Kiss & Hell

by Cassidy, Dakota

  Yanking open her fridge once more, she dug out the insulin, reaching into the drawer beside it to find the packaged needles she kept there for dog number one. She filled the syringe as Kellen’s chestnut-colored head peeked around the door frame of her kitchen and her pack tore around the corner, screeching to a halt at her feet. Positioning her diabetic pooch in her arms, Delaney injected his meds with a swift, practiced hand.

  “Mind if I shower—or is the water still only hot from nine in the morning until ten forty-five?” he joked. His jaw was unshaven, his hazel eyes bleary. Probably from the long hours he put in at his after-school program for gifted children. He was a good teacher. He’d be an even better father, and that made her smile. She just might have offspring by proxy if Kellen ever settled down.

  Delaney chuckled, then looked at her microwave clock. “You’ve got, like, eight minutes.”

  Her brood stared after Kellen’s broad back, while he hurried off to catch the last of the hot water she’d see until tomorrow. And that reminded her . . . her hands went to her hips, her eyes zeroed in on her “pack.” Hah! Pack, schmack. “Hey, philistines,” she called to them. Five and a half pairs of eyes sought hers. Well, four and a half if you counted out her sightless angel.

  Six bodies lined up dutifully as though a treat were in order. “Oh, no, no, no. You guys are in deep doody with me. Wanna tell me what all that cozying up to Clyde was all about? Haven’t I taught you, Grasshoppers? Demons are bad, bad, bad, and there you all were, climbing all over him like he was a mountain of T-bones. You’ve got some splainin’ to do. All of you. Now let’s get some sleep. Off to bed.” She gave them a stern look before flipping the lights off in the kitchen and heading to her bedroom.

  The pitter-patter of paws followed closely behind, each of them jumping up on the bed and sniffing the place where Clyde had sat not an hour before with looks of longing on their wee puppy mugs.

  Delaney’s lips pursed. What the hell was going on? Her dogs were as sensitive as she was to a bad spirit. How could they mourn his loss?

  She grabbed the muzzle on her anxiety-laden pooch, turning the dog to face her. “Sweetums? What about horns and scales don’t you get? He’s a bad spirit. Now knock it off and all of you settle down.” Dog number three turned her wet, brown nose up at Delaney, returning to the task at hand, which was apparently to dig to China through the blanket until they all found out where Clyde had gone.

  That should be reason enough to give her pause as she climbed into bed, soothed by the sound of Kellen’s presence in her bathroom.

  But she just wasn’t ready to go there.

  For now he was gone.

  Gone was good.

  As her eyes drifted closed, from the end of her bed a shimmer of multicolored light interrupted her fall into oblivion.

  Was it asking too much that a medium get some shut-eye? If this kept up, she wouldn’t be able to help people cross the street, let alone cross over into their own eternal utopia.

  Hunkering down under the covers, she muttered, “Not now, Charlie. Everything’s fine. Promise. Go find some movie grip to toy with because this medium is ass fried.”

  His smile lifted his mustache—a smile that was less like a comfort and more like a lethal promise of mayhem to come. The craggy lines of his face revealed a much harder man than was the reality of the total softy he really was. In death, he was as raw biker sexy as he’d been in his prime in the seventies. “Death Wish,” he said, his lips moving out of sync with his voice. Sometimes, when a spirit like Charlie came along, it was like watching an old Japanese movie translated to English—their lips moved long before the words came out.

  She knew this was his way of offering his supernatural, albeit sometimes destructive, help, and it left her touched. Delaney yawned and flashed him a sleepy smile. “Nuh-uh, Mr. Bronson. I know you’d like to whip out an AK-47 and trash all moving matter, but I don’t need that kind of help. No Death Wish tactics tonight. It’ll all be fine. The bad guy’s gone now, and that means I don’t need Rambo-like help.” She was prepared for that smile to turn to disapproval at the mere mention of another infamous movie and an even more popular actor. “And don’t frown at me. You didn’t corner the market on vigilante-like revenge. Think of it as passing the movie star action-adventure torch to Sylvester, and get over yourself. But thanks for thinking of me. You’re a real peach.” Her smile was warm when she winked.

  His nod was short, his hand rising in a succinct wave before he vanished, leaving her feeling all warm and smooshy.

