Chapter Five
There’s no reason to ever go to a nightclub before midnight. These were words Piper lived by. Sort of. As usual, around eleven, she got bored of drinking cheap wine and smoking hash in her flat and decided we should head around to the Demon’s Lair.
“It sounds so sexy,” she said, pulling a cigarette from her bag. “Demon’s Lair.”
“Hmm, yeah. Sexy.” It’s one thing we’d have to disagree on, though I knew better than to get into an argument with Piper.
She raised an eyebrow at me. “You don’t think so?”
“Demons are supposed to be evil, Piper,” I said it with a shrug. I never gave her more than generalisations on this kind of stuff. Anything else would be inviting her to jump down my throat to choke me with her firmly held opinions.
“I do like a bad boy,” she said, before she slipped the cigarette between her lips and lit it with a match. The naked flame caught my attention, lifting it from my thoughts. So bright. I was going to blame the second-hand high from her joint for how enraptured that spark of fire made me for those few seconds it took her to light the cigarette.
She exhaled the smoke and we started to walk. The earlier rain was off and the sky wasn’t quite so grey. April showers were to be expected, I supposed. It was just that time of year. Though the thought of more possible rain made me question my decision to come out without a jacket.
“Jimmy said he might meet us later,” she told me, glancing my way with slightly narrowed eyes.
I wondered how she expected me to react to that little bombshell. I had a hard time forming a response. Jimmy was one of Piper’s many student friends. He’s handsome, in a very obvious and he knows it kind of way. We’d had a moment, that sort of became a thing, but it’s been more than a year and I wasn’t interested in going back down that road. I supposed I should say something.
“How’s he been?” I really hoped she’d tell me he had a girlfriend. Back-sliding into a non-relationship so wasn’t on my list of things to do now that I was back in town.
“He dropped out of school. Started working for his dad. Doesn’t get out much anymore.” She took another drag on her cigarette. “Hardly anyone does these days. No-one ever has any money.”
Myself included, but I supposed I’d better not kill the mood with talk of finances. I took sixty quid out my bank account and I knew it wasn’t going to be enough, especially not later once the buzz of being loaded was operating my main systems for me.
“Sucks,” I said, half-wishing I’d worn my new dress. I didn’t know what I thought I was saving it for. My black denim skirt and slinky vest top had been worn to death. Worse, Jimmy loved this skirt. Maybe I should have worn jeans. I was starting to get a bad feeling about this impulsive night out.
“I heard they have flaming shots in this place.” She threw her cigarette to the ground and stubbed out the embers with her booted foot. The shiny black knee-high boots were so totally Piper. Her dress was cream-coloured and curve-hugging on top of her visibly black underwear. The leather collar and cuffs were over-kill. She favoured a certain kind of look that tended to scare most men off rather than lure them in. The dominatrix-style suited her personality, but she did usually have to take some shit for her choices. Strangers could really be arseholes. Particularly when they’re drunk.
“Sounds painful.” I winced at the thought of it. I just wanted a few well-mixed cocktails, cold and refreshing and loaded with alcohol. I wanted to dull the memory of my last visit to the dreamscape. If I was being totally honest, I wanted it erased from my head entirely. That wasn’t possible, so I’d settle for drinking myself into oblivion to forget it for a few hours, a few days, maybe, if I was lucky.
“There it is,” I said, gazing over the sexy lettering of the nightclub’s name hanging above the entrance doors. There’s a queue, of course. It’s new, it’s ladies’ night, and it’s half-eleven. I counted the skirts in the queue. The women outnumbered the men four to one. It relaxed me a little. I wasn’t in the mood to meet someone tonight. Not Jimmy, not some random guy.
“I’m not exactly convinced by this crowd, but beggars can’t be choosers.” Piper moved towards the end of the queue and I followed, really wishing for a second that I’d worn my jacket. The realisation of how vain it was to come out without just because it had looked idiotic with my outfit was kicking in. The wind was picking up, making it seem colder than it actually was. The size of the queue wasn’t exactly encouraging either. It’s not going to go down fast.
“It’s freezing,” I grumbled as we got on the end of the line. I was shivering, but Piper didn’t even seem to notice the temperature. Maybe it was the boots. My worn-in peep-toe heels didn’t really do much to keep my feet warm.
We moved forward a few inches and stopped, and it was five whole minutes before it happened again. I gazed across the crowd, avoiding making eye-contact with anyone glancing my way. In this kind of company, there had to be a demon or four lurking. I sincerely didn’t want to meet one. Not tonight. Not after the last one. Everyone’s entitled to a night off, right? Shuddering, I hugged myself tighter.
I felt something cool touch my neck and I jumped, turning to find Jimmy draping a suit jacket over my shoulders. His dark hair fell over his eyes as he moved; it’s kind of shaggy now, longer in a sexy, messy kind of way. Shit. He looked good.
“You looked cold,” he told me, wrapping it all the way around, hugging me as he did. He radiated heat, warming me up on the spot. It was almost enough to make me backslide right then and there.
