by Мишель Роуэн
“Well,” Val put a hand on her hip. “That’s definitely different. This is your idea of the perfect woman, I assume?”
“No, my idea of the perfect woman is . . .” He stopped talking for a second and eyed her.
“Yeah, that’s right. This is exactly what I like.”
“Then let’s get going,” she said, thinking about the key. “Julian won’t know what hit him.”
Chapter Fourteen
I am evil, Val told herself as she tried to get into her Elvira-Mistress-of-the-Night-like character. An evil, large-breasted witch who’s up to no good. No good at all. And who wears too much makeup. And very uncomfortable thong underwear.
The mayor’s mansion was at the end of the Miami-esque main strip of the Underworld.
Behind it was nothing. Literally nothing, which Val found quite strange, since she never knew what nothing looked like until she saw it. The mayor’s gated estate made her immediately think of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, which she’d seen on Entertainment Tonight. She’d thought for an old man he sure had a lot of gorgeous babes surrounding him. Maybe he, too, was a fallen angel and those were all of his buxom blond Tempters.
She suddenly felt like they were being watched, then noticed that at the side of the gate was an eye. A large eyeball about the size of a beach ball mounted on a metal pole. When they neared the gate it turned to look at them.
“And you are?” it asked blandly. But, since an eyeball on a pole didn’t have a mouth to speak, Val simply heard the voice projected around them.
“We’re here to see Mayor Vaille,” Nathaniel told it.
It blinked. “Are you here for the party?”
“Oooh, that’s right. There’s a party,” Reggie said.
Nathaniel glanced at the rat on Val’s shoulder, then back at the eye. “That’s right. My name is
Nathaniel.”
The eye moved so Val was in its sight. “And you are?”
She swallowed. “The name’s Claire,” she said, having decided that it was a good name to use.
Easy to remember and after all, Reggie’s girlfriend was also a witch. “I’m with the demon.
I’m an evil witch.”
The eye immediately closed up.
Nathaniel grimaced and turned to her. “You should know that evil witches don’t typically go around telling everyone that they’re evil witches.”
She shrugged. “Sorry. I’m new at this evil thing.”
“You’re not evil. Don’t even try to act like it. Just be very quiet. Pretend you’re mute.”
The eye reopened and looked at them with disdain. “The mayor is pleased you could make it.
Though, since you didn’t have the courtesy to RSVP, there may not be enough refreshments for you and your . . . guest. Next time, try to follow procedure.”
The gates opened and they walked inside. Val turned around to watch them close up again, locking with a bone-chilling click. Her heart pounded hard against her ribcage.
“Okay,” Nathaniel said. “We go in and find Julian. Approach him when he doesn’t expect it, doesn’t recognize you, and get your key. Then this will all be over. Simple.”
“Not simple.” She looked at him warily. “How do I know you won’t just tell everyone who I am?”
“I won’t.”
“But how do I know that for sure? Only hours ago you didn’t want to help me unless it was in line with tempting me, and now you’re doing me this big favor? What gives?”
He sighed. “Can’t you just accept it without overanalyzing it?”
She shook her head. “What assurance do I have that you won’t just go in there and blurt out to the mayor what I really am? Lloyd told me you’re on real shaky ground with your job. Maybe you want some extra Brownie points?”
He looked exasperated with her. “I’m going to have to have a very serious discussion with
Lloyd and his tendency to run off at the mouth. You know, if you’re that concerned about my intentions, you could just command me not to say anything.”
Val immediately brightened. “Oh. Right. I totally forgot about that for a moment. Okay, Nathaniel, I command you not to tell anyone who I really am.” She let out a long exhale and smiled. “There, I feel much better now.”
His lips twitched and he studied her for a moment. “You like that, don’t you?”
“Like what?”
He turned away. “Forget it.”
“No, tell me what you were going to say.”
Nathaniel turned back around with an amused expression. “Dominating me.”
Val’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
“You like being the one with all the power. Making me do what you want whether or not I like it. Having your way. Being a bossy little bitch.” The smile disappeared and flames suddenly flared in his eyes. “Do you have any idea what I plan to do once I’m free of your little spell, angel?”
She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. Not at all. She didn’t say anything back to him but an icy chill went through her. She definitely didn’t want to know what he planned to do.
But she was obviously in the minority.
“What?” Reggie asked curiously. “What will you do?”
The demon’s eyes flicked to the rat on her shoulder, then back to Val. “Never mind.”
Reggie moaned. “Oh, brother. You’re all talk, you know that? You’re not going to do anything bad to her, and you know it.”
His eyebrows went up, and he casually ran his hand through his dark hair. “Is that right, O wise rodent? And why would you think that?”
“Because you’re totally in love with her.”
“What did you just say?” he hissed.
“In love. With her. Did I stutter?”
Val could barely hear Reggie with the blood rushing through her ears.
Reggie chuckled, the sound cutting through the absolute silence. “Yeah, Val, I’m serious. It’s kind of cute, actually. The two of you arguing all the time but it doesn’t mean a damn thing.
