Naturally, though, there was a lot to do before the big date. Had to go shopping with Rachel, which wasn’t easy. We had to squeeze it into her lunch hour, and the entire time, she hit me with advice and questions.
“Logan and Devlin?” Rachel’s brown eyes gleamed with amusement. “Let’s all pause to remember just how sucky you were in high school at juggling more than one guy. You never could keep your lies straight.”
“I’m better at it now,” I said. Wow. A better liar. What a proud moment for me.
“So you like living dangerously.”
“Oh yeah,” I said. “No dates in two years. I’m dangerous. Ladies, lock up your men!”
“See, that’s what’s dangerous. This is the bottled-up theory.”
“Oh, this should be good.” I flipped through the Nordie’s rack and shook my head when Rachel held up a blue shirt. She put it back.
“You’ve been tamping down everything inside for so long you’re ready to blow—hmm. Perhaps not the best choice of words.” She shrugged. “Anyway, the question now is, whose bottle opener you gonna use?”
I laughed.
She held up a green shirt, sniffed and put it back. “Come on. Two guys, two chances for sex. Who’s first?”
“Maybe neither of them.” But I didn’t believe that, either. My hoo-hah had been on red alert for days now. There was a Grand Reopening party going on down there, and the whole place was ready to rock.
“Do I get a vote?” Rachel asked, gasping at a hideous blouse with red and green horizontal stripes.
Horizontal stripes are nobody’s friend.
“No,” I said. “Yes. No. Hell, I don’t know.”
“Okay,” Rachel said, “I vote both.”
“Damn, Rach. Does Simon know about your kinky side?”
“Why do you think he loves me so desperately? Besides, not two at the same time, gutter brain—Oh! Get that red silk one. It’ll look great with your hair—I mean, have both guys on your terms. Why not?”
She was appealing to the slut puppy within and doing a damn fine job of it.
“Devlin’s famous,” she reminded me. “Oh, and take pictures.”
“Pictures of Devlin?”
“Hmm.” She tipped her head back, smiled and sighed. “Not a bad idea, but I meant pictures of the club.”
“I’m not taking a camera on a date.”
“Please. It’s a sex club. There’re probably cameras in every room—Do you have decent shoes to wear?” She shook her head. “I already know you don’t. Let’s go.”
She grabbed my arm, steered me to Nordie’s shoe department and snagged a pair of strappy black sandals with three-inch heels.
“I’ll fall over.”
“Devlin will catch you. Romantic.”
“Unless I break my leg.”
“Trust me,” she said. “You know purses; I know shoes.” She snagged a salesman. “She wants these in an eight.”
“Seven and a half,” I said.
“Oh please.” Rachel snorted. “An eight,” she told the kid, who made a break for the back room. Who could blame him?
“You’re giving me a headache,” I complained.
“You’ll live,” she said, then pouted when her purse started ringing. Reluctantly, she reached inside, pulled out her phone and stuck her tongue out at it. “Simon. Probably wants me back at the office.”
“Thank God. I’m done shopping.” Unless I was buying chocolate, I didn’t really enjoy the mall experience. Rachel, on the other hand, was born to mall.
“He can wait,” she said as the now-returned salesman rang up my shoes. “First we have to get you some fabulous underwear. If Devlin’s gonna be peeling off your clothes, you gotta have something sexy to throw on the floor.”
I glanced at the kid looking from Rachel to me and back again with the kind of fascination usually reserved for car accidents. “What?” I snapped, getting his full attention. “You don’t think I can have sex?”
“None of my business, lady….”
Rachel laughed and dragged me to the lingerie department. I was too weak to protest. By the time she went back to work and I went off to clean a house for a new customer before going home myself, I had a headache like you wouldn’t believe.
I love Rachel, but she isn’t easy.
My new customer lived on one of the narrow streets of old homes that backed up against Pacific Coast Highway and a string of strip malls, motels and gas stations. La Sombra didn’t have much of a “bad” part of town, but this area was a little more dilapidated than others.
