Devil May Care

by Patricia Eimer

  Dan went into his introductory spiel, and I glanced at the Alpha and Lisa, who were having an intense conversation, their heads bent low together. He peeked over at me and Harold before whispering in her ear again. I turned back to Dan. Whatever those two were up to, I didn’t want to be involved.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Four hours later, I was so sick of hearing about the not-so-revolutionary advances that MEDTECH had made in hospital security systems that I was willing to barter my powers for a reprieve. Chaos protect me, I was ready to barter everyone’s powers for a chance to get out of here.

  “So everyone.” Dan clapped his hands together at the front of the room. “I think that’s everything. If we have no further questions—”

  Before he could even finish what he was saying medical personnel stood and started gathering their stuff. I rose and stretched, pulling my arms up over my head and cracking my neck. I was slowly reaching the point in my demonic lifespan where I didn’t actually have to sleep but right this second that was all I wanted to do. I wrinkled my nose at a flaky looking stain on my scrub shirt. Scratch that. I wanted a shower and then I was going to bury my head underneath a pillow and stay there till I had no other choice.

  “I’ll see you later.” Lisa grabbed her stuff and brushed past me like her tail was on fire.

  “Wait, where are you going?” I asked. “I thought we were going home?”

  “I have somewhere I need to be,” Lisa called out over her shoulder, bolting out of the room.

  “But how are you going to get home? We carpooled,” I called out, even though she was long gone. My stomach twisted as I watched people stream out of the room behind her. It was probably wedding planning, or something like that, but the thing was, Lisa’d never blown me off before now. Somehow, I knew it wasn’t because she’d decided to go looking for a cake topper.

  “Bettincourt. Paging Faith Bettincourt,” the PA system blared. I groaned. Two other nurses gave me sympathetic grins and then beat a hasty retreat. Not that I blamed them. If I’d heard them page someone else I’d have gotten out of there, too. Who knew which person they’d page next?

  I walked over to the phone sitting on the top of the podium Dan had been using earlier and picked up the receiver. “This is Faith Bettincourt. What can I do for you?”

  “Faith?” Sally simpered on the other end of the phone. “Do you have a few minutes?”

  “Sure, Sally.” I held back a sigh. “What do you need?”

  “Well, Detective Kastellero stopped by my office and told me that he’d seen you this morning…”

  “Of course he did.” Detective Kastellero was totally the grown up version of that tattle-tale you went to grade school with. Except this time I wasn’t going to lose my recess for not sharing the red crayon. If he pushed his suspicions enough, the hospital could request that I take a leave of absence to investigate any possible connections between me and the Cosgrove family.

  “So for legal reasons,” Sally continued like I hadn’t even spoken. “We need you to stop by the human resources department and schedule a meeting with the hospital’s legal department.”

  “I have to go talk to the lawyers?” I heard my voice go unnaturally high and sucked in a breath, trying to calm down.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Dan standing beside me, his eyes filled with concern. “You okay?” he mouthed.

  I put my hand over the receiver and nodded. “Kastellero,” I whispered.

  “Ass.” Dan picked up the last of his stuff and gave me a sympathetic smile before leaving me alone in the now empty conference room.

  “You’re not in trouble or anything,” Sally reassured me. “They just need to talk to you.”

  “Fine.” I ran a hand through my messy hair. “I’ll come on over.”

  “Oh, well, actually…” Sally gave a light laugh that I knew meant she was going to screw me over further. “I’m on my way to a meeting. So if you could just come on over and wait for me I should be there in a bit.”

  “A bit?” My heart sank. I knew how long those administrative meetings could go. Mainly because those people loved to talk.

  “A half hour tops,” Sally assured me.

  “A half—” I heard a click and then the phone line went dead. Damn it. Not only was she keeping me from going home and taking a nap, now she’d hung up on me!