Just sexual tension. I learned about that from Lloyd’s books. You should see how Nate looks at you when you’re not paying attention. It’s like he’s . . . eeek!”
Nathaniel snatched Reggie off her shoulder and held the rat up at eye level, squeezing harder than necessary. She couldn’t see his eyes for the flames that filled them now.
“I think I’ve had enough of you,” Nathaniel said in a very cold voice. “Nonstop chatter, telling your lies, making snide comments, whatever you can say to fill up the silence. Are you afraid of the silence, my little friend? Are you afraid of what you’ll hear when your mind is still? That you’re a failure in life, in love, and that nobody gives a damn if you live or die?
That you’ve been reduced to the sum total of your parts? A pathetic sewer dwelling life-form that needs to be exterminated? I think I can help you out there. Put you out of your misery.”
“Val!” Reggie squeaked as Nathaniel squeezed him harder.
She stormed at him and punched him in the shoulder as hard as she could. Her hands were clenched so hard that her glamourized long red nails bit painfully into her palms. “I command you to put him down right now. Do it!”
Nathaniel shook with the effort of trying to fight her power over him. He didn’t release
Reggie.
“Put him down!” Val’s voice raised a level and she saw the demon actually flinch as if the words caused him pain.
Finally, slowly, Nathaniel leaned over and released Reggie to the ground. The rat limped over to where Val stood. Nathaniel looked at her again, his eyes still filled with fire, his breathing uneven. His lips a thin, angry line.
“He lies,” he said. Then he turned away and continued along the path to the mayor’s sprawling mansion. Val watched him go for a moment before she gently picked Reggie up.
“Are you okay?”
Reggie was breathing hard, shaking, and his teeth chattered. “Methinks the demon doth protest too much.”
She frowned deeply at him.“Stop provoking him.”
“By telling the truth?”
“It’s not the truth. He can’t stand me.”
“He’s crazy about you.”
“You’re the crazy one.” She paused as she waited for her flushed cheeks to cool down a bit.
“Besides, FYI, he’s a demon. I’m an angel. Well, ex-angel, anyhow. It doesn’t happen. Got it?
And even on top of all that I’ve only known him for a couple of days.”
“That doesn’t matter. In Trixie’s books, they fall in love at first sight. Maybe you two are soulmates! Oh,” he sighed. “How romantic. Although I think he may have broken one of my ribs.”
Without another word to further provoke Reggie’s ridiculous notion, Val followed behind
Nathaniel as he made his way to the tall front doors of the Playdemon Mansion. She looked around at everything from the well-manicured hedges, to the rolling green lawn, to the interlocked driveway that had a Jaguar, a Mercedes convertible and a Rolls-Royce parked in front of the house. Anything to distract herself from what had just happened.
Nathaniel appeared to know exactly where he was going as he stormed through the grounds.
Val trailed behind him as he bypassed the front door and walked through a vine-covered archway leading to the rear of the mansion. Everything about this place seemed so real to her.
Like on that Miami Vice show with the big, expensive, flashy drug dealers’ houses that had a tendency to blow up at any given moment.
But it wasn’t real, Val reminded herself. None of it. None of the prettiness of it, anyhow. The visual of the gray, jagged rocks flashed in her mind. How did they do it? Keep up the façade so perfectly? Had it always been this way?
The archway led through to the most beautiful pool she’d ever seen. Not that she had much to compare it with the out-of-order, leaf- and snow-covered one at the Paradise Inn. She had seen commercials for high-end resorts in the Caribbean and this pool was torn right out of one of those. Blue, blue water. There were two stunningly beautiful women sunbathing topless. A shirtless man carrying a drinks tray delivered a couple of umbrella-topped cocktails to them.
They laughed and giggled and flirted with him. Beyond the pool she could see the ocean, sparkling like diamonds under the perfect sky.
Oh, and the big, fat slug. She couldn’t forget about that.
Definitely not beautiful, she decided. In fact, it was repulsively ugly reclining on a chaise longue under a large umbrella. She’d recently seen The Return of the Jedi and the slug-
creature immediately reminded her of Jabba the Hutt. Only smaller and a little less sexy.
Nathaniel stopped walking at the edge of the pool and waited for her to catch up. He turned his head in her general direction but didn’t look at her. “Let me do the talking.”
“Okay.”
“No argument?”
“Nope.”
“Good.” Then he looked at her, his gray-blue eyes cautious but currently flame-free, and he forced a smile to his lips. “Remember, we’re supposed to be together.”
She waited for a comment from the peanut gallery, aka: Reggie, but there was nothing.
Smart rat.
“Just one question,” Val said and Nathaniel sighed immediately.
“I knew it.”
“It’s just”—Val lowered her voice—“that isn’t the mayor over there, is it?”
He glanced at the slug. “Yes. Why?”
She shrugged. “It’s just that . . . he seems so concerned with how things look by his house and the rest of the Underworld, why doesn’t he, I don’t know—”
“Use glamour on himself?”
“Well, yeah.”
The corner of his mouth curled up. “He can’t.”
“Why not?”
