by W E DeVore
Until the Devil Weeps
Clementine Toledano Mysteries: Book V
By W.E. DeVore
UNTIL THE DEVIL WEEPS
ALSO BY W.E. DEVORE
Clementine Toledano Mysteries
That Old Devil Sin
Devil Take Me Down
Chasing Those Devil Bones
The Devil’s Luck
Until the Devil Weeps
Coming Soon
Devil in Exile
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 W.E. DeVore
All rights reserved
Anxious Laughter Publishing
To Heather - Society Maven. Badass. And my fearless companion on this wild journey.
“These are the days you need double what it takes.”
-Ryan Adams. Shiver and Shake
Part 1: Trouble Follows Me Wherever I Go
Aninut: Shock
Drifting listless in an endless sea,
suspended in the void,
quietly minding the eternal dream,
creation arising from pasts destroyed.
Q Toledano quietly hummed to herself, feeling the growing infant inside her body turn and kick against her hand as the mid-morning sun shone through the big bay window. A kaleidoscope of shattered light formed between her eyelashes as she leisurely allowed the waking world back into her quiet dream. She struggled to hold onto the lyric, wondering whether she’d made it up in her sleep or if she’d retrieved it from the dark reaches of her memory.
Her husband’s large hand ran over the bare skin on her stomach, coming to rest on the steady tapping near the left side of her rib cage. He nuzzled her neck with his mouth before moving down to place a kiss near his hand.
“Good morning, Little Bit,” he whispered. He looked up at her. “Good morning, wife.”
She squinted one eye at him and replied, “I don’t like this dynamic, Ben. How come Little Bit always gets the first kiss?”
Ben grinned at her and his eyes returned to her swollen stomach, his hand caressed the curve. “Fourteen more weeks.”
“Fourteen weeks,” she replied. “Almost to the safe mark.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” he asked. “We’re going to make it this time.”
“So, it would seem.” She swallowed back the frigid fear that just like all the other times, they wouldn’t make it.
“Does this mean we can finally start picking out names?”
“No,” Q said. “I’m not jinxing this. We’ll pick a name after it’s born. I’ll even let you start when we’re six weeks out. You’ve waited this long; you can wait two more months.”
He rested his lips on her shoulder, debating his next words before admitting, “I already have some names. I’ve just been keeping them to myself.”
She reached for his face. “Ben, we talked about this. You already set up the nursery and that’s bad enough....”
Before she could berate him again for building a crib without permission, he interrupted, “Madeline.”
“No,” she replied in flat refusal.
He was caught off guard. “What? It was your mother’s name. Why not?”
“And it’s too precious for fucking words. No. Absolutely not.”
“Muriel,” he offered.
“Blech,” she said. She yawned and stretched before sliding her legs over the side of the mattress and getting out of bed to walk into the bathroom, hoping to put an end to the discussion.
“Sofia?” he called after her. Q smiled at her reflection in the mirror. It wasn’t the first time that Ben had tried this tactic to get her to make some preparations for the baby. But after four miscarriages, she was loath to borrow trouble.
Ben came into the room after her and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her round belly. Running his hands over her bare skin, he kissed her shoulder before sliding his tongue along the side of her neck to her ear and whispering, “Belle.”
Q shrugged him off and moved away, sitting on the edge of the claw-foot tub at the base of the windows.
“What’s with all the girl names, Bordelon?” she asked, looking down at the taut skin on her stomach, searching for pale flesh between the clusters of purple, brown, and black bruises that peppered her abdomen.
He handed her an alcohol pad and she found the least bruised spot on her stomach to clean for her morning injection.
“Are you kidding me?” he exclaimed. “Do you know how many women there are in my family? Finding a name that is not currently being used by a living female member of either one of our families is like finding a virgin on Bourbon street.”
Ben filled a syringe with her morning dose of Heparin and handed it to her.
“You’re speaking from experience, are you?” she teased and quickly injected it into her stomach. “I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult, myself.”
She set the syringe down on the edge of the bathtub and watched as a bruise instantly ballooned on her stomach, grimacing against the burning sensation that came with it. Grunting under her breath, she breathed through the discomfort until it passed.
“Motherfucker,” she cursed. “I’m going to look like a damned cheetah after this. These bruises aren’t going away.”
Ben knelt down and put his hand on her newest bruise, soothing it with his warmth. “But neither is Little Bit. It’s working. They’ll heal.”
“Stupid superhuman clotting gene,” she muttered, not placated. The blood thinner that was keeping her from miscarrying was also making her bruise nearly every time she injected it into her body, and her stomach was looking more mottled by the day. She cupped his face in her hands. “One more name. That’s all you get. Swing for the fences.”
