Bart of Darkness (The Book of Bart 2)

by Ryan Hill

  “One hundred and sixty-four dollars,” the cashier said.

  I handed her a credit card. “Not even a politician could run a racket that profitable.”

  I packed the stuff in the back of my Mercedes, then headed to Barnes & Noble at Crabtree Valley Mall to get a book about how to officially keep Ozzie alive. I’d hoped they would carry a book called Hell Hounds and You: Raising a Demon Dog While Keeping Your Home in One Piece, but no luck. Bookstores never seemed to have the one book I needed the most.

  “I know you,” a voice said behind me.

  I whipped my head around. It was the ginger from the ABC Store. She looked even better in daylight.

  “Yeah,” I said. “From the ABC store.”

  This girl was a welcome sight after all of Sam’s “what does it all mean” angst. I hadn’t realized how much Sam’s mood bothered me until I caught myself listening to emo rock in the SUV on the way to Barnes & Noble.

  The ginger grinned, showing off some very bright, very bleached teeth. “Good memory.”

  Oh, I’ve got quite a few things better than my memory, hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge.

  I extended my hand. “I'm Bartholomew.”

  “That’s a mouth full,” she said, softly taking my hand in hers.

  And then some.

  “Veronica.”

  Fresh out of college, the ginger had graduated a year early and moved to Raleigh to work for her father, who was expanding his business. It was something to do with sales. I don’t know. I was too busy trying to sneak a peek at her body to hear for sure. If she’d tossed her wavy hair, I’d have taken her right there in the Self-Help section.

  Veronica read aloud the title of the book in my hand. “How to Train Your Miniature Schnauzer.”

  Shit. Not cool, Bartholomew. Not cool.

  “Yeah, you know,” I said with a laugh. “It's for a friend. She just got a dog.”

  Veronica awwed. “I love Schnauzers. They’re adorable.”

  “Did I say it was for a friend? I meant me. I took in a stray Schnauzer the other day.” I bit the inside of my cheeks, hoping I’d salvaged the situation.

  “You took in a stray?” Her eyes widened, like a blanket ready to envelop me. “Aren’t you the good boy?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  We both laughed. Veronica even touched my arm. The tight black shirt she wore hugged her succulent body. Rarely had I come across a woman this sexually confident without the help of alcohol, and in daylight. Any woman can strut her stuff at night in the dim lighting of a bar, whatever mixed drink she and her friends ordered pumping her body full of confidence, but doing it when the sun was up? Most impressive. I wanted her, but only if she passed a simple test… Because safety first.

  “Are you now, or have you ever in the past, been a Succubus?” I asked.

  Veronica was tongue-tied. The question caught her off guard, and why wouldn’t it? I figured it was the first and only time in her life someone would ask her if she was a Succubus. Years from now, she’d laugh about it.

  “A what?” she asked.

  I shrugged. Veronica having no clue what I meant was a good enough answer for me. “I just want to make sure you’re an actual human, because there aren’t many as stunning as you.”

  I wondered what Sam would’ve done if she heard me compliment Veronica. Gasp? Run off to the Religion section and cry? Become so consumed with jealousy she’d beat me over the head with every single Dr. Seuss book in stock?

  Suddenly Veronica’s face dropped. Her body language turned so cold, even I got a chill. I’d mucked it up. Why did I have to get possessed by a Succubus? It was like some scarlet letter that refused to go away. Obviously, my “game” had yet to recover.

  “I’m not sure what a Succubus is, but I’ll tell you what I really am.” She leaned in close. “If you can keep a secret."

  Or had I?

  I arched an eyebrow. “I’ve been known to keep a secret or two in my day.”

  “I’m not exactly what you’d call ... a good girl.”

  “That makes two of us.” I smirked. “I'm not exactly a good boy.”

  She made a pouting face. “Can’t I find that out for myself?”