  Two hours later I was tired, cranky, and not in the mood to wait around for an elevator. Pushing the door open to the Northeast stairwell, I let myself inside the tiny landing and looked around. Just like I expected. Completely empty. I glanced around once more, just to make sure, and then opened a narrow phase portal and stepped from the stairwell to the corner of the parking garage where I’d left my car way too many hours before.

  “Faith? Is that you?”

  Crap. Had I really just phased in front of man who was not supposed to ever learn that paranormal creatures existed? Now I had no choice but to mind wipe him. My day was getting better by the minute.

  “What are you doing here?” I smoothed my fingers over my bun, then pulled out the pins so my hair hung in a low ponytail at the nape of my neck. “I thought you would have left already. Didn’t you work graveyard shift last night?”

  “You did, too. But here we are.” Dan sauntered over to my car, and leaned against my rear driver’s side door. “I was taking a call from senior management at MEDTECH. The Chicago Police just took my boss in for questioning.”

  “Damn.” I leaned against the back of my car. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” He stood next to me, and ran his fingers down my back.

  “I have a boyfriend.” I jerked away and gave him a dirty look. “Remember?”

  “Right. Matt the Lawyer, who does mixed martial arts and has homicidal tendencies. He looked like a tool.”

  “He’s not a tool.”

  “Oh yeah, definitely a tool.”

  “Look, it’s just been a long day and I’ve got an even longer one tomorrow. I get to come in early and meet with Legal so they can dissect everything I may have inadvertently said to Detective Kastellero in case the hospital finds itself in court for some reason.”

  “Great.” Dan smirked. “That’s why you look like you’re about ready to cry.”

  “I’m not ready to cry.” I undid my ponytail and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to keep my horns firmly inside my skull. “I’m just tired.”

  “Faith.” He grabbed my other hand. “You know you can talk to me, right? I mean, besides my constant flirting I’d like to think I’m a good guy.”

  “Except for when your lips get a mind of their own and decide to attack me.”

  “Yeah, besides then.” He gave my fingers a squeeze. “So look, whatever is bothering you, you can tell me about it. It’ll be our secret. I promise.”

  “I can’t.” My phone vibrated and I snagged it out of my scrub top pocket. Lisa. I sent the call to voicemail, but it rang again.

  “Well whatever it is…” Dan took my phone out of my hand and answered it. He pressed the phone against my ear and stepped back when I took it. “I hope you can talk to someone about it.”

  I nodded at him and then swallowed. “Hello?”

  “Faith!” Lisa sounded frantic.

  “Lisa?” I felt my heart begin to pound. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  “Is Tolliver with you?”

  “No.” I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me and Dan reached over to touch my shoulder, trying to comfort me. “I’m still at the hospital. Why would Tolliver be with me?”

  “He’s missing,” Lisa said, her voice panicky. “No one knows where he is.”

  “He’s what?” I asked.

  “Tolliver is gone.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “What? What do you mean Tolliver is gone?” My heart was pounding and a prickle of fear ran up my spine. Children of the Devil didn’t just go missing. Not because we were paranormal creatures, but because our father thought
our safety required us to be within reach at all times. If Tolliver was actually missing, that meant that whoever had taken him wasn’t messing around.

  Dan looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “Where are you, Lisa?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

  Her voice was thick and I could hear the echo of her pacing across the hardwood floors in their new place. “Our new apartment. We were supposed to grab something to eat before he went to your dad’s baseball game for a bachelor party thing. But the door was wide open and he’s not here.”

  “Maybe he’s out getting something and just forgot to latch it behind him? You know Tolliver. He never thinks about that sort of stuff. Have you tried his phone?” I asked.

  “There are feathers everywhere,” she said and her voice cracked, “and a big black spot from where he threw hellfire at someone.”