“I’ve never been so glad to see you.” The words slipped out of my lips, and I cursed the enthusiasm behind them. Don’t lead him on, Tina. The voice of reason pleaded with me. I waited for the other voice to slap her down, but the devil on my shoulder wasn’t playing tonight. “Thanks, for the jacket.”
Too late. He didn’t seem to think I sounded so happy just because he warmed me up. He looked pretty pleased with himself, a sly smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “So, where have you been hiding yourself, Chrissie?”
I couldn’t think of an answer that didn’t sound completely pathetic. I loved that he calls me Chrissie, for some weird, intangible reason. My brain just caught on the soft sound of his nickname for me and didn’t want to have to think about anything other than how good it sounded falling from his lips. Lucky for me, Piper found something she wanted to argue about.
Piper snorted and pushed him back. “If you think you’re hijacking my wing-woman, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“Hey, you said I was welcome to join you,” he said, looking at me as if he expected me to complain too. I wanted him here, right?
I shrugged, avoiding his imploring gaze. “She said you were coming later.”
“This isn’t later?”
“It’s not even midnight,” Piper said, pulling out another cigarette. She paused and got a second out for him before he could ask. Some things never changed.
He shrugged, taking the cigarette out of her hand. “I had a wedding to escape. You can’t tell me to piss off, because I’m not going back there. End of.”
“A wedding?” Okay, now I was intrigued. “Who got married?”
He lit the cigarette and took a drag before he answered. “My idiot brother, if you must know. I give it three months.”
“Oh, come on,” Piper said, blowing out a breath. “You have to give them at least a year. For the kid’s sake, if nothing else.”
He screwed up his face. “There’s only a twenty-five percent chance the kid is his.”
“Seriously?” I’d never met his brothers, but Jimmy’s stories painted a vivid picture that could have been lifted straight out of a soap opera.
“The bride has been known to get around,” Piper told me, grudgingly by the glower she shot Jimmy, “but that’s her business. It’s none of yours.”
“She’s a straight up whore,” Jimmy said, smirking lightly as Piper drew him daggers.
“A woman has…”
“Sorry,” Jimmy cut in, before Piper could ‘get on her high horse’ as he was so fond of putting it. “But I don’t mean she sleeps around. I mean she’s an actual prostitute who has sex for money, one of forty-two women working the oldest profession in the world down in Grangemouth.”
Piper glowered at him. “You don’t know that. And you can’t judge her for it.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t judging. I was stating a fact.”
The irritable noise Piper made signalled the argument was over. Jimmy had managed not to piss her off to snapping point. It’s just as well Piper didn’t care about winning these fights, she only cared that her point was taken seriously. Hell mend anyone who laughed off her anger when she was stirred up about someone’s rights.
We moved forward a little more, and a little more. It was taking forever but we were getting somewhere eventually. It’s well past midnight by the time we got inside. The stifling heat made it safe to give Jimmy his jacket back, which I was incredibly glad to do. The moment he went to check his jacket into the cloakroom, I turned to Piper.
“Don’t leave me alone with him tonight.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “So, you’re over that whole thing you guys were having? Because it seemed kind of fun to me.”
It would. And it kind of was. But it’s not why I came home, and I was not getting pulled back into the perpetual cycle of lust-filled random encounters and never knowing when I’d get to see him again.
“I’m just not interested.” It came out flat.
She nodded, slowly, though I could tell from her shifting expression that she was having trouble taking it in. “Okay. No leaving you alone with the horn-dog. No problem.”
She must have thought I would have missed him when I was gone, or something. A worse thought occurred to me. Maybe he’d missed me, maybe he’d talked about that when I was gone, and that was why Piper had told him I was back. Maybe it was why he was here, instead of at his brother’s wedding. Ugh. I didn’t want to think about this.
He came over and we headed to the bar. The place was heaving and I was about ninety percent sure I was going to end up meeting a demon against my wishes. There’s only so much avoidance I could manage in a place this busy. Maybe if I got drunk enough I wouldn’t even remember a trip to the dreamscape. Plan made, I sipped at my drink and followed my friends through the crowd. We managed to find a booth in a corner of the room that’s furthest from the dance-floor.
“This place is huge,” Piper yelled over the pulsing music.
“Size isn’t everything,” Jimmy yelled in reply, winking at me.
I felt my face flush in memory of our last encounter. If Piper left me alone with him, I knew exactly what was going to happen. This night out was going to ruin more than my finances.
He slid in next to me the second I sat down, forcing Piper to sit across from us. She frowned at him, then yanked on his collar and leaned across the table to whisper in his ear. I cringed inwardly, wondering what she was making up to put him off making a move. I probably didn’t want to know.
He got up and said he was going to the Men’s Room when she let him go. She slid in next to me.
“What did you say to him?” I had to know.
She grinned. “I told him I just saw his crazy bitch ex. You know the one…”
“The one who beats the shit out of anyone she sees him speaking to? That crazy bitch ex?” They’d been broken up for a year when I had an unfortunate run-in with her. Luckily, she hadn’t seen me as a threat. She didn’t know we’d slept together. Later, he’d said he’d told her I was Piper’s girlfriend. She’d believed it, since she already assumed Piper was a lesbian because she had short hair. The girl was as jaw-droppingly awful as she was attractive.
