a bit of difference. They rather blended.
Her head fell to her hands, and she noted with mild surprise that she was now able to keep it from going directly through her palms. She was also sitting on the park bench versus falling through it to the cold ground. Little by little, she was apparently acclimating.
“You savin’ thisss ssseat fer some . . . one?” A leathery, weathered hand slapped the place beside her on the wood bench.
The pungent stale scent of hard liquor wafted to her nose, filling her nostrils. Putting the back of her hand over her mouth, she shook her head, cocking her eyebrow with disdain. Somebody’d had a little drinky-poo.
She saw from the corner of her eye, rather than felt, the shift of the bench as the boozer weaved, then settled beside her with an uneven plunk.
“So how’sss it goin’?”
Marcella paused, turning to face him. His navy blue knit cap was almost threadbare in places, and bushy thatches of wiry gray hair spilled from the sides of it. Layers of clothing in various colors lay beneath his dark green coat, moth eaten and heavy with the odor of sweat and urine. He held a bottle of amber liquid openly, not even bothering to disguise it with a brown paper bag. But none of that mattered—he could see her.
“You can see me?”
His head bobbed forward then back while he fought to focus. “Not ssso goo-good.”
“But you can see I’m sitting next to you?”
He hacked a deep, crackling cough before he spoke. “Yeahhhh,” he said on a hiccup.
Why was it that boozers and kids could see her but not like a personal shopper? “How is that possible?” she muttered, more to herself than to the homeless man.
His body tilted sideways, his head landing right on her shoulder. He could touch her, too? He smiled up at her with a blackened grin. “Don’t be sssilly. I could always sssee you.”
Marcella fought her gag reflex. Beggars couldn’t be choosers and seeing as she had but two allies, one who hated her, and one who wasn’t old enough to remember to change his own underwear, she figured one more, albeit plastered and stankified, couldn’t hurt. “What do you mean you could always see me? Have we met?”
“Yesss,” he slurred. “But gimme a minute. I can’t”—he shook his head, creating a wave of more noxious air—“remember who I am. Oh, this was cleeearly a mistake. How agre—egr—eegious egregious.”
Marcella’s eyes popped open. She stared down into the goofy grin he gave her. No drunk had a vocabulary like that. “Jesus Christ—Darwin, is that you?”
He bolted upright. “Yesss! Tha’sss who I am. Darwiiin. I know my name. Darrr—wiiin. ’Sa good name. Lubs it. Nice lady give it to me.”
Giving him a hard shove, Marcella knocked him off her lap with a grunt of disgust and surprise. She could touch him, too . . . Then why the fuck couldn’t she touch the cute outfit at Macy’s? “Ugh. Sit up. Good God. What the hell were you thinking, possessing a homeless, drunk man? One who smells like a Porta-Potty, to boot. I remember the ‘Possession Is Nine-tenths of the Law’ class, and they distinctly tell you to be very careful about who you possess, you moron.”
Darwin reared upward, then slammed back down on the bench. His head lolled at awkward angles. “My head. It keeps falling.”
Using her palm, she pushed it back upright then snatched her hand away. “That’s because you possessed the body of a goddamned alcoholic. And what are you doing here anyway? Isn’t there some big bowl of Chuck Wagon you should be shoving down your gullet?”
Letting his head fall back on his shoulders, he stared up at the sky with glazed red eyes, one hand clinging to the bench rail, the other precariously holding on to the empty bourbon bottle. “Ugh. The ssspin is parking.”
“I’ll bet the spin is parking, and that’s because the empty is bottle.” She tried to yank the bourbon from his hands unsuccessfully and resorted to pointing to it so he could see it was barren.
He scrunched his red-streaked beady eyes shut, then reopened them with apparently no success in focusing. “I mean the park. It’s spinning like a—a ghastly amusssement park ride. Around and a . . . round . . .”
“What are you doing here, Darwin? Did you come to gloat about what a failure I am because I can’t get back to Chez Gray? Because I can’t, you know. So if you’re not here to help me, go away. I’m not up to another round. I’ve done my time in the ring for today.”
“No, I have to talllkkk to youuu.” He held up a hand covered in a glove with no fingers and shook it back and forth, pausing for a moment as the motion mesmerized him.
She swatted at him. “Knock it off and focus, Darwin. Talk to me about what? I can’t think of any other reason you’d be here other than to snark me.”
“Nooo. Tha’sss not why I’m here. Ssswear it. I’m here to—to—tell you someting. Yesss. Tha’sss what I haf to do.”
For a moment, even though the body he’d possessed was distasteful, it was Darwin. As ridiculous as that was, feeling as alone as she did, he was like comfort food. Granted, it was comfort food that was bad for your glutes, but it still comforted. “What do you have to tell me that’s so important you had to possess Jack Daniel’s?”