  How many people could say Charles Bronson had just dropped by to offer up his own brand of justice in her defense?

  Sometimes, there was small compensation for the fact that she’d probably never have real live sex again unless it was via a battery-operated love tool.

  Really small.

  three

  “Darlink?”

  Delaney wiped the back of her hand over the corner of her mouth, searching for stray drool. Her hair clung to her eyelashes and her right arm was sore from being pressed beneath her chest. Waking up to her friend’s light Spanish accent, and the scent of her sophisticated perfume, might have made her smile if the night before hadn’t been so craptacular. “Marcella?”

  A husky chuckle drifted to her ears. Husky and sensual and totally Marcella. “Not so in the flesh,” she confirmed.

  Delaney struggled to open her eyes, reaching for whatever dog was in her immediate vicinity so they could snuggle. She came up dogless. Kellen must have taken them out for her. “Where are the dogs and what time is it?”

  “Your cranky brother has the creatures and it’s time to get up.”

  She felt Marcella’s weight shift on the end of the bed. She could picture her striking demon friend from behind her closed eyelids. Darkly voluptuous, olive skinned, green eyed, probably dressed in a curve-hugging black dress with a pair of matching heels, draped casually at the foot of her bed. Yet she kept her eyes closed. “I had a spectacularly shitty night last night, and you’d know all about that if you’d answered my nine hundred voice-mail messages. But my forecast is much brighter this morning. I’m all out of immediate danger right now—so be a good girlfriend and go catch up on your reality TV or something. Wife Swap was on this week. You don’t want to miss that. Hook up with me in a couple of hours, ’kay?”

  “No can do, chica.”

  Delaney groaned with a pathetic whine, rolling to her side. “Why is it that you can’t do? I’m not getting any younger here. You, on the other hand, are forever young. I don’t want to cast stones, but I lost my directions to the Fountain of Youth. I need some sleep here.”

  Marcella snorted. Delaney could visualize the delicate flare of her nostrils. “Don’t you all go waving my misfortune in my face there, girlie. It has very few perks—one of them being eternal youth—but if you could get a gander at my demon form, you’d grow a mustache. It’s unsightly. Heinous even. Now, get up, my pretty ghost magnet. We have business to attend to.” Marcella grabbed her by the forearm, pulling her to an unwilling, upright position and propping a pillow behind her back.

  Delaney dragged the covers with her, her eyes still closed. “Is there green tea involved in this getting up? Because if there’s no tea, I just know I won’t play well with others.”

  Marcella tugged a lock of her hair. “I don’t do domestic, and you know it. No tea. But there is something that might interest you. You can’t see it unless you open your eyes.”

  “If you were really my BFF, you wouldn’t make me do this.”

  “Because I’m your BFF, I’m making you do this. Open ’em, or I’ll set your curtains on fire with my bad aim.”

  Delaney finally laughed, opening her eyes with a slow shift of her eyelids. She snapped them shut much more quickly. “Yippee and skippee. Is that what I think it is?”

  Marcella flicked her arm with what Delaney guessed was a French-manicured fingertip. “It is, mi amiga. Now up with you so we can get this over with.”

  �
��Nice coup.”

  “Yeahhhh,” she agreed with smug satisfaction. “Even if I do say so myself. Now up, my friend. We have business to attend to.”

  “Will it be messy? I can’t afford to clean the carpets this month. The till is dry.” Resentment for Clyde’s séance crashing resettled in her craw.

  Marcella’s green eyes captured hers with a familiar gleam in them. “When isn’t it ever messy with me, D? No one knows better than you do, my demon skills”—she leaned in to Delaney, whispering the words—“suck hairy balls, for lack of a better word.”

  “That’s a phrase,” Delaney corrected.

  She sat back on the bed with a smile. “What-the-hell-ever. Anyway, seeing as I’m all ju got—um, you got, we’ll just have to make lemons out of lemonade.”

  “Lemonade out of lemons,” a deep voice over by the radiator in her room corrected.

  Marcella slipped off the bed as though she floated on a cloud. Leaning down, she dragged a slim finger over the hard shoulder that was duct-taped to Delaney’s radiator. “Whatever, darling. You Americans and your language are just something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to. Every time I think I get it—I don’t. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think explanations are in order here, don’t you?”