She nodded, smiling. “So, you and I have to sit together, and dance together. Jimmy can just hang with us and buy all the drinks.”
It was a smart move. I relaxed, but only a little. I wasn’t so sure hitting the dance floor was a great idea. Drinking in this dark corner, yes. Dancing alongside a bunch of people who might be demon possessed? Not so much.
“Drinks first,” I insisted, hoping we’d get into a binge and forego the dancing entirely.
Jimmy came back with another round of drinks and settled in opposite us. There was a thoughtful expression on his handsome face. He polished off his first drink quickly and moved on to the next, beginning to mess around with his phone.
He didn’t seem interested in joining in on the conversation, so Piper talked into my ear instead of yelling across the table for us both to hear. It started to feel like Jimmy was waiting for something. He kept glancing at me, between messing around with his phone and taking gulps of his beer.
Piper jumped slightly before she got up, checking her phone and telling me, “I need to go get Maria. She’s outside. Will you be okay for five minutes?” She didn’t seem sure about leaving me but I knew better than to get in the middle of things when it came to her sister. It was hard to believe they were even related. The girl was pretty naive, and more than a little bit breakable. Piper was her rock.
“If he tries anything, text me,” she whispered before she left.
I nodded, but I knew if he did try something a text message was not going to save me. When she was gone, Jimmy smiled at me and leaned across the table.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked, something calculating in his gaze.
Those dark brown eyes of his were so intent I could barely handle sitting there under their heat.
I pulled on an innocent face. “I have no idea what you mean.”
He laughed. “Look, Piper told me Tracy was here. Which is complete and utter bullshit. So I know something’s up.”
“She did?” I really hoped Piper was on her way back. My impulse control was horrible at the best of times. Put a few drinks in me and throw an attractive guy into the mix and trouble was just around the corner.
He took another sip of his beer and licked his lips. Oh, he knew something I didn’t and he was enjoying dragging this out. I was really starting to wonder what that something might be by the time his infamous mischievous grin appeared.
“Tracy started screwing my little brother a few months back. She was at the wedding. She’s still there,” he dropped the bomb finally, showing me a picture of his ex with his younger brother, slow dancing, something that had apparently just been posted to Facebook.
“Holy hell. He knows how nuts she is, right?” Shock flooded me.
He put his phone away. “That’s not the point, and you know it.”
“What is the point, exactly?” More importantly, where the hell was Piper? I glanced around.
“Piper’s not coming back.” His words pulled me back.
Did he just read my mind? I blinked back my surprise. I couldn’t see a demon in his eyes, but there’s definitely something in there. Something I’m afraid to get too close to. “What did you do?”
“Maria just got dumped by that weirdo she was dating. She’s out there crying her eyes out. Not the slightest bit interested in coming in here for a drink. Give it ten minutes. She’ll text you.”
“You called her sister to get her to come out?” I couldn’t believe it. Well, I kind of could, but still. That was pretty conniving. I wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or flattered.
“Texted her,” he corrected with a smile. “I didn’t think it would be this hard to get time alone with you.”
Damn it. I knew this was going to come up. I was going to have to just be straight with him. This was going to suck.
“So what is it?” he asked. “And don’t tell me you have a boyfriend. You wouldn’t be out with Piper tonight if that was true.”
Oh Piper would have been all over his arse for that kind of comment. Really made me wish she hadn’t had to leave to look after her sister. I supposed we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if she hadn’t.
I sighed, wishing I was a better liar. A boyfriend would be so convenient.
“It’s been a long time,” I started, trying to think something up on the spot and finding myself all out of excuses. Would it really be so bad? You like him, he likes you. Oh, shit. Out came the devil on my shoulder, all of a sudden. I knew she’d been keeping quiet for a reason. Trying to lull me into a false sense of security. Well played, devil.
I waited for his move, ready to see how it felt before I begged my common sense to come crawling back.
“It’s been too long.” He took my hand from across the table and I got the sudden horrifying impression he was going to make some kind of declarative romantic speech. No, please, no… “I didn’t know how much I’d miss you until you were gone. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Chrissie. I think we could really have something.”
Gag me. I tried to force a smile, but it didn’t want to come out. The funny thing was, if he’d tried to just kiss me I probably would have let him, and who the hell knew what might have happened then. It was just as well he didn’t. A casual fling was bad enough. That clearly wasn’t what he wanted now, and a hastily forged relationship is the last thing I needed.
“I’m not interested…”
“We don’t have to figure anything out tonight,” he said emphatically, no hint of desperation in his tone. He wasn’t acting as if I had started to blow him off, he was just being his usual demanding self. Typical. “Just take my number and think about it. Call me, and we can go on an actual date.”
He passed me an actual business card, with his mobile number scrawled on the back. I wondered how many of these he gave out to other women. I knew he’d been sleeping around. He was when we were seeing each other, and there’s no way he would have abstained because he missed me. This couldn’t be the first time he’d pulled this shit. I considered briefly if his tactics had just changed. Same old Jimmy, just with a new hook. He was trying to be smooth now, or something. It’s weird.
Sinners Never Sleep (Seven Deadly Demons Book 1) Page 3