Luck of the Devil

by Patricia Eimer

  “My. Couch. Why must you have your chemistry on my couch? In my apartment, for that matter? You have a hotel room. Two rooms, in fact. Last time I checked, he was a jerk, you were lying to him about Hope, and he made it hail on my street. None of those acts are key indicators that sexy times will be happening.”

  “Oh, we made up about all of that. We got back to the hotel, and we had a nice long chat.”

  “So you decided to come have oral sex on my couch to celebrate?”

  “No, sweetheart, we came here to tell you what we decided and, well, we got a bit carried away.”

  “A bit carried away? I just saw my father’s naked jiggly bits. On my couch. A couch that I happen to like. That is not ‘a bit carried away.’ That is so far over the line from ‘a bit carried away’ it can no longer see ‘a bit carried away’ in the rearview mirror of its wrongness-mobile.”

  “Dear,” my father said, “I think we’re all in an awkward position. Your mother and I were wrong and we’re sorry, but I think you might be overreacting. Just a little.”

  “No, no, I’m not overreacting. This”—I pointed to myself and waved my hands for emphasis—“is a perfectly reasonable reaction given the situation.”

  My mother smoothed her blouse. “What I think we should do—”

  “What we’re going to do is that I am walking back into my bedroom and closing the door. You have five minutes to get dressed and I am coming back out so I can go to work.”

  “I thought you were off work today,” my father said. “You said you were on vacation.”

  “Apparently, someone is stealing medication from our patients and selling it on the street.”

  “And what does that have to do with you?”

  “Two kids died last night and they had our morphine on them.”

  “And I repeat, what does that have to do with you?”

  “I’m the one who reported the medication missing. That means I need to go back into work, make another statement, and then the police want to talk to me.”

  “Oh, no they don’t.” My couch squeaked, followed by the rustle of fabric. “I’ll call Devanapour.”

  “Why are you calling him? He’s creepy. I don’t care what anyone else says, you can see the green scales from the corner of your eyes when you look at him.”

  “He’s also the best lawyer I have on staff,” Dad said. “And you’re not being questioned by police without someone present.”

  “Dad.” I turned around to face him, thankful he was once again clothed, and put my hands on my hips. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. They just need me to make a statement. If I bring in a high-priced defense attorney, that’s going to make them suspicious.”

  “I don’t care if they’re suspicious. I want you to take a lawyer and Devanapour is the best we’ve got.”

  “I’m not taking him,” I insisted. “If it’s that big of a deal to you, I’ll take one of the hospital’s lawyers with me. Okay?”

  “I still think—”

  “And I’m an adult who can make her own decisions now. So let me make them.”

  “Fine.” He plopped onto the couch and crossed his arms, his brows wrinkled into a pout.

  “Right, so I’m going back to my room to bleach out my brain, and you’re going to do some sort of wonderful trick to make sure my couch is completely sanitized. You have five minutes, tops, before I need to phase and get to work on time, and you know I hate the smell of burnt reality in my bedroom. It stinks up my pillow, so I will be phasing from my living room. That means clothes on and couch sanitized. Five minutes. Do you understand me?”

  “Why are you phasing? You have a car,” he said.

  “I don’t have time to drive in, and, besides, Hope has my car for the day. Now hurry up. I’ve got to go.”

  Without waiting for an answer, I stormed into my bedroom and slammed the door. I walked into my bathroom, stared in the mirror, and shivered. Therapy. I was going to need so much therapy. The problem was, what shrink would believe me?

  I turned on the taps and washed my face. What I’d just walked in on was by far the most disgusting thing I’d ever seen, and I had worked for five years as an emergency room nurse before I started at Rogers Hospital. And on my couch! Ugh, I felt dirty even thinking about it. A knock on the bathroom door startled me. I turned around, putting on my glasses.

  “Yes?” I opened the door.

  My father stood there, looking sheepish. He shifted uncomfortably. “Your mother and I are going now. I just wanted to apologize for the whole… ”

  “Having oral sex on my couch?”