  Delaney was off the bed in a shot, stumbling on her sheets, almost falling into Clyde’s duct-taped lap. When the full picture became clear, it made her gasp. Poor Clyde held hostage by a mountain of sticky silver tape. “You captured him with duct tape, Marcella? Duct tape? What about this says securing the bad demon to you? This shows shoddy workmanship, if you ask me, Ms. Demonli cious.”

  Marcella gave her long, black hair an indignant swish over her shoulder. “I was in a pinch, okay? He was lingering right here in your bedroom, hovering over your dead-to-the-world body—I had to act fast. Jesus, you’d think you’d at least notice the circle of salt I made around him so he’d be immobilized—just like you taught me. Can you even imagine what kind of freakin’ facial peel I’d have been up against if I had gotten any of it on me?” She shuddered. “Oh, and I think you’re clean out of Morton. We can shop once we rid ourselves of him. But not before we find out what he wants—or more specifically, what Lucifer wants.” Her green eyes narrowed in on Clyde, her full lips tilted in a seductive smile. “Though, I have to admit, the human form he chose is pleasant on the eye, eh, chica?” She glanced at Delaney and mouthed the word meow.

  Yeah, like big meow. The hell she’d admit that out loud, no matter how true. But Marcella, sexually charged demon that she was, had no filter from brain to mouth when it came to expressing her sexuality. A hottie was a hottie in her world. They never lasted longer than a night for Marcella, but Delaney had heard the stories. “Hey! Libido check. Forget what he looks like. He doesn’t even really look like that. That’s just some body he chose from a magazine cover or something, and you know it,” Delaney chastised, moving in to examine the job Marcella’d done.

  Despite the fact that Clyde looked as though he wasn’t going anywhere, and with all that duct tape around him, he might never go anywhere again, she wasn’t even a little ashamed to admit, she hated the prospect of violence during expulsion. And if screaming fireballs and iffy attempts at levitation were involved, especially where Marcella was concerned, Clyde was leaving this plane violently if not expertly. It just took Marcella time to warm up.

  “Then he chose well, no?” she purred again from deep within her throat, the rasp of her words slow and sensual.

  Delaney nudged her with an exaggerated sigh. “Focus, tart. He’s gotta bounce. Where he goes or if he goes with you before he gets there isn’t for me to judge.” Looking down at Clyde, fastened to her radiator with more duct tape than a Home Depot shelf and a circle of thick salt around him to keep him from escaping, her heart began to speed up. What could Lucifer possibly gain by sending him? Unless Clyde was just letting her think he was a lesser demon . . . “Now, suggestions on how to do that?”

  Marcella shook her head stubbornly, bracing a hand on the small of her back. “Not until we find out what’s going on. Your message said he came here to bring you back to that scum Lucifer. I want to know why. Is the head badass all of a sudden upset that you’ve kept a few souls from his slimy clutches? Or is he doing this because I help you keep spirits from ending up just like me? That worries me, D. That worries me all the time. That maybe that weenie Beelzebub will exact revenge on me through you. I won’t have it.” She returned her smoldering gaze to Clyde. “So, handsome,” Marcella looked down at him and purred, “spill.”

  Delaney reached for the robe she’d left in the corner of her room last night, never taking her eyes off Clyde. The Clyde who’d mastered a very convincingly baffled expression.

  Bra-vo, ba-by.

  He was crazy tight with the “I don’t get it.”

  She didn’t need to hear why he was here. She was almost certain why he was here. To make good on a threat the devil’d made almost fifteen years ago. A threat she’d never shared with anyone but Kellen. A threat that now made her wonder if she’d drawn unwanted attention to her friend who always dropped everything on a dime to help her.

  Oh, hellz, no.

  Involving Marcella might make an already hinky Lucifer take out his ire on her. There hadn’t been a lot of thought about repercussions when she’d dialed Marcella last night. The last thing her bound-to-Hell pal needed was Lucifer’s attention focused on her.

  The last.

  He wasn’t one hundred percent in love with the fact that Marcella refused to spread his evil, but he let her be, in favor of bigger havoc to wreak. She was small potatoes compared to most demons, who willingly followed Lucifer. According to Marcella, each new demon, upon creation, came readily equipped with a fireball or two, maybe some levitating abilities, but if you didn’t hone those skills, create chaos on a regular basis, you didn’t get much further than that. Sort of a use it or lose it rule.

