A Barrel of Whiskey - (An Urban Fantasy Whiskey Witches Novel)

by S. M. Blooding

  Disappointment ate at her heart. “Sex. That’s it.”

  “You said you loved me,” he said with a tone that implied he was offering the same thing.

  She watched the telephone poles pass, ignoring the “God saves” billboard with a naked baby on it.

  Dexx tapped the wheel. “I feel like I missed something.”

  So did she. “I don’t just want your body.”

  “Oh, I’m offering you everything that goes with it. My amusing whit. My adorable charm. My guns.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “Um, I guess I am, too?”

  Why did it feel like this conversation was going in circles? She needed to shred it and bring the point front and center. “You’re talking live-in-lover.”

  He opened his mouth to say something.

  “And I’m telling you I’m going to propose to you. Sometime, probably soon.”

  He pulled his head back and closed his lips.

  Men. She stared out the window.

  “For the record,” he said into the silence, “I was talking the same thing, too.”

  No. He wasn’t.

  “Guy speak, Pea. I told you I was going to give you my body. That’s as good as saying I wanted to…” He gestured with his hand. “Stay close to you. Alone. Without having sex with others.”

  Blessed fucking Mother. She looked at him. “As much as I love your body, that’s not what I’m willing to go war over.”

  He batted his eyelashes at her. “I feel like Juliet.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” She searched for something to throw at him and came up empty.

  He grinned. “So, you want to marry me?”

  “I’m reconsidering it. You know, in ten years, murdering you might be more pleasurable.”

  “That would make sex awkward.”

  “Do you have a one track mind?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. I’ve been sleeping in your bed for weeks. We’ve been dancing this dance. For weeks. It’s never been the right time. I’m horny, Pea. My body wants your body. My penis wants to get intimate with your vagina.”

  That was…romantic.

  “Well, my vagina is looking forward to meeting your penis.”

  “Oh, good,” he said with fire. “Because we were starting to worry.”

  She chuckled. She couldn’t help it. “It’s got its own personality?”

  “Obviously, you’ve never had a penis.”

  They pulled up to the brick and glass building that housed the Dallas PD. It was one of the historic buildings. The white stood out from the natural stone surrounding it.

  Dexx parked Jackie in the parking garage and got out of the car. His shoulders were tight, his lips flat.

  Paige stood at Jackie’s trunk. “Dexx.”

  He stopped, his back still turned toward her.

  She put her hand on his arm and tugged gently to get him to turn around.

  He sighed and did as her fingers requested.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t understand.”

  “Yeah. Me, too. Sometimes, I forget you’re a woman.”

  She snorted. “Because I’m the only one in this relationship who can have emotions. Moron.”

  He pulled his lips toward his nose.

  “You’re my best friend, D.”

  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he met her gaze. “You’re mine, too. And I really do want to spend the next few months with you.”

  “Not the rest of our lives?”

  He shrugged. “Let’s try the next few months first. I like being wined and dined.”

  “You’re so delicate.”

  His smiled grimly at her. “You were right. Before. When you said you loved me. Our love means war and we can’t bring that here.”

  That was their reality.

  “So, yeah. Let’s see how the next few months play out.”

  Well, one of them had to be the realist.

  She rose onto her toes and kissed him. No hunger. No desperation.

  A kiss of promise. That was all she could offer.

  His soft lips accepted it with one of his own.

  Paige led them up to the second floor. There wasn’t a desk clerk at the front. Just a wide open floor with glass walls and open desk spaces.

  “Are we supposed to be able to get up here this easy?” Dexx asked.

  Several men and women worked at their desks and around tables. They spoke to each other, busy with their cases. The snippets of conversation she heard were all work related. Where was the last place the victim was? What did the fiber tell them? Why couldn’t they work with the Jeffersonian and have all their cases solved in an episode?

  She’d worked on this floor five years ago, but it hadn’t looked anything like this. Previously, Chief Pendergast’s office had been on the far left.

  His name was still on the door, or at least there was a wall decal that looked like it could be his name on the door. She really needed glasses. Anyway, she headed in that direction and knocked on the door. Unlike the glass walls of the rest of the office space, Chief had real walls with real windows and blinds.

  He sat behind his desk and glanced up when she knocked. He waved her in, then bowed his head again, his cell phone tucked to his ear. “Yeah.” He gestured toward the two seats in front of his desk. “Yeah. No, sir. I understand that.”

  Chief’s office hadn’t changed. He’d played baseball in high school and college and trophies lined the back shelf. Not all his trophies, she wagered. After all, he’d made it through college on his baseball scholarships. He had a few pictures of his wife and their three daughters. They had a bulldog, Rosie.

  It looked like the office of a chief of police.

  “Yes, sir. Okay. All right. Yes. Fine. Will do. Thank you.” He pulled the phone away from his ear with a sigh and hung up. “Never take my job.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  “You should.”

  Paige frowned in confused surprise. “Should what?”

  “Plan on advancing your career.”

  She wanted to laugh. She’d just been fired from the Denver office and he was talking about advancing her career?