  A short time later, but not too short because I’m no minute man, the two of us emerged from a back room, my hair a mess, sticking out in a handful of different directions. I finished buttoning up my shirt, feeling like ten elephants had been taken off my back. The euphoria was so great, I didn’t give Sam and her murky disposition another thought.

  I paid for my dog book, then walked through the double doors at the storefront. There was normally a breeze in between the doors, but not this time. It was like the wind knew better than to mess with me.

  No touching! Rogue who just got laid coming through!

  I joined Veronica in the parking lot. Her hair was a bit messier, thanks to someone—me—pulling on patches of it while deep in the throes of passion.

  “We should do this again sometime. Raise a little hell, have a little sex.” I handed her my phone to get her number.

  “I can do that.” She typed in her number via a text message to herself.

  Then a memory popped up in my mind. “I get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “From earlier. You said you weren’t exactly a good girl.”

  “Yeah,” Veronica said, drawing it out to see where the conversation headed.

  “Your eyes.” I tucked the phone back in my pocket. “Windows into the soul.”

  In the heat of passion during our little sojourn into sin, her eyes had turned red for a moment. I was freaked at first, but remembered that a Succubus didn’t have red eyes. Demons had red eyes, but they remained hidden under our human exteriors. Veronica wasn’t entirely a demon … but she definitely had a hellish side.

  “Beautiful, right?” Veronica blinked a few times, exaggerating the movement.

  “Yes, but for this long,” I said, holding up two fingers close together. “They turned red.”

  “Noticed that, did you?” She winked. “Not many do.”

  “You’re not entirely a bad girl, are you?”

  Veronica hmmed. “Half?”

  That explained it. She was half-human, half-demon.

  “Is it your mom or dad that’s a demon?”

  “Dad. Mom died giving birth to me.”

  “So, what are you?”

  “I’m entirely a bad girl,” Veronica said.

  Veronica laughed, laying a hand on my back. She rested her head on my shoulder. “I guess I should’ve known too. Normal men aren’t half that good.”

  With Mom dead and no extended family, Veronica should’ve wound up in foster care. Hell didn’t permit demons to raise their spawn. Parenthood was considered too honorable a profession. Veronica’s father couldn’t abide that, leaving Hell to raise his daughter.

  The thought of Veronica having something to do with the Caelo in Terra passed through my mind, but her hair was all natural. I knew. I pulled on it hard enough it would’ve fallen off if it were a wig.

  “Who’s your dad?” I asked. “Maybe I know him.”

  Veronica laughed under her breath. “Did you have sex with me to get to my dad?”

  “Of course.”

  She punched me in the stomach with her free hand. “Talk like that and you might get to meet him one day.”

  “Not sure I’d like that.” Meeting her father, or any girl’s father, never ended well for me. With hers, chances were I’d wind up laughing in his face and calling him all sorts of emasculating names until he tried to kill me with a can of insect repellant. “I’m not really the type you take home to Mom and Dad.”

  “Neither am I, but the look on Dad’s face when he realizes I'm sleeping with a demon would be priceless.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Maternal Instincts

  Sam didn’t come out of hiding to say hello or update me on the investigation all night, which wasn’t like her. I should’ve been thrilled,
but Sam’s sad, mopey disposition nagged at me, like a tick digging its way into my skull. Against my better judgment, I reached out to her, offering to buy her a cup of some special cinnamon-latte-grande-macchiato-coffeoso thing at Starbucks, in the hopes it’d grease the wheels and get things moving.

  We sat at a small table, my back to the fireplace. The warmth reminded me of home—I mean Hell. I couldn’t exactly call it home anymore.

  “What have you been doing with yourself?” I sipped my black coffee and counted the hipsters working away on their laptops. There were five. “It’s not like you to keep radio silence this long.”

  Sam fiddled with her coffee, picking at the plastic cover. “Hanging out, I guess.”

  Great. She was still depressed, and I’d wasted five dollars trying to cheer her up with some monstrosity masquerading as coffee. This dark side of Sam made it easier to understand why she’d killed herself as a mortal. She took depression to another level. She tumbled all the way down, through the rabbit hole, past Wonderland, and into that eternal blackness. Forget trying to climb out of it. She’d set up shop and planted a flag down there.