A Mister Harris, who owned the tiny bungalow, had called the day before and asked for an emergency cleaning, since he was having guests this weekend. He’d said he would leave the key in the mailbox, and that was good enough for me. Thankfully, it was a really small, old house, so I knew it wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours to whip it into shape and head home. Grabbing my supplies out of the backseat of the VW, I headed up the walk and took the house key from the rusty mailbox.
Most of our customers were at work when we went in to do the cleaning, thank God. It’s a lot easier to clean a place when you didn’t have to make small talk with the owner. Besides, being in somebody else’s quiet house was the only really peaceful time I could get.
The inside was dark and, as it had looked from the outside, cramped. Smelled a little musty, too, and I wrinkled my nose, determined to open some windows and air the joint out while I cleaned.
The front door opened directly into a small living room. Then there was a short hall with a single bedroom, a bath and a kitchen beyond.
I hit the wall switch, looking for light, but the bulb must have been burned out. Perfect. So I went into the living room to open the drapes and carried my supplies with me. Felt good to be working. This I knew. This I was good at. I’d leave the old place so polished the owner wouldn’t recognize his own home.
I tugged on the cord, the dark blue drapes swept back, sunlight flooded the room, and someone behind me SHRIEKED.
“Jesus!” I dropped my supply caddy and spun around, heart in my throat.
A huge guy, with bright red eyes and fingernails that were long and curved into claws aimed at my face, raced at me from out of the shadows. Panic reared its ugly head, and I bolted to one side, narrowly missing a swipe from those nails of his. His breath sounded loud and strained, and my own heartbeat was hammering in my ears.
I jumped over a low coffee table, hit the edge with my toe and sent it flying, scattering ancient magazines in every direction.
Crap, crap, CRAP!
“You will die!” the guy screamed, and I was afraid he was right. If my heart beat any faster, I was going to stroke out on the spot.
Blindly, I grabbed the first thing that came to hand. A lamp. I pitched it at him, and it bounced off his wide forehead but didn’t slow him down any. If anything, I think I pissed him off. Well, join the club. Show up to clean a house and get attacked? So not right. He lunged again, then headed around the edge of the couch. I went the other way and changed directions every time he did. We had an excellent standoff going until he got tired of the game and leaped onto the cushions to make a wild grab for me.
From there on, it’s a blur. I remember running in crazed circles in the little room, picking up everything I could find to throw at the guy—but nothing fazed him. Every time I made a break for the front door, he jumped in front of me. Like he was getting some hard charge out of terrifying me.
And maybe he was. What do I know from demons? Maybe this was like foreplay to him. Oh, ew.
“Look, this doesn’t have to get ugly,” I said and jumped when he lunged at me again.
“You will die, Duster.”
Hey, catch that? I’m famous. Then, his threat kicked in.
“I can’t die,” I shouted, hurling a cut-glass ashtray that had to weigh ten pounds. “I have a date!”
He laughed, and that fried me. A demon didn’t believe I had a date? All of a sudden I remembered wha
t Jasmine had been trying to teach me all week. I wasn’t supposed to run from these guys. I was supposed to be fighting back. Killing ’em. And damned if this red-eyed claw monster wasn’t asking for it.
He charged me again, and this time, I jumped up, hurtling him like an Olympic track star. I landed near the front window, stunned, surprised and, yeah, a little proud. I reached into my supply caddy for the demon spray, tossing everything out of my way. Furniture polish, rags, floor and oven cleaner—I sent them all flying at him like domestic bullets.
Finally, though, I found my trusty demon spray and sent a squirt directly at him. It arced through the air, glittering in the hazy sunlight, and hit him full in the face. While he was blinded and screaming in fury, I spun halfway around, kicking his legs out from under him. He went down like a redwood and kept right on screaming as he clawed at his eyes. But I wasn’t done. I whipped out my right hand, and it went right through his chest wall like it wasn’t even there, and I pulled out his heart.
He stared up at me in total disbelief, then poof.
Yep. Just like on Buffy. He popped apart into a cloud of dust, and the heart in my hand disintegrated just as completely.
