by Renee George
It was July, so basically, hotter than Hell, though I hoped to never find out for sure. The sun had set less than thirty minutes ago, but the temperature only dropped a couple degrees. I’d been watching Demon Roger for several days now, and he always left work at the same time each evening. Five after nine.
Two nights earlier, I’d followed him home, the easiest place to take him down, and confirmed that Willis still lived with his wife and three daughters. His wife had dark finger bruises on her arms, the kind you get when you’ve been gripped too hard, and the children cowered when he was near them. It got my blood to boiling, I tell you. I think the only reason he showed some restraint when it came to terrorizing his family was because outright abuse or suspicious death would get the attention of human law enforcement. And Demon Roger had grown comfortable in the life he’d stolen. I wanted to kill him right then and there, but I’d learned through Olivia’s trial and error that sometimes, getting rid of the body didn’t go as planned. I didn’t want his wife anywhere near the crime scene. Poor woman didn’t need “homicide suspect” added to her list of worries.
I hid behind a large Dumpster near the back entrance, a place he would have to pass by to get to his Cadillac Escalade, trying to ignore the smell of rotted food emanating from the bin.
A tap on my shoulder startled me half to death—not really, I’m a minion—but you know what I mean. I turned, and l shot my wrist up, but the guy behind me caught my arm before I could push a spike through his chin.
The man, who was not a man at all but a demon lord, stood about six feet tall, with short dark hair, an angular face, and wide set red eyes that sparkled with mischief. He wore a red suit with tails and a tall hat, reflecting his farcical personality. In this almost human form, it was easy to imagine him as the angel of laughter, not the entertainment director of Hell he became after his fall from Heaven.
The first time the Demon Lord Kobal made contact with me had been in Purgatory, or what some called Limbo. The place hadn’t been as bad as it sounds. It was a little like waiting at a very empty and lonely park for someone to come and lead you out. Boring, but nothing crazy. Kobal had appeared much the same as he did now, only his eyes had been clear blue like the skies on a hot summer day, the color they had been before his fall from grace.
When Kobal convinced me to make a bargain with him and become his minion, I agreed on the condition that my sister Olivia be free of the brute Moloch and that the twins got to enjoy real lives as walking, talking, fleshy humans. Little did I know, my clever sister had already discovered a way to free herself, and I’d made the deal for absolutely no reason. There is no honor with demons. That’s the first lesson I learned.
I’d smoothed out my peach chiffon skirt, folded my hands in my lap, and politely asked, “Can I help you, sir?”
“Why, your accent is as charming as a kitten’s whiskers,” he’d said, affecting an old South accent.
I giggled. “Kitten’s whiskers are very charming.” Now, while it might appear I was flirting, I can assure you most vehemently I was not. I was raised to be polite and social, and most importantly, I hadn’t been attracted to the demon, which made behaving in accordance with my manner of breeding much easier. Unlike the way I’d acted with the handsome man at the deli.
Kobal shook his head, a broad smile splitting his face. “Charlotte Madder,” he said grandly. “How is my most favorite girl?” His eyes turned devil red, showing me exactly who he was. Had I not just spent nearly a century and a half watching my oldest sister Olivia fight all manner of demon and scum, his presence might have wilted me.
“Busy,” I said with a little more pith than was good for me when addressing one of the twenty-seven demon lords of Abaddon. “Can you come back later?”
“My darling, little belle, that’s not how our arrangement works.” He booped me on the nose with his index finger. “You know that.” He threw his head back with an exaggerated head roll, still smiling. “You are adorable. Have I ever told you that?”
I groaned. “Every chance you get.” He treated me like a favorite doll. “Can you just tell me what you want so I can get on with my night?”
“Now, now.” He pouted. “You don’t want to hurt my feelings, do you?”
I gulped. “Uhm, no.” On the surface, Kobal seemed jovial and even-tempered, but a demon lord is a demon lord, and those bastards can get mean if provoked. Still, he never treated me the way Moloch had treated Olivia. If he did, I’d probably try much harder to get away from him.
