A Fiend in Need

by Maureen Child

  I clutched at my heart. Jesus. I got faint when I skipped lunch. No wonder he was hungry.

  “Oh, I don’t have to eat,” he said, as if reading my mind. “I just like it.”

  “Well, if you don’t have to eat, stop mowing through my supplies.”

  He sniffed and had the balls to look offended. Amazing.

  Sugar whined for another treat, leaned against me and looked up at me through the tangle of black-and-white hair that hid, I assumed, eyes. Hard to be sure. I hadn’t seen her eyes since she was a puppy. “Forget it. Next Pop Tart’s mine.

  “Okay, look,” I said, “you seem like a nice Faery—”

  He beamed at me.

  “But,” I added, “what’m I supposed to do for you? I kill demons. I’m not a bodyguard, you know.”

  Brady polished off the chicken leg, then waved the bone at me like a magic wand. “Vanessa’s a demon. Kill her.”

  “She’s a queen,” I reminded him, and as I said it I was thinking that maybe I wasn’t really up for queen fighting just yet. Hey, I was new at this. And I just got a manicure and I thought I was getting a cold.

  “Yes, she’s a queen,” he said, tossing the naked chicken bone at the trash can, “but you’re legendary.”

  Hmm. I liked the sound of that. Then a second later I gave myself a mental slap in the head. Dummy. He’s flattering you into helping him.

  And he was good at it.

  “Why’s this queen after you?” Not that I really cared. I just wanted to know how determined she was going to be to get him back.

  The morning sun spearing through the kitchen window gilded him in a brilliant outline. Sugar dropped to her belly and slunk over to him, hoping for crumbs now that she’d finished my Pop Tart. When Brady tore off another piece of chicken and gave it to her, he made a friend for life.

  My dog, much like me, can be won over with food.

  “If you don’t mind breaking your chewing stride there, big guy, maybe you could explain a little?”

  Licking his lips, Brady said, “She’s held me for more than two hundred years.”

  “Why?” Seriously? It wasn’t this hard to get information out of Thea, and teenagers are notoriously closemouthed.

  He shrugged, took another piece of chicken and said, “I was her sex slave.”

  Oh, boy.

  My hoo-hah lit up.

  I mean, over the last month it had gotten used to seeing some action, and now it seemed the party was always on down there and ready to go at a moment’s notice. My brain filled with images that I would probably go to Hell for, but since I was already headed in that direction, I wasn’t too worried. Instead I enjoyed myself a little.

  Brady in chains against a gray brick wall. Brady tied to a huge four-poster bed. Brady coming at me wearing nothing but a smile.

  I took a breath, blew it out and looked at him. His eyebrows wiggled, like he knew exactly what I’d been thinking.

  “I have waited,” he said, polishing off the chicken and closing the fridge door with a nudge from his hip, “for centuries. I’ve served the queen and waited for the time when a strong enough Duster would be called. A Duster with strength enough to protect me.”

  Uh-oh.

  “You are that Duster.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “You are Sanctuary.” Brady came around the kitchen table with Sugar practically attached to his leg while she licked the Colonel’s grease and secret spices from Brady’s fingertips. (She really liked chicken.) He stopped right in front of me, looked into my eyes and said, “As long as I’m with you, or here in your house, I’m safe. No demon can harm me.”

  “Fabulous,” I said, wondering why I was still talking to him. Sure, he was gorgeous and all, but I was sooo not looking for another male in my life. Even a sex slave seemed like too much trouble at the moment. “And I get no say in this?”

  He shrugged, and that amazing chest of his sort of rippled. Major distraction.

  “You are Sanctuary.”

  “Hell,” I argued, “I need a sanctuary. I don’t think I can be one.”

  Behind him a face appeared in the window; then in a flash it was gone again. I blinked, sure I’d hallucinated. I sniffed at my empty coffee cup, thinking maybe he’d slipped me something, but there was nothing. Shaking my head, I looked past the Faery, and sure enough a head popped up in the window again.

  An ugly head.

