The Devil and Danielle Webster

by Cynthia Cross

  Fortunately Patty stepped in. “You guys need to fill me in,” she announced. “I got a quick phone call from Danielle a couple hours ago and other than that, everything is sketchy to me. What happened first?”

  “What happened first is that your sister told the Devil to bring Doug to her, right at this hotel,” Tina informed her.

  “Well, not exactly,” I said hastily. “I was just daydreaming about the past, you know, thinking it would be nice if he were here, but I was thinking of Doug at 23, not Doug the way he is right now.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Patty said. “I really do get it. Growing older with the person you love, that works fine. Running into someone you used to love, and finding out after twenty years that they’ve changed and so have you, that isn’t always a good thing.”

  “Exactly,” Doug said.

  “It was awful,” I agreed. “Especially since I wasn’t expecting it at all.”

  “So Daemon Lucifer has how many signatures?” asked Patty.

  “Just two,” I said. “Plus Tina signed Doug’s name before we had the exorcism.”

  “The what?” asked Patty, eyes wide. “I missed that?”

  “Tina conducted it. It was awesome. His head spun all the way around,” I reported.

  “It wasn’t awesome,” Tina snapped. “It didn’t work, and Satan LAUGHED at us.”

  “It was my fault,” Doug said apologetically. “I didn’t use the right holy water.”

  “Next time, I want to be here for the whole show,” said Patty.

  “There isn’t going to be a next time,” Tina said with assurance.

  “It’s true,” I told Patty. “We’ve had three attempts at a night of passion which didn’t work. Doug and I hate each other’s guts—“

  “Oh, you do not,” said Patty. “You’re just both in a bad situation and blaming each other. If you were neighbors, you’d probably be babysitting each other’s kids.”

  I was impressed with this thought, but Tina snorted.

  “Well,” Patty said hastily, “What was the Devil’s most recent offer?”

  “He offered to cancel our contract, since we were getting nowhere with our night of passion—“

  “ So you didn’t go back in time?” Patty asked.

  “Well, yeah, we did. But the only passion was in the past. I was sitting there cracking jokes. I mean, really, how can anyone watch or relive something like that, in the company of a stranger you don’t even like?”

  “Plus, Danielle had a good idea,” Doug volunteered. “She put so many limits on what she wanted to relive that he didn’t have much to choose from—“

  “Yeah, I actually wanted to relive something I had enjoyed, which made it difficult!”

  “Don’t fight,” Patty said. “And don’t you start,” she said, addressing Tina, who looked ready to go on the attack. “So how did you get from there to an exorcism?”

  “Mr. Lucifer said we could just stay here, off the time grid, until we eventually got our night of passion,” I explained. “Well, first he offered to give us a night in the present, only in our bodies from twenty years ago. By then we were so annoyed with each other that the idea grossed us both out. He keeps telling us that the contract says all sales are final.”

  “So when did Tina arrive with her holy water?”

  “When he said we could stay here forever, I begged him to let me say goodbye to Tina,” Doug explained, putting his arm around his wife as he spoke.

  “So then Tina got here and started an exorcism,” I went on. “And it didn’t work. And so they want their priest here to do it right, without baby drool—“

  “Without what?” Patty interrupted.

  “Never mind,” Tina said.

  “But to do that, he wanted us all to sign a new contract that if the exorcism didn’t work, he got to keep all three of our souls.”

  “He’s a greedy soul-grabbing bastard,” Patty observed. “Very sharp.”

  “Yeah, a real opportunist,” I agreed. “And Tina wouldn’t sign.”

  “I’m not going to sign anything that trickster puts in front of me. I’m amazed that you two were so trusting,” Tina said scathingly. “And I have my children to think of. They need at least one of their parents.”

  “So anyway, that’s where we are right now,” I finished.

  “Okay,” Patty said thoughtfully. “I’ve got a couple of ideas. First of all, what’s the date of the contract?”

  “June 21, today’s date.”

  “It’s been June twenty-first four times now,” said Doug mournfully.

