More Than Fiends

by Maureen Child

  “I do what I do,” she said softly, “because there must be balance.”

  I blew out a breath and wished for a beer. “Oh man, are you going to go all Zen-like on me? Cause I don’t think I can handle a Master/Grasshopper talk right now.”

  “You watch far too much television.”

  “Guilty,” I agreed. “But not the point. Now explain what you meant.”

  Jasmine’s gaze caught mine. “Balance in all things is necessary. When demons attain too much power, that balance is disrupted and the world suffers.”

  This was just too weird. I was sitting in my backyard (it really needed mowing), watching a storm roll in and listening to an ancient woman talk to me about balance in the demon world.

  “I chose this duty,” she was saying in that plain, no-nonsense tone she always used, “because some of my kind feel it is important to maintain stable ties with the mortal world.”

  “Hah! And I’m stable?”

  She smiled again, so briefly that if I hadn’t been watching her, I never would have noticed it. “You have a good soul, Cassidy. A heart big enough to accept that not everything in the world is black and white, or good and evil.”

  “Oh sure,” I said, calmer now as I admitted that though it was damn weird finding out my “guide” was a demon, I was pretty sure she was still trustworthy. Leaning back in my chair, I kicked my feet out in front of me and added, “You say that now so I can’t get all frosted and rip your heart out without feeling like a jerk.”

  She smiled, and even her dark eyes glittered with humor and…relief? Maybe she felt good getting her secret out in the open.

  “I will be with you for as long as you need me,” she said, “which I must say, I fear will be quite some time—”

  “Hey! No insulting the Demon Duster when she’s just forgiven you!”

  “—and,” she continued, lifting her voice to drown me out, “when it is Thea’s time to inherit her powers, I will be there for her as well.”

  “God,” I muttered, thinking about that for a second. “Thea.”

  “Of course, we’ve talked about this. The Duster legacy is passed along from mother to daughter. Your own mother—”

  “I know,” I said, interrupting her because I really didn’t want to think about my mom now and how we’d both been gypped when she died too young. “I know it’ll be Thea’s turn one day. I already told her, actually, and let me tell you, if you think I’m a pain in the ass about this, just wait till Thea’s up at bat.”

  Jasmine actually shuddered.

  Me, I was worried. It gave me chills thinking about Thea going up against nasty-ass demons who wanted her dead. But the real scary part was, she’d never get to be a Duster at all unless I was able to protect her now.

  Jasmine shrugged after a minute and scratched Sugar behind her ears, making the dog actually moan in ecstasy. “It may not be Thea, you know. If you have another child and it is a daughter, she may be the one to inherit the power.”

  “Oh, you can put a lid on that plan,” I said hastily. I mean, sure, sometimes when Thea was being all sweet or we were laughing together, I halfway considered maybe someday, at some far-off point in the distant, still-foggy and ambiguous future, that I might, maybe consider maybe thinking about another child. But in case you didn’t notice, the chance of that happening was real iffy.

  Which meant, of course, that Thea would be the one stuck with this “duty” sooner or later. Let’s vote for later, I told myself, and put that thought out of my mind for the moment.

  “Besides,” I said, with a sigh of great relief, “I’m practicing realllllllyyyyy safe sex these days. I mean, interspecies sex has got to be totally safe. Can’t reproduce if you’re not even in the same gene pool—hell, same gene ocean—right?”

  Jasmine didn’t say a word.

  “Right?” I repeated and heard the shrill, nails-on-a-chalkboard quality of my voice. “Right?”

  “Our species are not so very different,” she said. “At least, that can be said for a great many of us. There are, of course, many different types of demons. Each with their own quirks—”

  I snorted. “Quirks? Like claws and fangs and wild, red eyes and, I don’t know, trying to kill me?”

  “Some of them are far from human,” Jasmine went on, disregarding both my indelicate snort and my abbreviated rant. “Others are very close to human, and until they choose to show their demon natures, you would have no way of knowing their true heritage.”