  He waived her off.

  “Listen, Chief—”

  “Henry. I think you’ve earned the right to call me that.”

  Before Rachel, they’d been pretty close. Not wildly so, but when he threw a BBQ, he invited her over. When Alma had needed a new floor put down in the kitchen, he’d come by to help. “I didn’t realize you knew my secret.”

  She’d discovered he knew about her background in demons and witchcraft in Denver when she’d been fired.

  Henry shrugged. “Yes. Balnore—your demon teacher—told me to keep it a secret. So, I did.”

  “And you thought that was best?” Especially since he knew that her teacher had been a demon.

  “I had no reason to tell you.” He pulled the corners of his lips down for a quick moment. “You were doing well. All I had to do was to keep you on the straight and narrow. Well, roughly on the straight and narrow. I helped with the paperwork when things got a bit dicey and when you were ready to quit hiding your world. I even helped you destroy evidence.”

  “You what?”

  Henry raised his hand to stop her outrage. “I had to. I knew what was at stake.”

  She’d had a helper. She’d been really lucky, and she’d never realized it. It made her feel stupid, unobservant. She couldn’t be unobservant and be good at her job. “You’re offering me my old job back?”

  He winced and sat back in his black chair. “Not quite.”

  She frowned.

  Dexx resituated in his chair.

  “You see, after you left, things got a bit worse.”

  A knot formed in the base of Paige’s gut. “Describe a ‘bit worse’.”

  Henry rubbed his balding head and leaned forward. “Demon possession is on the rise. We don’t know why. We don’t know what’s going on. We only know there are more demons topside than ever before.
Probably because of you not being around.”

  Paige flinched.

  “I talked to Balnore about that, trying to get you back, but he wouldn’t hear anything about it. Said you did something you couldn’t come back from.”

  “I summoned a demon to kill my mother.”

  Henry raised a surprised eyebrow. “That bitch is still alive.”

  “That is,” Dexx muttered, “still an issue.”

  Henry flailed with his hands. “If she’s still alive, why did they decide your gift had to be banned for five years?”

  “They overreacted.” Paige didn’t want to get into it. This was a part of her life she’d never shared with her boss, with anyone she worked with, really. Well, outside of Dexx. “What matters is that I’m back now.”

  “No. I mean, that’s good. Don’t get me wrong, but, no. That’s not all that matters. I lost people. We lost people because we didn’t have you.”

  She swallowed. What did he want her to say? There was nothing she could say.

  He picked up a case file from behind his desk. He didn’t have to stoop, so it had to be on a side table or something. He tossed it toward her. It landed on the corner of his desk. “Innocent people, Paige.”

  She picked up the folder and opened it.

  Angela Wright. Age thirty-two. Mother of four. Died from unexplained causes. Her heart had been shredded inside of her body.

  “She killed eight people before we exorcised the demon inside her.”

  “You?” Paige asked in surprise, her eyebrows raised. “Exorcised her?”

  Henry nodded, his shoulders slumped with weariness. “I did.”

  “Is that the reason she—” Paige gestured to the file. The reason exorcisms weren’t performed by just anyone was because they could get them wrong. Very wrong. Like letting-a-demon-kill-the-host-on-the-way-out kind of wrong.

  Dexx frowned and pulled the file from her lap to read through it. “Oh. Really? Her heart was shredded?”

  Henry huffed and pulled another file from behind his desk. “Yes. It has something to do with the exorcism. We think. But we don’t know what.”

  Paige stood up and took two steps to see around his desk. Henry had been retrieving those files from a tall stack of files. There were dozens of them. Maybe even a hundred? Most were not thick.

  Dexx had taken the other file Henry had offered. His eyes widened as he closed it. “We need to look at your exorcism.”

  “Or teach him how to do it right,” Paige muttered.

  “Or that.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Balnore?” Paige knelt beside the stack of files and rifled through them gently. All of these were her fault. All these people. The people they killed. Their deaths? Yes. She could have stopped all of that.

  If she’d been there.

  “He hasn’t been returning my calls.” Henry canted his jaw to the side and sighed down at the pile of papers beside his chair. “We really need your help, Paige. You came home at the perfect time.”

  Why had so many people been insistent she come home? Everyone, to include Oriel, the Scribe of Hell? Was it because of this? Did Oriel know what was going on here? What Henry was trying to do?

  Why wouldn’t he have known? He was Hell’s scribe. He must have seen just about everything down there.

  “I haven’t decided if I’m staying.” She didn’t even realize she was going to speak and the words were already out of her mouth.

  “What?” Concerned alarm crashed over Henry’s expression. “But we need you.”

  “Yes, well—” Paige licked her lips. “I could be used just about anywhere.” She didn’t even know if that was true. She didn’t know because she hadn’t done any research. Maybe she should be on the road, like Dexx. Going from one town to the next cleaning up the demon messes?

  Henry released two quick breaths that were almost words as he floundered. “I thought…” He shook his head. “You came home.”