  “How can he give you a night of passion from twenty years ago when the contract is dated today?” wondered Patty.

  “I thought of that,” I said, “and challenged him on that. “That’s why he offered us a new night, only in our old bodies. By then we were freakin’ sick of each other.”

  “Then he tried to trick us into signing something he called a ‘hold harmless’ form, or something,” Tina put in. “It wasn’t. It was a contract to get my soul as well.”

  “She signed it, too,” I added.

  “Oh, NO!” Patty said, eyes widening.

  “I signed Doug’s name,” Tina said with pride.

  “Oh, no,” Patty said again.

  “They want their priest to try a real exorcism this time, but that’s not going to happen as long as Tina has to sign a contract,” I explained. “So we’re stuck.”

  “I’d really like to have Father Fritz here,” Doug said mournfully.

  “How would that help?” Patty wanted to know.

  “He might know how to deal with the Devil better than we’re doing. But it’s no go, not if Tina won’t sign.”

  “Well, we don’t want anyone signing anything else,” Patty said reasonably. “Cut your losses.”

  Tina looked at Patty with approval. “Thank you! That’s exactly the point I was trying to make.”

  “We need to get Jill here,” Patty said decisively.

  “Well, let me check my phone, then,” I said. “I know she leaves a text at some point before 5 AM, but by the time I saw it, the clock went back to 2 AM.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Tina.

  “Jill’s Danielle’s boss,” Patty explained. “She’s a lawyer.”

  “Honey, Danielle and I have been bouncing back and forth between 2 AM and 5 AM. This is the fourth time.”

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of her,” I said. “I sent her a text at about 2 AM, because she’s the first person I thought of. She must have gotten up to pee and checked her phone, because when I checked my phone at 5, I just caught a glimpse of it before we went back to 2 AM.”

  “Geez, that’s confusing,” Patty commented. “But you know she’s going to text you sometime before 5, and this time you’ve got to grab the chance to read it.”

  “Yes,” I said, relieved that she understood.

  “Why not just call her?” Patty asked.

  “Jill texts, Patty. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I remember her ‘Backstage Ass’ blast,” she agreed. “I still think you should call her, especially while Diablo is out of the picture.”

  “I’ll try, but I don’t think she has the phone on ring. Maybe not ever.”

  “Well, at least keep an eagle eye and ear open for an incoming text. Put it in your teeshirt pocket,” she advised.

  “What’s her number?” Tina asked. “I’ll call her.”

  “Honey, my cousin Karl’s a lawyer. Why don’t we call him instead?”

  “Karl’s a tax attorney. What kind of law does Jill practice?” Tina asked me.

  “She does wills and divorces.”

  “Perfect. She knows how to deal with nasty people.”

  “She has a lot of really nice clients!” I said defensively.

  “Let’s stick with Jill for now,” Patty cut in decisively. “She’s got your back, Dannie, just like I do.”

  But before we could act on this, or anything else, Daemon Lucifer was back in the
room, breathing a bit heavily. And with him was someone I recognized.

  Chapter 7 – Angel Battle

  “Angel Battle?” I said incredulously. “What are you doing here in Bullhead City?”

  “Miss Webster? What are you doing here in Laughlin? We’re not in Bullhead City, we’re in Laughlin. Um, aren’t we?”

  Daemon Lucifer looked younger and handsomer than ever. “I need you to babysit for awhile,” he said.

  “Babysit?” I asked. “Angel’s what, 17 by now?”

  “I’ll be 18 next month,” she offered. Angel was in a powder blue sundress and flipflops. She was just as beautiful as I remembered, her large blue eyes wide, her long streaked blonde hair cascading about her.

  “I have some dealings with her mother to complete,” he said in an undertone to me.

  “Yeah, I can imagine,” I said.

  “She’s a married woman. Her husband’s the ward bishop,” he said, assuming an air of outraged virtue.

  Tina overheard part of our conversation. “What’s a ward bishop?” she asked.

  “My dad’s a ward bishop,” Angel said.

