My Way to Hell

by Dakota Cassidy

  But that wasn’t bringing her the kind of comfort his arms had.

  Maybe, if she just slipped in beside him while he was sound asleep, he’d never know she was there. She didn’t sleep anyway; if he woke up, she’d slip back out.

  Floating to the bedroom, she passed through the wall and hovered at the end of his bed. He’d been true to his word. He’d saved the other half of the bed for her.

  Clenching her eyes, she pushed the doubts that plagued her to a dark closet in her mind. There’d be plenty of time for her misgivings to eat a hole in her heart when she was back on Chez Drab.

  For now, impulse clutched her, dragging her to the other side of the bed. Climbing in beside him, Marcella lay down next to the man who’d been the object of her desire for years and closed her eyes, realizing Kellen was no longer just a desirable object.

  He was a man she wanted to snuggle with.

  Preposterous.

  The shift of the covers made her lips twitch when Kellen lifted them, tucking them around her shoulders, and rolled into her, wrapping a strong arm around her waist.

  Making her smile.

  “Marcelllaaa.”

  A wet nose buried itself in her neck. Blech. Maybe choosing not to sleep with Kellen hadn’t been so whacked after all. Swatting at the intrusion, she fought to rediscover this place of apparent rest she hadn’t been able to find since she’d become a ghost.

  A snort, low and grunting, tickled her eardrum, as did a tongue, slimy and warm. In retrospect, that she’d passed up this kind of sexual prowess brought only relief that she hadn’t allowed herself to become carried away last night. The morality police cheered in her head. Way. To. Go!

  A heavy weight settled on her chest and began licking her cheek. Breath, not unlike that of a Dumpster, wafted beneath her nose. God in all his mercy. How had she missed the stench of Kellen’s breath last night?

  “I know you’re in this bed, Marcella, and I just want you to know, I’m supportive of this—this—afterlife love connection with my brother. I know you’ve always thought I’d be against it because you were a demon. You know, the whole Hell thing, but I don’t feel that way at all. I know, despite your—your displays of va-va-voomishness, and all the airs you put on, that you’re a good person. And I know you hate that I know that. And, omigod, I’m so glad the two of you are getting along that I’m all weepy. Now all we need to do is get you earthbound again so you can marry Kellen and make babies,” a voice, not unpleasant or unfamiliar, whispered, rushed and rambling, in her ear. “So get up, ghost, because I have some exciting news.”

  Married. She heard nothing else but that word. A filthy word if there ever was one. She’d been married, and now, he was dead. Maybe married wasn’t a skill in her wheelhouse. Her eyes shot open to find her best friend almost staring at her, but missing her mark by just a half inch to the right of her face. “Delaney?”

  Kellen sat up with a rumble, dragging the covers off her.

  Marcella looked down. Delaney’s dog, the one with the BeDazzled diaper, burrowed into her chest, making himself a comfy place to settle. She couldn’t remember what number he was. Delaney didn’t have names for her dogs, only numbers. Whatever his number, it was up, as far as she was concerned. Though, clearly he could see her, and touch her, and he liked her boobs as much as Kellen had. She gave him a narrow-eyed gaze. “Get off of me, you beast. I don’t have much of a dress left. I definitely don’t want it to smell like dog,” she growled.

  He growled back, sinking his BeDazzled butt further into her chest.

  She raised her eyes to Kellen. “Help.”

  His sleepy, rumpled, sexy self reached over, lifting the dog to settle him by his side.

  Delaney eyed the two of them from the end of the bed with a fond gaze that made Marcella squirm. “So—I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I’m guessing you’ve, ah, made nice,” she teased with a smile, crossing her arms over her chest, allowing the flowing fabric of her shirtsleeves to drape over her belly.

  “It’s not what you think, D,” Kellen said, running a hand through his tousled hair. “And how did you know Marcella was here anyway?”

  She pointed to dog number 222, or whatever. “They’re otherworldly sensitive, remember? And whether Marcella liked it or not, they adored her. Especially if she had panty hose on. Besides, her perfume’s everywhere. Now both of you get up. I have some exciting news.”

