by Aaron Crash
“I like the power of friendship as well,” the angel murmured from the back. She was still obviously shaken up by the property destruction, theft, and demon murder, though the demon murder definitely bothered her the least.
“You’re sweet back there,” Bailey said. “As for making the hell keys, well, I’ll need blood, but not a bunch. Candles, chalk, some wine, and holy water. Actually, I’ll use all that stuff for both the keys and the bullets.”
Jack pulled onto I-25 and headed south. His moral compass wasn’t bothering him much. On the news, they heard that there had been a fire in Denver, at an old mansion, but no one was hurt. There wasn’t much in the way of details. No, the Wycombe House wouldn’t let the press anywhere near them. That den of sin wanted to keep its existence a secret.
Jack couldn’t wait to see the faces of his mother and aunt when he gave them the cash. Their money problems were over.
Before he headed over, though, he and the girls had to pick up a few of the spell items that Bailey needed. They also had to stop at Jack’s apartment to change clothes. Then they hit a head shop and a store that sold religious items, and, yes, they swung by the church to get some holy water. There was a basin at the front that people dipped their fingers in before making the sign of the cross.
It was dinnertime when they got off the freeway. Jack called and said he’d pick up barbecue from a local joint that got burnt ends just right. They also had some delicious fatty ribs, which Moms liked for whatever reason. Fully loaded with dinner, Jack pulled up outside their duplex.
Jack took the dark sunglasses off the demon’s face. “Bailey, this is my aunt and my mom. I don’t want to know anything about their sex lives, both real and imagined. And if you could be less...demon-y, that would be great. Can you manage that?”
“Less demon-y? What does that even mean?” the succubus asked, offended.
“Avoid cursing and talking about anal sex,” Gabby said with a sigh.
“Can I talk about oral sex then?” Bailey held up a hand. “You two fuckers don’t need to worry about a thing. I can be polite. I’ll just pretend I have a stick up my ass like this one self-righteous angel I know.”
Gabby brightened. “Oh, which angel do you know? Maybe I know them too!”
Bailey laughed and shook her head. “Who do you think, Feathers?”
It took a second, but Gabby got it. “Oh.”
Bailey let out a breath that turned into a groan. “This is going to be the longest evening of my life. Good thing I can cast spells.” The sex demon didn’t ask if she could help with the supplies or carrying in the barbecue. She just waltzed up to the door. “Hello! I’m Bailey, a friend of your son’s. He’s just so nice. Bringing you dinner and money. I hope if I ever have a son, he’ll bring me dinner and money.”
She was being loud, overly friendly, but at least she wasn’t talking about cunnilingus or blow jobs.
Gabby, though, saw Bailey in the best light. “She really is trying to be good. You must know, Jack, that Bailey is the exception to the rule. Demons are terrible creatures that feed off humanity, corrupt them, tempt them to do terrible things, and then laugh at them. However, you’re right. However much you’re changing me, you’re also changing her.”
Jack turned around in his seat and gave the angel a long look. He wanted to tell her that he was glad that she’d joined them, that he hoped she understood that deep down he did have a moral compass. He was an asshole with a heart of gold, though most of the time that meant people just saw him as an asshole. He hoped that Gabby could look beyond his wrongdoings and see the truth.
Gabby gazed into his eyes, and she was kind, innocent, and loving. If a little troubled...
He finally found something to say. “Thanks for helping us find Annie.”
“It’s my pleasure, Jack Masterson. And I hope someday you’ll tell me all about what was behind that look. I hope someday you trust me enough to tell me about the police academy.”
“I trust you enough,” he said softly. “Maybe it’s myself I don’t trust.” He scooped up the duffel bag that held all the Eternity Cannon supplies, and Gabby helped him carry everything inside.
By that time, Bailey was at the kitchen table, already drinking a Milwaukee’s Best.
Jack set the gun stuff on the couch and took the food stuff to the counter. He laid out their dinner while his mom and aunt chatted.
“I am loving this girl!” Moms said enthusiastically from her seat at the kitchen table. “Where did you meet again?”