  One with red eyes, horns sprouting out of its forehead and a really nasty set of teeth. The head was gone a second later, and I knew the demon was jumping up and down. Good God. Could this morning go any further downhill?

  “Who’s that?” I pointed at the window.

  Brady the Faery frowned, turned and glanced behind him. An instant later the demon head appeared again, and this time it was snarling.

  “DEMON!”

  “I knew that.”

  The next time the demon yo-yo made an appearance, Brady stuck out his tongue and laughed. Sort of a nah-nah-nah-nah-nah thing. Very mature. The demon hissed, waved its scaly fists and disappeared again.

  Well, I was pissed.

  I’d lost a Pop Tart and a cup of coffee, had a Faery burst into my house uninvited and apparently I was going to war against a demon queen, for Pete’s sake. “Just stay in the house,” I muttered, and grabbed a handy-dandy bottle of my demon spray before opening the back door.

  The demon was waiting for me.

  He was short, but he was mean.

  “You harbor the slave!”

  “Wasn’t my idea!” I shouted right back. “He just showed up!”

  “You die and the slave returns,” it shouted.

  Die? I didn’t think so. I had way too much to do.

  It took a swing at me. Short, remember? Its arms were short too and missed me by a mile. Good thing, since those claws of his could have made quite the tear in my last clean T-shirt. I leaped out of range (impressive jumping skills are just part of the whole Duster package), and when I landed I squeezed the pump spray on the bottle, sending a long, graceful arc of brownish liquid right at his head.

  It hit the demon on the left horn, and the damn thing started melting even as the demon screamed and flapped its hands at its own head, trying to wipe off the acid. Of course, all it managed to do was spread the acid to its hands. Demons. Not exactly Mensa material.

  While it was screeching I heard Sugar howl in harmony; then I slapped my hand through the demon’s dirty shirt and into its chest and ripped out its heart. It gaped at me in disbelief just before it poofed.

  They never seem to believe the dusting will happen to them. It’s always some other demon who gets turned into soup mix.

  Sugar was still howling when I turned around and looked at Brady, now standing at the threshold, though safely inside the house. He was giving me a proud smile, and when he started applauding, damned if I didn’t feel like taking a bow. Hey, I’d just killed a demon on half a cup of coffee.

  Not bad, if I did say so myself.

  “You are the Duster,” Brady said with just a touch of awe that did a lot for my ego. “Your strength, your power will protect me from the queen.”

  “Yeah, well…” I glanced around the yard, just to make sure there were no more scabby little surprises hidden out there; then I headed for the house. I got past Brady and stepped into the kitchen. Then he closed the door and backed me up against the pantry.

  He was way too close, and there must have been some kind of Faery pheromone at work, because my brain was going a little foggy and my knees all of a sudden felt slippery.

  “I’m very handy to have around,” Brady said, leaning down to sniff my hair.

  Sniff my hair? Oh, boy. This could be trouble. Especially since I was sniffing right back at him, and he sort of smelled like cookies. Cinnamon cookies. Whoa. Good thing it wasn’t chocolate-chip.

  Was that attraction I was feeling? Or just pure feminine appreciation of an excellent male? Please, not attraction. I just didn’t have time for one more guy!<
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  He lifted one hand and stroked the side of my breast, and I jolted out of my stupor, smacking his hand away. It’s one thing to let an escaped prisoner eat my leftovers, but I like to get to know a guy a little better before he goes feeling me up.

  He shrugged and smiled. “I am a sex slave, remember.”

  Hmmm.

  Stop it, Cassidy, I told myself, hoping myself was listening. You’ve already got a demon lover and a human ex-lover…do you really need a Faery to top everything off?

  Okay, I was better.

  For the moment.

  “Look,” I said, trying to let him down easy. After all, I could see the guy had some problems, but no way was I going to let him move into my house. I had a kid to think about. Keeping Thea safe was the one all-important motivator in my life. “I don’t mind taking out the demon for you or anything, but—”

  “You will free me.”

  He looked at me out of those silvery blue eyes, and the unspoken plea in them really got to me. What was I thinking?

  He couldn’t stay in my house.

