A Fiend in Need

by Maureen Child

  Thea looked too pleased, so I added, “As long as she stays out of the actual fights.”

  Now she scowled at me. Spreading sunshine and joy, that’s me.

  Brady stood beside me like a brave little soldier, hands behind his back, chin lifted, as if waiting for one of us to order him to his death.

  Men are such drama queens.

  “Fine, fine.” Jasmine huffed out a disgusted breath and caved to the inevitable. She folded her hands on top of her ugly-ass vinyl purse and looked at me. “Vanessa is marshaling her forces. Amassing an army.”

  I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. This was the big announcement? “Well, duh. That’s not exactly a news flash, Jasmine. We all knew she was going to be pissed off about us rescuing Brady. She was bound to get her little demons together.”

  I sounded really brave, despite the fact that my stomach was twisting itself into knots. Hey, I was in no hurry to meet the queen one-on-one again. I still had vivid memories of the beating she had given me.

  “She’s using the beach caves Judge Jenks once used.”

  “Of course she is,” I said. “Get one demon out and another one moves in. What is it with those guys and the beach?” I wondered.

  “What’s she going to do?” Thea asked, and her voice sounded so small, I thought for a minute that Jasmine might have been right. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to include Thea in this little chat.

  Then Jasmine started talking again, and it was too late to change the game plan.

  “She’s planning an assault on the town.”

  “Moooooooommmmmm…” Thea’s eyes went wide.

  “This is not good,” Brady said.

  “Crap,” I said. An assault on the town. With only me to stand in her way? Great. Let’s count the ways this was going to suck.

  Jasmine nodded, and her eyes were more worried than I’d ever seen them before. It didn’t exactly thrill me or fill me with confidence to know that my trainer was concerned. “My source tells me she plans to attack on Halloween night.”

  Even the air in the kitchen seemed to go still. Everyone was so quiet, I heard Sugar’s heavy breathing and the ticking of the clock on the wall. Late-afternoon sunshine streamed in through the shining windows and lay across the table, highlighting the familiar faces all turned toward me as if expecting me to come up with something brilliant.

  Me?

  I licked my lips, picked a cat hair off and said, “That’s just not right.” I took a quick gulp of wine to ease the sudden tightness in my throat. Stupid, I know. I hear that a crazy, killer demon is planning to take over the world and I’m pissed off because she’s planning to do it on Halloween. But come on…“Kids, costumes, candy. She can’t ruin Halloween.”

  “More than your holiday will be ruined, Cassidy.” Jasmine’s voice sounded like she was at a funeral. Oooh.

  Not a good image.

  The crisp, cold wine wasn’t going to do it for me tonight. I needed margaritas. A truckload of ’em. And nachos. With sour cream. Maybe guacamole. I settled for my wine.

  Shaking my head, I said exactly what I was thinking and tried not to acknowledge the fear in Thea’s eyes. If I did, I’d have to acknowledge the fear in me, and I so didn’t want to do that. Cassidy Burke, queen of the mental block.

  “She’s already beaten me once. I don’t know how you think I’m going to be able to stop her this time.”

  “We will think of something,” Jasmine said, though she didn’t exactly sound like she believed it. “We have time.”

  “Yeah. A week.” I nodded. “Sure. We can do a lot in a week.” Like move to Brazil. Change our names. Hide under a rug in Brazil. I’d have to take Carmen with us, though. I didn’t speak Spanish. Or was it Portuguese?

  I felt Brady’s hand come down on my shoulder in quiet solidarity. I appreciated it; I just didn’t want to have to think about that not only was the town, happy in its ignorance of all things Vanessa, counting on me, but so was Brady. He’d come to me for sanctuary—or to steal my powers, whatever—and if I didn’t win, his future wasn’t looking any brighter than La Sombra’s.

  Waiter? More wine!

  I looked across the table at Thea and forced a smile I didn’t feel. “It’s okay, baby. We’ll figure something out.”

  “How?” she demanded. Closing in on sixteen years old, Thea didn’t buy my easy answers anymore. Damn shame, too.

