More Than Fiends

by Maureen Child

  Which is strange all in itself—as anybody who knows me can tell you, I don’t make fast decisions. I’ve been known to stand in the cleaning-products aisle at the grocery store for a half hour trying to choose between Comet and Ajax. And don’t ever offer me a choice between white or chocolate fudge-covered Oreos.

  But in that one split second, I was no longer Cassidy Burke, house cleaner extraordinaire…. I was Catwoman/Batman/Spiderman and a bunch of other cool superheroes all rolled into one.

  Instinctively, I spun around, kicked my right leg out and caught the gray marauder dead in the stomach. The air whooshed out of her lungs as she flew back and slammed into the kitchen table. This was all too much for Sugar. The dog jolted out of her terrified stupor, leaped to her feet, turned the table over in her wild scramble toward the back door, and what was left of the Hershey’s Kisses plopped onto Jasmine’s head and shoulders like brass-colored raindrops.

  Holy crap.

  I just beat up an old lady. Catwoman never did stuff like that. Hell, even Buffy never beat up old ladies. Well, she staked one or two, but that was her job.

  Good thing I was raised Catholic so I could call up my guilt at a moment’s notice. Nobody does guilt better than a Catholic. We excel at guilt. My friend Rachel Cohen—Zoe’s mom—and I go over this whole Catholic/Jewish guilt thing all the time, but I always win. See, Rachel was born and raised Catholic, then converted to Judaism when she married Simon, so even she doesn’t believe that anybody could beat Catholics when it came to the Guilt Games. Like I told her. Doesn’t matter if the Jews have been persecuted for centuries.

  None of them had to deal with nuns as teachers. And the Jews don’t have Hell. We have Hell. How can you feel guilty if there are no eternal flames waiting for you? Fear of a bad reincarnation? Forget it. Come back as a cockroach? Who cares? Cockroaches live forever.

  Nope. Catholics win the guilt crown every time. Nobody can compete with us. We grew up learning the sign of the cross as the Father, the Son, and the It’s All My Fault, otherwise known as the Mea Culpa.

  But I digress.

  I’m standing there wondering how in the hell I’d just done that—I haven’t exercised since the day I taught Thea how to ride her bike. I had held on to the seat and steadied her for about twenty steps, then I was wiped and she took off, leaving me in the dust. So I had to wonder, how did I come up with that completely cool, kick-ass move?

  Could you learn kung fu shit from watching Angel and Buffy DVDs?

  I stepped out of my shoes because—with the one heel missing—I was a little lopsided, and then I took a step closer to the old lady smiling at me from the mess on the floor.

  She was grinning at me like…well, like a loon.

  “What the hell do you have to be smiling about?” I demanded. But, hey, on second thought, this could work to my advantage. She’s happy. Maybe she has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t even remember me kicking her. We tell the nice men in charge of rubber rooms and Prozac that she sneaked into my house and fell down—nobody’s any wiser. Sure, I’d feel guilty. But I’m comfortable with that.

  “Well done,” she said and pushed herself clumsily to her feet.

  “Well done? I just kicked you across the room—” I shut up fast. If she wanted to compliment me instead of suing me, who was I to argue?

  The phone rang and I jumped, startled. Jeez. I swear, if I survived the rest of this day, it was going to be a miracle.

  “There are many things for us to discuss,” Jasmine was saying.

  You betcha. Like why the hell the nutball catchers weren’t scouring the streets for her.

  “Right. Hold that thought,” I said and scanned the rubble of my kitchen, trying to find the phone. I finally spotted the damn thing on the counter, half-hidden behind the bag of groceries. I kicked the mustard bottle out of the way and grabbed the phone on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom,” Thea said, “I’m just calling to tell you I’m not speaking to you.”

  Normally when Thea was mad at me, she would spend hours explaining in painful detail exactly how long it would be before she spoke to me again. Right this minute, I didn’t have the time to hear it.

