Devil May Care

by Patricia Eimer

  “Thanks.” Dan followed me out into the hallway, oblivious to the fact that Malachi was hovering over his shoulder. Dan had never been very spiritually sensitive so he’d never noticed Malachi before, but I was still worried. Before the Alpha had wiped his memory, he’d seen my father morph into his large, black demon manifestation and rain hellfire down on one of my mom’s short-term boyfriends, and he couldn’t ignore the creatures hidden in the corners of his eyes. He’d earned five years in an inpatient facility for that and if it wasn’t for the Alpha’s intervention last month he’d still be there, claiming that the monsters under the bed were not only real but very, very pissed off.

  We reached the elevator and I hit the button, intent on ignoring my paranormal companions while taking part in perfectly normal, mind numbing, social chitchat. “So, Dan, is this your first time to Pittsburgh?”

  “Yeah.” Dan, completely oblivious of our eavesdroppers, rocked back and forth on his heels. “I don’t normally handle the service calls or any of the sales work. I work in the research division but they sent me out because this is my system.”

  “Well, yay for him.” Malachi floated between us and flipped the engineer standing next to me a bony middle finger. “It failed. They should be firing him and not sending him out to make more mistakes.”

  “Why does it matter who designed the system?” I asked, ignoring Mal completely.

  “I know that system inside and out. If someone cracked it I’m the best person to figure out who was behind it. I’m going to tear into the system, find out what failed, and then find out who caused it to fail. Sure, someone else could probably do it but I can do it faster, more effectively, and if there’s some sort of new bug in there that we haven’t seen before I’m your best chance of fixing it on the fly.”

  Yep, still the same Dan. Still intense and passionate about his work. Still determined to be the very best. Still cocky as hell when it came to how he did his job. And the way his eyes flashed when he was fired up still made me quiver.

  I was desperately trying to ignore that, though. Even if he did make me weak in the knees it wasn’t like anything would come of it. I had Matt and, even if Matt wasn’t in the picture, Dan had his sanity—and his life—back. No amount of knee jelly could make me steal that from him again.

  “Quit looking at him and trying to figure out what might have been,” Malachi ordered. “Remember Angel Boy? Dark hair, big white wings? Lives next door? Will not go crazy from having dinner with your parents?”

  “If you’ll excuse me for a second,” I said to Dan, and pointed down the hallway. “The main desk is right there, but I need to use the bathroom before I start my shift.”

  He gave me a quick nod. “I’ll just go let the charge nurse and the attending on duty know I’m here.”

  I hurried into the women’s room next to the elevators before he could say anything else.

  Harold floated over the bathroom stalls and came to rest on the diaper changing station. “Coast is clear. Now spill it.”

  “Will you two just shut up already?” I turned to look at myself in the mirror and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to make it look presentable. “I can’t even think with you two around.”

  “You need to find a way to minimize your contact with him,” Malachi warned. “Spending time with Dan will turn out bad. For everyone’s sake, stay away from the human. He’s mentally fragile. Discovering our existence a second time could cause him to break beyond even the Alpha’s repair.”

  “I’m not going to have anything to do with him outside of work. There’s no reason for me to go out of my way to see him.” I took a deep breath and puffed out my cheeks before letting it out in one great big huff.

  “Good,” Harold said. “Just pretend he doesn’t exist. Everything will be fine. Soon the temptation will be gone, and you can go back to your relationship with Matt with a clear conscience.”

  “My conscience is fine. There’s nothing going on with Dan. There’s no temptation to fight. I’m just some nurse as far as he’s concerned.”

  “Keep it that way,” Malachi said.

  “I will. I’ll go let Andrea know I’m here early to help out before my shift, then I’ll sit down with Dan and give him the rundown on what happened with the drug thing. After I’ve done that I’ll go on about my day like none of this ever happened.”

  “Don’t sit down with him.” My dread demon floated over to block the door. “Tell him you have no idea what happened and you don’t think you can be of any help. Then ask to be reassigned to another floor until he’s gone. Avoid him like a plague of acne. Or wing rot.”