  “News?” Marcella asked.

  Kellen stretched, his toned muscles flexing and rippling beneath copper skin. “Marcella wants to know what news.”

  Delaney gave him a smugly arrogant look. “I know how to get her earthbound again.”

  Now Marcella sat up. “That’s impossible. There is no way to come back from the dead unless you’re a demon or a vampire. Period.”

  Kellen eyed her. “You know vampires?”

  “If only you knew who I know,” she said dryly.

  “Both of you pay attention. Marcella can become earthbound again.”

  Marcella was stunned. But it was impossible.

  “How?” Kellen demanded with a gruff bark. His sudden interest brought back their conversation from last night, leaving Marcella more skittish than ever.

  Delaney gave him a hesitant glance as though she were reconsidering sharing her thoughts, but then her face changed and she went for it in a rush of words. “Well, here’s the thing, and this is just on the fly. It might need tweaking—revisions—something. So I was on my way over here to see how you two were getting along, because, well, you don’t get along. Imagine my surprise when I found you not only in the same zip code, but in the same bed. Never mind, that’s neither here nor there. I stopped to get some coffee on the way, and while I waited, I was counting my blessings and then I remembered what happened with Clyde. So here’s what we have to do. We have to find a freshly dead body. Now, before the two of you balk, give me a minute. Marcella’s basically just a soul, wandering free. If we found someone who’s dead, like maybe only a minute or two, just long enough so we can be sure that person’s soul has crossed over, she could technically jump into the body and inhabit it.” She finished with another smug smile, obviously rather pleased with her solution.

  Marcella’s mouth fell open. “Have the burbs given her brain damage? Maybe it’s hanging out with all those housewives and their whole-food organic bullshit. I’ve always told her it’s okay to have cow every once in a while to keep your immune system strong.”

  “I think it’s too much Ghost Whisperer,” he muttered out of the side of his delicious mouth.

  “She’s insane.”

  Delaney caught Kellen’s eyes. “She’s calling me insane, isn’t she?”

  “She is and so am I.”

  Delaney’s hands fluttered in the air. “Don’t you see this could work? Clyde did it. He got back into his body just as it left this Earth!”

  Marcella shook her curls with a fierce bob of her head. “Tell her that, while I love her, I’m not afraid to also tell her she needs to stop sucking on all those weeds she’s so fond of. They’ve addled her brain. The hell I’m getting into some poor dead person’s body.”

  Kellen slid to the end of the bed, pulling his jeans from the floor to slip them on, running a hand over his forehead before he spoke. “D, Clyde was getting into his body, not someone else’s, and he was doing it so he could cross over. If Marcella did it, she’d be violating someone else’s body, and jumping into someone else’s life. That person would have family, friends, maybe even kids. Marcella wouldn’t know who they were.”

  Delaney’s enthusiasm waned—big. Marcella watched as she searched for yet another solution. “So we find someone who has no family or friends or a job or . . .”

  Kellen kissed Delaney’s forehead and forced her to look at him. “You do know that’d be almost impossible, right?” He spoke the words with gentle admonishment, gripping her shoulders with his tanned hands.

  Marcella’s heart constricted when she saw Delaney’s crestfalle
n face.

  Delaney sighed. “Okay, so I didn’t think it entirely through, but it still could work,” she mumbled. “I have nothing else. I can’t find a single thing in any of my books to help get her back here with us. I’ve been up day and night, trying to find anything that will help. I can’t sleep for the worry. There’s boatloads of info on reincarnation, which I thought might lead us to at least a clue, but there’s nothing. It seems when you’re a ghost, you’re a ghost, and if you don’t have the light as recourse, that’s how you stay.” Her words held such defeat, Marcella winced. “I just want her back here with us. Do you hear me, Marcella?” she called out into the room. “I’m not giving up, you pain in my ass. You saved Clyde and me. You deserve better!”