“Felicia,” he said.
“And no.” She stood up and walked to the shower with Ben following behind.
“You have a girl’s name already picked out, don’t you?” he stated as they stepped in together and Q turned on the water.
“Yes. Yes, I do. And it’s not being used. I looked through the complete list, twice.”
“What is it?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I told you, it’s bad luck.”
She rotated them so Ben could wash his long, blond hair and reached her hands up to the top of his six-foot-five-inch frame to help. He closed his eyes and let the water away rinse the foam that was pouring down his face.
“It’s not bad luck, darlin’,” he replied. “That’s just a bubbemeiser.”
“Who in the hell taught you that word?” she asked, shocked that her Catholic husband from Metairie would know there was a Yiddish word for ‘old wives’ tale,’ let alone be able to use it in a sentence.
“Aaron. For the record, he agrees with you.” Ben looked defeated. “He called his dad and forced me to talk to him when I went off on how stupid I thought the whole thing was. How are you supposed to bring a baby home from the hospital without a name, a nursery, or baby clothes?”
The son of an Orthodox rabbi, Detective Aaron Sanger was their best friend, and Q did an internal victory dance, relieved that the two men in her life were not going to gang up against her and her newfound maternal superstitions.
“Well,” she said. “You can’t argue with six thousand years of tradition.”
“Or Aaron’s father,” he said, looking annoyed. “He’s worse than you.”
She pulled him down to her and kissed him. “You can pick out the boy’s name. Just keep it to yourself. I don’t want to know.”
“That’s because you and
me both know there is no way in hell it’s a boy,” he said pointedly.
Q studied her stomach. “I don’t know, sometimes Little Bit feels kind of masculine to me.”
“Jasper.”
She gaped at him in open distaste. “My great-uncle’s name?”
“And my great-grandfather’s.”
“He’s going to get his ass kicked in kindergarten,” she argued. “And I told you I didn’t want to know.”
Ben rolled his eyes, knowing that the genetic odds of his family tree were stacked against the current occupant of his wife’s womb having a mixed set of chromosomes. “Then you ain’t got nothing to worry about. Humor your husband, for once.”
Q laughed. “Fine. Jasper.”
“And for a girl?” he asked. “Come on. Tell me. Nothing bad is going to happen. I won’t allow it.”
She swallowed back the tears that pooled up in her eyes and silently nodded. When she recovered her voice, she whispered the name she’d held in her mind for months but hadn’t yet spoken out loud. “Nola.”
A vivid smile spread over Ben’s face as he gazed down at her. “Done and done.”
He moved to kiss her and she pulled back.
“We’re still not telling anyone,” she said. “I mean it, Ben. It’s bad luck. And we don’t need any of that. No bad luck, bad juju, bad mojo, and especially no shlemazel.”
He bent down and brought his lips to hers, slowly kissing her as the water poured over them both. “It’s going to be ok, darlin’. We’ll be bringing Little Bit home in just a few more months. Please let yourself be happy about this. It’s not good for you to be on high alert all the time. You need to calm down with all this bad mojo shit.”
The genetic condition that had caused her to miscarry four times over the course of two years, was also the potential cause of more than a dozen birth defects and she was dreading this week’s visit to the doctor because of it. She tried to keep positive, but it was still there, eating at the corners of her mind. “What if they find something? What if something’s wrong?”
Ben said, “Nothing bad is going to happen this time. There’s nothing wrong. Everything is just as it should be.”
She nodded and turned around, relaxing back into her husband’s tall frame. He kissed the back of her neck and she reached up her hand to bring him closer. His hand slid down below her belly and pulled her to him.
“Promise?” she asked.
“Promise.”
They finished their shower and Ben handed her a towel to dry off. As she rubbed lotion into her skin, Q asked, “When are we meeting Aaron?”
“About an hour,” he answered. “We have time to ride the streetcar if you feel like it.”
“You read my mind. Be nice this time, will you?”
“I’m always nice,” he replied.
“Not to Jeffries, you’re not,” She pursed her lips and gave him a meaningful raise of her eyebrow.
Sanger’s new girlfriend was a point of irritation for Ben, and while Q had been just as surprised that Sanger and Ben’s younger sister, Yvonne, had called it quits, she wasn’t about to interfere. Almost two years earlier, when Q had left for a six-month tour with Dark Harm to perform in front of sold-out Arena crowds across the U.S., she’d assumed she’d return home to New Orleans to find her sister-in-law engaged to Aaron Sanger. Coming home to discover that Yvie had ended the relationship instead had been a surprise. But Yvie wasn’t well known for her great skills at navigating romantic entanglements, so Q had set the issue aside. Ben, however, had not.