  Marcella flat-out refused to play demon games, and so far, the horned one hadn’t seemed terribly interested that she helped Delaney cross people over, or even that she’d stopped a bunch of possessions in her time. The theory they’d concocted about Lucifer’s indifference to it was simple. No demon wanted to go back to his level-four Hell boss and tell them they’d screwed up something as simple as a possession or talking someone into their way of life. Don’t ask, don’t tell. What your level boss didn’t know couldn’t hurt him—or, in the end, you. And it couldn’t be reported to Satan.

  So Marcella’d become a mere blip on Hell’s screen.

  But Lucifer might not be so in the game if he knew Marcella was helping to thwart an effort that had obviously been a long time in the making. One he’d ordered by sending Clyde with a specific message.

  If she’d been a trifle concerned last night, that all changed with the idea that Marcella could be hurt. Fear sliced through her—fear and indecision. Delaney put a hand on Marcella’s shoulder, hoping she wouldn’t pick up on the fact that she was about to tell her a major, honkin’ lie. “Know what, Marcella? Forget why he’s here. In fact, forget I called you. I think I can handle this all on my own.” Her words were clearly unsteady, absolutely unsure, but she wouldn’t risk Marcella’s involvement.

  “You mean forget it? Just like that?” Marcella snapped her slender fingers together. “Um, no. You were freaked out on the phone last night, señorita. You said Clyde had come to collect you and bring you back to Hell, something I don’t get because he can’t get you there without whacking you and he can’t whack you, according to the rules of Hell—unless he wins your favor by deceit, which will never happen with someone like you. Though, he can definitely freak you the fuck out—make you see and do horrific things as a result if your will is even a little weak, but that ain’t you, guapa. Regardless, that’s not something I’ll ever let happen if I can prevent it. But it’s a statement I still don’t understand because you’re hardly presenting a problem to Lucifer. Most of the spirits you cross over know exactly
where they want to go, and it ain’t down below. So no go. Call me curious, but I’m in it for the long haul.”

  Delaney rolled her tongue in her cheek. Fuck. She had said she was a little freaked in her voice-mail message when Clyde claimed he was sent to take her to Hell. But wasn’t that a demon’s goal to begin with? To drag your ass back to Purgatory by hook or by contract? “Well, take your curious ass home. All demons make threats, and you know it. I’d never had a direct hit like that before that was so personal, so I got a little hinky. But I’m over it. Now, I appreciate the duct tape and the circle of death constructed in salt, but I think I know exactly what to do.” Which was an utter and complete lie. She didn’t know much more about expelling a demon than nuns knew about riding cowgirl, but if it meant keeping Marcella from hacking off Lucifer, so be it.

  Marcella’s dark head tilted to the left, the sleek strands of her hair almost brushing her elbow bent at her hip. “Ah, no. I went to a lot of trouble to anchor our compadre’s ass to your radiator—a lot—and not without risk to my personal well-being. I deserve some answers. Besides, you do realize, if Lucifer sent him, and we manage to get rid of him, which isn’t looking like a problem seeing as I wrestled him with only duct tape, that that chicken shit will just send someone else in his place. Maybe someone who’s bigger and badder. I say we deal with the wussy demon just for fun, because he has to go no matter what, and while we’re at it, we get the 411. Know what I mean, ghost lady?”

  She knew exactly what Marcella meant. Delaney’s thoughts raced, her hands becoming ice-cold. If Lucifer wanted her and this demon didn’t nab her, there’d be more to follow. But that still didn’t mean Marcella had to be involved. And she definitely didn’t want Marcella to know why the devil had come calling via Clyde. The less she knew, the better off she was. “I know just what you mean, but I also know you don’t need to be involved. It’s like you said—he’s clearly not a very powerful demon. I just got all whacked when he said he wanted to take me to Hell. But again: so over it now. So go on—get to gettin’. Isn’t there a sale at Pier 1 today? I bet they have pillows on sale . . .” she enticed with a smile and a singing lilt to her voice, running a hand over her robin’s egg blue nightgown. Which was just a little skimpy to be prancing around with in front of a demon.