A Fiend in Need

by Maureen Child

  “So…?”

  Convoluted logic designed to give me orgasms. Hmm. He really was a dream guy.

  “Look, Brady. This was fun, but I’m not looking for another guy in my life, okay?”

  “Because of the demon.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you know about it?”

  “Only what I pulled from your mind.”

  “Only what you what from my what?”

  “Pulled. Mind.”

  “You can read minds?” I yelped that last sentence, and why not? Instantly I tried to go back over everything I’d been thinking since I first saw him. Right. My thoughts were usually like a shotgun blast—you know, wide and scattered. I do know I had spent a lot of time thinking he was pretty yummy.

  God. Embarrassing much?

  “He should not have done that to you.”

  Great. Now he knew about the humiliation, too. “Yeah, I know.”

  “But he was a fool. I am not.”

  “Brady…”

  “Fine.” He bowed his head. “As you wish. I will touch you no more this morning.”

  Hmm.

  Had he built himself a loophole there? Did I care? A problem for later.

  “Look, Thea will be up soon. Gotta get her ready for school and—”

  “Yes,” he said, bounding off the bed with more energy than I had ever had. He sent me a flashing grin. “I will make the breakfast and talk to her about the cheerleading. I have many plans for her success.”

  “Great.”

  He turned to the door, and then I thought of something. “Brady?”

  “Yes?” He spun around again. “You have changed your mind about the touching?”

  “Yes. No. I mean…” Hey, you try to think clearly when you’re faced with a sweetheart of a god who only wants to give you orgasms. “Look. No more touching.” (Boy, it hurt to say that.) “What I want to know is, you said you read minds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you, um, read Thea’s?” (Yes, I’m a terrible human being. But if you have a teenage daughter, you’ll understand this.)

  He cocked his head and looked at me. “Why?”

  “Um, has she been thinking about a guy at all?”

  “Ah…” He nodded solemnly.

  I gripped the sheet up tight over my boobs and said, “It’s not like I want to spy on her or anything (okay, sometimes I did); it’s just that I want to know if she’s thinking about this one little half-demon, because she used to have a thing for him and it got really ugly really fast, and if he’s back in town I want to know about it so I can go dust the little thug before he worms his way back into Thea’s life.”

  Can I cram a long thought into one sentence or what?

  “She does not think of a demon,” Brady said with a wink. “She thinks of someone called Ryan. He plays a game called ball foot.”

  “You mean football?”

  “Yes!”

  Interesting. Brady knew his way around the Internet but didn’t know the word football? Beside the point here, Cass! A football player? I slumped and my chin hit my chest. Thea had a crush on a football player named Ryan? Oh, man. This was not good. See, Thea’s a genius, and the jocks of the world almost never look at a girl who’s smarter than they are. No wonder she wanted to try out for cheerleader.

  There is just nothing harder than sitting by and watching your kid set herself up for a letdown. Even if she made the cheerleading squad, there was no guarantee this guy would ever consider her more than tutor material. (Oh, come on; football players aren’t exactly known as Rhodes scholars.)

  Okay, I’d talk to Thea as soon as she got home from school. Well, I’d talk, and maybe Thea would listen. Teenagers. You do what you can.

  Brady left, closing my door quietly behind him, and I lay there for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do next. I mean, sure, shower, get dressed, go to work. But what to do next. Did I go find Devlin and dust him? Did I forget all about him and move on? Did I set fire to the house Logan just bought to keep him out of the neighborhood? Never mind on that last one. I was kidding. Sort of.

  I slid down flat on the bed, pulled the sheet over my head and tried to make the world disappear. Didn’t work. The phone on my bedside table rang, and I ripped the sheet off my head to glare at it. Maybe Faery powers were contagious, because all of a sudden I was feeling a little like now I could read minds. The point is, I just knew who was calling. On the second ring I grabbed it only because I didn’t want it waking Thea up.

  “Cassidy, don’t hang up.”

  I knew it. “Devlin, don’t call here ever again. In your whole long, hopefully miserable, disease-ridden, poverty-stricken life, never call here.”

  “I can explain.”