  “Okay,” I said and watched as Jasmine picked up the refrigerator door. My eyeballs popped. She set it back into place, then handily went about steadying the hinges. Man. She could be making a fortune doing exercise videos for old folks. Didn’t look like she weighed eighty pounds, yet she was really spry for a woman who had to be…oh, a hundred years old at least.

  “Mom? Are you listening? Zoe and I talked it over, and she totally agrees that I should not speak to you.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”

  Sugar scooted back into the kitchen on her belly—apparently being terrified alone was worse than being terrified with company. She kept one eye on Jasmine and settled on top of my feet.

  “I think you should know that this has seriously affected the whole mother/daughter trust thing,” Thea continued, “which is why I think the only way to handle this is to not talk to you anymore.”

  My darling daughter’s voice was nothing more than a persistent buzz in my ear. How the hell could I concentrate on Thea torturing me while I had this weird-ass woman in my kitchen who was busily rehanging the fridge door as if it weighed nothing? Besides, I’d just discovered I was a superhero. Hell. Maybe I could even fly.

  “Look, honey, could you not talk to me later?”

  I hung up while she was still explaining about not talking to me, and looked at Jasmine. What the hell was going on here? I swallowed hard, took a deep breath and pinched myself. Ow. Yep, still awake and breathing. My stomach felt like the last time I mixed wine and tequila—without the good times.

  Not a single one of Jasmine’s blue/gray hairs was out of place. She wasn’t winded or limping or even whimpering quietly. Once she had the refrigerator door hung again—how did she do that so easily?—she dusted her palms together and turned to face me.

  “Now we can talk,” she said.

  Actually, I didn’t feel like talking. I felt like drinking my beer. And then another one. Or twelve. Something totally strange was happening here. It wasn’t just that Jasmine was freakishly strong or apparently impervious to being kicked in the stomach. It was me.

  There was something going on with me, and I really wanted to know what it was.

  As much as I prefer the view with my head in the sand, I had to acknowledge that I was all of a sudden pretty damn strong. And then there was the cool kicking thing.

  “Just who are you?” I asked. “Really?”

  “I’m your guide,” she said, and her black eyes sort of swam with a wash of color. Weird. Big surprise. “I’m here to help you accept your destiny. To—”

  “Yeah,” I interrupted fast, because I just wasn’t up to hearing the whole destiny speech again. “I got that part. But—”

  The phone rang again, and irritated, I grabbed it. “Thea, you’re not talking to me, remember? Tell me later.”

  “Cass, honey, is that you?”

  “Gram?”

  “Just called to say happy birthday!”

  Oh yeah. As birthdays go, this one had been a beaut. “Thanks, but—”

  “Is Jasmine there?”

  I whipped the receiver away from my ear and stared at it before slapping it back against my head hard enough to make me wince. Damn. Forgot about the strength thing. “Jasmine? So you do know Jasmine?”

  “Well, of course I do, sweetie. She was my guide, too.”

  I snapped a quick look at the old lady, who was now peeling one of my Hershey’s Kisses. As she popped it into her mouth, she smiled, settled herself on a kitchen chair and folded her wrinkled-up, bony hands on the table in front of her.

  “Your guide?”

  “Oh, hasn’t she explained yet?” My grandmother sounded a little whiny, which was totally not like her. “I was hoping she’d already given you the talk. But I can wait. I’ll just call back
later and—”

  “Oh, no you don’t, Gram,” I said, giving Jasmine a steely-eyed look that didn’t faze her a bit. “No slithering off until you tell me what the hell is going on!”

  “Cass, honey, language.”

  I thumped my forehead against the cupboard. “Gram…”

  Growing up, especially after my mom died, I spent a lot of time at Gram’s house. There were always cookies, a willing ear and warm hugs waiting for me there. Harriet—better known as Harry to her friends—Burke was a constant in my life—and Thea’s, too—until she up and moved to Florida a few years ago. Why Florida when she already lived in California was beyond me. After all, we have sunshine, too, without the humidity and the hurricanes and alligators and bugs big enough to own property.

  “She said something about me being a Demon Duster?”