  “I’m not being reassigned to another floor.”

  “They’re too short staffed on nurses with Faith’s ability up here to let her transfer anyway. The only place she could go is into a surgical rotation, and most of the surgeons are terrified of her so that’s a no-go.” Harold sat on one of the sinks and crossed his arms. “So we need a plan to get him off the hall instead of her.”

  “Wait. Why are the surgeons terrified of me?” I’d never screwed up with a patient before, especially in surgery.

  “They think you’re overly protective of your patients after the whole Threatening to Castrate Bob Duttweiler thing last year,” Harold said.

  “He had it coming. I mean what sort of asshole complains about missing his tee time because of a two-year-old girl’s cardiac surgery complications? Especially after she’s already dead? Losing his balls is the least of what that asshole deserves.”

  “Yes, it is.” Harold uncrossed his arms. “That’s why I had his right to practice at this hospital revoked the first time I got the chance. It’s also the reason I screwed his wife—and his girlfriend. We won’t even talk about the threesome I managed to finagle out of it when the two of them found out about each other.”

  “Harold.” I shook my head and tried to fake disapproval. Harold had always been a bit of a skirt chaser. Okay, more than a bit. But he’d been an amazing pediatrician and, given the number of “corrected” entries I’d seen on some of my patients’ charts lately he wasn’t letting a little thing like death slow him down.

  “So maybe the threesome was to pour salt in the wounds.” He shrugged. “That doesn’t change the fact that Mal is right. You can’t go back out there and start up again with your ex. I know a thing or two about how men and women relate. Post-failed relationship hookups never work out. Plus it will destroy what you’ve got going with Matt.”

  “I’m not hooking up with Dan.” I walked over to the bathroom door and pulled it open. I stepped into the hall, looking around to see if anyone was watching. When had work gotten so complicated? “I’m only going to explain what happened with the MEDTECH system and after that I’ll forget he even exists. Proper procedure and nothing more.”

  “I still don’t like this idea,” Malachi said, sounding gloomy.

  I ignored him and swiped my badge against the ICU security system. “You don’t have to like it.” I gritted my teeth and waited for the door locks to click. When they did, I walked into the PICU, glaring at my demonic companion. “But I still don’t have a choice. It’s protocol.”

  I ran straight into Dan as he came out the door at the same time I was going in.

  “Hi,” he said. “I was just coming to wait for you in the reception area. Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. Why? Do you need something?”

  “Yeah, the charge nurse on duty, Alice—”

  “Andrea,” I corrected.

  “Right. Andrea. She said since you weren’t scheduled yet and they have things under control, we’re clear to go somewhere off the ward to discuss the security breach. She suggested the staff cafeteria.”

  “Just like our first date,” I said under my breath.

  “What?” Dan asked, his eyes wide.

  “I can’t watch this.” Mal floated closer to Harold. “Come on, Dr. Death, if she’s not going to listen to us I know we can be of more use somewhere el
se.”

  My demonic bodyguard and my ghostly friend disappeared, both of them glaring at me. Which was all for the better in my opinion. There was no way I’d be able to keep my cool and deal with their bickering at the same time. “I said that sounds great. Coffee is great. But maybe we should do my handprint scan first? Since we’re already here?”

  “Sure.” He motioned toward the medication room. “Step into my lair, fair maiden. Don’t worry, I’ll only bite if you ask me to.”

  Yeah, that was the problem. Once upon a time I’d asked him to but only one of us remembered what had happened next.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Your lair, huh?” I tried to keep my gaze focused forward and not at him. He still smelled the same—coffee mixed with hot buttered popcorn. I never figured out where that second part came in but it had always clung to him. “I thought it was my lair. After all, I am the oncoming charge nurse.”

  “That may be.” He pulled out a badge and waved it in front of my face, showing that he had temporary access. “But for the next few days your medication room is my new office. So that means it’s temporarily my lair. You’ve been evicted.”

