More Than Fiends

by Maureen Child

  Then, as the laughter faded, he grabbed my hand before I could slam and lock the door.

  “Okay, Cassie,” he said, trying for solemn and apologetic, “so it wasn’t funny.”

  “You think?”

  “But come on. I owed you. You hid my kid from me.”

  My heart felt like it was dropping into my stomach. Ick. “That’s what this is all about for you, Logan?” I asked, watching his eyes. “Payback?”

  “No.” His blue eyes met mine straight on, no games, no laughter, no jokes. “You really threw me, Cassie. Seeing Thea. Being home again. Being with you…It’s a lot.”

  That I could understand because, hey, it was a lot for me, too. “Yeah, it is.”

  And as we stared at each other, I thought wildly, Okay, this might be all right. We can be grown-ups about this. It’ll be fine. We’ll work it out and everything will be good.

  Then he spoke up again, popping that balloon.

  “I’ve got to get to the station now, but, Cassie?” He reached up, cupped my cheek with one hand and stroked his thumb across my cheek. “We’re not done. I’ve got plenty of questions for you. And I’m gonna want answers.”

  Well, crap.

  Chapter Seven

  An hour later, Jasmine arrived, and suddenly I felt like there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to turn me into a superhero.

  That afternoon, I knew that if a real live demon actually showed up, I was dead meat.

  After three hours of “training” with Jasmine, I was covered in grass stains, and my favorite jeans had a rip in the knee, not to mention bloodstains from where my knee was cut from the rock I fell on. I’d broken two nails, and there was actual sweat rolling down my back. I don’t do sweat. I have an allergy to exercise of any kind and to the sweating kind in particular.

  I’ve got nothing against nice, slow walks to the bakery or even running—if there’s a purse sale at Nordie’s. But there was just something inherently wrong in actually trying to sweat.

  We buy deodorants to keep from sweating and then go on a run? I don’t think so.

  I was too tired to crawl into the house, so I stretched out on the sun-warmed grass in the backyard. No point worrying about more grass stains or mud now, right?

  “You did well for your first day.”

  I pried open one eye and glared at the old woman looking down at me. She was backlit by too much sunlight, so she looked as if she were standing in a halo. Big lie. If anything she should have had horns and a tail.

  She looked the exact same as she had when she’d walked into my kitchen that morning. Her blue hair was still sprayed tightly to her skull, looking like a fuzzy swim cap, her dress hadn’t wrinkled, and she wasn’t even out of breath.

  I’m thirty-two, she’s two hundred, and I’m the dead one.

  That’s fair.

  And humiliating, sort of.

  “Just kill me now,” I muttered and then went oomph as Sugar threw her entire body across my stomach. The dog was confused. She wasn’t used to seeing Mommy move around so much. She’d probably need therapy. Get in line.

  “We will continue this tomorrow.”

  “No, we won’t,” I managed to say, closing my eye because I didn’t want to die with one eye open, looking like I was winking at the grim reaper. “I’ve got a business to run. A kid to embarrass. A life to—” She got the idea.

  “This is more important.”

  “That’s what you think. But, since Thea and I both like to eat, I’m going to have to go with the work thing.”

  God, I didn’t want to think about moving, let alone working. But until I hired more help, it was just me and Carmen to handle our customers. God. Made me tired just thinking about it. Was it too late to be born independently wealthy?

  “You’ve accepted your destiny.”

  “Not willingly.”

  “You’ve agreed to kill demons.”

  I lifted one hand. Briefly. “I’ve agreed to spray ’em.”

  She’d already explained that ugly-ass liquid in the spray bottle. Seems it’s some ancient, secret recipe that affects demon skin like acid. Ew. Which meant, of course, that Leo, my surly appliance-delivery guy, was actually a demon. Crabby, I knew. Bald, fat and lazy, I knew. But demon? No wonder he ran like a bat outta hell.

  Once sprayed and identified, Jasmine said, demons must be killed.

  “Won’t the acid do it?” I asked. “It’d sure as hell do it for me.”