  That sort of sadness was contagious. There was no cure. The depression had to run its course. If I were smart, I’d have stayed far away from her.

  “Any word on Peter Heinrich?” I chugged the rest of my coffee. The scalding heat felt refreshing going down my throat.

  “Probably an alias,” she said. “Gabriel found almost a thousand Peter Heinrichs in Heaven’s records, but they were all accounted for.”

  Meaning they were either in Heaven or Hell.

  “Yeah, it’s probably an alien then.”

  “Alias.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You said alien.”

  I narrowed my gaze at Sam, waiting for the light bulb to turn on.

  Finally, her face brightened. “You were kidding, weren’t you?”

  “That was the idea.” I’d wanted to make her laugh. Instead, the plastic-angel treated my joke like a sidewalk drawing in the middle of a rainstorm.

  Thanks, Sam.

  My attention turned to a little boy outside. He screamed and cried for his mom to the point it was like putting my ears through a pencil sharpener. I tried to ignore the kid, but coupled with Sam’s funk, the wails were starting to grate on me more and more, pushing me to the edge. If I went over, I’d end up standing in the rubble of a destroyed Starbucks, somebody’s heart in one hand and my plain black coffee in the other. That wasn’t counting all the cops surrounding me, wondering what the Heaven happened.

  “Sorry.” Sam glanced past me at the kid outside.

  “I just wish you weren’t so doom and gloom. It’s not fun.”

  Sam didn’t respond.

  “Neither is being ignored.”

  “What?” she asked, looking back at me. “Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

  “Sorry.” This time she caught herself. “Sorr–”

  I held up a hand. “I get it.”

  Sam pointed out the window. “Do you see that little boy?”

  I followed the line her finger made to the kid. “He’s a bit of a whiner, don’t you think?”

  She glared at me. “He’s crying for his mother, and nobody is helping him.”

  “And if his mother won’t, why should we? I’m sure there’s an excellent reason why that kid’s been abandoned, not the least of which is his annoying, shrill voice. Let Social Services handle it.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “What is, then?”

  She rose from her seat and walked outside. I turned to stop her and accidentally knocked over a glass of sugar. Awesome. Most days, I’d tease Sam about this helping hand, bleeding-heart junk, but seeing her do something, even a kind gesture that made me want to swallow back bile, sure as Heaven beat the manic-depressive version I was dealing with. I couldn’t work with borderline-suicidal Sam, but bleeding-heart Sam? That was doable. I threw away my coffee and went outside.

  “I want my mommy,” the little boy was saying through his tears. He had thin, brown hair with matching eyes and wore a black sweatshirt with the Batman logo on it.

  Sam, meanwhile, knelt down to his level. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I lit a cigarette. “What’s your name?”

  He sniffed. “Duffy.”

  I exhaled as I spoke. “The kids must have fun with that one.”

  “Bartholomew,” Sam said in a hushed tone.

  “Just saying.” What was the big deal? He probably did get picked on for having that name.

  “I want my mom,” Duffy said, sniffing. “I can’t find her.”

  “Let’s see if we can help you find her.” Sam patted Duffy’s shoulder.

  “Did you run away?” I asked with a smirk. “You look like a runaway.”

  Sam smacked me on the leg. “You’re not helping.”

  “I want to go home.” Duffy wiped his runny rose, leaving a shiny trail of snot on his hand and sleeve. I considered lending him a handkerchief for a moment, but that moment passed without me giving it to the kid.

  “Do you know your address?” Sam asked.

  Duffy nodded. “But I can’t tell you. You’re a stranger.”

  “What about how old you are?”

  Duffy held up a hand, showing off the fingers. “Five.”

  “So you’re big enough to wait things out on your own?” I asked.

  “Bartholomew,” Sam said in a scolding tone. “We will stay here and wait until someone comes looking for Duffy.”