  “Yeah well, that means you’ve got suppository duty. Since it’s your lair they’re your dirty job.”

  “Maybe we’ll have to work out a lair sharing plan. But first, what can you tell me about the MEDTECH system failure last month?” Dan swiped his badge and the door to the medication room popped open.

  “Not much.” I still stood in the open doorway while he made his way into the room. The MEDTECH system failure was the one thing I couldn’t figure out. We’d always suspected the security breach had been part of the scheme Matt’s younger half-brother, Levi, and my former brother-in-law, Boris, had cooked up to steal my father’s and the Alpha’s powers and then rule the world. Like most megalomaniacs they hadn’t thought it all the way through, though, and they were now locked in a pocket of Purgatory, forced to think about what they did.

  In the chaos that followed I’d forgotten about the MEDTECH breach and Levi had never bothered to explain how stealing morphine was related to world domination. I guess he could have planned to drug me and steal my powers, but it seemed a bit more subtle than you would expect from a guy who used car bombs at a local restaurant to draw the Devil into his trap.

  Dan sat on the metal stool next to the counter and ran his finger over the touchpad of his computer. He used two fingers to type his password and then turned to look at me.

  “So walk me through the MEDTECH failure.” He brought a complicated looking program up on the screen. A small black box beeped once and the top lit up, turning blue.

  “What do you want to know? That thing looks sort of spooky, by the way. You’re sure it’s not going to fry me or something?” That would be bad. The Not Dying After Taking a Hit of Electricity thing always made people a bit nervous around you. Given present company it might also be enough to re-break his brain.

  “MEDTECH wouldn’t let me use anything that could increase their legal liability. Besides, why would I want to make a doomsday machine to attack nurses? Politicians maybe, but nurses?”

  “Well you know what they say: people are strange.”

  He raised an eyebrow before standing and gesturing for me to walk through an open doorway and farther into the chilly white medication room. I tried not to gag on the scent of bleach and antiseptic that filled the air. It never mattered what time of day I came in here, the place always sort of reminded me of Hell’s version of a chemistry lab—for souls who thought Purgatory was returning to high school every single day for the rest of eternity.

  “So what happened? With the MEDTECH system, I mean.” Dan placed his hand on my back and guided me to the table where we normally mixed medications, which he was now using as a desk.

  I tried to subtly remove myself from his arm, but this new version of Dan was a bit more touchy-feely than his former incarnation had been. Or had he been groping nurses our entire relationship and I didn’t realize it? “When I left, the MEDTECH system worked. When I came back on shift the next night it didn’t.”

  Dan picked my hand up, caressing it lightly before he reached for an alcohol wipe. Jolts of electricity shot up my arm. Usually touching a human was like sticking your tongue against a battery. Dan? He was like sticking a metal file in an active light socket.

  I felt myself blush when he dragged the wipe over the back of my hand, and trailed his fingers along my wrist. He put my hand on the top of the box and it warmed beneath my touch. He’d definitely acquired a cheeky side since the memory wipe.

  He hit another button and it scanned my hand. “So you have no idea what happened to the security system?”

  The machine finished scanning my hand and I bit my lower lip, trying to ignore the way he was making my heart pound. “Not a thing.”

  He picked my hand up and set it back on the counter before pulling over a second stool for me to sit on. He grabbed a notebook and a pen then looked up at me with a quirked eyebrow. “So tell me what you do know.”

  “When I left everything was working fine. When I came into work the next day the medication room’s locking system still worked, but the cabinet was acting funny.” I sat beside him, facing toward the door, and leaned my back against the table. The lights above me flickered and the cool locker, where we kept narcotics that needed to be refrigerated, clanked. That wasn’t good. I pulled my stool farther away.

  “Funny how?” Dan turned so we were facing the same direction and slouched backward, mimicking my pose.

  “Bernice swiped her badge and it didn’t beep. That’s when we noticed the locker was open. Not all the way, but just a crack, like someone had been in a hurry and hadn’t closed it all the way.”