  Well, I’d seen that for myself, hadn’t I? Look at Devlin, for Pete’s sake. He looked like a guy. A big, gorgeous guy, but human through and through. And yet…Then I wondered what his “demon” self looked like and wondered again if I really wanted to know. Did I want to see him go all fangy and clawy? (Yes, not words. I know.) And the honest answer was, nope. Didn’t really want to see the “real” him.

  Hell, I didn’t even want to know what Jasmine looked like when she was kicked back with a demon crowd.

  “Okay,” I said, turning my head on the back of the chair to look at her. “But we’re talking about reproduction here. It can’t be possible.”

  “Thea’s friend Jett is only half demon,” Jasmine went on, eyes gleaming with—Was that humor? “His father was human.”

  “I didn’t know that. Half demon? Oh crap.” So sex with the demon world wasn’t exactly safe. The meaning of that sank in fast, and I immediately thought about my wild night with Devlin, but I was safe. For sure. We’d used condoms. Every time. So, unless demons had, like, supersperm or something, I should be covered.

  Right?

  “You’re enjoying this,” I accused.

  “Is that wrong?” she asked, smiling.

  Bitch.

  Not that I was considering having sex with Devlin again, but when I did, I was going to make sure he was wearing two condoms. Hell. Maybe three.

  I just couldn’t take much more.

  For the next couple of days, I carried that demon spray with me everywhere. If Jasmine could be a demon, everybody in town was suspect.

  No matter whom I ran into, I gave ’em a squirt.

  The paperboy—no.

  The guy at the car wash—yes.

  My favorite teller at the bank—no.

  Joey Paretti’s best mechanic—yes. When the little guy with the handlebar mustache started smoking, Joey jumped in front of him, arms wide in protection and shouted, “Don’t kill him! Fabrizio’s the best mechanic I’ve ever had. Besides, he’s a Firenzi demon—they’re car specialists, not evil. He came here all the way from Italy. I paid his way over.”

  Car-specialist demons?

  God, everybody had a specialty these days.

  Truth to tell, ol’ Fabrizio didn’t look too dangerous. He was practically quivering. So, being brilliant and, oh yes, financially challenged at the moment, I proposed a deal.

  “If I don’t kill him,” I said, liking the thrill of power, “I get free tune-ups and oil changes for a year.”

  Joey gritted his teeth. “Fine.”

  “And”—I was on a roll and kept right on rolling—“I don’t have to pay for the bodywork you did on my Bug.”

  “Damn it, Cass!” Joey glared at me, glanced over at Fabrizio, who was looking a little worried, then finally caved and said, “Fine. You got a deal. But just so you know? This sucks.”

  Not from where I was standing.

  Anyway, the squirt-a-thon continued.

  Carmen—no.

  Her cousin Yolanda—yes. (That was an eye-opener, but Carmen insisted that Yolanda was only half demon and that she was a really good worker.) Since phone calls for jobs were still pouring in, how could I dust a good worker?

  But the half-demon thing was still worrying me—for all I knew, Devlin’s sperm had found a way through that thin layer of latex and were already laying siege to my eggs! That thought creeped me out enough that I gave my hoo-hah a squirt just in case.

  Then I took my spray over to the high school and, once class was out f
or the day, squirted all of Thea’s teachers. No point in taking chances.

  I was really hoping the principal, Mr. Richards, was a demon, because I never had liked that guy. Such a wimp. But no…everyone was clear except for Mr. Mondaca, the biology teacher who had flunked me sophomore year. When he lunged at me across his desk…Gotta say, it was a real pleasure ripping out that particular heart.

  Basically, I discovered La Sombra was so not the quiet little town I’d always believed it to be. There were freaking demons everywhere.

  When I met Rachel for coffee at the Starbucks near Simon’s dental office, I spritzed the barista who told me the perfume had a really cool “earth-vibe” to it. Probably the oregano. Then, when Rachel came out onto the patio and sat down next to me, I gave her a quick shot.

  “What the hell was that for?” she asked, whipping a compact out of her Prada bag. (Rachel has excellent taste in purses.)

  “Just a new perfume I’m trying out,” I said.