  “Mormon,” I said succinctly, hoping Tina would say no more. They don’t understand these things in Schaumburg. “Everyone, this is Angel Battle. I’m not sure why she’s here, but she was one of my students my last year of teaching.” Quickly I introduced everyone else in the room.

  “So what are you doing here?” I asked again, dropping the whole Bullhead City/Laughlin question. No need to confuse her with a discussion of state boundaries.

  “Mom had to go to Las Vegas. She had to go to the Temple.”

  “Temple?” Tina asked.

  “Mormon,” I said again. “There’s a big Mormon temple in Las Vegas.”

  “So we had to go home through Laughlin,” Angel said, innocently, “because she wanted to go to the casino. Oh!” she said. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone that. Can you forget that part?” She gave me her most appealing look.

  I couldn’t help asking. “Didn’t she go to a casino while you guys were in Las Vegas?”

  “Nooo,” Angel Battle said, shaking her head. “She knows a lot of people in Las Vegas. My dad’s not supposed to know.”

  I could hear Doug start to chuckle, but Tina elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Is your mom still at the casino?” I asked.

  “I hope so!” Angel said, giggling.

  Knowing Angel, it had something to do with a boy. “Is Jesse up here, too?” I asked. Jesse’s given name was Jesus, but that was another difficult concept for Midwesterners.

  Angel looked impressed in spite of herself. “No!” she said, going all wide-eyed again. “Well, yeah,” she said. “But don’t tell my mom, Miss Webster. My mom would ground me and take away my iPhone.”

  “That would be terrible,” I said, trying my hardest to avoid sounding ironic.

  “I remember you,” said Patty.

  “You do?” Angel said. “I don’t remember you.”

  “I remember hearing about you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Looks like our friend Mr. Lucifer has left us again,” I observed.

  “That’s not his name,” Angel said. “That’s my seminary teacher, Mr. Satin.”

  “Are you sure that’s his name?” I asked worriedly.

  “Of course I am,” she said, opening her big eyes even bigger.

  “You’re sure it’s not Mr. Satan?” asked Patty.

  “It might be,” said Angel Battle. “I don’t remember.”

  Patty came over and whispered, “Is this the one who cheated and then blamed you?”

  I nodded. Angel Battle was a factor in my decision to leave teaching. That last year, I’d had one class period especially full of hellions, and Angel was arguably the worst. The students were all in special education, but too often, their lack of success by high school was not because of dyslexia or a disability, but due to lack of work ethic and refusal to take their education seriously. For many of them, high school was a place to stretch out in their chairs, talk to friends on the other side of the room as I attempted to conduct class, text, make repeated trips to the bathroom, and go visit the nurse with every possible health concern.

  Angel liked to adopt the persona of a four-year-old when it suited her. She would all but grab her own crotch while saying, “I have to go potty. I really do, Miss Webster! I’m gonna pee my pants.” Such distractions multiplied by fifteen students could take up huge chunks of class time which should have been devoted to, horrors, improving their reading and writing skills.

  I had caught Angel cheating on a test. In her defense, most of them did. The better test-takers often showed their contempt for the whole educational process by keeping their tests in range of wandering eyes, or saying with pretended naïveté, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “The answer to number 10 is B, right?” and then grinning at me, pleased with themselves. Angel had erased her incorrect answers from underneath my red pen, rewriting them after consulting another student’s test. She claimed I’d misgraded the questions. I called her mother and went to my administrator. Angel was furious. That was the incident Patty recalled.

  “Why are you here, Angel?” I asked her now. “Oh, by the way, the bathroom’s right there.”

  “Mr. Satin needed to talk to my mom—“

  “At 4 AM?”

  “Well, people stay up late when there are casinos,” she pointed out. “We’re leaving early tomorrow. But mom wasn’t there.”

  “Oh,” I said. Hmm.

  “I have to get back to my room. I left someone there, and Mom could be back any time.”

  “Text him,” Patty advised.

  “I think his battery needs charging.”