“Good,” he let go of my arm and patted my shoulder. “Excellent. Now, where is Aloysius?”
“I haven’t been able to find him. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
He pursed his lips and gave me a look of pure consternation. “I felt him with you earlier in the evening.”
“Believe me, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of that old magician. The last place he was seen was is in Vegas over a year ago. Are you sure he’s in Branson?”
“I can feel him here. I just can’t pinpoint his whereabouts. Are you sure you didn’t see him?”
“Unless he’s changed his appearance, I haven’t. But there are four magic shows with different magicians, so I’m going to see them all. Maybe he’s using another pseudonym.”
Kobal tapped his lower lip and twitched his nose. Finally, he nodded. “Call for me when you find him.”
“You betcha,” I said. Demon lords couldn’t monitor you twenty-four hours a day, well, they could, but they’d get nothing else done, but they were alerted when someone invoked their names. It’s why my sisters and I made a practice of not saying demon names out loud. I looked at my watch. It was nine o’clock. Five more minutes before Roger would walk out that back door. I had to get rid of Kobal. “Is that all for now?”
“For now,” he agreed. “Don’t take too long with this one, my little Southern minion. Aloysius and I have long overdue business.”
I looked at my watch again. “I’ll holler as soon as I find him.”
“You do that.” Kobal disappeared as quickly as he’d appeared, and I turned my attention back to the task at hand.
As expected, Roger Willis stepped out the back of his restaurant at nine-o-five. He had a big set of keys in his hands and cellphone to his ear. I could hear him laughing loudly at whatever conversation was taking place, probably someone telling him about kicking puppies or scamming the elderly, the jerk.
I prepared myself to spring as he neared my position.
“I’ll talk to you soon,” I heard him say. He was so close now, and my palms were honest-to-goodness sweating. This was my first take-down without Olivia or Eliza backing me up, and I prayed I wouldn’t screw it up. I heard the scrape of his boots just feet from me.
His phone rang. He stopped walking. “Hello.”
Christ almighty, my heart rate kicked up three notches. Olivia had taught me that adrenaline was an energy drain, so I tried to slow down my pulse with quiet, even breaths.
Then I heard a bang on the side of the Dumpster and Roger exclaimed, “Damn it! You get the fool to approve the measure, or I will serve his organs to my customers as a daily special!”
Come on, Roger, I mentally encouraged the lesser demon. Turn back around and walk toward me. I gave an exasperated sigh when his voice grew farther away.
Shoot, this wasn’t turning out like I planned at all.
I peeked around the corner. Roger’s back was to me as he paced at the end of the trash bin. He was not going to make this easy. I ducked back again and grabbed the water pistol out of my bag. I held it with two hands and aimed straight at him as I rounded the corner. I got behind Willis and said, “Don’t you move.”
He took his phone from his ear and pivoted to face me. Then he started to laugh.
“You’re trying to rob me dressed like you’re going to Sunday school and holding pink water gun? What kind of mugger are you?” He put the phone back to his ear. “I’m going to have to call you later,” he said to whoever he’d b
een talking to. “I’m about to have a real good time.” He hung up the call and turned his full attention on me. His brown eyes flashed red. “You’ve picked the wrong guy to mess with, bitch.”
“Oh, I think I know the crappy scent of demon when I smell it,” I told him. “Maybe you’ve heard of The Madder.”
His amused expression disappeared. “You’re Olivia Madder?” he asked cautiously.
“I’m Charlotte Madder,” I said.
“Kobal’s special snowflake?” The demon in the Roger-suit began to laugh again. “Go away, Madder lite, before I flay you to the bone.”
“Well, I nevah,” I said. “That’s no way to speak to a lady.” I pulled the trigger on the pistol, and a tiny spurt of colloidal silver spit out the end. “Shoot.” I pumped the air nozzle to build up the pressure, and the demon’s laughter turned into guffaws. “This is so embarrassing,” I muttered.