“She’s a stripper!” Aunt Sue called out from down the hall. She came out and saw Gabby. “And she looks like a tax accountant in a beauty contest.”
“Thank you on both accounts.” The angel’s smile was genuine. “You must be Aunt Sue.”
“Sue is fine.” The old woman started loading up a flowery plastic plate with barbecue. “You have those fatty ribs your mom likes, Jackie. But did you bring me a spicy sausage? I guess not. Looks like we know who’s the popular one around here.”
“He is my son, Susie,” Moms proclaimed. “And, Jack, could you make me a plate? My hip isn’t feeling too well today.”
Bailey sipped, then set her beer on the table. “As for where Jack and I met, we met at church. I like to hang out there and hit on girls.”
There was a beat of awkward silence, and then Aunt Sue roared laughter. “You say the damndest things. Tell us, really.”
Bailey kept a straight face. “It really is where we met. Gabby here came along later. We have mutual enemies.”
“Don’t you mean friends, dear?” Moms asked.
The succubus shook her head. “No. Mutual enemies, but the enemy of your enemy is a friend.”
“I’ve fucking said that for years.” Sue sank down at the table and started eating noisily. She still had better manners than Bailey.
Jack made his mom a plate, and all five of them ate and chatted.
Gabby said she worked for a large military contractor, which wasn’t all that far from the truth since she was part of the Pinturicchio Legion.
Bailey said she was in the entertainment industry and made a joke about being a personal escort for rich men. Again, not exactly a lie, but both Moms and Aunt Sue thought she was joking. You could say the most outlandish things as long as you immediately smiled and pretended it was all a joke.
After dinner, Gabby insisted on cleaning up all by herself, and Jack pulled his mom outside onto the back porch. The lawn he mowed had gone yellow from the cement patio back to the chain-link fence, which showed an alley on the other side.
He got right down to it. “Hey, Moms, I came into money. I want to help out. I’ll still talk to Cousin Eddie about not raising your rent. You are family, after all. No need to be greedy.” Jack pulled out the wad of bills all rubber-banded together.
His mom’s eyes narrowed. “That looks like drug money, sweetie. Like in the movies. It’s suspicious.”
“I know, Mom.” Jack debated on whether to show his mom and his aunt his powers. They were old, and he wasn’t sure if they could really handle the truth. He’d keep it quiet for the time being. “Look, you need the money, and I’m getting into a new business, so I’ll have more cash. Pinetree and I are going to be buying and selling some rare antiquities.”
“I don’t know, Jack.” His mom frowned. Then she looked him in the eye. “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”
That was the question. He returned her gaze. “Today, I can live with what I’m doing. It might not be what Dad would do—”
His mom cut him off. “You were never going to be your father. That’s good. You get to be your own person, and that’s the best kind of person to be. If you’re okay, I’ll take the money. But I doubt Aunt Sue will buy your side business schtick. She’ll think you’re a pimp and those girls in there are prostitutes. That’s what she’ll think.”
“And that isn’t the truth. Bailey and I are together, that’s true, but Gabby is just a friend.” Of course, that was stre
tching the definition of friend because so far she had watched him have sex with Bailey twice now, and Jack had spent several delicious minutes feeling up the angel.
His mom patted his hand. “I’m sorry about the past, Jack. I really am. And I’m sorry you had to lose all your brothers. Especially Andy.”
Jack felt the tears sting his eyes. He couldn’t tell her that losing all his brothers seemed to have been destined to happen, to make him the surviving son, the sixth son out of a long line of sixth sons. It would be cruel. In fact, in a lot of ways, his fate was cruel.
But he had to give his mother hope. “It’s just us now, Moms. I won’t put us in danger. At the same time, I have to do what I think is right. Sometimes that’s going to align with the higher laws, and sometimes it’s not.”
“In that way, you’re not like your father. For him, it was black and white, right or wrong. He couldn’t see the gray.”
Jack nodded. Hank Masterson was many things, but morally flexible wasn’t one of them. Jack thought of his life, standing between a demon and an angel. “I’m living in the gray at this point. But my heart is in the right place, I think.”