  “Well, it smells like pizza. Not a bad scent, but I think it’s gonna clash with the Beautiful I splashed on this morning.” She blotted her face with a napkin, shooting me do-it-again-and-I-slap-you looks.

  “Sorry,” I said, but inside I was sighing in relief. No smoke lifting off of Rachel. Which meant at least one little corner of my world was staying sane. Well, as sane as Rachel could get, anyway.

  “So,” she said, putting the compact away and picking up her cup, “Simon says I should get out of the office before Mrs. Eisen comes in for her cleaning, and I thought, ‘Thank you, God.’ That woman makes me want to pick up his drill and see how thick her skull really is.”

  “So you’re free for a while?”

  She grinned at me, took a sip of her mocha latte, then swallowed with a grimace. “God, how hard is it to mix a little chocolate with some steamed milk and a shot of espresso?” She pushed up from her chair and stalked away. “I’ll be back.”

  My latte was just fine, so I picked at my chocolate doughnut, (give me a break—they’re baked, not fried; Starbucks knows how to take care of female customers), took a sip of my hot coffee and idly squirted the guy sitting next to me on the patio.

  Smoke lifted from the top of his head, and he looked at me, wide-eyed and horrified as he dropped the paper he’d been reading and bolted. I watched him run for it, slapping at his smoking head just as Leo had, what seemed years ago, now.

  I let him go without bothering to chase him down like a dog. I’d figured out something in the last couple of days. Squirting everyone I came into contact with not only told me who was a demon and who wasn’t, it also told me who was a good demon and who wasn’t.

  Pretty simple, really. The good ones took off running, hoping I wouldn’t bother to chase ’em. (Which I wouldn’t. I don’t do exercise willingly, remember?) The bad ones attacked, trying to kill me before I could dust them.

  It was sort of comforting in a weird way, to at least have that much figured out.

  By the time Rachel came back to the table, muttering about teenage airheads working around hot machinery not being good for anyone’s health, I was settled into my chair and ready for some good gossip.

  “You had sex with him, didn’t you?”

  I choked on a sip of latte, and when I got my breath back, I managed, “Huh?”

  “Don’t make me have to kill you.”

  I laughed. Rachel really was good. “You mean Devlin.”

  “I’m reaching for my gun.”

  “Yes,” I said and couldn’t quite keep the sigh of reflection out of my voice. “I had sex with him.”

  “Oh dear God,” Rachel said, doing a little sighing of her own. “The look on your face is making me so damn envious I can’t stand it. Tell me everything. Don’t leave out a thing. I can’t believe it’s been days and I don’t know about this yet.”

  “Jesus, Rach. You’re the one who told me I would have sex with him. Why sound so surprised?”

  “Not surprised. Crabby. I need details.” Rachel reached out one hand, squeezed mine briefly, then settled back. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in years. You’ve been so busy lately—Well, since Logan came back to town, we never talk anymore.”

  It wasn’t only Logan. Every spare minute I had was spent training with Jasmine, but Rachel didn’t know that, did she? “I know. Things have been—”

  “Weird?”

  “Absolutely.”

  That one pitiful word couldn’t come close to summing up what my life had turned into in the last week or two. There were some details Rachel would never hear. I was thinking she wouldn’t be too happy to hear about all the demons in town.

  Rachel broke off a piece of her crumble coffee cake, popped it into her mouth and then set her elbows on the table, her chin in her hands. She was watching me as if I were the trailer for the next big summer blockbuster.

  I caved pretty quickly. “It was amazing.”

  She sighed again, and I grinned. After all the strangeness of the last couple of weeks, being myself with Rachel felt damn good.

  “More,” she demanded.

  “Six times,” I said.

  “Jesus.” She fanned herself with a napkin.

  “I could hardly walk after.”

  “I think I just had an orgasm,” she said, eyes wide, mouth a perfect O.

  “I know I did,” I said, taking another piece of doughnut and chewing despite my satisfied grin. “Several.”

  Rachel slurped up some mocha, grabbed a new napkin and dabbed away imaginary sweat from her forehead. “Keep going.”

