by R. J. Blain
Client from Hell
A Hellishly Magical Comedy (with a body count)
R.J. Blain
Client from Hell
A Magically Hellish Comedy (with a body count) #1
by R.J. Blain
Step one: add some gasoline.
Step two: light a match.
Step three: watch the devil’s house burn.
* * *
As far as plans go, Sandra Moore rather likes hers. It’s simple. It gets the job done. It reduces the devil’s house to smoldering ruins.
* * *
Life is good—at least for the year she has left of it, assuming the devil doesn’t kill her first.
* * *
Instead of the quick end and the retribution she deserves, Sandra gets the client from hell for the case of a lifetime, one that could forever change the war between the heavens and the devil’s many hells.
Copyright © 2021 by R.J. Blain
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Rebecca Frank of Bewitching Book Covers.
Contents
1. Some risks were worth taking.
2. Glasses made life better.
3. I would always choose the samosas.
4. The Devil, as always, was in the details.
5. Some was better than none.
6. What do you mean by mangled?
7. It doesn’t hurt.
8. I thought Atlanta had been completely wiped out.
9. Don’t monopoly laws exist?
10. I don’t know what it means to be properly cuddled.
11. I swear I’m not actually a vampire.
12. Lucille is fun to drive.
13. Intent mattered with my magic.
14. You are tricky.
15. In good news, I woke up.
16. How could otters be a problem?
17. I already missed his fur-covered wings.
About R.J. Blain
From Outfoxed
One
Some risks were worth taking.
Had I been wise, I wouldn’t have set the Devil’s house on fire. Had I been smart, I would’ve covered my tracks a little better. Could I even prevent the Devil from discovering who had struck a match and burned down his pretty little mansion? I’d cast every practitioner spell I knew to disable the security system without triggering an alarm, using ensorcelled scraps of paper to take over the alarm system’s job and imprint a looping video on the feed, creating the illusion nothing had changed at the property while I took my time destroying the cameras.
The trick to dealing with the evil nasties of the world involved not getting caught. I could only hope I’d taken enough steps to avoid detection. While I had my doubts, I refused to falter.
Some risks were worth taking, and the Devil deserved to have his house torched. Had he minded his own damned business for once in his eternal life, his problems wouldn’t have come knocking at my door. Technically, it hadn’t been a door. I didn’t know what the hell they called the flimsy barrier separating the audience in a courthouse from where the accused, the accuser, the attorneys, and the rest of the legal folks sat, but I couldn’t help but think of it as a gate meant for toddlers.
The Devil reminded me of an unruly toddler with a temper problem, although most little children didn’t erupt into flames when annoyed.
It wasn’t my fault his daughter had gotten into legal trouble, and it certainly wasn’t my fault he had wanted to take care of the matter personally.
I checked my box of matches to discover it was empty, and I tossed it into the burning bushes, which did a good job of igniting the startlingly flimsy exterior of his mansion.
The next time, the Devil would remember the details—and hire someone to put a better veneer on his Georgia property, one a little less likely to go up in flames at the first introduction to a match. Then again, the gasoline I’d helpfully splashed along the exterior helped a little with its inclination to burn.
Whistling, and well aware the Devil would catch me within ten minutes of realizing someone had been brave and stupid enough to torch his house, I dumped the remaining gas tanks into the flames. Thanks to a little practitioner trick I’d picked up for the sole purpose of committing an act of arson, they would be reduced to ash in a matter of minutes, leaving no evidence they’d been made of plastic.
While I’d already screwed a few things up on the covering my tracks portion of my arson adventure, I tossed a few papers inscribed with warding runes into the fire. They vanished in a flash of blue light and green smoke.
Instead of a blonde-haired woman with glasses, any attempts by lesser divines and scryers would result in a dark-haired man, also with glasses, someone who’d earned the Devil’s ire over some idiotic dispute.
It would take an angel—or the Devil himself—to pierce through my illusions. The angels would assist the Devil if he asked, but he wouldn’t. The Devil would view his torched home as a challenge and seek to solve the mystery without cheating.
If he acted true to form.
He might, or he might not.
The Devil cheated when he wanted, but he also loved mysteries as much as he adored his little cupcake of a daughter. Witnessing her attempts to rid the Earth of him through strangulation in a courthouse would be one of my cherished memories until the end of my life, which I predicted would occur within ten minutes following the Devil discovering who’d gotten tired of his shit and gone after his Earthly possessions. The case, which had devolved into the defendants—the Devil and his daughter—feuding without a care in the world, had put me in the line of fire.
As the pair had turned the court into a circus, the judge had thought it would be wise to have the promising young attorney-in-training practice questioning witnesses and the defendants.