  “Oh, good. Then she has told you.” She laughed a little. “You had me worried for a minute there.”

  “I had you worried?”

  “Well, it is Jasmine’s place to tell you, after all. Don’t want to step on toes.”

  “You mean it’s true?” Weird, weirder, weirdest. Woo-hoo! I win the Crappy Life Contest! What’s first prize? An enema?

  “Well, of course it’s true, dear. Why would anyone make up something silly like that?”

  I glanced at Jasmine and saw that she was still smiling and still eating my kisses. Old lady or not, she’d better not eat all of my chocolate, or we were going to have another kick-a-thon.

  Just beneath my grandmother’s voice, I heard the echo of a ship’s horn and the rattle and clank of silverware mixed with muttered conversation.

  “Where are you, Gram?”

  “Oh, honey, I’m on a cruise.”

  “Again?”

  My grandmother went on cruises every other week. Even in the fall, when most sane people want to stay on dry land, Harry was out on the high seas, bingo-ing her way to happiness.

  “Listen now, Cass honey,” Harry was saying, dropping her voice until it was almost impossible to hear her over the background noises. “You pay attention to Jasmine. She’ll teach you everything you need to know. Then when I get back, I’m coming for a visit, and we’ll have a long talk about…everything.”

  “You bet we will. Starting with why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I demanded, not ready to let her off the hook for never once in my thirty-two years mentioning this weird demon thing.

  “Well, it’s not allowed,” Harry said, then added, “Besides, you had so many other things in your life, sweetie. Losing your mom so young. Then having Thea. Then losing your dad. I thought it best to just wait.”

  In other words, she hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell me. And seriously, who could blame her? Sure, it would have been easier on me to hear it from Gram, but—let’s be honest—I wouldn’t have believed her. Still…“You know, Gram, a little warning would have been a good thing.”

  “I understand that you’re a little pissy, honey, but Burke women have been doing this for generations. You’ll be fine.”

  Burke women.

  Growing up, I’d always wondered why my mom had kept her maiden name. Why I’d gotten her last name instead of my father’s. Although, to be honest, being Cassidy Burke was way better than the alternative of Cassidy Cossetti. Sounded like a stripper.

  But I never would have guessed that it all boiled down to killing demons.

  “Oh!” Gram said, excitement crowing in her voice. “And tell Jasmine that I took out a Baranza demon last night at bingo.”

  “A Baranza demon?”

  “Oh, nasty little things,” Gram said. “Always drooling, and they have the ugliest black fingernails. Just so tacky. Though, with the whole Goth thing, they can really blend in with the younger crowd. They stick out like bad plastic surgery in my group, though.”

  I shook my head and leaned back even harder against the kitchen counter. “You killed a demon? Last night? On a cruise?”

  “That’s the job.”

  “But you retired.” From the bookstore she owned, I had thought.

  “Well,” Gram said, “I do like to keep my hand in! Now, sweetie, you listen to Jasmine, and we’ll talk again real soon.”

  She hung up, and I just stood there listening to the dial tone humming in my ear. My entire world had just turned upside down. My sweet, slightly off-center grandmother killed demons at bingo. My ex-boyfriend/lover/whatever was back in town destroying my relationship with my daughter.

  And a blue-haired old lady with spray bottles was going to teach me how to be a superhero.

  I needed a drink.

  Chapter Six

  By the time I got the kitchen straightened up, Jasmine out the door but promising to return tomorrow (oh boy, can’t wait) and the frozen pizza in the oven, Thea was home.

  I knew this because the front door slammed with enough force to peel paint off the walls. Since she pretty much inherited her gentle demeanor from me, I wasn’t really in a position to complain.

  Thea stomped through the living room, pounded into the kitchen and plopped down onto a chair. Then she stared at me with her mouth all firmed up—just to make sure I understood she still wasn’t speaking to me.

  Okay by me. I’d had enough talking so far today to last me a week at least. A little quiet, a little time to gather my thoughts—hah!—a little time to relax and try to get a handle on my new “destiny,” for God’s sake, would not be a bad thing.