  She huffed. “The acid would, of course, kill them if you dunked them in the solution. A spray will only help you identify them. And in some cases, it may weaken them.”

  “So what? I’m supposed to walk around squirting perfect strangers?” I rocked my head back and forth in a no-freaking-way signal. “I can’t do that. I’ll get arrested.”

  She talked right over me. “Once they’ve been identified, you must destroy them.”

  “How’m I supposed to do that? Exactly.”

  “It’s quite simple, really,” Jasmine said, folding her hands neatly at her waist. “You reach into their chests and remove their hearts.”

  Bells clanged in my head, my stomach lurched and raced up my throat, and I had to swallow hard to push it back down into place. “I reach into their what and remove their huh?”

  “Chest. Heart.”

  “No. Way.”

  Could my life get any weirder? Where was a time machine when you needed one? I’d go back two days and leave town before either Jasmine or Logan could show up. I’d take Thea and we’d go somewhere exotic. Europe maybe. Or Canada. A place where nobody wanted to make me reach into somebody’s chest and rip the heart out.

  Jesus…

  “It must be done.”

  “Not by me. I wear rubber gloves to hold a toilet brush,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for dead demons. Go, demon death!” I waved an imaginary pom-pom to show my enthusiasm. “But no freaking way am I going to shove my hand into some thing’s chest. Hello? Unsanitary much?”

  Jasmine looked for a minute like she wanted to kick me, and I would have had to let her since I was still too tired to move. But the moment passed, and I guess she decided to go for strained patience instead.

  “You’re in training,” she said reasonably.

  “Apparently.” CRAMP. Cramp in my right leg. God, help me move my leg—or if not, send a lightning bolt.

  Now would be good.

  I desperately rubbed at the pain and, aah, it receded from morphine-needed-here to Motrin level. I might live. I looked up at my tidy gray nemesis and said, “I’m willing to jump and leap and in general beat myself up for the cause—and if you knew me better, you’d realize just how big a concession that is—but I gotta draw the line at tearing hearts. Ew.”

  Jasmine sighed. She’d chased me around the damn yard, made me jump and crouch and fight shadows all morning without a comment, and now she sighed?

  “We will resume your training tomorrow after you finish work.”

  “And we will never discuss ripping out hearts again,” I added, just to make sure she understood I hadn’t changed my mind about that.

  Shaking her head, she walked around me, and I heard her footsteps headed for the house. Probably going inside to get her butt-ugly purse. Then she paused. “You are a Demon Duster, and you will do your duty.”

  “Right.” As long as it didn’t involve chest punching. I would have said anything to get her to leave. Boy, as soon as Gram got back from her cruise, we were going to have a showdown.

  Sugar’s steamy dog breath was fanning my face, and I felt her drool soaking into my T-shirt. But I just couldn’t care.

  Superhero?

  Me?

  The world was in deep shit.

  After a shower I climbed into clean clothes and felt almost ready to take up my real life.

  When the phone rang, it was Carmen Mendoza, my remaining employee, a tiny woman with a will of iron and a never-ending supply of clichés.

  “I wanted you to know that I hav
e hired my cousin Rosario.”

  “Okaaaayyy…”

  “I have told you,” Carmen said patiently, in the tone she used on her ten-year-old son. “My cousins are dependable, not like those college girls who are fly-by-nights.”

  First cliché of the conversation.

  “I promise, no more college girls.”

  “Enough said about that, then,” Carmen said with a victorious sniff.

  I like to think I’m in charge of my own business, but it’s actually Carmen who runs everything. At least, that’s how she sees it. And since my only other employee had only just quit, who was I to argue with Rosario being hired? At least I knew she wouldn’t up and quit. Carmen would kill her if she tried.

  “We have taken care of the Johnsons, and the Nelsons and the Toledos wanted to put cleaning off until tomorrow,” Carmen said, catching my attention again.

  Guilt pinged around inside me like an insane pinball going TILT. “Hey, you guys don’t have to do it all. I can get out to the Toledos’ in the morning and do that one myself,” I said, pouring another cup of coffee.