  With a pop, the Devil was back in the room. “She wasn’t at the casino you told me to go to,” he told Angel. “I need your mom to sign something for me. Can you have her sign something for me?”

  “What, you want me to take it to her now?”

  “No, just don’t forget to have her sign it when you see her.”

  “But Mr. Satin, I don’t have my backpack with me.”

  Daemon Lucifer looked exasperated. “You can just carry it, can’t you?”

  “Oh, okay.”

  “Here it is. She needs to sign it with tomorrow’s date. Can you remember that?”

  “What is tomorrow’s date?”

  “Just tell her you need her to sign it with tomorrow’s date.”

  “What if I don’t see her until tomorrow? Do I say tomorrow then, or today? Can my dad sign?”

  “No!” the Devil said with unnecessary heat.

  “I can just sign it for her,” she offered.

  “Don’t sign anything!” four of us said at once. The Devil looked at us with annoyance.

  “Just take it with you,” he said. “Tell her to sign it with tomorrow’s date, that’s June 22. I’ll come pick it up tomorrow night.”

  “We’ll be back home by tomorrow night.”

  “So will I,” said the Devil.

  “Okay,” she said, clutching the document. “Can we go now?”

  They left. It was nice to know that Daemon Lucifer could leave via doors, just like any ordinary person. But in 30 seconds, they were back.

  “Where did you drop it?” Daemon Lucifer was asking.

  “I think over there.” There was the paper to be signed, on the floor.

  “Don’t drop it again.”

  “I won’t. Wait!” she had her phone out. “Come here, Miss Webster, you and me and Mr. Satin.”

  “Selfie time,” I said to Patty, rolling my eyes. “I hate their phones. Their phones are their souls. Try taking one away, and they go ballistic. I was constantly busting up photo ops in class.”

  Angel was gloating over her picture. A teacher who’s been ‘selfied’ and looks ridiculous is worth a moment’s giggle. “Thanks, Miss Webster,” she said sweetly.

  They left again.

  They were back in another 30 seconds.


  Daemon Lucifer waved a paper under my nose. “Is this her mom’s signature? She got it too fast—I think she forged it. Does it look like Angel’s signature to you?”

  I saw a physician-worthy scribble on the signature line. “It could be her mom’s,” I said uncertainly. I was feeling bad for her mom. Then on the date line, I saw in large childish print: “p. 6.”

  “Angel, you wrote your mom’s signature on here, didn’t you?” I asked.

  She opened her eyes wide again, and then opened her mouth—

  “--You put ‘period 6’ here for the date,” I explained before she could lie. Your mom wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Mom lets me sign things from school all the time,” she argued. “She won’t care.”

  I shook my head at the Devil. “Mr., er, Satin,” I said. “You should deal directly with the parents.”

  He sighed. “Damn kids.” Turning to Angel, he said, “Third time’s the charm. Come on, brat.”

  “Bye, Miss Webster!”

  They were gone. This time they stayed gone.

  “What was THAT all about?” Tina asked.

  “I honestly don’t think we want to know,” I said.

  “I took a class on the Mormons, once,” Doug said. “They have an unusual way of looking at the Devil. He’s the brother of—“

  “Doug, never mind,” I said. “Honestly. We’re all sleep-deprived and this whole situation is surreal enough.”

  “Second that,” said Patty. “Check your texts.”

  I picked up my phone just as a call came through. I must have missed it the first three go-rounds because the phone was silenced. It was Josh.

  “What are you doing calling?”

  “Sorry, I’m working graveyard shift. I thought you’d be up getting ready to drive back home.”

  “Well, I am up,” I admitted. “What do you need?”

  “When are you picking up the kids?” Josh wanted to know. “I should tell you, Mike has been inviting a bunch of his friends over to your house this afternoon.”

  “Today? Why on earth today?”

  “He says he wants to have a surprise birthday party for his girlfriend.”

  “A birthday party? Today? If that isn’t Mike all over. It’ll have to be at your house. I’m not sure when I’ll be home.”

  “Danielle, Leann and I just can’t do that—“