“I dooon’t knooow,” he whined. “Can’t think ssstraight, an’ I have fery few teef to work wif.”
She was just too tired. Marcella gave him a consoling pat on the knee accompanied by a long sigh. “It’s all right. You probably just missed razzing me. Everything’s always exaggerated when you booze it up. Your emotions get all out of whack.
Believe me, I know. I’m a crier when I’m snockered.”
He shook his rolling head with a dizzying nod. “No. No. No. ’S important. I know it. Gimme a sec to tink.”
“Okay, you tink, chico. Mind if I destress while you do?”
“I can’t tink if you yak.”
Twirling a lock of her hair, Marcella ignored Darwin’s fight to keep his head erect and his indirect protest for silence. She had to get this off her chest. “So I can’t get back, Darwin. I don’t know why, but I can’t get back. I tried, because God knows I don’t want to stay here after what I just saw, but I can’t do it. What happens to me if I can’t get back? Do I just drift here forever? Shit. I never thought I’d say this, but I want to go back. At least on Plane Dreary there’s peace.” And no women named Catalina who swished their round, pert asses while they made even a plain old T-shirt look like an advertisement for Big Breasty Babes.
“Oh!” Darwin hollered. “I ’member. Uh, re—mem—ber,” he enunciated. “You haf a problem.”
She frowned, grabbing him by his bearded, shaggy chin. “What problem?”
“I can’t reeemember.”
“Bah. Let me tell you about problems, pal. First, Delaney. I made contact and she knows I’m okay, but she twisted that horndog of a brother around her little finger and convinced him it would be a good idea for me to help him with his ghost whispering while I’m stuck here. Which leads me to the problem with Kellen and his mistress of malevolence. Can you even believe when I tell you that two-faced, self-righteous shit is hot for a demon? Yeah. I saw her today. Right there in Delaney’s shop, just like she’d been there before. Verrry comfortable, I tell you. All rubbing up against him like some cat on a kitty condo laced with catnip. It was vile. Disgusting. Shameful.”
His giggle, high and sharp, echoed in the empty, open space of the park.
“How’s that funny?”
“Do you haf a twin?”
“What?”
“A twin. She sssounds jusss like you.”
Marcella bristled, knocking her shoulder with his. “Oh, shut up. I was never so blatant.”
Darwin let go of a gurgling snort. “Blatant should be your sssurname. But tha’sss not why I come, er came. I haf to tell you sometink. So shhh.”
With a roll of her eyes, Marcella leaned back, crossing her ankles and arms.
“Okay, I tink I got it. I heared, damn—heard sometink.”
The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “About?”
“Aboutchuuu.”
“Big deal. Like everyone on that godforsaken plane hasn’t talked about me at one time or another. I’m not winning any popularity contests because they think I’m unsociable.”
“No. No. No. Was about sssomebody you know.”
“I know lots of people, Darwin.”
“Thisss one is bad. So, so, sooo bad.”
Goose bumps crawled along her arms. Maybe he was just exaggerating because he was drunk.
“Calvin! Yesss.” The wrinkles in Darwin’s forehead deepened. “Wait. No. Not Cal . . .” His knit-capped head dropped to his reed-thin chest, his lips blew out puffs of air, and he began to snore.
She gave him a jolting shove. “Wake up! Who is Calvin, Darwin?”
His groan was long. “’S not Calvin.”
She squinted. “Sounds like . . . ?”
“I don’t knooow,” he whined. “The only sound I can hear is the voice that tells me to dink more and tink less.”
“Get out of this body, Darwin, right now, you canine calamity.”
“Nuh-uh. Can’t. On this plane I can only talk if I possessss.”
“Remind me of that the next time you’re hounding me.”
“Carlos!” he bellowed, pitching forward with a wobble. “Yep. Tha’sss right, babyyy. Carlos.”
A shiver of dread walked along her spine, stopping at her intestines. “Tell me right now what you know about Carlos. Now, Darwin, or I’ll see to it that you never see another beef-basted pig ear again!” Oh, Christ on the crapper. What did Carlos have to do with anything? He was just a baby. An innocent child.
“I can’t tink,” he moaned.
Alarm bells shot off in her head. “Well, you’d better get to tinking, pal. Carlos is a little boy. Maybe eight or nine. If you heard something about him, I want to know what the fuck it is and I want to know now. So let’s go get coffee or something to sober your lame ass up. I need to know what you know.” She poked Darwin with a ragged nail, but he’d resumed his slump while long, choppy breaths escaped his chapped lips.
Leaning into his ear, she lifted the cap and winced, her nose wrinkling. Jesus, he was ripe. “Daaarwiiin! Wake up!”
His head snapped up, crashing into her jaw. She grabbed him by the shoulders, scanning his red-rimmed eyes. “Damn it, dog, what do you know about Carlos?”
“They want him.”