  “Shit.” I turned my back on Dan, trying to keep my composure. “Get everyone together at my apartment. I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

  “Should I call Matt, too?” she asked. “I mean normally I would but…”

  “We don’t know if that crazy mother of his might have had something to do with it,” I said. Shit. My parents’ wedding was in two days, my brother was missing, my boyfriend’s family might be involved, and I was trapped here with the one guy whose mind might crack if I said the wrong thing. “Don’t call him. Let me handle it. Let’s just keep it in the family for right now.”

  “Right,” Lisa said. “Just demons. Gotcha. Please get here, Faith. If something’s happened to Tolliver…”

  “Lisa, we’ll find him. I promise. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “Okay.” Lisa sniffed. “Promise me you’ll be careful?

  “You, too.” I hung up my phone and turned to Dan.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “That was Lisa. There’s been an emergency and they need me at home.”

  “Then you better go.” He opened the driver’s side door of my car for me and stepped back. “Give me a call if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “I will.” I slipped behind the wheel and pulled the door closed.

  Once I reached an empty alley next to the Health Department, I focused every bit of my energy on opening a portal big enough to drive my car through. The fabric of reality shredded with a loud, whip-like crack and I punched it, sliding the car into a parking spot on the street in front of my building. After throwing it in park, I rushed inside, not even bothering to wait for the hole between spaces to stitch itself back up.

  I sprinted up the front steps and threw the door open, skidding to a halt in the front vestibule. Dad, Malachi, Harold, and a few high-ranked demons clustered around the open doorway.

  Mom and Hope were sitting on the steps with Lisa wedged between them. One look at Dad’s clenched jaw and the tight line of Malachi’s shoulders told me that she’d been right. Tolliver hadn’t just popped out for a gallon of milk and left the door open.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I came home after we split up and found the door standing wide open,” Lisa looked up at me with red-rimmed eyes and sniffled. “The place is trashed. He’s not here. So I tried his cell phone and got his voicemail. ”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “Then I called him again. That’s when I heard his phone buzzing on the kitchen counter,” Lisa whispered. “Tolliver would have never gone anywhere without his phone. Not by choice.”

  “Sprites,” my father said from the doorway, his mouth set in a grim line and his eyes blazing.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Sprites,” he repeated, motioning me to come to him. His hand was shaking. “I’d say a full pack, guessing from the amount of feathers we’ve found.”

  “Sprites? You’re talking about the angelic version of imps?” I moved to stand next to him. “Those little green things with shiny wings that like to play in flower gardens and bite your fingers?”

  There was no reason for sprites to even be in Pittsburgh. They attached themselves to angelic creatures for protection and they never—voluntarily—strayed into demon-controlled areas. It would have taken someone with an immense amount of charisma to convince them to appear in Pittsburgh with the Bettincourt-Morningstar family taking up residence.

  “You’re saying my brother, the Crown Prince of Hell, was taken by a group of do-gooder imps?” They should have been shitting themselves in fear of an Archdemon. Not hunting him for sport. “Those things are only like three inches tall, and they squish like modeling clay when you step on them. I remember watching Ba’al beat one down with a fly swatter when I was a kid. You’re telling me something like that managed to snag Tolliver?”

  Nahamia, one of Dad’s demon lords, pushed his dreadlocks over his shoulder as he approached. “Sprites hunt in large packs so they could have blitzed him from multiple sides. He wouldn’t have a chance to fight back. I’d say there was somewhere around seventy-five to a hundred, easy.”

  I craned my head to the side and looked past Dad into Tolliver’s living room. Holy shit. No way could only one being, supernatural or not, inflict this much damage to a room. Furniture was flipped on its side. Holes were punched into the drywall. Black smears still smoldered on the carpet, leaving an oily residue on a few patches of the walls. Tolliver hadn’t gone down without a fight.

  “So what do we do?” I asked. “Where would a group of sprites keep Tolliver?”

