When Spell Freezes Over (All My Exes Die From Hexes Book 4)

by Killian McRae

  “Hey, you, cocksnot!”

  Igor made for a poor excuse for a gnosis demon, even though that was his official designation. In Jerry’s opinion, the three-hundred-year old sinner who’d been a low-level Ottoman magistrate in the Balkans during his life wasn’t the brightest bulb in the workshop.

  To no surprise, the demon looked up.

  “Yes you, you double-dipped cheese niblet. Come over here.”

  If his own reputation as the longest-lived demon still carried cache, Jerry wasn’t sure. Regardless, the six-foot panty puffer lowered his two-day-old copy of the Boston Globe and moseyed across the street.

  “We have a situation, and we need to ask for a temporary truce.”

  “A temporary... What?” The demon scratched his head. “You think we’re like Spain and Italy going to war over a trade deal or something? The Fallen don’t give truces.”

  “But I’m not asking the Fallen, Igor, I’m asking you.” With his hands up in the air, Jerry raised one foot slowly, then tentatively placed it on the street, working himself outside of the charm’s safety. “Look, you and me never had any qualms with each other, right? And you know what my status was. If I didn’t like you, Kochab would have you painting her nails and kissing her ass for days. Now, I got a situation here, and I’m asking you to do me a solid, in respect to all the times I didn’t condemn you to servicing Paris Hellton.”

  “Paris Hellton.” The demon’s chest shook. “Ah, yeah, that’s good. You always were funny. Tell you what. You tell me what this here so-called situation is, and I’ll decide if it warrants anything.”

  Any trace of jest in Jerry’s voice evaporated. “My wife’s mother is dying.”

  “Nah, get out of town!” the demon croaked. “You mean Dade’s mom is gonna kick it now, with the apocalypse on the horizon and creatures of the Old Testament wanting her dead and all?”

  “One, her name is Romani, because she’s my wife. And two, yes. Come on, Igor. Have a little heart. Give us four hours... Three, and I’ll put in a good word for you with the boss.”

  “You’re human now, why would Lucifer care what you said?”

  So, word hadn’t gotten around then.

  “Still a Pure Soul,” Jerry offered. “Gotta count for something, right?”

  Igor looked unsure. “Why you need my cooperation? I thought your wifey was one of those angel types, able to pop all about God’s green earth at will. Why don’t she just pop there?”

  “She’s upset. Can’t focus long enough to do that. I just...”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Jerry spun to find his brother rolling his eyes as he proceeded to assume a place on the street next to him.

  “Igor, I command you to go take a nice, long walk around the block. A really long walk. You will not tell anyone we spoke, and you will not tell anyone where we have gone. Do you understand?”

  Igor, glass-eyed and entranced, nodded. “Of course, sire. Your command is my will.”

  Jerry looked to Marc, one eyebrow raised.

  Marc shrugged. “What? I’m the devil. I might as well use the privileges it affords me.”

  “You just clocked out that man’s free will, or the very little of it he has left as a demon. Have you no shame?”

  “Old Marc might have been, but devil-Marc? Nah, I’m pretty comfortable with it. Besides, if I let you two maw on, we might still be here when Molly actually dies. Come on, let’s get going. You have the keys?”

  Jerry pulled his cell phone from his coat pocket and began squirreling in commands the moment the demon had turned the corner. “There’s a car two minutes away.”

  “What do you mean, a car? What about Riona’s car?”

  “Dee and I used it when we left for Greece at Christmas. It’s still parked at the airport. I guess that would be one advantage we’ll have if Az and Michael succeed in their doomsday plot; we won’t have to pay off the parking charges.”

  Just then, Riona’s red head peaked out from the door. “We good?”

  With a swipe of his hand, Jerry motioned her down. “I Ubered the car. It will be here in a moment. Marc managed to send the demon packing for a few hours.”

  “If he can do that, why are we all hulled up here?” she asked, bundling herself in her coat.