His mom drew him in for a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “You have a heart of gold, son. You’re a good boy, bringing your old mother and aunt dinner on a Wednesday night.”
Two more nights until they went to rescue Annie. Forty-eight hours.
Jack and his mom went back inside the house.
Bailey had already started. She’d drawn a pentagram on the table and set candles at the five cardinal points.
This was a bit of a shock to Moms. “Susie, what is going on here?”
His aunt was a bit tipsy. “Bailey wanted to show us a magic trick. She’s going to make these little lead balls glow. She’s an adult entertainer, after all.”
Bailey must’ve seen the look of shock on Jack’s face. “I’m an adult, and I entertain adults. Just to be clear.”
Gabby stood over Bailey’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Masterson, it’s not an upside-down pentagram, but a normal pentagram, an ancient holy symbol of power. The five-pointed star represents the good in the world.”
Moms sat down at her normal seat and surveyed the table. Jack sat across from her. There were eighteen lead balls at the center of the table. Bailey had the vial of holy water ready. “Now, this magic trick requires something eternal. Rose Masterson, will you always love your son?”
Moms smiled at Jack. “Always. He’s my little Jackie boy. The last of my sons.” Tears shone in her eyes for a minute.
Gabby clutched her heart. “There is so much soul in this room. There is so much love and happiness, and I feel the eternity. Can’t you feel it, Bailey? It’s joy and commitment and the power of an enduring love.”
Bailey exhaled a frustrated breath. “Yes. I can feel all that. I’m just not saying it out loud because I don’t want to sound like a ditz.”
“Makes me wanna puke,” Aunt Sue agreed. “Okay, get on with it.”
Bailey took the water, looked at it, and then handed it to Gabby. “I probably shouldn’t get that on me. Will you sprinkle some on the lead balls while I say the spell?”
Neither Aunt Sue nor Moms were sipping on their beers. They clearly didn’t want to miss a thing. The old women didn’t have much excitement in their lives, and so a beautiful dark-haired magician with two colors of eyes casting a spell would make their month, if not their year.
Bailey was hiding her red eye for now, and it was a normal brown color. Her blue eye sparkeld extra bright as she spoke the words of the spell. “Creare excrucior in lucem, et tempora usque in aeternum. Now, Gabby.”
Gabby sprinkled the holy water on the lead balls, which glowed some but soon went back to being dead metal.
“All of you, repeat after me.” Again Bailey spoke the bastardized Latin.
Soon all of them were saying, “Creare excrucior in lucem, et tempora usque in aeternum.”
The lead balls got brighter and brighter and brighter as the candles dimmed, and all at once the entire place went dark. The only thing glowing were the lead balls.
“Oops, that’s the breaker.” Aunt Sue pushed back from the table and hurried outside to the electric box.
Moms sat looking over the glowing orbs at the center of the table. “Well, I don’t know how you did it, but that’s something right there. I always suspected there was real magic in world. This isn’t a trick, is it, Bailey?”
Gabby was the one that answered. “Every word we speak is powerful, Mrs. Masterson, but more powerful is your love for your son and his love for you. Jack has a good heart. It’s thanks to you and his father. You did a fine job raising him.”
The lead spheres pulsed one last time, and then all was dark for a second until the lights flickered back on.
Jack set up the cylinders and started reloading the equipment on the table.
When he placed the cap-and-ball revolver on the table, Moms blinked. “That’s a beautiful gun, Jack. Is this part of the deals you made with Pinetree?”
Jack grinned. “It’s definitely part of my new business venture.”
Aunt Sue cracked open a fresh beer. “You a pimp, Jack? A pusher? Are you going to pursue a life of crime?”
Gabby furrowed her brow. “I hope not. I really hope not.”
Bailey sipped her beer noisily. “Fifty-fifty chance he’s in jail by Christmas.”
There was a shocked moment of silence. Then Moms laughed. “Oh, Bailey, you’re such a kidder.”
She was kidding. Jack wouldn’t be going to jail, ever. Now, being eaten by a demon or being trapped in an eon palace? Those were definite possibilities.