  He leaned closer and I closed my eyes, trying to remember all the reasons I couldn’t stand the smell of hot buttered popcorn. I drew a blank and focused on thinking about Matt’s face instead. I was a good girlfriend. Even if I was a demon.

  I opened my eyes and noticed he was closer than was strictly professional. Time to focus on the professional. Otherwise I was going to have to turn Dan into a frog and send him to a sorority so I could get that tiny part of my heart lingering on could-have-beens to focus on the here and now instead. Let the sorority tramps try to kiss him back to his more princely form, because in the end, no matter how much he flirted and made my heart pound, Dan wasn’t the guy for me. I cared about Matt, crazy family and all.

  Groaning internally, I pulled away from him and the lights dimmed.

  Nothing strange, I reminded myself. You are a normal woman and nothing weird is going to happen around you tonight. Calm down, already.

  “Keep going,” Dan said. “So you found the medicine cabinet unlocked. What happened next?”

  I scooted backward on my stool, trying to put as much space between us as possible, but on a normal night the medication room was a tight fit. With all his equipment stashed in here there was nowhere else to go.

  “We found the morphine missing and reported it. The hospital opened an investigation and now you’re here. Last I heard the police didn’t have any leads on who did it, but you’ll have to ask someone in admin for more details. I’m just a nurse.”

  “But you have some ideas as to who it might have been?”

  I shook my head. “Not a clue.”

  I put my hands behind my back and wiggled my fingers. We’re finished here, I thought, and projected the idea toward him. He didn’t even blink. It had to be the mind wipe the Alpha had done, making him resistant to my psychic messages. Damn it. “It could have been anyone, and the theft occurred on someone else’s shift. Back then I worked days. I didn’t switch to nights until two weeks ago. After Bernice requested her transfer.”

  “It must have been a tough transition,” Dan suggested. “I’ve never been one to stay up until the wee hours of the morning. My ex-girlfriend…” He stopped and looked at his hands, his face serious.

  My heart was pounding and my s
tomach rolled like imps were inside of it throwing a party. “Your ex-girlfriend…?”

  It shouldn’t matter to me. When I’d asked the Alpha to strip me from Dan’s memories I knew that meant he was going to date other women. That didn’t change the fact that small, irrational parts of my brain were considering ways to make this ex-girlfriend of his feel pain. Lots of pain. Then turn her into a fruit fly—the one transformation even Jesus couldn’t reverse because of a fly’s tiny life span.

  “She used to say I kept grandpa hours,” Dan murmured. “Looking back, our incompatible sleep schedules probably should have been one of those big glaring signs that we shouldn’t be together. Here all I wanted to do was have a romantic dinner and a movie, and she didn’t think a night was complete unless we’d closed every bar in south Chicago.”

  “Oh.” I should have felt bad for him. His ex-girlfriend was right—he did keep grandpa hours—but I’d always found it endearing when he tried so hard to be a traditional romantic. Okay, so he was more likely to take a girl out for burgers and a sci-fi movie. But still, he always tried.

  “Anyway, enough ‘woe is me.’” Dan stood. He brushed past me and opened the door. “That’s the last thing you want to hear about the guy who’s here to fix your security system. So anything else you think I should know about the MEDTECH breach? Anything that maybe didn’t seem related at the time but was just odd now that you think about it?”

  “Not a thing.” I shook my head and tried to hold back my sigh of relief that we were almost done with the questions. Now I could go about finding the most effective way of avoiding the man.

  “Well, thanks.” Dan smiled. “If you think of anything else…”

  “I’ll let you know. But Hospital Admin is probably right about it being some sort of weird power glitch. Like when your power goes out and the alarm clock doesn’t ring. That sort of thing.”

  “Somehow I doubt it.” Dan grimaced and then turned back to his equipment.

  Taking advantage of his dismissal, I left the medication room, closing the door behind me. Right now all I could hope was that he wasn’t nearly as good of a programmer as I remembered. Otherwise he was very quickly going to figure out that there were things going on in this hospital that normal mortals might classify as strange. Or worse.