When I’d gone to the courthouse, I’d been there to be seen and not heard. Questioning witnesses to prove the Devil or his daughter hadn’t done the crime would forever annoy the hell right out of me. Why hadn’t someone requested an angel to put an end to the nonsense rather than subject the court to their madness?
Most of the time, I liked Judge Andretti, so I couldn’t justify burning down his house. The Devil, however, deserved a little fire in his life.
I’d seen more about his true self than I wanted, which should have been hidden from the eyes of mortals behind the same sort of shroud angels used, or so the limited information I’d been able to scrounge up claimed.
The Devil’s appearance coupled with my unwanted ability to spot the shimmering shroud at the courthouse confirmed I ran out of time.
It would have been a kindness if I’d been wiped out of existence rather than been made aware of the curtain of energy blanketing the Devil and keeping those around him safe from instant death. For me, instant death would have been a mercy.
It no longer mattered. I turned my attention back to my work. As far as arsonists went, I considered myself to be a generous one. I’d waited until everyone in his eclectic family had left the premises, including their menagerie of weird pets, which included cats, fish, a few birds, and some dogs.
I suspected the dogs had a hellish origin, as at least one of them had multiple heads.
As far as I could tell, the Devil’s wife ruled over them all with an iron paw; I’d witnessed her take on the form of a snow leopard while planning my act of evil.
The angel in me made it difficult to be truly evil, the demoness in me lacked the spine to do much about my angelic tendencies, and the human in me had taken over and overruled the forces of
good and evil battling within me.
I still couldn’t figure out where I’d gotten so much angelic and demonic DNA; my parents appeared to be human. My grandparents also appeared to be human. Everyone I knew in my family appeared to be human.
Yet somehow, genetically, I passed for the child of a triad without being a child of a triad.
One day, I might ask my parents what the hell was going on—or corner my grandparents and ask them a few questions regarding their parentage.
Then again, it didn’t matter. I was out of time. The Devil would get me or the cancer would, and with nothing to lose, I figured the Earth owed me a favor for poking the divine with a sharp, fiery stick. I’d go out with a bang, but it beat suffering through the prophesied six months to a year I had left to live.
Making the headlines in a blaze of glory would leave a mark unlike the obituary of a poor legal student with few prospects and a ridiculous amount of debt. Not even pixie dust could dull that edge, and Georgia had pitied me enough to offer me access to the highest grade possible that wouldn’t reduce me to a mindless slave, to make the last months of my life easier—assuming I could afford it.
I admired my inferno for a few minutes before I left to resume living the little life I had left.
Several months prior, I would have been eager and excited to go to school and learn about the inner workings of the legal system. Everyone still believed I had potential, which compounded my sense of defeat.
I knew better, and I’d run out of reasons to keep hiding the truth.
My diagnosis had snuffed my potential out, and I marched to the department head’s office so I could formally file my withdrawal from school. Why waste money on courses I wouldn’t be able to use even eight months from now?
I longed for a hit of the pixie dust I couldn’t afford, hoping my insurance company would get around to approving my request for a prescription. Then again, tomorrow, the doctors stuck with me wanted to start their last-ditch efforts to salvage my life, and they could dose me with whatever they wanted. The doctors wanted to fight my cancer, but they did it more for themselves than for me.
I’d met men like them before.
They hated to lose.
That they hated to lose a life helped me cope, but my life had become a trophy to them, one they’d battle for long into the night, despite my keen awareness my body failed a little more each day. My favorite of my physicians, surgeons, and specialists, who had a wife who’d beaten a cancer a lot like mine, recognized the truth of my situation.
She’d gotten lucky.
I wouldn’t.
Of them all, he’d been the one I trusted to make sure my last days were as comfortable as possible, and he’d pushed for my pixie dust prescription, which would be upgraded to the highest grade as soon as I crested the point of no return.
I appreciated that, assuming I could afford the bill. My financial situation wasn’t his problem, and I took care to dodge him becoming aware I hadn’t gotten a single dose of pixie dust yet.
There wasn’t a whole lot of point in having freedom or life if all I had to show for it was pain.
I lifted my hand to tap my knuckles on the polished wood, my chest tight from a mix of dread and the side effects of the medications trying to keep me alive.
Dr. Lakset, Esquire opened the door to his office before I had a chance to knock. “Come on in, Sandra. You’re as prompt as always. That’ll serve you well down the road. No matter what field of study you opt for, the clients hate when their representatives are late.”
I bit my lip so I wouldn’t sigh. “I need to withdraw for the semester, I’m afraid.”
“May I inquire as to why?”
“I have cancer, and they’re starting intensive treatments tomorrow, which have a less than five percent chance of working. I’ve been given no more than a year, but it could be as early as six months. They think closer to a year right now.”
The middle-aged man’s brow rose. “Well, that’s the one argument I swore I’d never question when I started working in academics. Is there anything we can do to help?”