Chills coursed along the back of her neck. “Who wants him? Who? Why?” she yelled, her throat tight.
Darwin began to drift again, his eyelids making a slow descent, but just before he slumped into three-sheets-to-the-wind oblivion, he managed, “They know he can sssee you.”
As Darwin slumped to the left, splaying his upper body over the arm of the park bench, she jumped up, panic-stricken.
Who could possibly want Carlos that knew her? Oh, good Christ. Except for Delaney, Clyde, and Kellen, the only people who knew her were bad, bad fuckers. Why would they want a little boy? Because he had the gift of sight?
She didn’t even know how she’d been summoned by him—or where the frig he lived. One minute she’d been in Carlos’s room, the next she’d been sucked back to Kellen’s place. Damn it all. How could she possibly look after a little boy she couldn’t find? Her demonic contacts were long gone—there were only two people in the whole world who could see her, and to make everything that much worse, she was always crying these days.
As evidenced by the big fat droplets falling from her eyes, splashing to the cold, cracked pavement below.
Jesus, soon she’d have to start stuffing her bra just to keep tissues on hand.
“Hey, Carlos. How’s it goin’?” Kellen asked over his shoulder as he unpacked yet another one of his boxes.
The little boy shrugged his shoulders and gave an answer so hushed Kellen had to strain his ears to hear it. “Okay, I guess.”
“Cool. You wanna help me unpack? I have lots of science stuff in these boxes from my old school. Bet there’s a lot of stuff in there you’d be interested in,” he suggested, keeping it light. Since he’d met Mrs. Ramirez’s grandson, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was either being ultrasensitive because he’d worked with children for so long, or if Carlos really wasn’t just a quiet, introspective child, but troubled.
Uncertain as to whether Mrs. Ramirez felt comfortable enough to confide in him yet, he tried not to pry. She’d been Delaney’s long-standing part-time help, and when he’d taken over the store, he’d inherited her along with it. She brought him food, she helped him take care of the ever-growing clientele Delaney somehow had managed to develop before she’d left for Long Island, and she never questioned the odd conversations he had with what appeared to be himself.
Yet, when her eyes fell on her grandson, they grew dark with concern—which, in turn, concerned Kellen. She was a proud woman. If there was trouble with Carlos, she might not be ready to confide in him just yet.
In that moment, he realized how much he missed the routine of his classes. How much he missed his kids. How strange it was that now that he had the time to deal with the afterlife, it was eerily quiet, with the exception of Joe showing up. It meant the spirits of the afterlife felt they couldn’t trust him, and as much as the spirits drove him to want to hit a six-pack, he found he wanted to do right by them. Like Delaney had. He wanted to do it as well as she had.
Mrs. Ramirez blew past him, rubbing her hands together. “Ees—” She stopped short, correcting herself and the broken English she worked so diligently on three e
venings a week at the high school. “It is cold in here, Meester Kellen. You turn on de heat today?” She smiled a beaming grin at him, clearly proud that her hard work was paying off.
Kellen gave her the thumbs-up sign then glanced at the digital thermostat. It read forty-two degrees. Jesus, if one more thing needed to be replaced, he was going to give D back the store and live in a cardboard box—they were warmer. Kellen frowned, rising to get a closer look. “It was just seventy about an hour ago.” He tried to reset the temperature, but it wouldn’t budge. “Damn. I’ll have to call the landlord. Mrs. Ramirez, do you know where his number is?”
She shivered, her round face pensive. “I think Meess Delaney, she leave it in de flippy thing.”
The Rolodex. He headed for the cash register, grabbing for the flippy thing, but it slid away, as though an invisible hand were trying to snatch it from him. And to think, just moments ago, he’d been pondering the afterlife peace he’d been granted.
Kellen waited a second, then grabbed for it again, capturing it just before it got away. He gave Carlos and his grandmother a hooded glance, hoping they hadn’t seen the Rolodex move of its own accord. He flipped it open, trying to remember the landlord’s last name.
The index cards began to shuffle, spinning slowly at first then gaining momentum until they began to frantically flip. Kellen threw his body at the countertop, hoping to land on it, but it zigzagged away out of his reach.
By now he should be used to this kind of madness, but it still never failed to make the hairs on his arms stand on end. “Look,” he muttered into the air, “do me a favor. Can it until the kid’s gone, okay? Whoever you are, I’ll try to help, but you’re gonna have to wait. Now quit before you scare him.”
But it was too late.
Carlos, dark eyes wide, was frozen in place by the boxes he’d been helping unpack.
Fuck. “Carlos? It’s okay, bud. I know this is kind of weird, but I promise you, it’s okay. I’m here. Why don’t you come stand next to me?” He held out his hand, but Carlos refused to budge, though if Kellen had judged his line of vision correctly, he wasn’t even looking in the direction of the Rolodex.
My Way to Hell Page 8