  “Who was that old lady?”

  My chin hit my chest. So much for peace. “I thought you weren’t talking to me.”

  She gave me one of those looks that said, “Mmoooooommmm”—stretching a one-syllable word into about eighty-five. And one of her eyebrows lifted, too—just like her father’s.

  I was stalling. Hell, I was trying to think of something to say. What could I say? I was still trying to get used to the idea of demons myself—I was in no way ready to try to explain this new truth to Thea. So, at the risk of lying yet again to my one and only child, I just said, “She’s a friend of Gram’s.”

  “Why’s she here, then? Gram lives in Florida.”

  Like I said before. Smart kid. Damn it. “She’s, um…” Funny. All the lies I’ve come up with in my lifetime, and I couldn’t find one big enough to deal with a demon-obsessed old woman.

  I should probably be telling Thea about this anyway. If there were really demons out there, then she should know to be careful. Look both ways, don’t take candy from strangers—oh, and keep a sharp eye out for demons. Yeah, that’d go over big.

  Thankfully, I didn’t have to answer that question because she came up with an even more difficult topic a second later.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me my father was alive.” She grabbed a paper towel off the roll in the middle of the table and started shredding it. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’m almost sixteen. I had a right to know. You should have told me.”

  I took the chair on the other side of the table from Thea and took a deep breath of pepperoni-scented air. Nothing like a good whiff of pizza to give me a little extra strength. “Probably I should have.”

  “Probably?” Her voice squeaked, it went so high.

  “Fine. I’m a terrible mother. A rotten human being. I should be shot.”

  That eyebrow lifted again. “Really.”

  “Since we don’t have any guns, you want to just slap me around for a while?”

  She thought about it for a long moment or two, then finally shrugged. “If I do that, who’ll take the pizza out of the oven?”

  Aw. Sniffle. I was so touched. My genius daughter, who should be taking college courses—or, hell, maybe teaching college courses—was afraid of the oven. Something about all that heated air rushing out to steal her breath and singe her eyelashes. But then, it might be the fact that when she was a little girl, to keep her from getting too close to a hot oven, I told her a dragon lived in there.

  God. I really did lie a lot.

  As it turns ou
t, though, good thing for me.

  “I didn’t mean to lie to you, Thea.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “Okay, I did.” I scraped up the shredded paper towel and crumpled it in my hand. “But it was for a good cause. You were really proud of your dad, weren’t you? You know, the hero dad who saved all those kids from a flood?”

  “A fire.”

  “Whatever.”

  “But it wasn’t real.”

  “It was real for you, baby girl.” I reached across the table and gave her hand a pat. “Look, you were a little kid, wondering where your daddy was. I didn’t want to tell you—”

  “That he left us?”

  Ouch. See, that was the conversation my lies had helped me avoid for sixteen years. I never wanted her to think her dad hadn’t wanted her. So I cleared that up, fast.

  “Not true. He left me. He didn’t even know about you.”

  “He does now.”

  She didn’t look as if she knew what to think about that, either. Was she happy? Weirded out? Probably a little of both. Well, hell. Me, too.

  I don’t mind admitting that I wasn’t real happy about Logan coming back to town. Aside from the whole hormonal reaction to the man, it was damned strange to think of having to share my daughter with someone.

  Being a single parent isn’t always easy. There’s no one else to blame when something goes wrong or you make a bad decision. There’s no one to take a shift when your kid is up sick for a week. There’s no one to whine to because your kid is smarter than you.

  But along with the grief, you also get the good stuff to yourself. The hugs. The secrets. The smiles. The love.

  Okay, I guess I could see why Logan was pissed off about never knowing about Thea. But in my own defense, I’d raised a great kid. All he had to do now was swoop in and take advantage of it. Plus, he was the new parent. Everybody knows that kids always like the new thing best.

  I slapped myself in the forehead. Idiot. I was so not going to be the kind of mom who was always asking her kid, You like me best, right?

  Thea grinned. “Want to tell me what you hit yourself for?”