  “No need,” Carmen said, then added, “You would be rushed, and haste makes waste.”

  Cliché number two.

  “I have told Rosario that she is not to be late again or I will tell you to fire her.”

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling, because Carmen hadn’t even bothered to have me hire Rosario. Why would she come to me to fire her? “I’m a beast.”

  “It is your business,” Carmen said. “I only work for you.”

  “Sure, you do. Hey, before you go out tomorrow, why don’t you swing by here? I’ve got some great new window washing fluid I want you to try out.”

  “Leave it on the porch,” Carmen ordered. “I’ll have Rosario pick it up on her way home.”

  I almost saluted, but the sarcastic gesture would have been lost on her since she couldn’t see me. So I just let it go and hung up.

  Now that I had the afternoon to myself, all I had to do was start working on the bid for Magic Nights. Of course, when I say working on the bid, I mean that I was gathering everything together for Thea to figure it out when she got home from school. Why have a math-genius daughter and not use her?

  But first, the bank.

  La Sombra Trust stood on the corner of PCH (Pacific Coast Highway for those not in California) and Fifth. It had been standing there for more than a hundred years. And that’s when its parking lot had been built. Back then, apparently, you didn’t need much room for your horse and buggy. Or horses were way smaller than cars. And people were probably more civilized then, taking turns.

  Not now.

  The bank parking lot was a free-for-all, and anyone who didn’t arrive ready to fight for one of the all-too-few slots was forced to park down at the pier and hoof it. Well, I’d already had my ass whupped for the day, and no way was I going to walk an extra three blocks just to make a deposit that I should have made over the weekend.

  So I did the parking lot cruise. Me and four other cars, looking like the slowest parade on the face of the planet. Each one of us was willing to cheat the others out of the first open space. It was like playing musical chairs with cars.

  The man driving the car in front of me stopped suddenly, forcing me to do the same as his wife slowly climbed out. Using her walker, she clomped up to the driver’s side window of the guy nesting in handicapped to shout at him, “Do I get a turn before I die?”

  I knew exactly how she felt.

  The guy in the parked car, however, was unmoved.

  And so, apparently, was everyone else. My radio was blasting out an old Beach Boys tune, and I had my windows rolled down to catch the last of the afternoon breeze off the ocean.

  That’s the only reason I heard it.

  An engine. Running a lot faster than anything else in that lot. It sounded like someone was gunning it. You know, pressing down on the gas pedal to make the engine sound like a tiger ready for its five-hundred-pound steak?

  The old lady with the walker lifted her nose like she was trying to sniff out trouble. Then she bolted for her car (well, shuffled really quickly), climbed back inside and rode off.

  “Good,” I muttered, still wondering where the hell the idiot with the racing motor was, “at least I’m moving again. I’m not parking, but I’m moving.”

  That’s when I noticed that I was suddenly the only car in our parking parade. The guy behind me had backed off about fifty feet—apparently I’d already passed a parking space, and he was gonna get it—and the old guy in front of me had swung around the edge of the lot.

  A woman stepping out of the bank ahead of me lifted one hand and pointed while she shouted, “Look out!”

  Who? Me?

  I looked up into the rearview mirror, and my eyes popped open. An old Chevy that had more rust than paint on its body came around the lot, aimed right for me. That gunning engine roared, I caught a glimpse of the driver—young with a nasty little goatee—and then it felt as if a wall the size of Kansas slammed into the back of my little VW.

  “CRAP!” I shrieked loud enough to break glass, tightened my grip on the steering wheel and felt my head whip forward and back again with the impact. My poor little car was shuddering as badly as I was.

  The Chevy blasted past me, and I was pretty sure the driver flipped me the bird, which just added insult to injury, in my opinion.

  When my shaking stopped, I was pissed, naturally enough, but there was nobody around for me to bitch-slap.

  Just to add the topper to all of this, the guy behind me in the parking parade whipped his Caddy into the now-empty space that my attacker had left behind.