  “I don’t know yet,” I admitted, and sat up straight, plucking at a stray cat hair on my boob. “But I’ll think of something.” I looked at Jasmine. “We’ll think of something. Right?”

  “Of course,” she said, but I thought I heard her mutter something about a snowball in Hell.

  Feel the love.

  I stood up and walked to the wine bottle on the counter. Pouring myself another glass, I looked at Brady and said, “You and Thea had better get with the practicing. Tryouts are in a couple days, right?”

  My darling daughter looked at me as if I were crazy. But I wanted her to put this out of her head. Go concentrate on good stuff. Be a kid. No reason why she should have to obsess on this situation when she wasn’t even old enough to have some wine to take the edge off.

  “Mom…”

  “Go on, Thea. There’s nothing to do about this queen thing at the moment, so just forget about it for now. Go practice. Be a cheerleader. Make Sister Mercy crazy.” I grinned. “Do it for me.”

  If Vanessa was planning on killing me, I needed highlights. Damned if I was going to die with roots showing.

  The next day I called Castle Hair and begged, whined and pleaded until Cindy Fergus finally surrendered and promised to squeeze me in that afternoon.

  Castle Hair had been in La Sombra for more than fifty years. Cindy’s grandma started the shop, working out of the basement in her house. When her daughter took over she’d rented a store on Hill Street with an option to buy. By the time Cindy took over from her mom, they owned the shop free and clear.

  Castle Hair had made its reputation in town with three generations of women. When I was a kid I’d had my bangs cut there, and one summer a disastrous pixie cut (didn’t even want to think about Pixies anymore) had scarred me for life. But I got over it.

  I had gone to school with Cindy. At St. Paul she’d been the “good” girl. The one who never talked in Mass, got all As, had Father Dowd telling her mother that Cindy should be a nun and protected her virginity as if she were Saint Maria Goretti.

  I, on the other hand, was the bad girl. The one who got detention for rolling her uniform skirt until it was practically a mini, smoked cigarettes in the bathroom (only the one time, because I accidentally set fire to the trash can when I threw the damn thing away, and the fire department was not amused), and I sneered when Father Dowd told me I was going to hell for suggesting that maybe Jesus had had a real life that probably included dating. Not to mention the whole getting-pregnant-at-sixteen thing.

  So Cindy and I didn’t really cross paths all that often in school. Still, she was the best hair person I’d ever seen, and she wasn’t nearly as churchy as she used to be. Life had taught her a few things since then. She married Mike Fergus, the hero of St. Paul’s basketball team, right out of high school, had two kids, and then Mike left her for a lounge singer named Darrin.

  Guess Cindy realized not everything could be solved with an extra rosary.

  Anyway, we sort of bonded over the single-mother thing and had become friends over the years. So while Cindy was working on a client, I took a seat at the shampoo bowl and looked around. Every time I moved my head I heard the rustle of the aluminum foil that was stacked all over my hair like shiny shingles. I’d had a glass of wine and a couple of fudge drop cookies. I’d been pampered and treated like a girl (nice for a change), and now I was ready to be finished.

  It felt good to have a little normal in my life, though, you know? The scents of hair dye, perfume and burned coffee filled the air. Female conversation drifted through the room, with a couple of older women s
houting at each other from under the hair dryers.

  Cindy had redecorated since taking over from her mom, and now the shop looked like it belonged in Tuscany: ocher walls, huge, dark wood–framed mirrors at every station, and soft enough lighting that everybody looked good. She had a great stereo system set up, too, and you could pretty much judge her mood by which CD she had playing. Right then Madonna was singing, and I knew Cindy was feeling all Woman Power.

  When Gina, the shampoo girl, came around the corner with a dark brown towel, I smiled at her. Gina had short, dark brown hair, eyes so thick with eyeliner and mascara she looked as if she were wearing a Lone Ranger mask, and manicured nails at least three inches long.