  “Demons I can command, Keystone. But according to your husband dearest here, standard patrols are changed out every twelve hours, and the fallen check in with the demon assigned to a watch every day. I can tell all the demons to go to Hell—literally—but if a Fallen shows up here I’m powerless to do anything.”

  Squeaky breaks announced the arrival of the car. Jerry and Riona climbed in the back row of the sleek SUV and belted themselves in. Dee and Anwen would stay behind. Ramiel would meet them in Salem. Marc insisted he would accompany them as well, for their own protection. If the Fallen had a demon stationed outside their door, why wouldn’t they have one at Molly’s. All it would take would be one order from Marc, and the problem would be neutralized. At first, Jerry had scoffed at that. Seeing the demonstration of the devil’s least power, however, reassured him there was some use to it.

  Riona didn’t utter a peep all the way from Boston, up the coast, but Jerry didn’t miss the way she kept twisting, untwisting, and re-twisting the tissue in her hands. The last time she’d seen her mother, Jerry suddenly realized, had been at their wedding. While Molly had witnessed the fracas that happened when Marc and Michael showed up, she didn’t seem particularly fazed by it. In fact, Molly revealed to Jerry that her inability to recall the facts of Riona’s conception hadn’t entirely faded. The barrage of memory charms may have eaten away at the details over the years, but Molly Dade had still stored away a few useful recollections among the mothballs of her brain.

  They found Molly in her room with the staff physician hovering over her bed. Riona’s mother looked like a twig floating on a river of gray sheets, dark blue blankets, and tubes hooked to nearby machines sitting on a cart. The doctor met their eyes the moment the door opened, and jumped up to talk to them.

  “You must be her daughter.” He held out a hand.

  Riona shook it. “Yes, I’m her daughter, Riona Romani, and this is my husband, Jerry. And this...”

  The view when all three turned around to look at the fourth man in the hall made Riona and Jerry do a double take. Marc held out a perfectly manicured hand, while the other adjusted the white linen-wrapped piece of cardboard he wore around his neck, over a finely pressed black button-up he’d manage to somehow conjure out of nowhere. Complete the combo with his matching jacket and no-nonsense black slacks, and he looked like a model pulled off the shoot of GQ’s Hot Clergy Who Rock the Pews edition.

  “I’m Father Marcello Angeletti, here to counsel the family and, if needs be, administer last rights.” Not a single blush of sarcasm or machismo. Marc stepped back into his old human persona with the grace of an eel sinking into a cavernous coral reef. “I hope there’s not a problem with my being here?”

  The doctor gave Marc the once over, almost as if he, too, weren’t convinced swimsuit models stood among the ranks of the church. Still, he accepted Marc’s handshake, and that slight gesture was all it took for the devil to brush away any doubt.

  “No, of course not,” Dr. Singh agreed. He shook his head, breaking himself of the fascination with the priest. “Um, yes, well... Mrs. Romani, do you wish to be alone, or is it okay to talk in front of your guests?”

  The contemplation dancing in Riona’s eyes blew away the moment Marc gently placed his hand on her elbow. Her posture eased a bit, though whatever tension was leached got picked up immediately by Jerry. Obviously, the simple movement was as good as the opening volley in a gunfight to him.

  “Thank you, doctor, thank you. But I trust both of these men without qualification.” Her face flattened. “My mother?”

  “I could give you the medical explanation and names of the conditions she’s suffering, and I’d be happy to do that if you insist, but I can more concisely explain i
t like this: Your mother is very old, and because of her smoking and hypertension, combined with her advanced age, she’s simply come to the end. The most I can do is make her comfortable. I have several options for that. Perhaps you’d like to talk the matter over with Molly, see what she wants to do. The staff say she has no Advanced Care Directive on file, so nothing for me to base my treatment on.”

  “Is she...” Riona stumbled for words. “Is she able to talk?”

  A smile on the doctor’s face almost managed to blossom into a laugh. “As if you mother could be silenced by anything.” He opened the door, and passed through, saying, “I’ll give you a few minutes in private.”