My knees gave out, and I dropped to the floor, landing in a gritty pile of Mister Harris. Breathing wasn’t coming easily, but just as well—I didn’t really want to inhale demon dust. Couldn’t be sanitary. My stomach gave a hideous lurch, and for a second there, I really regretted the Big Mac I’d had with Rachel.
“Ohmigod.” I couldn’t believe it. I’d done it. Just the way Jasmine had said I would. I had actually pulled out the guy’s heart.
“Oh, that’s just disgusting.” I looked at my hand and made a mental note to dip it in boiling water as soon as I got home. Then I staggered to my feet, went into the hall closet and looked for a vacuum. When I found it, I plugged it in, sucked up the evidence, then gathered up my supplies and left.
I figured the demon who’d hired me to clean his house wouldn’t really care if I did the windows or not.
Chapter Eleven
I was still shaky when I got home.
Having a demon dissolve into instant soup mix right in front of you was enough, I think, to make any woman need a quiet moment to hurl in private. But since my Big Mac was staying put, I used that private moment to grab a bag of Hershey’s Kisses and eat my way to peace instead. After the sixth or seventh foil wrapper hit the coffee table, I felt a little better. Chocolate. The Wonder Drug.
I heard the mail slot open and turned in time to see a piece of paper drop onto the floor. I turned on the couch, grabbed the edge of a curtain and tugged it back, but didn’t see anyone out there. Whoever had dropped the note was either Batman fast or was sneaking away, trying not to be seen and apparently excelling at the job. As soon as I picked up the paper and read it, I understood why.
Back off, Demon Duster, or your daughter will be ours.
Okay, now I wanted to hurl.
I yanked open the door, raced onto the porch and, looking for an enemy, stared at the familiar, comfy street where I’d grown up. But there was no one. The Marchetti boys were in the garage, Bon Jovi blasting from their radio. Our next-door neighbor, Harlan Cates, was working in the yard, probably setting bear traps to keep kids off his precious grass.
Everything looked normal. But nothing was.
Not anymore.
I crumpled the note in my hand and thought about the red-eyed guy with claws I’d dusted just an hour or so before. Imagining him going after Thea made me so sick I had to bolt for the bathroom. It was one thing to know that one day she’d be a Duster, too. But she’d be grown up then. Now she was just a kid. A kid more important to me than my own life.
I just barely made it to the bathroom in time, and when the disgusting festivities were over, I stared into the mirror and hardly recognized the pale, wild-eyed woman looking back at me.
I gripped the sides of the sink, and I’m pretty sure my fingers left indentations in the porcelain. I was so damn mad, so scared, I wanted to rip somebody’s heart out. And, hey, now I could.
“Okay, demons, playtime’s over,” I murmured to the crazed woman in the mirror. “Nobody threatens my baby.”
A half hour later, Thea was home, and I only just managed to keep from grabbing hold of her and dragging her into the house, where I could keep her locked up until she was thirty-two and had some demon-killing power of her own. Instead, I looked at her, standing next to Jett, and a niggling worry began to tug at the edges of my mind.
“Where were you guys?” I asked, stepping back to let both of the teenagers inside.
“God, MOTHER,” Thea said, with an eye roll toward Jett. (This is code for “Don’t embarrass me in front of a guy.”) “We stopped for a Coke on the way home from school.”
“Uh-huh.” The worry was still there, poking at me, prodding at me to find out for sure if what I was thinking was true or not. Ordinarily, I was willing to cut Jett a little slack. Up till now, I’d always thought of the kid as just a thorn in my parental paw. But now I knew there were demons out there. Now I knew that someone was threatening my baby.
And Thea had been just a little too eager to campaign for demon rights. If I was right, Thea and I were due for another chat that would make me Public Enemy Number One again.
So when they went into the kitchen, I followed. Grabbing my trusty spray bottle off the table, I took careful aim and gave the kid a squirt right on top of his nose piercing.
Instantly, smoke curled from his face, and Jett screamed like he’d been shot. Which he had. Thea freaked out, running for a paper towel while shrieking at me, and Jett was wiping his face with the sleeves of his ratty flannel shirt. Sugar was howling, and I was standing there tapping my foot, waiting for a damn explanation.