  A puff of smoke curled from Dad’s nostril and his horns popped through the skin on his forehead. “His presence would be detected in the Celestial Kingdom, and they can’t access my realm. The only place left to look for him would be…”

  “The Grey Lands,” I finished. Purgatory. Man I hated that place. Absolutely hated it. It was gray. Miles and miles of endless gray. Aside from the gray, there were hundreds of millions of couches and chairs that looked like they’d all been stolen from hospital waiting rooms sometime in the early Sixties. It was also huge and easy to get turned around in if you didn’t know where you were going, since everything looked the same. Which, if you thought about it, made Purgatory the perfect place to stash someone.

  “Okay.” Dad clapped and looked at each of us in turn, his eyes flaring red. The air around him crackled with dark energy and the entire building hummed with evil. Thunder sounded, and the sky outside the window turned green and hazy. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Lisa, Faith, Hope, and Roisin, I want the four of you to stay here. Get Lisa’s apartment fixed up. If anyone calls or shows up, get in touch with me immediately. If there’s any sort of ransom they’ll start here.”

  “I think I should go with you,” Mom argued. “Tolliver is my stepson and I want to help.”

  “Stay here,” Dad said. “The rest of us will find Tolliver.”

  “But I can help,” Mom protested. “I can call upon my sisters in the coven and together we can cast a spell to divine his location. Then we’ll cast another one that compels whoever has taken him to send him home to us.”

  “Roisin,” my father said. “Stay here. Help the girls. Don’t talk to anyone else. I’ll call Lilith.”

  “You’re going to call Lilith?” Mom yelped. “Why are you calling Lilith? We don’t need to call that woman. She’ll just make this worse. Let me help instead. Please.”

  “I’m calling Lilith,” Dad said. “She’s Tolliver’s mother. She’ll have a link to him that no one else has.”

  “B-b-but are you sure that you have to call her?” Mom asked. “I mean she’s your ex-wife.”

  “Roisin…” Dad sighed. “My son is missing. He could be hurt. The last thing you have to worry about is me suddenly deciding to start back up with my ex-wife. Besides, after the last time we broke up I can promise that she would rather castrate me than kiss me.”

  “Are you—?”

  “Stay here.” He walked to her and kissed the top of her head. “Protect our girls.”

  He opened a portal and usher
ed the rest of them through it.

  “Wait!” Mom called out before he managed to follow the others through. “What should I do?”

  “If it comes down to it I know you’ll think of something.” He stepped through the portal, sealing it behind him.

  “He’s wrong you know,” Mom muttered.

  “About what?” Hope asked.

  “Lilith would take him back in a heartbeat if she had the chance.”

  “It’s not likely,” Lisa countered, her voice hollow sounding. “Especially since she just moved in with Baziram, the Archdemon delegate to the International Court of Justice.”

  “Lil is dating someone?” Mom’s eyes lit up. What woman wouldn’t be insecure about having Lilith, the Archdemoness of Lust, as a rival? She had the whole Sophia-Loren-gone-British thing going on, and man she made it work for her. I’d once watched the woman stop eight lanes of traffic on the L.A. freeway with nothing but a smile and a double whammy of pheromones.

  “I wonder if Dad knows?” Hope asked, widening her eyes at me. I knew she was thinking about the way Dad had reacted every time he saw Mom with another man. One particular instance with a canning jar, a goat, and three voodoo priestesses was an especially vivid reminder of how territorial Dad could be when it came to the women in his life. Or the women that used to be in his life. Same difference.

  “He doesn’t.” Lisa looked at her open doorway, gnawing on her lower lip. “She said it’s not any of his business and she doesn’t want to make things awkward by fighting with him about it before the wedding.”

  She started to sniffle again, and I could see tears clinging to her lower lashes. I draped my arm over her shoulders. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said and hiccupped. “A group of sprites took Tolliver and now he’s missing. They’re going to hurt him or banish him or…I don’t know, something even worse than that.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to Tolliver,” I said. “They’ll find him, they’ll get him back, and you’ll get married, just like you planned. I didn’t endure all this wedding planning crap for you to just chicken out now.”