  A stool sat by the edge of the bed, a nothing-special functional piece of furniture that Riona made use of. Jerry stood beside her, and Marc took up a post at the end of the bed. Molly’s tiny, withered frame barely moved the blankets strewn over her; only the hiss from the oxygen tank streaming to tubes running through her nose suggested she was breathing at all. A few more pieces of medical paraphernalia beeped and blinked, measuring out the moments.

  Riona weaved her fingers around her mother’s hand and lifted it to her lips as she leaned over the nursing home bed: technically a place to sleep, but also designed to be easily used for medical care.

  Molly’s eyes cracked open as her head pivoted to the left. “God damn it, you’re here.”

  “Sorry I haven’t come by, Momma, I was...”she paused, searching the air for the right word. “...consumed.”

  The old woman’s face brightened. “Of course. Got a world to save,” she huffed out. “Or destroy.”

  Riona looked at her mother, brow furrowed. Did she really know something about what was going on, or was her eminent demise twisting her mind?

  Marc took a step forward. “Molly, I’m Father Angeletti. Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable? Anything you need to discuss before you go?”

  She took note of the new man in her view with equal parts of confusion and doubt. No matter how far gone Molly Dade was, resting skeptic face was still her natural expression.

  “You’re a priest?”

  “Graduated from seminary school, took my vows, haven’t been defrocked.”

  Marc’s assurances must have left Molly a little keyed in. “Enough couching in that answer to fill a therapist’s waiting room, Father. Angeletti, you say? Last time I met you, you said your name was Jerry Romani.”

  Marc looked to Jerry for explanation.

  Jerry shrugged. “Riona and I visited once, when I was still possessing your corpse.”

  Molly chirped back in. “Ha! Possessing your corpse. Got news for you. That’s what we’re all doing. Possessing corpses, until we get to the end. Riona,” she turned back to her daughter, “I asked them not to call you. Being here won’t keep me from dying, and you above all people know what’s going to become of me now.”

  “Momma, don’t say those kind of things. Just because you’re...”

  “Sariel told me.”

  That flat-faced all three of them. Finally, though, it was Jerry who asked, “What do you mean, Sariel told you?”

  Molly threw a dismissive gesture his way. “You know, the angel of death? Though why they call him that, I’ve never got. He doesn’t kill people, you know. Just collects mortal souls after they’ve passed, taking them up or down, depending.” Her confidence fell. “He’ll be taking me down tonight. Told me as much. Told me I was supposed to go last night, but he’d managed to get me one more day.”

  “You’re going to Hell? Wait, what? Momma, how do you know... all this? I thought you didn’t know anything about...”

  “Come on, baby, who did you think bound your magic when you were a kid?” she asked wryly. “You were a little terror back then. Barely out of diapers, making your stuffed animal animate. You sent a teddy bear after me once when I wouldn’t let you have ice cream one night that nearly took one of my toes off. Teddy Ruxpin bastard. Trashed him the next day, and found out how to bind your magic until you got a little older.”

  “You knew?” Riona still couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “First, you’re telling me that you’re also a witch, and second, that you knew the whole time I was growing up that I was one too, and you didn’t share that with me? I walked through a fucking wall. I was positive I was going crazy. When they threw me in the nut house, I thought they were right.”

  “Until I explained it to you and rescued you from there,” Marc said, asserting his alpha hero-ness anyway he could.

  “You mean because I finally unbound her magic and let her save herself,” Jerry topped.

  He fixed Marc in his sites, took two steps, meeting Jerry’s advance, and ended up standing chest-to-chest with the devil. Molly focused on the two men at the end of her bed, fists clenched, jaws gnashing, testosterone flaring.

  She cleared her throat to get their attention. “Just whip them out, boys. There’s a measuring tape over there in the cabinet, and I wouldn’t mind the parting gesture of a peep show. Otherwise, if you don’t mind, I got a few things to tell my daughter before I die since she just had to show up.”

  How such a tiny woman could make two titans of Hell’s all-stars, past and present, squirm, Riona wasn’t sure. She sure hoped she inherited that trait, however. She had a feeling it would come in handy in years to come.