I liked he didn’t offer me pity or sympathy; I had no use for either. Pity or sympathy wouldn’t pay my medical debt, nor would it buy me more time. “If it wasn’t for adding to the debt, I’d appreciate material to read, but I can’t attend classes starting tomorrow.”
“What sort of treatment?”
“Chemotherapy, and they don’t think it’ll work because it’s a pretty invasive cancer, and it’s resilient. It started in my bones, and it’s gotten just about everywhere. If the chemo doesn’t show immediate signs of working, they’re going to put me on pain management and let it run its course until I qualify for something a little more permanent.”
Some called it suicide, but others called it mercy. I figured by the time I got to the point not even pixie dust could help, I’d view my end as a mercy—if the Devil didn’t get to me first.
I smiled at the thought of the horned bastard’s house burning brightly in the night. Maybe he’d return to his many hells where he belonged instead of bothering humanity—and stomping around in the local courthouses where people like me might catch a glimpse of him in his full glory.
If it hadn’t been for him, I might not have noticed the shrouds around the angels, too. With my body knocking on death’s door, I supposed I breached the boundary separating life from eternal rest. It was either that or the rumors people kicked the bucket when they caught a glimpse of a heavens just weren’t true.
When I’d inquired with the CDC, they seemed to think it was true, as they’d given me a long list of incidents involving the immediate demise of those unfortunate enough to witness angels or the devil without their shrouds protecting them. Apparently, the CDC didn’t want mortals even realizing the shrouds existed, so I’d been asked to keep my mouth shut about it.
I’d agreed, as while I didn’t mind torching the Devil’s house for adding to the mess of my life, I drew lines at killing random people. If I decided to kill somebody, there’d be nothing random about it.
“You seem pretty at ease about your situation.”
I maintained my smile, a task I’d gotten better at with practice and time. “The chemo might work, and if it doesn’t, I’ve got some time to do a few things on my bucket list before I give it a good kick.”
Dr. Lakset sat behind his desk and gestured for me to sit. “While the circumstances have changed, a situation has come up you might be ideal for, especially since you won’t be able to attend classes any longer. It would also allow you to remain enrolled and keep your full-time status despite your inability to attend classes moving forward.”
That caught my attention, and I sank onto the chair across from him. “Sir?”
“We have a client, and he wants a student to assist him in some basic tasks. As you’re not an esquire and cannot offer legal advice, you will be functioning as a rather well-educated secretary and researcher for the remainder of the semester. Your academic skills are excellent, and you’re within a year and a half of qualifying for your JD. The assignment would allow me to preserve your standing in the school, credit you for your classes at your current GPA, and allow me to issue an exemption for most of your finals. The assignment is a higher-level difficulty than the exams would be, and they would demonstrate your knowledge to sufficient degree. It’s unusual, but it benefits you—and it allows me to give the client a good resource. The client is also reasonable, and I’m certain an arrangement can be found so you can work around your treatments.”
“What’s the catch?” As my current GPA fell into the slightly better than perfect territory thanks to extra credit, I’d be making off like a bandit. When something sounded too good to be true, a catch lurked in the nearby shadows, waiting to catch the unwary in its nasty claws. The Devil had nasty claws when he wanted. Through his shroud, I’d witnessed flickers of his various forms, and his malevolent form, the one he whipped out in the darkest part of his hells, did a good job of keepi
ng me awake at night.
Those claws could tear through flesh without any effort, and they glistened with some rank fluid I bet made any injuries he inflicted hurt even worse.
The Devil ruled the hells, after all—not a meadow filled with pretty white unicorns farting rainbows.
Dr. Lakset sighed. “It involves extensive travel, so for the period of the contract, your housing would be arranged by your client. The school has issued minimum requirements, which he would need to meet or exceed. I’ve reviewed the locations you would be staying at, along with an itinerary of hotels. The client will also be required to notify the college of any changes to your lodgings.”
“That’s unusual.”
“He travels a lot, and he needs someone who can handle paperwork for him on the road. That someone will be you. You’ll be working with his attorneys as well, but you’ll be serving as the right-hand woman for him and his executive secretary for the duration of your contract. There will be an NDA you will need to sign.”
Getting a law student to assist a client and his executive secretary made sense; while I couldn’t offer legal advice, I could keep an eye out for anything that seemed sketchy and pass those to the real attorneys. I’d also be able to get good experience dealing with corporate law, one of the more lucrative branches of legal work.
If I could beat the cancer, I might be able to build a future off the internship. The terms seemed sane enough, too. The client handling the expenses would make my life easier, and if I didn’t have to pay my lodging bills for the rest of the semester, I might be able to salvage something should I survive the cancer treatments. The NDA didn’t bother me; I’d been warned from the day I’d started my formal schooling I would learn to live with them or fail at being an attorney.