  “Yeah, that.” He nodded and reached into his pants pocket, pulling out his car keys. “And you said your sister had your car, so if you want to take my car for the rest of the day instead of phasing everywhere, you can.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, pushing past him.

  He followed me through my bedroom and into the living room. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s not a big deal. The alley in between the two dumpsters is mostly empty, and even if the occasional bum sees me, no one is going to believe him. Besides, I was going to spend my day watching television, but now I’m going to be deep-cleaning the entire apartment. So no going anywhere for me today.”

  I focused my energy on opening a portal between my living room and the hospital. Power tingled in my veins, licking its way up the length of my spine, and with a final sizzle the fabric of reality tore. “I’ll call you when I get home from work and we can maybe do something? Have dinner, maybe? I know a place you’ll like. It’s a decommissioned church. I know how fond of those you are. And it’s got beer. Good beer.”

  “Okay.” He sounded almost hopeful as I hurried through the portal. “Have a good day at work.”

  “Right, okay, ’bye.” I watched the tear in reality between my apartment and the alley shrink and disappear with a pop.

  “You’re really in for trouble now,” Harold said, floating out of the side of the dumpster where we’d left his body.

  “What are you doing here? I thought Dad cleared your paperwork and you were securely locked in Hell.”

  “Don’t I wish.” Harold floated closer. “First, I ended up in a waiting room that sort of resembled the dean of medicine’s office when I was at Yale. Lots of wood, stiff-backed leather seats, musty-smelling. It was horrible. Then, just when I’m finally getting comfortable, everything disappears and I’m back in the dumpster with my remains. Which, I’d like to let you know, are now covered in biological filth. It’s disgusting. You should be ashamed I’m not getting a proper burial.”

  “You brought it on yourself,” I said. “How could we send you to the morgue looking like you did?”

  “I have no idea, but I deserve better than what is currently happening to my corpse.”

  “I’ll see what I can arrange.”

  “Do that now. Skip going in there to deal with Sally and her touchy-feely people problems and handle my poorly disposed-of remains.”

  “We’ve got time. I’ll go see what Sally wants and come right back out to deal with your body. And then we’ll go back to my apartment, get Dad, and find out how you ended up stuck in Purgatory after your paperwork was finished. It’s a tiny little administrative error. He’ll fix it in no time, and you’ll be off to Hell and out of my hair by dinner.”

  “Then let’s do it now.”

  “Harold, I’ve got to deal with Sally first. You no longer have to follow her regulations. I do. I need this job.”

  “But… ”

  “But what?”

  “I just really have a bad feeling about this. And that’s saying something coming from a ghost.”

  Chapter Nine

  “I thought you’d never get here,” Sally said.

  I blinked twice and wondered why I hadn’t bothered to grab some coffee before I left. Although one look at her hideous outfit was enough to wake anyone up quickly. Don’t let anyone fool you into believing I’m the demonic fashion police, but
there are certain things that just shouldn’t be worn to work. And I firmly believe that a zebra-print miniskirt is one of them. Or a lycra belly top with rhinestones across the chest. Besides, the products required to keep her curly red bouffant in place should never have been allowed into a hospital. If anyone lit a match near her in an oxygen-use area, the whole place would go up like a roman candle.

  “I’m five minutes earlier than I told you I’d be. I got lucky enough to have a bus driver with a lead foot.”

  “No, no, I understand, but why are you taking the bus, sweetheart? Is that little car of yours in the shop? I told you, a good old American-built SUV is what you need. Those little Japanese cars just can’t compete. What would happen if you got into an accident?”

  “I would probably be just fine. The Civic has an excellent crash safety rating and it doesn’t eat me alive at the gas pump.”

  “Well, that’s true.”

  “And, somewhere in the rain forest, a little rhesus monkey is smiling because he can take a clean breath that hasn’t been polluted by smog because of my environmentally conscious choice.” Being green seriously irritated the shit out of my dad. But I didn’t need to tell Sally about Satan’s hatred of ‘Birkenstock-wearing, tree-loving, dirty hippies.’