  With the men mollified, Molly looked back to her daughter. “I was a witch, but it took every bit of my magic to contain yours. It drained me. And even though two angels took turns slicing up my memories of your father like sushi, I remembered who you were meant to be. I knew I was raising an advendavi, and most people in the know don’t like prophets. I knew if anyone else found out what you really were, there was as much of a chance of you dying as there was that they’d kidnap you, free your powers, and try to manipulate you to fight for whatever godforsaken quest they were on. I bound you to protect you, and I kept you ignorant to protect both of us.”

  “I think there’s more to being a prophet than Ramiel let on,” Riona complained.

  Marc’s face was blank, but Jerry took on his usual know-it-all role.

  He placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Given who your father is... There’s only ever been one other person in the whole history of mortals with abilities remotely similar to yours, and he drastically changed the structure of the world.”

  Marc’s eyes grew big. “Who?”

  “He’s the reason you’re a priest, Priest,” Jerry said.

  Marc instinctively fingered his collar. “Jesus?”

  Jerry rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. I’m so talking about JC. Oh goddess in grief, you Christians are something else.”

  Molly reached for her daughter’s hand. “You really have a thing for difficult men, don’t you?”

  “Why do you think I sometimes went after women instead? But ignore them. So that’s why these powers suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Michael really is a ripe bastard, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is. I’ve done what I could to block him from your life, took his heavenly blade and vanquished him before you were born. I’m sorry I... I’m sorry I didn’t do more. And I’m sorry I couldn’t be the kind of mother you deserved.”

  “Oh, Momma. Don’t. You were a great mother.”

  “And you’ve always been a great liar.” A smile crept on to Molly’s face as she lifted a feeble hand to Riona’s cheek. “But you lie for the right reasons. It’s okay, baby doll. I know I was mean, irritable, even came down on you hard a few times. You’ve always had such a strong spirit, I just didn’t know how to handle it.”

  “You handled it as best you could.” Riona turned her mother’s hand over and kissed the palm. “I love you.”

  “You too. Now, I think that’s all. I’m ready, Sariel. You did good by me.”

  As though it had always been so, two drop-dead gorgeous men suddenly appeared in the room. One, the more familiar, was Ramiel. He crossed to Riona like a protective big brother and draped an arm over her
shoulder. The other, a tall, slender man who appeared Asian in his features, took a seat on the edge of Molly’s bed.

  “I can give you maybe an hour more,” he said gently. “If you need it.”

  “No, it’s time. I’m ready. Except...” Molly’s eyes found out each of the others in quick succession. “I don’t suppose any of you have a cigarette?”

  Jerry dared to smile, and Riona let out a mottled laugh. Marc, however, reached inside the back pocket of his black slacks.

  “They always told me these things were going to kill me,” he said. “Funny, I kinda thought after I died, the cravings would finally go away. Doesn’t seem to be the case.”

  Jerry rolled his eyes. “Yeah, because Hell is a place where you can easily drop your bad habits.”

  Sariel took Molly’s hand. “As much as I’d like to comfort you, Molly, I don’t think it’s a good idea in respect for the other tenants of this facility.”

  “Shit, you’re probably right. Uppity angel.”

  At that moment, the black-haired angel seemed to realize there were others in the room. “Hello, again, Riona. We met before, but maybe you don’t remember. I was wearing a different skin then.”

  Jerry, eyebrow arched, asked, “When did you meet the angel of death?”

  But it was Sariel who answered on her behalf. “Only in passing, in the Nephilim realm. You were with Persephone then, and you’d thought—or maybe, she thought—I wouldn’t recognize who, or what, you are.”

  Marc stepped up from the background. “We’ve met before too, but maybe you don’t remember.”

  The angel’s eyes narrowed as he posited a study on the priest. “Ah, yes. Not too long ago. You were a southbound passenger. You’ve changed a bit since then. ‘Upgraded,’ as the mortals of this era are fond of saying.” His head swiveled, and he focused on Jerry. “And you were the one who figured out the resurrection route. Is this the body they gave you to possess? It’s a little on the short side, isn’t it?”