  “Hi, Cass,” she said, and wrapped the towel around my neck, tightening it hard enough to make me gag. “Oopsie,” she said, and loosened it just enough to let air through my windpipe. Then she lowered my chair, laid my neck on the rim of the black shampoo bowl and turned on the water.

  I stared up at her while she slid the foils from my hair.

  “So,” she asked, “anything new with you?”

  New. Hmmm. Demon hunting. Queen avoiding. Faery almost-sex.

  “Nope,” I said. “You?”

  “Actually,” Gina said, hitting my scalp with scalding hot water, “yeah.”

  “Hey! That’s hot!” I jolted in my seat, but nobody else heard me over the blow-dryers, standing hair dryers, shouting old women and Madonna hitting a high note.

  “Oopsie,” Gina said, and blew a purple bubble with her gum. “So, like I was saying, I’ve got a chance to move to Paris and study hair for six months.”

  My head was still simmering, so I winced when she hit me with the water again, but it was just right this time, so I closed my eyes and relaxed into it. “That’s great. When do you go?”

  “Well,” she said, massaging my head until I wanted to purr, “first I need to come up with some quick cash.”

  “Ah.” I folded my hands over my belly. “Got any ideas on how to do that?”

  “One,” she said, and grabbed my chin, dragging my head further into the bowl.

  Yikes! Shampoo girl goes psycho!

  While I was struggling, she shifted the spray hose to shoot it right up my nose, and suddenly I was sitting in a chair, fully clothed, and about to drown!

  My eyes flew open, and I had to squint to see past the splashing water, but I looked into Gina’s brown eyes and watched them turn a glowy red. Not good. I was choking and gagging and fighting every instinct I had that was telling me to take a breath before I died.

  Gina had her upper body pressing over me, holding me into the chair, and I was flailing my arms around, looking for something to hit. I was practically standing on my head in the sink, and the water was gushing into me, clogging my throat, cutting off all air.

  Gina had a hell of a grip, too. Must come from the years of shampooing everybody in La Sombra. Funny, all the people around town I’d squirted with demon spray in the last month and I’d never stopped into Cindy’s.

  Why? Because it was so damn hard to get an appointment!

  The roar of the water filled my ears, so I only barely heard Gina saying, “I really like you, Cass. Honest. It’s just…well, it’s nothing personal.”

  Well, it felt damn personal to me!

  “I mean, you’re really great.” She lowered the hose closer to my face, pushing water higher up my nose, filling my mouth and throat. Little black dots sparkled at the edges of my vision. “You always tip me, not like some people, but the queen’s offering big money for you, and I really need it.”

  So my dead body was gonna sponsor her trip to Paris? Oh, I didn’t think so! My mind was fogging over, my chest was tight and hot water was pouring up my throat in a flood. Finally, though, I came out of my damsel-in-distress mode and found Duster power.

  Gargling, groaning, spitting, coughing, I thrashed around like a crazy person, then managed to land a blow to Gina, slamming her off balance enough to make her stumble back a step or two. Before she found her balance again, I pushed out of the chair, dripping wet, my hair hanging down in my eyes. I spit out a mouthful of water and slapped my right hand into her chest. Her eyes went wide and horrified when I ripped out her heart and let her explode.

  What was left of Gina mixed with the water on the floor and made a nasty little mud puddle at my feet.

  That was when I noticed the quiet in the shop. I swung my wet hair out of my face and shot an arc of water droplets across the room. A couple of them caught Cindy dead in the face as she stared at me.

  “Do you know how hard it is to find a good head massager?” she asked.

  “Hey, she tried to drown me.”

  “Damn demons.” One of the old women under the dryer sniffed. “Can’t trust ’em.”

  “You’re a demon, you dumb bunny,” her friend snapped.

  The first old woman sniffed again. “The young ones. Just can’t trust ’em. They get uppity.”

  Uppity demons.

  “Damn it, Cass,” Cindy said, coming closer. “Look at that mess.”

  I glanced down at Gina’s mud and couldn’t feel bad. Better her dead than me dead. But still, I did make a mess. “I can clean it up….”