  “I don’t know about monkeys, but I imagine it’s so much easier to fit it into a parking spot. So that should count for something.”

  “Okay, well enough about my car. Which, since we got off topic, my sister is borrowing. It’s not in the shop. What do you need me to do?”

  “We need you to walk us through what happened one more time before the police arrive. Just so all of our ducks are in a row.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, then they’re going to ask you to provide another specimen for testing in their labs.”

  “And?”

  “They’ll want to go through your purse and your locker. Then they may have some questions of their own.”

  “Okay, sure. I don’t know what I can tell you that I didn’t already tell you yesterday, but I can repeat it all again.”

  “That’s all we need you to do,” Sally assured me.

  I shoved my hands into my hoodie pockets and followed her into a large conference room where I found myself face to face with the hospital administrator, Dr. Turnbow. He was a tiny, white-haired cardiologist who’d become an administrator when his hands began to shake. Next to him sat Doris, our head of nursing, and flanking them were two lawyers with the standard ‘attorney hair’ and black suits. The blonde wore a navy blue shirt, while the brunette had decided to keep it classic with a white button-down and a skinny black pencil skirt. Both of them looked like ferrets. Well-dressed ferrets, but still ferrets.

  “Miss Bettincourt,” Blondie said smoothly, and motioned for me to sit down.

  The hair on the back of my neck rose, and my tail itched. Something smelled wrong about this chick—like cotton candy mixed with rotten fish. She thought she was a shark circling wounded prey and was enjoying it. Apparently, I was her prey.

  Think again, bitch.

  I was starting to think maybe Harold was right. Something didn’t feel right about all of this. I acted on instinct and decided Dad might be right. I needed a lawyer.

  “You know what? I think I’m going to take Sally up on her advice from earlier.”

  “Her advice?” the brunette asked.

  “I think I want a lawyer present. Just to keep everything completely on the up-and-up.” I hated the idea of calling Dad back and asking Devanapour to sit with me, but it looked like my only choice.

  I froze. No, he wasn’t. I grabbed my cell phone out of my pants pocket and opened my contacts.

  “I can act as your counsel,” Blondie said.

  “That’s okay.” I dialed Matt’s number. Thank Evil I’d remembered to enter the numbers for all my tenants into my phone. Helps me screen their complaints better. “My boyfriend is a lawyer. I think he could be here in ten? Twenty minutes?”

  “But—”

  “Then everyone can get all their questions out of the way at once.”

  “I don’t think that’s… ”

  “Hold on, it’s ringing.”

  Matt sounded curious. “Hello?”

  “Hey Matt, this is Faith.”

  “From next door?”

  “Yeah.” How many Faiths did he know? It wasn’t exactly a common name. And it was unheard-of for demons, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Not exactly. Do you think you could meet me at work?”

  “At your work?”

  Blondie was getting impatient.

  I held my finger up and smiled at her in mock apology. “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they need to ask me a few more questions about that missing drug thing I mentioned to you last night over dinner, honey. And you know how you told me I needed to make sure I had a lawyer present… ”

  “And you’re in a room full of people you don’t trust?”

  “I know, sweetheart. I should have called you right after I talked to Sally this morning, but I knew you had that meeting this afternoon. Then I got to thinking about it and didn’t want to upset you, so I went ahead and called.”

  “On the scale of bad, going from I Got Pulled Over for a Broken Taillight, to I May be Implicated in a Felony and They’ve Caught Me at the Scene of the Crime With Blood on My Hands and Stolen Goods in My Purse, where are you?” he said.

  I smiled. Cute. “Yes, I know we talked about how important it was to never be questioned without independent counsel present, but I just really didn’t think you were going to make such a big deal out of it.”

  “I’m at the Municipal Courts Building and can be there in under five minutes.”