  That sounded like a terrible way to waste the afternoon.

  “Why don’t we just take him home?” I asked. “Maybe put him in a basket, leave him at his doorstep.”

  “I’m too big for a basket,” Duffy said.

  Sam rolled her eyes. “That would us irresponsible of us and you know it.”

  I waved her off. “Whatever.”

  Sam and I sat on the bench with the kid until his mother, the cops, whomever, came along. She chatted up Duffy, hoping to keep him calm. He was five years old, wanted to play basketball for the North Carolina State University Wolfpack when he grew up, and though he wore a Batman sweatshirt, said Spider-Man was his favorite superhero.

  “If you really want to play basketball for the Wolfpack, I’m sure there’s some kind of deal we can make,” I said.

  Sam’s eyes turned into spears that pierced my chest. Figuratively speaking, of course. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Like I can even do that kind of thing anymore,” I said. Besides, he was too young to sell his soul.

  “What’s he talking about?” Duffy asked.

  “Nothing,” Sam said. “Do you remember where you lost your mom?”

  “I didn’t lose her,” he said. “I was here on a field trip for school.”

  “Downtown?” Sam asked. “Anywhere in particular?”

  “The capital.”

  “He probably means the Capital Building,” I said.

  Sam nodded. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Duffy said. “I was walking, then the bad place, then here.”

  “What’s the bad place?” Sam leaned closer, like a defensive mother. “Did someone hurt you?”

  I made a fist. Not that I loved kids, but why was it so hard for people to understand? Don’t mess with kids. It’s an unspoken rule. For demons and humans.

  “I don’t think so,” Duffy said.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “Nobody touched you, hit you, anything like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I rested my elbows on my knees. “It would be really helpful to us if–”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Duffy said, cutting me off. The little worm.

  “Okay,” Sam cooed. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

  “Hey kid,” I said. “Let’s just get you home, okay? Your mom will be there, she’ll be relieved to see you, and my
friend and I can get on with our work.”

  Duffy’s eyes widened. He nodded, mouth hung open, like a human version of Ozzie.

  I clapped. “Praise Jobu.”

  Helping Duffy wasn’t my deal, so I let Sam drive us to the kid’s home. Duffy sat in the back seat, loudly patting his legs and kicking the back of my seat. I ground my teeth, resisting the urge to snap one of his legs off to use as a toothpick.

  Another kick jostled me forward. I turned to the runt, wearing a million-dollar smile. “Can you not do that?”

  “I’m bored,” Duffy said.

  “So? Look out the window.”

  “That’s boring.”

  This kid. The sooner we get rid of him and get back to work, the better.

  Thank Hell he’d be out of my hair in a few minutes. I closed my eyes, imagining how dark his face would turn if I held him upside down for a day or two.

  “This should help,” Sam said.

  She held her cell phone out to the kid, who gladly took it. I didn’t approve of Sam giving her phone to someone who could slobber all over it, but Duffy did calm down after diving into the marvel of modern technology.

  It turned out he lived in a two-story home in some suburban development in north Raleigh. One day it was a small forest, the next it was a neighborhood sprawling with cookie-cutter homes. Everything about the place screamed wholesome and family-friendly. The deeper we went into the development, the sicker I felt. It was like downing a bucket of arsenic through a beer bong.

  Sam drove past a couple of homes under construction, then parked the car on the curb in front of Duffy’s house. The front yard had a couple of trees, and the house was lined with little bushes. The kid hopped out of the car and darted for his front door, where he rang the bell over and over.

  I opened my car door. “Not much on patience, is he?”

  “He’s five,” Sam said, turning off the engine. “He’s probably not much on anything besides cookies and cartoons.”

  We walked over to Duffy, who was still banging on the front door.

  “Mommy!” he said. “Mommy, I’m here. Let me in.”

  No answer.

  Duffy tried knocking on the door and ringing the bell at the same time for a double-whammy, then, and when nothing happened, he started back in with the crying. “Where is she?”