  Marcella rose from the bed to float to Kellen’s side. She gave Delaney a sympathetic smile her friend couldn’t see, forcing her next statement from her lips. “This was what I was afraid of. That she wouldn’t let this go, and instead of focusing on her new marriage and house, she’d waste time trying to find a way to get me back here on this plane. And I don’t want that. It’s impossible anyway. Tell her I love her for trying. Now stop. Please. Let it be.”

  “No,” Kellen replied with a measure of defiance to his tone.

  Marcella’s eyes widened. “What did you say?”

  He put his hands on her shoulders to hold her in place as she wafted upward. “I said no. I’m not going to tell her to give up. In fact, D showing up saves me a phone call. I’d planned to call her to see if she’d figured anything out. Now that she’s here, I’m going to tell her what we know about Carlos, and then I’m going to suggest we put our heads together and figure out a way to get you back to this plane.” His hazel eyes, flecked with gold, fired off a challenge.

  Fear gripped her heart. To hope they could find a way to keep her here was to beat the proverbial horse. It was unfair even to ask her to consider that she could resume her old life. Not only that, it infuriated her.

  Knowing it was also unfair to condemn them for caring about her didn’t stop her from behaving irrationally.

  Floating to the doorway, she threw Kellen a hard look. “I said I want you both to let it alone, God damn it! Why won’t you two get it through your thick skulls? Fuck-all, I don’t want to do this anymore! I don’t want to keep being left behind. Jesus, how hard is that to understand? How would you feel if you had to live eternally and watch the people you love die off one by one?” Tears thickened her throat, and that was when she turned and fled.

  Because that was the crux of the matter. Even if she could regain her earthbound privileges, she probably wouldn’t be human when she did. She’d let Delaney in once, and though she’d never regretted befriending her, she’d known it would hurt when it was her time to cross.

  And now there was Kellen—who she’d almost let in. Kellen who was dreaming up a future that could never be.

  A future she didn’t deserve because she’d done something unforgivable.

  Nothing could ever fix that.

  What about nothing didn’t everyone get?

  ten

  Hours passed as Marcella sat in her old apartment, drifting from room to room, longing to touch her things, her clothes, her shoes. Her lease wasn’t up for another three months. Maybe she could just stay here until whatever was going to happen to her finally did.

  It hadn’t occurred to her earlier, in all the turmoil and chaos, to come home. She’d figured, much as her earthbound privileges were gone, so were her apartment and everything with it. But curiosity, and the need for the creature comforts of one’s home, had called to her.

  She’d come back to New York fifty years after she’d left, having spent those fifty of her demonic years as far away from her hometown as she could. The once painful memories of Armando and the doomed marriage she’d left behind were replaced by the inviting memories of her childhood growing up right here in this very apartment. Sort of. In 1934, it had been a small house that she, her mother, father, grandmother, and older sister, Isabella, had shared.

  When she’d realized a development company had built co-ops where her old house once stood, she’d conjured up some cash and leased it. It was to her advantage that ownership changed hands regularly, and so did the name on her lease. In order to stay in the home she’d once loved, she’d had to continually reinvent herself to management, but it was worth the memories.

  The cool colors of her apartment, pale green and ice blue with oyster accents, had once soothed her. Now all of her vases and paintings did nothing but frustrate her. She couldn’t touch them. She couldn’t run her fingers along the smooth tops of her walnut-stained furniture or sit on her precious off-white Ethan Allen couch with the Pier 1 throw pillows.

  Floating to the kitchen, she closed her eyes and called up the image of her grandmother in their old kitchen, rolling tortillas and humming while her mother, a seamstress, worked on hemming pants for her father’s tailoring business. A new batch of tears floated her eyeballs until she couldn’t see anything but the blur of her recollections. The only regret she had about selling her soul was losing her family. Her mother and father never would have understood why she’d killed Armando. Though deeply religious, they never quite believed in her gift of sight. No one did. Only her grandmother had believed, and she’d warned Marcella of the dangers of revealing her gift. Her parents would have had her at the Vatican as fast as a boat trip could get them there. It was Grandma Rosa who’d taught her how to deal with the constant intrusion of the afterlife in her young world. It was her grandmother who’d warned her about Armando, too.