  “Never mind.” Cindy waved a hand, then stepped in closer and peered at my hair. “The highlights look good. But you’ll have to shampoo yourself now. My other shampoo girl’s off today.”

  I shrugged. “I can do that.”

  Two days later I was back at school.

  The gym at St. Paul High School smelled like sweat socks and raspberry lip gloss. Weird combination, let me tell you.

  Brady and I took a seat on the bottom row of bleachers, with Zoe Cohen right behind us, watching the girls trying out for cheerleader. The first part of tryouts was simple enough. They lined up all the wannabes and had them do cartwheels and jumps (too bad Thea wouldn’t get her Duster jumping abilities until way too late to help out in this department) and splits. Each of the girls dropped into a neat split, and the insides of my thighs screamed in sympathy.

  But I smiled anyway, because Thea was looking good. Yes, her jumps weren’t very high, but she didn’t knock anybody over with her cartwheel (unlike a little brunette who was now dissolved in tears).

  The kids and parents on the bleachers broke into applause as the girls came off the gym floor to wait for their names to be called. The group portion of the tryouts was over. Now came the hard part: Every girl had to perform, alone, in the middle of the gym with God and everyone watching.

  “Am I late?” Logan rushed in and pushed his way into a seat beside me. He smiled at Thea as she came over to join us.

  “You came,” she said, giving him a big grin.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” Logan said, leaning across me to give Thea’s hand a squeeze.

  “Almost, though,” I muttered.

  He looked at me and shrugged. “I skipped out on a case. I’ve only got about a half hour; then I’m gonna have to bolt.”

  Staring at him, I had to give Logan points. He’d been an official father for only a month, and he was trying his best. He knew how important all this was to Thea, and he’d made a point to be here. Damn it.

  How was I supposed to keep my guard up when he went behind my back and made my kid happy?

  Thea sat between Brady and me, hands fisted in her lap, concentration furrowing her brow as she watched the first girl performing the original routine they all had had to create for tryouts.

  “Dani’s pretty good,” Thea whispered when she leaned into me.

  “You are better,” Brady assured her.

  Not to be outdone, Logan said, “You can beat her, Thea. I’ve seen you practicing.”

  Who hadn’t? I thought.

  “He’s right,” Zoe said. “You’re way better than Dani. Look at that; she can’t even smile and jump at the same time.”

  I sort of empathized with Dani. I couldn’t jump and smile at the same time, either.

  “Don’t worry about
it,” I said, patting Thea’s knee. “You’re gonna knock ’em dead, baby girl.”

  “I hope so.” Thea’s gaze drifted to the other side of the bleachers, where Mr. Football, Ryan Butler, was sitting. He gave her the thumbs-up, and her eyes glittered with happiness.

  Oh, boy.

  Logan caught their little exchange and growled, but I ignored him.

  Thea wanted this so badly, I was cringing inside. It’s much easier to take disappointment for yourself than to watch someone you love go through it. And frankly, Thea had always succeeded at everything she’d ever done, so she had no experience with failure. I, on the other hand, had all kinds of experience with failure.

  Then I caught the eye of Sister Mercy (Merciless the Evil), who glared at me—letting me know that Thea’s ruining her brain and future by trying out for cheerleader was all my fault. One of these days I was going to spray that woman. Even if she wasn’t a demon, it would feel good.

  I pushed crabby nuns and nasty demons out of my mind and concentrated on Thea. I thought about praying, then realized that if I did, the chances were good that I’d bring the walls of this Catholic school gym crumbling down around us. Catholic-lites who actually pray run terrible risks.

  “Elle Franklin,” one of the judges called out.

  I recognized the name and watched as the Peeping Thomasina I’d caught in my driveway the other night headed out into the middle of the floor. When she flew into her routine I started getting a little prickle of unease.

  That prickle grew fast. I recognized that routine. Hell, I could probably perform it myself, I knew it so well.

  “Damn,” Logan muttered. “This is not good.”

  “Uh-oh,” Zoe said from behind me.

  “Pixie spittle,” Brady whispered.