A little over four months ago, Sanger had announced he’d started a relationship with the ATF agent who used to be Dark Harm’s head of security and Ben’s dream of patching things up between his sister and his best friend had encountered an obstacle that, in his mind, had to be removed. Up until now, he hadn’t been very subtle at hiding that fact from said obstacle.
Ben put his hands on his hips. “Yvie’s in love with him.”
Q let out a peeved sigh, annoyed that she had to explain this salient point to her husband once more. “No, she’s not. Your little sister dumped Aaron. Not one, but two Mardi Gras ago. Yvie’s explained this to you, over and over. I’ve explained this to you, over and over. Sanger’s explained this to you, over and over. Let it go, already. She’s with Josh. She loves Josh. She’s over it. Sanger’s over it. I’m way the fuck over it. It’s long since time for you to get over it, too.”
Josh Mason had been Ben’s business partner in every way that mattered for over a decade, but he still wasn’t trusted with Ben’s favorite sister’s heart because until recently, when a woman threw herself at Josh Mason, which was most days, he was happy to catch her and take her home for a night or two. Despite Ben’s objections, Q had to admit that Josh and Yvie fit together better than Yvie ever had with Sanger.
Q escaped to the bedroom and pulled on a pair of shorts and a loose, flowing, green maternity shirt. Reaching behind her back to tie it, she called over her shoulder, “If you ask me, Yvie being with Josh and Aaron being with Elaine Jeffries makes the world make sense again.”
“And how’s that, Clementine?” Ben said as he walked to his closet and stepped into a pair of shorts. He shoved his hands into his back pockets before glaring at her.
Her husband using her given name meant some serious damage control was about to be necessary if she didn’t feel like starting her day with a domestic dispute.
She moved to him and pulled him down into a kiss. “Yvie’s fun. Josh is fun. Aaron can be a little black raincloud that swallows joy. And honestly, so can Jeffries. Let the fun people be fun and the serious people be serious. That’s what I say. No sense in fighting your nature.”
Ben started to argue and she shushed him. “You’re just mad because you had your heart set on Sanger joining the family. I get it. But let it go, sweet husband. You’re still going to get a brother; it’s just not going to be Aaron Sanger. And you love Josh.”
“Josh is never going to marry Yvie,” Ben muttered. “He doesn’t even own a suit, let alone three.”
Q screwed up her face and asked, “What in the good fuck are you talking about?”
“A serious man needs a suit for three things: a proposal, a rehearsal dinner, and a wedding.”
“You weren’t wearing a suit at any of those events, Ben,” she argued.
“That’s not the point,” he pouted. “I had them. I just didn’t have them on.”
“Well, then, my mistake,” she replied, sticking her tongue out at him and making him laugh.
She sat on the edge of the bed, grunting as she struggled to pull on her Converse. Ben crouched down and took them from her hands. Resting back on the bed, she eyed her growing stomach with dismay. “I’m as big as a house.”
He reached up and caressed her belly. “Yes, but a beautiful house.”
“Fuck you,” she retorted, giggling at the absurdity of no longer being able to comfortably tie her own shoes.
Ben gave the laces a final adjustment and stood back up to pull on a white t-shirt. “Ready?”
She heaved herself off the bed and started downstairs with Ben in tow. They locked up the house, strolling down the steps of their wide front porch hand in hand and through the gate of the wrought iron fence that surrounded their lawn. After several less than friendly letters had been left on their front porch by an obsessed Dark Harm fan calling themselves ‘Burn Bitch Burn,’ Q had to finally admit that recording and touring with one of the biggest rock bands in the world would necessitate some changes in her life; a security fence being one of them.
When they reached Carrollton Avenue, they boarded a Downtown-bound streetcar, finding a seat in the back amongst a fragrant pack of middle-aged female tourists. In the midst of the neon feather boas and floral-patterned summer dresses, sat one very sullen teenaged boy in a dark green shirt. Q saw the logo emblazoned on the front and smiled. Two intertwined squares, forming a star could only mean one thing: Dark Harm.
She pointed her c
hin to the boy and Ben winked at her before reaching his long arm out across the aisle to tap him on the shoulder.
“You like Dark Harm?” he asked.
As the boy turned, his eyes magnetically attached to Q’s own in an instant. While pregnancy may have softened her shape, her turquoise eyes that had become synonymous with the legendary band since recording with them had not.
“You’re the Archangel,” he said in a breathless whisper.