  “Of course, dear, I’m sure this will just take an hour or so. Just come by HR and you’ll see.”

  “Just sit down, shut up, and try not to put your foot in your mouth before I get there.” The phone went dead and I shoved it back in my pocket before smiling apologetically at Blondie.

  “So?” She seemed flustered, and the cotton candy smell had been replaced with something that resembled burnt meatloaf. Yep, definitely disappointed I had gotten a lawyer involved.

  “He’s just down the street at the court. He’ll be here in just a few minutes.”

  “Tell him to take his time,” Doris said. “I know this is a hassle and we’re really sorry to bring you in here over your vacation time for this, Faith.”

  “Oh, that’s okay. Sally explained everything.”

  “Well, I just wanted to say how sorry—”

  “I think we’re best served by not speaking about any of this until Miss Bettincourt’s lawyer arrives,” the brunette said.

  “Right.” I smiled tightly at Doris and changed the subject. Matt had told me not to talk, but this witch in her polyester-blend suit just made me want to argue. How much trouble could being polite get me into? “So, anyway, I haven’t seen you in a few weeks. How’s your grandson doing?”

  “Growing big. He’s almost two now and just as adorable as they come. Mean as the Devil and twice as stubborn, but he looks like the angel Gabriel himself.” She reached into her purse and rifled around until she pulled out her phone and handed it to me. I opened her picture program and started flicking through the pictures of her grandson. He was an adorable, chubby blond boy with twinkling blue eyes. But he was much too pale to resemble Gabriel. I wasn’t about to tell a proud grandmother that, though. They’d want psychiatric down here to take part in the questioning as well.

  A sharp knock on the door sounded a few minutes later. Matt must have run to get here this fast. The court building was three blocks away, and HR was in the basement of the hospital. I handed Doris back her phone while Blondie stood and walked to the door.

  Matt brushed past her without saying a word and stalked to where I sat. The tense set of his shoulders and the tight lines around his mouth let me know e
xactly how much trouble I was going to be in for pulling him in on this mess.

  I tried to pretend like this wasn’t the most awkward predicament I had ever gotten myself into. I probably wasn’t fooling anyone, but all I wanted to do was keep him from trying to kill me in front of all these people. “Hi, honey.”

  “Darling,” he said, and turned to stare at the people across the table from me. “I’m Matt Andrews, Miss Bettincourt’s lawyer. And you are?”

  “Janine Birgenhurst.” Blondie stuck her hand out for Matt. Instead of taking her hand, though, Matt turned to the brunette and let Blondie’s hand hang there in space.

  “Corey Valquios,” the brunette said. “We’re part of the hospital’s legal department.”

  “Right,” Matt said and sat without asking Dr. Turnbow or Doris who they were. The other two lawyers didn’t look surprised, and I thought it might be some sort of weird play for dominance. He was here to win and the only people he considered viable competitors were the suits across from him. The rest of us were spectators. And Alpha help me if the whole dominant-lawyer thing he had going on wasn’t all kinds of sexy.

  “Today is just a bit of formal procedure,” the brunette said, and nodded toward me. “Miss Bettincourt didn’t need her own legal counsel present.”

  “But has chosen to avail herself of it, anyway,” Matt said. “Now, what exactly is this about? I know for a fact Miss Bettincourt was not scheduled to work today, and while I’m sure she appreciates the overtime you’ll be paying her for this meeting, I also know she’d rather be enjoying her vacation.”

  “Paying her?” Blondie said.

  “You did call her into her workplace when she wasn’t scheduled to work in relation to work matters. That means Miss Bettincourt must be compensated at her regular rate of pay. Since she’s already being paid her standard hourly rate for vacation time, that now requires you to either refund that time to her or pay her overtime.”

  “That’s—”

  “Perfectly reasonable,” Dr. Turnbow said sternly. “Now, moving on. We simply need Miss Bettincourt to repeat her statement for law enforcement when they arrive. They’ve requested she resubmit to a search of her locker and personal belongings and to another drug test.”