  From the grave.

  In a way, she was almost grateful they didn’t understand what she’d done by marrying Armando. Why she’d had to kill him . . . Her father had fought enough in the way of battles by marrying her mother, someone his family hotly disapproved of. The shame of his daughter’s indiscretion would have killed him.

  There was enough guilt to go around—more would only have left her with an eternity of deeper depression to deal with. Back then, Xanax wasn’t an option.

  Eyeing her fridge, she longed to lay her face against the cool, silvery exterior and mope some more. But there was information about Carlos to be found, and that sex kitten in work boots Catalina was due to call.

  Steeling herself to stop this whine she’d become so gifted at, Marcella bolted through the door of her apartment without looking back. Surely some of her old contacts would be at the bar she’d once frequented when getting information was of the utmost importance. They might not be willing to talk to her, and some might not have the ability to see her, but she still had ears. Why she hadn’t considered it sooner than this could only be chalked up to the emotional turmoil her afterlife was in.

  If this thing with Carlos was a hellbound fact, someone would be yucking it up and taking pleasure in the coming mayhem.

  If hitting her old hot spots didn’t work, she’d dig Darwin back up out of some boozer’s body. She was going to figure out what this all meant for Carlos. Her anger with Darwin was unfair anyway. She’d reacted in a very un-Marcella-like way to a response that was only reasonable, considering she hadn’t shared the entire story of Armando’s death.

  Apologies were probably in order—which would blow the rest of her image all to shit, but Darwin didn’t deserve her newly found joy in a good, crying hissy fit.

  First, some of her old haunts.

  Skipping in virtually unnoticed, Marcella floated to the back of the Sin Bin, owned by Satan himself and operated by his slimy pricks. Scanning the interior of the dank, greasy hole, she cringed at the memory of her last visit to this abyss of iniquity and desperation. But it had yielded information that had saved Delaney. She was almost of a mind to pray it did the same for Carlos. But she’d forgotten how to pray. So she’d instead hope for the kind of luck she’d once found in this dive.

  Ears pricked, she headed to the farthest region of the black and deep purple bar where most of the action happened. Beaded curtains covered
the back rooms where the supreme order of filth played. Sultry music thrummed from the speakers along the walls. Low rumbles of laughter mingled with groans of pleasure whispered along the maze of corridors to her right. Smoke, thick and hazy, wafted in clouds of gray throughout the air.

  Tawdry scenes awaited her, scenes involving the most decadent of Satan’s followers—alive and dead. Gagging, she fought the impulse to run. Instead, Marcella peered through one red and purple beaded curtain.

  “Oh, Marcella. I knew you’d come home,” a voice, black and silken, slithered in her ear. “Come give your old pal Satan a big stinkin’ hug.”

  Whipping around, she found herself eye to eye with the Prince of Darkness. Her stomach churned bitter acid. Lucifer held out his arms, open wide, but she backed away, finding a doorway to hover in, cocking her eyebrow in a familiarly arrogant expression. “So, how’s tricks?”

  He threw his head back and laughed a deep, resonating vibration that shook the walls. He wore stonewashed jeans with a hole in the knee and under his open jacket a T-shirt that read “I Put the ‘Cute’ in ‘Execute.’” It stretched over his skinny chest when he planted his hands on his hips. “Oh, Marcella. I’ve missed you so. Tell me, see-through one, have you missed me, too?”

  “Like a seeping boil on my ass,” she replied, coolly. God, it felt good to be in control. Where it had come from and why wasn’t as important as that it had. Kellen and Carlos had left her bobbing in a sea of alien emotions, but this—what she felt for Satan—this she knew. Welcomed. Luxuriated in like a silky bath full of perfumed beads of soap.

  His sharply angled, bony face cracked a smile filled with malevolence when he thumped his chest with a slender, pale hand. “The pain of rejection. So deep it cuts,” he mocked.