  “HAH!” I sat straight up and shook the phone receiver like it was actually Devlin’s neck, before I slapped it back to my head again. “Explain? You can explain? What happened then? You were lying in bed naked and Three Boob fell on you? Did she accidentally impale herself? Poor you. It must have been a terrifying experience.”

  “Damn it, Cassidy, I didn’t know you were coming over, and—”

  “Oh! So this is MY fault!?!”

  “I didn’t say that; all I said was—”

  I was so damn mad I couldn’t just lie there for this conversation. I jumped out of bed, hooked my foot in the sheet and fell face-first onto the rug. “Ow!”

  “What happened?”

  I slammed the receiver against the floor a couple times just for the hell of it. Maybe I’d break his rotten stinking demon eardrums. My bruises from the day before were almost gone. Lucky me—I had new ones blooming and it wasn’t even dawn yet! Pain ratcheted across my face, and my ears were ringing as I kicked free of the stupid sheet.

  “Damn it, Cassidy, are you all right?”

  “No!” I hung up as hard as I could and then stared at the phone receiver, snapped cleanly in two.

  Hmm. This Duster-strength thing could get expensive.

  Chapter Eight

  Jasmine was all over me that morning.

  And I wasn’t really feeling like jumping and running in the stupid yard. The battery charge I’d gotten earlier? Long gone. Besides, I believe I’ve mentioned that I hate exercise of any kind. Well, exercising after a breakfast of Belgian waffles with whipped cream and sliced peaches was even worse.

  “That’s it,” I said, dropping to the grass and sprawling, spread-eagled. It was still early enough that the dampness of the grass soaked into my T-shirt, but I so didn’t care. “I don’t care if minions from Hell jump over my fence to kill me; I’m not moving.”

  “If you are going to fight the demon queen, you must be prepared.”

  I pried open one eye and lifted my head to look up at my nemesis. Every gray hair was sprayed into place. Her gnarled hands were clasped at the waist of a blue paisley dress, and her orthopedic shoes were shined to such a high gloss, I could see my reflection in them. At that moment, not a good thing.

  “If the queen’s so damn scary, why hasn’t she come after me herself already?” I closed that eye and studied the blackness behind my eyelids. “All she’s done so far is offer a cash reward that’s got all the dweeb demons after me.”

  Jasmine sighed. I didn’t have to see her to know her eyes were rolling. “For now, the queen isn’t worried enough about you to come after you herself. She’s content to let her legion of followers try to take you out.”

  “Content,” I mused aloud. “Wonder what that’s like?”

  “But sooner or later she will become impatient,” Jasmine nearly shouted, clearly irritated by me. Again. “Your fight will come and you have to be ready for it.”

  “I’ll be ready,” I said, and yawned.

  “You’re not taking this seriously, Cassidy. It is your duty—”

  “Jasmine,” I said, interrupting her before she could get into another of her long-winded speeches about what a crappy Duster I was turning out to be. “I had a bad day yesterday, and this one’s no
t looking any better.”

  “You shouldn’t have trusted Devlin.”

  I lifted my head off the grass and glared at her. “EXCUSE ME?”

  “Demon lovers are notoriously capricious.”

  “Capricious?”

  “They are not known for their monogamous tendencies.”

  “How the hell did you find out about it, anyway?” I was shouting now, still lying flat on my back on the grass. Mad, yes, but still too pooped to get up.

  Sugar hurried over to me—upset by the shouting and worried about all this exercise Mommy was doing—and dropped across my middle. Hundred-pound dog, trying to save Mommy from herself and now smashing Mommy. “God, Sugar…”

  She whined, so I petted her and took shallow breaths.

  Could this get any worse? Now Jasmine knew about how Devlin had treated me. Wasn’t it enough that I knew? That Rachel and Brady and Three Boob knew? Did the whole world have to know that I got dumped?

  “News travels fast in the demon community.”

  I sneered. “They have bulletin boards, do they?”

  Jasmine sniffed, unimpressed by my lame attempt at humor. “The demon woman had to be treated for severe acid burns.”

  “Aw, poor booby.”