  Thea lived in my house.

  Not to mention the fact that Logan was moving in across the street. He’s a cop and a little territorial (despite the fact that he broke up with me to marry some rich girl named Busty or Spunky or some damn thing). Of course, he didn’t know about Thea at the time, but that’s not the important part.

  Anyway, the point was that Logan Miller would be living across the street, and he was at my house all the damn time now, trying to get in good with the daughter he’d just discovered. He probably wasn’t going to like the fact that a gorgeous giant had moved in. Yet, as appealing as it was to think about irritating Logan, I just didn’t want to deal with it all.

  “I’m really sorry, but you can’t stay in my house. My kid lives here, and I don’t want your demon queen sending her fangy (was that a word?) minions over here or, God help me, hanging out here herself, trying to get to you through Thea!”

  He frowned. Disappointed that his sex-slave tactics weren’t working on me? Had he been expecting me to flop over onto my back like Sugar, desperate for a tummy rub? I must have a rotten reputation in Otherworld Town. Did all the demons and such think I was that easy? Were my name and phone number on the wall of a demon bathroom: FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL DUSTER SEX BUNNY?

  “Did I mention I can cook?” he said.

  Hmmm.

  Fine. I admit it: I like food. Shoot me now.

  Sex was tempting, sure. But if you had to you could live without sex. God knows I had for too long to think about. But you had to have food, and to me the promise of actual home-cooked meals was like a fifty-percent-off sale in Nordie’s purse department—too alluring to pass up.

  Besides, it’s not like I was willing to risk my daughter’s safety just for the sake of my own stomach. Thea liked to eat too, you know. Plus, with Logan here all the damn time, there was extra protection, even if he didn’t actually know about the danger he would be protecting us from. Did that make sense? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I couldn’t protect the Faery myself, anyway. I was getting pretty good at the whole dusting thing, and I was bound to get better and better, right?

  Whatever.

  “Okay. You can stay,” I said, and his face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “For now.”

  “You won’t be sorry.”

  “I’m already sorry,” I told him. “Just don’t make me sorrier.”

  “Right.” He turned away and started rummaging through the freezer. “What do you want for dinner?”

  After the morning I’d already had? “Surprise me,” I said.

  With Brady busy in the kitchen, I put on my favorite pair of sneakers, brushed crumbs off my red T-shirt with the words CLEAN SWEEP emblazoned across the boobs, and hit the bathroom. I glanced in the mirror, swiped some mascara on and ran a brush through my dark blond hair. I needed new highlights badly, but I was thankful my hair was curly enough that it looked pretty good even when I didn’t have time to do the whole product thing.

  My reflection didn’t look too happy with me, but I didn’t even have the time to argue with myself. If that woman in the mirror wanted to rag on me for letting the Faery hang around, she’d just have to wait her turn.

  I had places to go. Places to clean.

  I run my own business cleaning houses, and now, thanks to the contract to clean Magic Nights, Devlin Cole’s exclusive sex club, I’d even picked up a few new business office clients. Clean Sweep was really starting to make good money—partially thanks to the demon spray.

  Not only did it act like acid on demons, but the damn stuff made windows sparkle. Apparently the scent of the stuff even convinced ghosts to pack up and move on from their haunts. Me, I like the smell of oregano. Makes me think of pizza and other good stuff. But it seems like oregano is a big turnoff in the otherworld.

  I was thinking there weren’t too many Italian demons.

  I had two houses scheduled for cleaning that morning, and thanks to my currently-in-residence Faery, I was already running late. I had my supplies loaded up in my bright yellow VW Bug and I headed down my street.

  I made it to the stop sign at the first cross street before my cell phone rang.

  I glanced at the screen, sighed and snapped it open. “Hi, Carmen.”

  Carmen Mendoza is a short bulldozer of a woman in her fifties who supposedly works for me. The truth is, Carmen really runs things, hiring her cousins when we need the extra help, firing them when they piss her off, and I don’t have to do a thing but sign the checks.

  The only downside is Carmen’s love of clichés. She has one for every conversation.