  “He turned me every which way but loose,” I said, leaning in toward her, watching her eyes sparkle with imagination as she mentally filled in the blanks. I ticked them off on my fingers for her. “On the couch, the floor, against the wall, on the terrace, over a table—”

  “Wow.” She sucked in a gulp of breath, blew it out and said, “That’s only five.”

  I shrugged. “And the bed.”

  “After all of that? How disappointing.”

  Disappointing was one word I would never use to describe that night. Amazing. Electric. Overpowering. Orgasmic. Now, those were words. “Trust me. So not.”

  “God. When I go back to the office, I’m taking Simon for a ride in one of his chairs.”

  I laughed and leaned back, lifting my latte for a long sip. It was so good to be with Rachel. To feel—God help me—balance in my life. I could deal with the demons and Logan and Devlin and Thea, as long as I had Rachel. My one remaining thread to normal.

  “So,” Rachel asked, “is Thea still hanging out with that little demon?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  You know how many times I’ve read books where the heroine thinks, I couldn’t hear over the roaring in my ears? That always sounded so stupid. So implausible. Until just that moment.

  I blinked.

  I had to shake my head to get rid of that roaring, which was making the whole world sound muffled and strange, before I could clear my throat and say, “Demon?”

  “Come on,” Rachel said, chuckling as she lifted her mocha in a salute. “Have you looked at that kid?”

  So she didn’t know. She was just talking about the weird bolt through Jett’s nose and the spiky hair and, well, the whole package. “Yeah, but—”

  “Oh God.” She set her cup down and leaned back, staring at me in stunned surprise. “You didn’t know about the demon thing, did you?”

  Crap. She really did know the truth about the kid. How? How was that possible? Even Rachel knew about demons in La Sombra? What? Was I the only person in town who hadn’t known? Wasn’t I the Demon Duster? Wasn’t I the one person who should have known?

  The theme music to The Twilight Zone was repeating over and over in my head. Maybe Jasmine was right. I did watch too much TV. But you try to avoid watching The Twilight Zone marathon every year.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. I just assumed that Thea told you.” Rachel groaned, grabbed her mocha and took a long gulp. “God, I’m an
idiot.”

  The roaring was back, and Rachel sounded like she’d been put on mute. “What do you mean, you assumed Thea told me?”

  “Well, Thea told Zoe about Jett, and Zoe told me, so I thought for sure Thea had told you about that spiny-headed little creep being a demon. The kid tells you everything, Cass. Have I ever mentioned before just how jealous I am of that? I have to pry information out of Zoe with bribes and sheer trickery.”

  A cloud slipped across the sun, and a chill crawled up my spine. Okay, that was a little too horror movie-ish, but the truth was, I had a creepy feeling. I mean, I should have been feeling better, knowing I could talk to Rachel about this demon stuff. But in a weird way, it just separated us more. I mean, she knew they existed and, that was nice and all. But she didn’t know that her best friend was the one assigned to kill ’em.

  I wanted to tell her and almost did, but changed my mind at the last minute. If Judge Jenks, aka Head Demon, was trying to use Thea against me, what was to say he wouldn’t use Rachel? Or Zoe? Or anyone else I cared about?

  Damn it. Why did my life have to keep getting more complicated? Wasn’t there a saturation point? Wouldn’t I reach a level where the universe would say, Okay, Cassidy, that’s enough for one incarnation. You’ve done all you could. Live long and prosper. I gave my head a mental slap. More TV quotes. From Vulcans, no less.

  “Cass?” Rachel snapped her fingers in front of my face, and I jolted, startled. “Jeeezzz,” she said, her eyes glittering with worry and frown lines working on her forehead. (The Botox must have been wearing off.) “You were, like, in outer space or something. I really messed this up, didn’t I? You didn’t know about Jett, or the whole demon thing at all, did you? Oh crap. I’m a rotten human being. I should be shot.”

  As much as I was enjoying Rachel’s guilt-a-palooza, I couldn’t let her think my zoning out was all her fault. (Although Rachel’s skill with guilt was second only to my own.)