  Then my airbag burst open and crashed into my face. Perfect.

  Finally got the deposit made, listened to a lot of sympathy from the very people who had luckily moved their own cars out of the way before I got slammed, and then took my little yellow Bug to my favorite mechanic. Well, my only mechanic.

  Joey Paretti went to school with me, and he always could fix anything. A few years ago, he’d taken over his father’s shop, and he was the go-to guy for any car calamity. Thankfully, he too assigned me a million and one easy payments, and I left my poor Bug with him and drove one of his loaners home. A ’97 Nissan Sentra, it was a nice enough car, but it felt way too much like a grown-up’s car. Wasn’t it bad enough I’d turned thirty-two? The sedate silver car didn’t suit my style at all. Not that I actually had a style. But you know what I mean.

  Anyway, Joey promised to get my baby back to me in a few days, and my insurance agent promised my premiums wouldn’t go up. Right. And any day now, Prince Andrew would be dropping by my house for a quickie.

  Still, after a so-far rotten day, my own house was clean, bills were paid (barely), and for lunch I had my bowl of microwave popcorn (movie butter flavor) sitting on the table in front of me. I dropped a handful of the popcorn onto the floor for Sugar, and while she made like a Hoover, I got up to answer the doorbell.

  I tugged my black T-shirt down over the waist of my jeans, hurried across the room and smashed my little toe against a chair that had been in the same place for ten years. Pain whipped through me. With stars blinking on and off in front of my eyes, and still whimpering, I opened the door.

  Oh God.

  Devlin Cole, big as life and twice as yummy, was standing on my front porch. Tears were in my eyes, my toe was throbbing, and long-ignored parts of my body were suddenly alive and humming.

  He was wearing all black today. Black slacks, open-collared black shirt and shiny black shoes. He looked way too good, and suddenly I was wishing I had taken more time with my hair, and maybe a little makeup wouldn’t have been out of line.

  “Hi.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Hi back.” I looked past him and saw a silver gray Porsche parked at the curb, and almost whistled. If the Marchetti boys across the street were home, any minute now they’d be outside drooling on Devlin’s car.

  Shifting my gaze back to the man still watchi
ng me, I managed to croak, “Did we have an appointment?”

  “No,” he said, and his lips twitched as if he wanted to smile but was holding back. Too bad. He has a great smile.

  “Then…”

  “I wanted to talk to you about having your company do the cleaning at my house, too.”

  Okay. This is good. More work, always a plus. But why come by my house? Why not call? And why did I care? There was a gorgeous giant of a man standing on my front porch, and I’m gonna be picky about why he’s there?

  I don’t think so.

  “Sure. Come on in.”

  He walked into the house, and I got a good whiff of him as he passed. God, he smelled good. Almost better than chocolate. A second later, I heard the scrabble of Sugar’s nails on the wood floor and tried to move fast enough to head her off before she could shove her nose into Devlin’s crotch.

  I was too late. When Sugar’s on a greeting mission, she’s hard to stop.

  But then Devlin managed it with a word.

  “No.”

  The look of stunned surprise on the dog’s face should have been funny. Sugar had never heard that word, but I could tell she didn’t like it. She tried to put on the brakes, but couldn’t find purchase. Her eyes got wide with panic behind her black- and-white hair, her nails skittered, her butt hit the floor, and her momentum sent her sailing past us to slam into the round table sitting beneath the front window.

  The table tipped, and the blue glass vase I’d found at the swap meet upended, rolled to the edge of the table and crashed onto the floor, sending shattered glass, rust-colored china mums and water across the floor in a veritable river of destruction.

  Sugar stood up, shook herself all over, then walked out of the room, head high, like she was trying to convince us she’d done that whole slide-and-spill thing on purpose just to entertain us.

  I didn’t even look at Devlin. It was his own damn fault for coming to my house. I project businesslike and competent when I’m out in the world. In my own habitat, it’s a whole different story.

  “Welcome to my world,” I said and dropped to my knees to gather up the remaining scraps of a crystal, cobalt blue antique vase.