  What might almost have been a smile twitched at the corners of Jasmine’s mouth for a heartbeat; then it was gone. “You’ve made an enemy there.”

  “She’ll have to get in line,” I said, and dropped my head back to the grass. Staring up at the sky, I watched as thick gray clouds scudded in from the ocean. The wind picked up and tossed the leaves of the trees into a wild dance. Sugar shivered on top of me, and I took another cautious, shallow breath. “He called me this morning. Said he could explain.”

  “Hmmph.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.” More or less.

  “You have more important things to think about than—”

  “Sex?”

  “For example.”

  “It’s not like I always think about sex,” I argued. In fact, up until last month I hadn’t thought about sex much at all. Because there hadn’t been any in my life to think about. But then Devlin stormed into my world and woo-hoo! Now I was sort of accustomed to the orgasm-filled lifestyle, and it really pissed me off that it was all over.

  Of course, I still had Brady….

  Stop it! I needed help. Demons Anonymous, maybe.

  “No,” Jasmine agreed. “Mostly you think about food.”

  Good point.

  “You should also be wary of the Faery.”

  “Ha! You made a rhyme.” Jeez, I was really beat. “His name is Brady, by the way. But why wary of the Faery?”

  She frowned. “There is a reason the demon queen held him as a sex slave.”

  Yeah, and I could guess what it was. The man had some serious skills. But probably that wasn’t what Jasmine meant. “What reason?”

  Jasmine scowled again, and the heavy lines on her face fell into that oh, so familiar expression as easily as Cinderella’s foot slid into the glass slipper. “Sex with a Faery enhances one’s own powers.”

  “Huh?” My eyes were bugged out. I was thinking about the too-excellent finger orgasm I’d had that morning and wondering if that counted as sex in the Faery world. I had felt pretty good afterward. Until Jasmine got hold of me and sucked every drop of energy out of my body like a Hoover on bread crumbs.

  Jasmine’s mouth pursed like she had another lemon slice clamped between her teeth. “Vanessa, the queen, has been using Brady for centuries to increase her strength. To maintain a stranglehold on her dominion.”

  My brain was sifting through all this at a pretty slow rate. Exercise? Not my friend. Makes me so tired the whole world seems to move in slow motion.

  “Without the Faery, Vanessa’s strength fades every day. This is why she is so frantic to get him back.”

  Hmm. “So the sex must be great.”

  When Jasmine’s gray eyebrows shot straight up, I realized I’d said that out loud.

  Ignoring me, she said, “Vanessa has been so busy with Brady, she hadn’t noticed that a new Duster had been called.”

  “So when Brady escaped and came to me—”

  “Yes. She was alerted to your presence. Hence the Wanted poster on the Internet. She wants to reclaim Brady and will eventually do so.”

  “Fabulous.”

  Have I mentioned lately that my life sucks?

  “You must beware of the Faery.” Jasmine’s blue eyes drilled into mine like she was trying to force me to listen. She knows me pretty well. “Sex with him will increase your power, but the strength is fleeting and will leave you weakened for a time after that enhancement ends.”

  “So without Brady, Vanessa’s weak now?” Hmm. Maybe it was time to pay her a visit, after all. The way I was feeling at the moment, a weak demon was my favorite kind.

  “Weaker than she was. She is still many times stronger than the average demon.”

  Average demons. Who knew there was such a thing? Naturally, the queen had to be an overachiever or something. Swell. Now I had to beat off a Faery—perhaps I should rephrase that—and keep from getting stomped on by a jealous queen looking for a battery charge.

  Okay, maybe I should train a little harder. Not a lot. But a little wouldn’t hurt.

  “Vanessa will not give up easily,” Jasmine said. “And she won’t be as easily defeated as Judge Jenks.”

  “Easily?” I echoed, remembering that fight in the beach caves with the head demon in La Sombra. “You thought that was easy?”

  She sighed and rolled her eyes so far back in her head, all I saw was solid white. Fairly creepy. When she looked at me again she said, “The judge was strong. Vanessa is in a category all her own.”