Jack finished loading all three of the cylinders, so he had eighteen rounds now. He cleaned the revolver while they all talked, then left, kissing his mom goodbye and giving Aunt Sue a hug.
Bailey hugged them both as well, but it was Gabby that lingered. It was clear that the angel loved the Nefesh in the room, that special soulful magic when people got together.
Back in the car, they were quiet for a minute.
Jack spoke first. “Bailey, I know you looked into the sex lives of my mom and aunt. I meant what I said. I don’t want to know.”
Bailey rolled her eyes. “You humans have so many hang-ups. Fine. But we’re not done yet tonight. I’m on a roll casting spells, so I want to craft the hell keys tonight. We gonna party like it’s 1669.”
“Where to now?” Jack asked.
“I need a fire. And some of your blood, though I think Gabby’s blood might work better. The blood of an angel? That’s going to have some hardcore properties.” Even though it was night, Bailey kept her sunglasses on.
Gabby didn’t say a word. She held something in her hand. Jack could see her closed fingers in the rearview mirror. From the look on her face, it seemed important. And it seemed that the angel was making up her mind about something.
Jack had an idea of what she was holding in her hand, and also what he needed to do.
Chapter Thirty
JACK DROVE HIS CAR to the nearby King Soopers for some supplies that Bailey had forgotten. Then they were back on the road.
Jack knew it was time to tell the women his big secret. Bailey might not care, but it would mean everything to Gabby. “I used to watch westerns with my old man. These weren’t the cool spaghetti westerns, no, these were the old-fashioned westerns. You know, the ones where the cowboy’s horse would do tricks, or he’d just bust out into song for no reason. My dad loved those cheesy black-and-white westerns you can find free on the streaming channels nowadays.”
Bailey wasn’t listening, or didn’t appear to be, but Gabby was. She was hanging on every word. It was dark outside, and the lights flashed through the windows.
Jack continued. “The good guys wore the white hats, the bad guys wore the black hats, and it wasn’t hard to tell who was going to get gunned down at the end. Funny thing was, my dad would nod and point at the TV. He’d tell me that sooner or later, the bad guys
would always go down. In real life, there’s a penalty to being an asshole, and some pay it early on, and some pay it later. It might not be a bullet between the eyes, it might be a prison sentence, but if you’re an asshole, you’ll soon wind up alone.”
Bailey laughed, obviously thinking it was bullshit, but Gabby didn’t say a word.
At a stoplight, Jack caught the angel staring at him.
“The point is, I never wanted to be a bad guy. But in the police academy, something happened, and I don’t think I’ll ever get to wear a white hat again. I had a friend, Jennifer, and we’d hang out a lot. I figured we would’ve dated if we weren’t in the same program. We both agreed that you don’t shit where you eat. But she was great, and it was nice just being with her. At some point in the future, when we weren’t eating at the same place, I planned on asking her out. There was another guy in the program, Walter Malcolm, of the Malcolm family. That family basically helped build Plum Creek, and Walter knew it. He wanted to be a cop because one brother basically ran the city council, and another was on his way to running the fire department. Walter would run the police department, and then the Malcolms could do whatever the hell they wanted in Plum Creek.”
Jack remembered hating Walt right from the start. He was a confident, smarmy dickhead who saw the police academy as just a rung on the ladder. Jack’s father had told him to just mind his own business, and that had been Jack’s plan. Until that night outside the bar.
Jack stopped at a stoplight, waited until the light turned green, then continued his story. “I’d lost two brothers by then. Four of us left alive. They’d go after that, one after another, until it was just me and Andy. He just died...about a month ago. It was cancer, so it wasn’t as much of a surprise.”
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Gabby whispered.
“Me too. All the death was hard on everyone, including my father. Dad said it was a terrible thing, to bury your children. I can’t imagine.” Jack didn’t want to get caught up in the death of his father, so he kept talking. “Long story short, Friday nights my academy class would go out for drinks at this bar we all liked. Not Pinetree’s—a cop bar on the road to Sedalia called O’Malley’s. One night, it was past midnight...but let me back up, I guess. Or I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” Talking was hard, and his throat kept closing up.