He lunged at me, his head smashing into my chin. I yelped as I landed on my backside on the asphalt parking lot. I held on to the water gun with my right hand, but my left hand landed in something hot, sticky, and brown. Ew!
I held out the pistol as Roger came at me again and squeezed the trigger over and over. Finally, the darned thing worked. He screamed as the liquid silver sprayed in streams across his face and neck and coated his clothing. Willis stumbled away, his hands on his face as I leaped from the ground and went after him.
He managed to beat me in a footrace to the front parking lot, hollering for help. Who was he kidding? Help, indeed. I tackled him and rolled him onto his back, then I lifted my hand, so I could release a spike into his forehead.
“Hey! Stop!” I looked up at the four people who’d exited a nearby eating establishment. Two were filming me with their smartphones, one was on her cell saying, “Yes, there’s a crazy lady attacking some poor dude,” and the fourth, a very large man, was headed straight at me.
Oh, my sweet lord.
“He’s not human!” I shouted as he dragged me off the demon.
“I don’t know what he did to you,” said the guy as he put me into a considerable bear hug, “but no one deserves to die.”
“He does!” I screamed.
The next thing I knew, cop cars and an ambulance screamed into the parking lot. I watched as EMTs tended to the wounded demon and then Mr. Bear Hug handed me over to the cops. They arrested me, removed my wrist weapons, put me in handcuffs, and invited me, forcefully, to get into the back of their vehicle.
And that’s how I ended up in the county lockup for assault.
Back to my present hellish situation…
“Just hold tight, sister,” Olivia said. “Help is on the way.”
I pressed the jail phone’s hard-plastic receiver to my forehead before replacing it in its cradle. What should have been a simple demon banishment had turned into a nightmare.
The guard walked me back to my single cell. It was a room with a door. Apparently, my enthusiasm to take out Demon Roger had merited concern from law enforcement, and I’d gotten a special room. Solitary, they called it. The guard locked the door behind me, and I sat down on the bed. The thin mattress was as about as comfortable as sitting on metal spikes.
You should have been doing the job I tasked you with, Charlotte, I heard Kobal’s voice in my head. His ability to talk to me this way made me shiver to my toes. Kobal had a comedic and charming way about him that could make someone forget he was a demon lord. But I never made the mistake of thinking he was just harmless and fun-loving.
“I will find your guy.”
It will be hard to track down Aloysius the Magnificent if you are incarcerated. I detest Moloch’s soldiers as much as the next demon, but you are my minion. You have responsibilities to me. I could hear the pout in his voice. Besides, our deal requires you to do my bidding once a year for the next one hundred years, and I was generous enough to give you the first year to enjoy your new flesh and blood body.
“Then help me get me out of jail, and I will handle my business.” I grimaced. “I mean, your business.”
I’m afraid I can’t do that, sweetie. But you were near Aloysius earlier, I could feel him.
“If he made a bargain with you, shouldn’t you be able to just pop in and see him?”
Don’t you worry your pretty little Southern head about what I can and can’t do. If you would have retraced your steps when I told you to, you wouldn’t be in this predicament, I would have the soul that should be rightfully mine. He sounded more terse than normal. That wouldn’t be good for me.
“I sincerely apologize, Kobal. I thought it would be over quick, easy as pie. Once I’m out of here, I’ll track down this Al-low-ish-ous,” the man’s name was tricky as all get out, “the Magnificent, I swear.”
I know you will, Charlotte. Because you don’t want to break our agreement, now do you?
Since my sisters were technically free when I made the deal, Kobal couldn’t do anything to them. But me? He could revoke my minionhood and, if he did, I was hellbound. Considering the hottest place I cared to visit was Georgia, I shook my head most vehemently. “I do not.”
Good. Now find me my magician.
The moment I felt his absence, I breathed a sigh of relief.