He glanced at the mayor who didn’t seem to have noticed their arrival yet. “Like I told you before, Mayor Vaille was second-in-command in Hell itself until he got a little too ambitious and power-hungry. Lucifer didn’t like that too much, to say the least, so Vaille was demoted to overseeing the Underworld.”
“The Underworld that looks like Miami Beach.”
He nodded. “Part of the mayor’s punishment was an inability to perform personal glamour.”
“So that means that he can make everything look good except himself?”
“Precisely.”
“He must hate that.”
Nathaniel smiled and shook his head. “Have you ever heard the story of the emperor’s new clothes?”
“Wasn’t that a Disney movie?”
“That was The Emperor’s New Groove,” Reggie piped up. “I have it on DVD. David Spade’s my hero.”
Nathaniel gave Reggie a withering look. “In ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ the ruler is naked but his underlings have convinced him he wears beautiful clothes. He is unaware of his own humiliation until someone points it out to him.” He paused. “The mayor has convinced himself, and no one has argued with him, that he is very desirable and attractive.”
“You’re kidding.”
“So, it would be best if you say nothing that may belie that delusion. Understand?”
Val took another look at Jabba and grimaced. “What if it just slips? What if he says ‘Don’t I look good today?’ and I say, ‘For a slug you look good.’ What then?”
“Then,” Nathaniel looked away, “you would count yourself lucky if you only lost your tongue.”
“Nathaniel!” The mayor finally noted their presence, and waved his flipper-like appendage.
“Come here, my boy.”
Nathaniel slipped an arm around Val’s waist, which took her by surprise and steered her toward the mayor.
The mayor extended a flipper and Nathaniel dropped to one knee and kissed it. “I’m so pleased you could make it to my party. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“The pleasure is mine, great one.” Nathaniel rose to his feet. “I wanted to come by and tell you personally that I have been giving your generous offer of employment much serious thought.”
“And? Will you join me?”
The way the mayor was eyeing Nathaniel made Val think he left off the “in the hot tub,” part of the proposition.
“Like I said, I have been giving the matter much thought.”
“That is not an answer. Things are brewing, my demon friend, a great opportunity has only today presented itself, and I would relish the chance to have you on my team.”
“What opportunity is that?”
The mayor raised a lump of flesh on his forehead, which could have been his eyebrow.
“That’s privileged information. But join me, and you will be one of the privileged few.” His gaze tracked along Nathaniel’s form and came to rest on Val.
“This is . . . Claire,” Nathaniel said. “She is with me.”
“I see.” His lump of eyebrow traveled higher. “Do I smell human? A human in the
Underworld? Nathaniel, I’m shocked at your audacity.”
“She may be human, but she’s striving to be so much more than that. She is a practitioner of black magic.”
The mayor nodded. “Ah, a witch. Very nice. Very nice, indeed. Welcome, my dear.”
Val wondered how an evil witch might answer him. “Thanks a bunch.”
“I enjoy magic very much, myself,” the mayor continued. “Would you do a demonstration for me?”
A demonstration? Val’s eyes widened. Of magic?
She swallowed hard. “Do you have a deck of playing cards handy?”
Nathaniel laughed. “Claire, don’t tease. Great one, forgive her, please. Her magic is so dark, so malicious in its nature, that none of what she does can be demonstrated here since there is that Belligerent Magic Decree you so wisely put forth.”
“Yes, yes, of course, you are right.” The mayor eyed Val and she tried to eye him right back.
Evil witches didn’t get intimidated by Underworld bosses. If there was a handbook
for evil witches, that would be on page one.
Fallen angels, on the other hand, were intimidated very easily. And often. At least this fallen angel was, she thought.
The mayor nodded at her. “Your familiar is very well-behaved. An interesting choice, I must say. It must ensure that all but the bravest demons will stay away from your business.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your familiar.” He waved a flipper at her.
Val looked at Nathaniel.
“Squeak,” Reggie offered.
“Oh, right. My familiar. Yeah, he’s . . . quite well-trained, actually. Not housebroken, though, but what can you do?”
“Squeak?”
“Well, you’re not.”
The shirtless waiter delivered a drink to the mayor who was unable to pick it up, so he stood there while the mayor sipped it from the tray with a long, bendy straw. When he’d sucked the last of whatever the oddly puce-colored liquid was, the waiter wandered back toward the topless women.
“This party will be quite the event,” the mayor said. “It was originally simply one of my regular bashes, but now I’m celebrating.”
“What’s the occasion?”
The slug shrugged. “It has to do with the privileged information I spoke of before. But a word from you could change all that. I would love to have you in my folds. Err . . . I mean, have you in the fold.”
“I would enjoy”—Nathaniel seemed to shudder ever so slightly—“discussing it further with you.”
The mayor eyed Val again. “In private.”
She took a step back. “Yeah, you guys talk. I’ll just go snag a drink and leave you two at it.”
Nathaniel held eye contact with her for a moment before he went to grab a nearby lounge chair, pulling it up alongside the mayor’s chaise.
Not that she was one to judge, but it was quite obvious that the mayor preferred handsome demons to sexy evil witches.