When the noise finally faded away, I said, “You’re a demon.”
The kid sniffed, wiped his face with the paper towel Thea was waving at him and said, “Well, yeah.”
“I can’t BELIEVE you did that,” Thea shouted, clearly mortified.
I slanted her a look but kept one wary eye on the little demon in front of me as I asked her, “You knew, didn’t you?”
“Of course I knew Jett’s a demon. It’s not exactly a SECRET.”
“It was to me,” I pointed out, then gave Mr. Piercings my full attention. “What’re you up to?”
“Dude,” Jett said, lifting both hands in an as-innocent-as-he-could-get shrug. Which wasn’t real impressive, considering his head was still smoking and his pants were on their way south. “I’m just chillin’.”
“Uh-huh.” Chilling with my daughter.
“Mother, you’re being insulting.”
She says that like it’s a big surprise. I’ve been embarrassing Thea for her whole life. No point in stopping now. “I’m asking questions.”
“Exactly.”
I was still watching Jett, not really sure, but half expecting his eyes to turn bright red like those of the guy I’d dispatched earlier. A few soft tendrils of smoke were still curling in the air over his head, and a part of me was feeling a little guilty about squirting a kid. Still, a demon was a demon. Right?
“Dude,” Jett said, taking a step back, as if reading my mind. “I’m cool, you know? The demon thing? That’s just whatd’yacallit, my heritage. I’m not into the whole demon/ human war thing, you know? It’s, like, so over. I’m, like, into music and doing whatever.”
I blinked, mentally translating lazy teenspeak into English, then asked, “What is ‘whatever,’ and why’re you doing it with my daughter?”
Jett shrugged again, reached down and tugged his baggy jeans up. They hung on narrow hips briefly and then drooped down to expose way too much of his pale blue boxers.
Thea was actually simmering. I could feel waves of humiliation and fury rippling off her and didn’t even risk another glance her way. I figured there would be plenty of time for us to get into this later. Right now, I wanted to lay down some ground rules for Hell Spawn Junior.
“Thea’s cool,” he muttered, dipping his still-smoking head and looking up at me. “And she’s, like, pretty and everything. I, you know, like her and everything.”
Thea sighed.
Good God. Demon poet.
“Okay, Jett,” I said, idly shaking my spray bottle. It had his attention. He watched the brown liquid sloshing around with a dread fascination, which cheered me right up. “Some ground rules.”
“That’s cool,” he said, nodding, and I figured he’d be willing to agree to just about anything while I was holding that bottle.
“One. You hang around with Thea, you keep your hands to yourself.”
“MOTHER!”
Bigger nod. Gaze still fixed to the demon mixture. “Cool, dude. Cool.”
“Thea,” I said, still watching Jett, “go to the living room.”
“But—”
“Now, please.” I didn’t use the “mother” tone very often, so when I did, it really got results. Thea stomped off into the other room, and when we were alone, I leaned toward Jett and stared him right in the eye. “Listen up, Jett. I don’t know if the word’s gotten out to all of the demons in town, but do you know who I am?”
He nodded and swallowed hard. “Demon Duster.”
“Right.” I gave him a tight smile that didn’t have a single thing to do with good humor. “But just so you know? The Demon Duster isn’t half as scary as Thea’s mom. And that’s who’s talking to you right now.”
“Got it.” He nodded so hard, one of his hair spikes fell over.
“Good.” I caressed the trigger of the spray bottle, just to make sure he knew who was in charge around here. Was I enjoying this a little too much? Probably. But give me a break. I’d been putting up with the kid for six months now. There are limits. “I’m glad you get it. Because when you’re with Thea, you’re going to keep your spiny little demon fingers to yourself, or I’m going to chop them off for you. At the shoulder.”
He gulped.
I leaned in closer. “Then I’m going to beat you to death with the bloody stump. And then I’m going to rip out your heart and store your ashes in Tupperware.”
More Than Fiends Page 13