It was after eleven at night when I heard the metallic snick of the door’s lock, and then it opened.
“Ms. Madder,” a stout, middle-aged prison guard said. “Time to go.”
I pivoted my eyes to glance at him peripherally and willed my lower lip not to quiver as I spoke. “This is all a terrible misunderstanding.”
He shrugged. “That’s not for me to say, ma’am.” He took my arm and led me down a hall past the door to the prison ward.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To get your things. The charges against you have been dropped.”
“How?"
"Mister Willis refused to give a statement or file charges against you."
"How am I supposed to get back to town? My car is at the restaurant."
"You got a visitor waiting for you."
"Who?" My sisters were fast, but not supernaturally so. There is no way they made the three-hour drive in less than ten minutes.
“A Mister Jared Jackson.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. How did Jared know I was in jail? And why in the world would a gentleman whom I had just met even care?
Chapter 3
I tried to fix my mussed hair and pinched some color into my cheeks as the officer escorted me toward the front of the county jail. We’d stopped first to get my things. I was surprised they gave me back my peanut lighter, wrist straps, and water guns, but they'd emptied the silver nitrate out and took the spikes. I guess I'd gotten lucky that I’d left my bag behind the Dumpster, or I'm not sure how I would have explained the liquid cyanide in syringes. Right now, though, I had bigger problems than the police, like finding out why a man who barely knew me would come pick me up from jail, and even more interesting, how he knew I’d been arrested in the first place.
When the officer hit the buzzer and the steel door between me and freedom and Jared Jackson, I held my breath for a second. I pulled my shoulder back and leveled my chin parallel to the ground. I would not let anyone see me looking defeated, no matter how I felt on the inside.
When we made it past all the desks and the officer showed me the front door, Jared waited for me in the parking lot, leaning against an older, dark-blue, full-sized pickup truck, while his fingers played quickly over his smartphone. When he saw me, the nervous flutter I felt the first time I’d laid on eyes on him, danced in my stomach.
He put his phone in his pocket and waved at me. I gave him a half-hearted wave back as he started toward me and met me half way. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I nodded, trying real hard not to tear up. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“What happened? I saw you jump on that guy, and thought for sure he must’ve done something awful to you, but when the police dragged you away…”
“He did do something awful,” I said, refusing to defend myself more. After all, I hadn’t asked Jared to rescue me. I had family for that.
Jared read my mood and nodded. “I’m sure you must be exhausted.” He patted his truck. “Where to?”
“Can you take me to my truck?”
He grimaced. “If I had to guess the city impounded it. The businesses around here have a strict no parking after ‘close of business’ policy. You won’t be able to get it from their lot until tomorrow morning.”
“Wonderful.” I hoped my bag was still behind the Dumpster. It had my purse inside it. “Can you take me back to Vasken’s?” When Jared cast me a questioning glance, I shrugged. “I dropped something in the back lot.”
“Sure. Then I can take you to your hotel.”
“The American Inn,” I said.
“Deal.” He held out his hand to shake.
I raised a brow and shook my head. “I don’t make deals anymore. Not if I can help it.”
Jared shook his head and chuckled. “You are a strange duck, Charlotte.” He walked me around the passenger side of his truck and opened the door like a gentleman. I gauged him for a moment, and even in the dim light, I saw something in his eyes that made me want to trust him. My Poppa used to say that eyes were the window to the soul. After watching Olivia make deals for more than a century, I knew that wasn’t exactly true. Words were cheap constructs, but a man’s eyes could tell you a lot about his true self. Jared’s eyes were soft and kind, without an ounce of cruelty. Not like those peepers of Roger Willis.
I nodded once to him as I stepped up into the truck. I noticed a dark smudge on my skirt and grimaced. I bent over and sniffed. It smelled of overripe bananas. Thank heavens. For a moment, I’d feared it might be excrement, and that would be just too appalling to consider. As it was, I wanted to get back to my room and scrub myself from head to toe and wash the whole awful evening off me.