  “My cousin Yolanda is at the Stevenson house,” she said, jumping directly into the conversation. “Rosario is going to the Danielses’, and I myself am going to be working at Mr. Hawthorn’s.”

  “I’m heading over to the Lopez house now. Busy day for all of us.”

  “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

  First cliché of the morning.

  “Do you have enough of the demon spray?”

  “Sí. Yolanda isn’t comfortable using it, but I told her to wear gloves.”

  Yolanda wasn’t comfortable around the demon spray/window cleaner because Yolanda was half-demon. Yep. Demons, demons everywhere.

  It had been a big surprise to me when I first found out about the whole demon population. Apparently I’d been living in a fugue state all my life, because soon after the truth had smacked me in the face, I found out that practically everyone else in town already knew about the demon thing.

  Carmen knew about them because her family was riddled with ’em, but it turned out even my kid knew about the demon world operating in La Sombra. Of course, the little half-demon Thea’d had a crush on was the very creep who’d handed her over to the head demon, so Thea’d stopped talking about demon rights. At least for now.

  “Before I forget,” I said as I made a left on Cedar and headed out to PCH (Pacific Coast Highway to those not living in California), “we’ve got a shot at the cleaning contract at the clinic on Fifth Street. I’ll be heading over there tomorrow to look it over so we can work up a bid.”

  “This is good. I will tell my cousin Olympia, who also needs a job, that you have hired her.”

  I grinned. Carmen has an inexhaustible supply of cousins. “Okay by me,” I said, “though you didn’t bother to ask me. Is Olympia half-demon too?”

  “Sí,” Carmen said. “But she is part Cirio demon. They like things tidy. She will work well for us, or I will tell you to fire her.”

  “Boy, I’m a tough boss.”

  “Life is hard and then you die.”

  Cliché number two.

  “That’s sunshiny and bright so early in the morning.”

  “Same shit, different day,” Carmen said, and hung up.

  Wow. Three clichés in a five-minute conversation. She’s good.

  I drove down PCH, naturally hitting every red light along the
way. Have you ever noticed that when you hit one red light, you hit ’em all? I think they set them up like that on purpose. Anyway, I had plenty of time while sitting still to think about the route my life was taking.

  To be honest, it was pretty chilling.

  I never asked to be this legendary Demon Duster. Turns out the women in my family just become the Duster on their thirty-second birthday. My mom died in a traffic accident before she could take up her powers. Of course, a month ago I’d found out for the first time that the car crash hadn’t been an accident, after all. The head demon in town had had my mom killed to protect himself.

  Made me want to dust him all over again, just for the hell of it.

  Anyway…now I had this full-time demon-killing job, along with trying to run my own business, raise my kid, have the occasional orgasm with an incredibly endowed demon and survive the training that Jasmine the Wicked insisted on.

  Seriously, this was not how I’d imagined my life going.

  I turned right onto Birchcrest Road and pulled up at the Lopez house. It was, like most of the other houses in La Sombra, an old California bungalow: wide front porch with stone pillars, big rooms and lots of windows. I figured I’d be here a good two hours, after which I had to hit a small apartment for a quickie cleaning; then I’d be heading down to St. Paul High School for a meeting with Thea’s math teacher.

  Was it wrong of me to look forward more to cleaning toilets than facing down a nun who wanted to talk math?

  Chapter Three

  Even if I hadn’t known for a fact that Tommy Canter lived in the apartment I was cleaning, I would have guessed a single guy lived there.

  I’d just left the Lopez house after an hour of vacuuming, washing windows and bathroom cleaning. Though the house had been way bigger than this one-bedroom apartment, it hadn’t taken as long as this place would to clean.

  The Lopez house was an easier job because Mrs. Lopez, like women everywhere, always cleaned her house before I came to clean it. We don’t want maids thinking we’re slobs, after all.

  But guys couldn’t care less.

  The grungier the better in their little worlds. Which made for a lot of work for my company but some pretty disgusting moments while knee-deep in the sludge. I’d been cleaning Tommy’s place for only a couple of months, and boy, was I ready to cut him loose.