  Oh, man. Seeing him like this, this surprised and at a loss? She felt like a complete ass for entertaining the thought of not staying. “I was fired.”

  “I heard.”

  “So, you know what happened.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No. It wasn’t. However, maybe if I hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  Henry snorted, anger settling around his eyes. He picked up a file and flung it at her. “That happened while you were gone. So did this one. And this one.”

  She batted them away. There was no way of catching them the way he tossed them. “Okay! I get it.” She leaned forward to retrieve them and placed them back on the stack. She stood and walked back to her chair. “These things happen whether I’m here or not.”

  “They do. And, trust me, without you, things get a lot worse.”

  Even though he was making her feel like an ass, she still wasn’t sold on the idea that this was the best place for her.

  “A few people started working these cases on their own.” Henry scratched his eyebrow, all signs of anger erased. “I figured it out pretty quick. With you missing, I was covering those cases on my own.”

  “I’ve never seen you in the field.”

  “You left me no choice.”

  “Sorry.”

  He waved her apology away. “I don’t blame you, but if you’re really sorry, prove it by staying.”

  She wasn’t ready for that yet. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Well, like I said, a few police officers and detectives started working these cases on their own. They weren’t doing too bad, but they didn’t have the information.”

  “You didn’t have the information.”

  “I did, however, have Balnore for the first three years. He was a wealth of information.”

  She remembered how he’d helped her as her gifts were growing, but he was a demon and had other priorities, so he couldn’t really be counted on. “Yes. He is. Okay. What next?”

  “Well, I met with them, got their backgrounds. Most of them are here because they saw something they couldn’t explain or lost someone due to circumstances that didn’t make sense.”

  Dexx shrugged and glanced at Paige. “That’s how I’m here.”

  “Demon hunter.” Henry frowned. “I read your file.”

  “You haven’t read the right one.” Dexx sat up straighter in his chair, then leaned down on his elbow resting on the metal armrest. “I’ll get it to you. The list of demons and other paranormals I’ve taken down is pretty impressive.”

  “Paranormals.” Paige turned in her seat. “And no mention of shape shifters or vampires?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Mentioned? Sure. But I didn’t believe it. I treated them like anything else, and dealt with them.”

  “And that’s not going to come up and bite you in the ass?”

  His face screwed up in “how the fuck should I know” as he shrugged.

  Henry frowned at them both. “I’ve put together a special unit that only deals with these types of cases.”

  “An entire unit?”

  “We cover more than just Dallas. Our jurisdiction covers all of Texas.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “Demons like to possess some pretty powerful people, Paige. I thought you would have figured that out already.”

  She had. But that wasn’t the point at the moment. “Okay. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Henry led them through the desks to another room surrounded by glass on the far end. “My bosses don’t know everything. They only know that I’m in charge of the normal units and a special task unit that handles some of the harder to catch killers.”

  Paige nodded. “And the other detectives? Do they know?”

  “They’ve all seen stuff, Paige. It’s hard to hide anymore.”

  What a strange world she’d just fallen into. She’d come from Denver where she had to hide everything, where there were only two of them working the paranormal, to this? Where all the detectives on the floor knew abo
ut her kind of cases? Even if only just a little.

  The room on the far end was a lot bigger than it appeared. Four desks sat along the exterior wall and four against the interior glass wall. A long couch took the remaining cement wall space. A door led into another room, this one not made of glass. A round table stood in front of the couch and on the far end was another door, this one open enough to show a desk, though not much more.

  A woman, tall, Hispanic, and muscular, perched on the corner of the desk of a shorter man, wide at the shoulders.

  He was black—though, why she was supposed to call him black when his skin was brown was beyond her. His features were strong and he had pale, grey-blue eyes. Wow. Striking.

  Another man, this one slightly frumpy, white with a full head of brown hair, talked on a landline, typing something onto his computer.

  And another woman, tall, her blonde hair swept up into a severe ponytail, worked feverishly on her computer.

  “Hey, guys.” Henry cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles against the closest desk.

  A few of the people outside their office area looked up from their tasks to see what was going on.

  Wow. This was definitely a new experience. Paige was used to flying under the radar. Not being on it.

  “This is Detective Paige Whiskey.”

  The blonde woman quirked her lips to the side, assessing Paige. “I heard you were fired in Denver.”

  Paige nodded. “I was.”

  The frumpy man glanced up, wrapped up his call, and hung up.

  “What happened?” asked the black man with the pale eyes.

  “Governor was possessed by a demon and killed a woman, leaving DNA behind. He died of a heart attack after the demon left.”

  The Hispanic woman folded her arms over her chest. “Are you working with the same exorcism we are, then? I thought there was supposed to be something special about you.”

  “I don’t use exorcisms.”

  “But I do,” Dexx said brightly, taking a step forward. “Dexx Colt. Demon hunter. You’re all doing, basically, what I do. Only, you get paid to do it. Which would be…?” He shook his head and clasped his hands together. “Amazing. Hey, you never said. Does this whole job offer idea come with me getting a job?”