  Now I wanted to roll my eyes. Just what I needed to hear. My spanking-new enemy was Super Demon. Was it too late to take a vacation? Someplace far away. Maybe I could take Thea to Florida to visit my grandmother. Grams had promised to visit us, but she hadn’t yet. I was thinking it was because she so didn’t want to get into the whole Demon Duster thing, and how she hadn’t told me a thing about it for my entire life.

  Jasmine had been Gram’s trainer when she started out. She would have trained my mom too, I guess, if Mom hadn’t died in a car accident when I was twelve. Anyway, Gram never said a word about me being a hereditary Demon Duster—suppose I couldn’t really blame her. After all, I inherited more than Duster powers from the women in my family. I also got their propensity for procrastination. (Say that three times!)

  “Now,” Jasmine said, “if you’re entirely rested, perhaps you would like to continue the training that will one day save your life?”

  “Snippy…” I shoved Sugar off my chest, ignored her pitiful whimper and pushed myself to my feet.

  There was actual sweat sliding down my back—not the best feeling in the world—and my legs were trembling. I might have mentioned before that I’m not really into the whole exercise thing, and my body was not happy about this training business. But better trained than dead, right?

  “Okay, what now?” I looked at Jasmine. “Leaping tall buildings in a single bound? Stopping a speeding bullet?” God, I hoped not. I had a feeling Duster strength wouldn’t be enough to protect me from a gun. But then, so far the demons I’d come up against had pretty much seemed to be traditionalists, in the way that they preferred trying to kill me with their bare hands rather than gunning me down with an Uzi. Hey, let’s hear it for tradition.

  Jasmine cocked her head, stared off blindly into the distance and listened so hard I’m pretty sure I saw her ears twitch.

  “Sensing a disturbance in the Force, master?” (Yes, I quote movies and TV shows. Some people think I spend too much time watching these things. I think it’s more fun to sit and watch TV than it is to fight demons or get ordered around by a tiny demon, but then, that’s just me.)

  Jasmine didn’t even acknowledge me. She was off in her own little world, listening for God knew what. As the seconds ticked
past, I got a little creeped out.

  “What? What is it?” I looked around the yard, half expecting a demon from Hell to appear out of nowhere. But all I saw was grass that needed mowing, dead flowers that needed to be pulled out, and a jacaranda tree that was bent over at a weird angle. It grew that way because the wind blew it over when it was a baby tree and I never bothered to straighten it. I kinda liked it. It had character.

  “Listen.” Jasmine’s voice was a thin hush.

  “To what?” I whispered back.

  She turned that glare on me. “When I say listen, I mean, do not speak.”

  “FINE.” I planted both hands on my hips and listened. What did I hear? My neighbor Harlan Cates humming out in his backyard—probably going over his beloved grass with a tweezer. The old goat had an unnatural love for his lawn and was roundly hated by every kid on the block. He had a collection of Frisbees, baseballs and basketballs that he’d confiscated and never returned.

  I also heard the Marchetti boys across the street. Who could miss ’em? At the moment they had Metallica blasting from the speakers in the garage while they worked on their latest dog of a car. Down the street, the Sanchez’s dog, Rosie, was barking like a loon, but that was her hobby. She pretty much barked all the damn time. Sugar was whining, but then, that was her hobby, and I could hear my own heartbeat thundering in my chest and getting louder the longer Jasmine stood there like a damn sentinel.

  She looked eerie, sort of like a gray-haired statue carved by a sculptor with a twisted sense of humor. That gray hair was stuck close to her skull. Her nose was twitching as she scented the air, and her blue eyes were sharp and narrowed.

  “You’re creepin’ me out,” I whispered, and got another glare.

  “There is something…”

  “Something?” Well, that didn’t sound good. Damn it. I hated this. How come I was born under the lucky Demon Duster star? Why couldn’t I have been born under the incredibly-wealthy-princess star?

  “Wait for it.” She braced herself, every scrawny bone in her body going on full alert.

  Fabulous.

  The back door flew open, and I jumped out of my tennies and shrieked. (Demon Duster, always prepared.) It was Brady. I slapped one hand to my chest to hold my heart in place. He was standing there on the threshold, and he looked as weirded out as Jasmine. Probably not a good sign.