Parts & Wreck

by Mark Henry

  Regardless of how exhausted Luce was, she could always go for some food, but she’d climb a mountain for great food and Luce had a feeling that the room service in the other room was worth pushing through the aches and pains of a recent exorcism.

  Until she tried to lift herself and the soreness shot through her muscles like lightning. “Jesus!” she cried. “There’s only one thing that can help these aches, Wade!”

  “Vicodin?” he called from the other room.

  “Nope.”

  “Food?” Wade backed into the room with a grand tray in his arms and set it up on the ledge of the tub.

  Luce’s eyes molested the spread, landing on something she hadn’t expected. “Just so you know, I called every item except that waffle with the ice cream and bacon on it.”

  “Oh,” he said. “That’s mine.”

  “It’s slightly freaky,” she said, stabbing a wad of fries into the chocolate shake. “But not a dealbreaker.”

  “No? Maybe that is, though.” Wade pointed at the drippy mess she forced into her mouth.

  “You can’t be serious. This is the gold standard of junk food. It’s the only way to test whether a place can make both fries and shakes. The fry has to be crisp enough to hold up to the shake and the shake has to be thick enough to hang onto the fry. It’s freakin’ science, man. Plus—” She shoved another few chocolatey potatoes in her mouth and gnawed.

  The Portland Grand had a believer in the kitchen because the combo was perfect.

  “Plus?” Wade asked, his hand dipping into the tub to caress her thigh.

  “Plus, if I keep myself clean, you won’t have any reason to bathe me again, and, I can tell you, you’re damn good at it. You should do it professionally.”

  “Like a geisha?”

  “Like my geisha.”

  “That can be arranged.” Wade stood and let the robe fall off.

  “God!” Luce cried. “You need to warn a girl when you’re going to flash that thing. It’s a choking hazard.”

  “Just move over.” Wade dropped into the tub, crawling over her until their lips were nearly touching. “I’m so glad you found me.”

  “Wait. I found you?”

  “You absolutely found me. You knew something would happen between us or you wouldn’t have been drawn to me in the lobby of The Parts Department.”

  “Oh no, I just wanted information. You’re the one trying to lure unsuspecting women with public boners.”

  “Raid cans.”

  “See? It’s sick. Lucky for you, I’m a perv.”

  “Thank God.” Wade lowered himself gently and kissed her, soft.

  “So what happened to the Bishop?”

  “Nothing. He’s probably on his way back to Rome.”

  Luce’s eyes went wide with astonishment. “What?”

  “You’ll learn that in this business it’s best not to cross the Vatican. Look how long it took them to admit certain priests are molesters.”

  “And Steve? He was there.”

  “He bolted after Quince knocked him over the head with a table leg. Hitch has him now.”

  “What about Polly?”

  “I suspect Mary-Agnes is currently debriefing her and bringing her into the fold. She simply knows too much about us now.”

  Luce clutched her skull, “Okay, that last bit is making my head hurt.”

  “We don’t have to talk right now.”

  Luce relaxed back into the tub, bracing herself on Wade’s calves, running her fingertips across the fine hairs, his thickly corded muscles.

  “I feel like you were holding me on that bed upstairs. Even though Hitch had me, I felt very close to you. Isn’t that weird?”

  Wade cocked his head and grinned. “It would be if it didn’t happen. But it did.”

  The next morning, they sipped coffee in bed and watched gray clouds impale on sharp buildings.

  “I can’t promise you a happily ever after, Luce. I don’t know if we’ll even be alive next week, next month, or a decade from now. What I do know is that as long as we are, I’ll be right here beside you, loving you and only you.”

  “You make precarious living sound doable.”

  “Is that all? Just a snarky comeback?”

  “It means I love you. I love this.” Luce cupped her hand over his heart.

  “My man-titty?”

  “That, too.”

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  Wade rested his big mitt on the bow of her stomach, too early to feel the first physical stirrings of the baby growing inside her but not the sweet pangs of excitement. Luce was feeling them, too. Hers might have been more about the end of morning sickness at the moment.

  “How did the two of us manage to pull off this coup?” he asked, nuzzling behind her ear, sniffing.

  Wade had told her he couldn’t get enough of her scent. Something alchemical had happened as a result of the pregnancy, apparently. Pheromones or something and if Wade wasn’t walking around at least semihard, then Luce was probably not around for him to sniff. She was reminded of commercials that warned of erections lasting longer than four hours and was pretty sure Wade was going to have a stroke during office days when he couldn’t have her…repeatedly.

  Luce giggled glancing at the ring on her finger, a simple band, though they weren’t married yet. “It’s pretty basic. Tab A goes in slot B. Repeat.”

  Wade pulled away, feigning shock. “You told me what we did was special.”

  Luce proffered her hand, palm up. “Show me on this doll where the bad lady touched you.”

  Wade broke into hysterical laughter, shifting even closer to her on the park bench, then fell abruptly silent, cut off by Luce’s grip on his knee and a sharp, “Shh.”

  Up the square, at the corner of Cherry and First, amidst a herd of tourists, men and women on their way to and from work, coffee cups steaming like coal engines, a familiar face bobbed. Luce had suspected their source, a vagrant named Chlorina who jangled her tip cup after she gave them the news, was not as reliable as say a third grader. But apparently, all that time on the streets made a person pretty observant, enough so to see the ash-black aura that some stronger possessions can create.

  “Look.” Luce pointed.

  Wade followed her gesture and grunted, his hand drifting away from her engorged stomach. “I’ll be damned.”

  Wrapped up warm and comfy in a wool peacoat and scarf, passing from the shadow into the sunlight with all the carelessness of someone who actually belonged in our world, was Hitch, all dressed up in his Aaron Statlender suit.

  The possession had changed the man’s cheekbones and his hair seemed fuller, more stylish, somehow. Better. Hitch’s face stretching behind the man’s skin.

  Luce summed it up. “He definitely wears Aaron well. Look at his walk; it’s exactly the same. Damn. And his face, Jesus.”

  Wade winced in disgust. “He’s not that great-looking.”

  “Uh…yeah he is.”

  Aaron lingered at a storefront, admiring something in the window. Luce suspected he was perusing the reflection to look behind him for a tail, and since the demon obviously had one, Luce took the opportunity to plant a kiss on Wade, who followed her lead and shielded them behind a raised newspaper.

  “Whatever,” he murmured, the words hollow in her open mouth.

  “Wait.” Luce stretched the word out unnecessarily. “Are you jealous?”

  Wade straightened into a stretch, adding a yawn to show exactly how unperturbed he was by her demon enthusiasm. “Of a guy with a centipede demon crammed down his esophagus? No. Not even.”

  “Because you needn’t be. You’re one sexy mofo.”

  Wade grinned and shook his head. “You better believe it.”

  It was Luce’s turn to laugh hysterically.

  “That’s not very encouraging. I’m going to have to file a complaint with HR.”

  Luce let the top of the paper flop, just in time to see Aaron walking again, confident he was fitting in
to the crowd.

  “Do you miss him sometimes?” Wade asked, peering around the side of the sports pages.

  Luce turned a stern eye in his direction.

  For a second she thought she could actually deny it, but truth was, Hitch had been a huge part of her life for a long time, when he’d left her, there was an emptiness. One that she was lucky to have Wade to fill. If he hadn’t been there, she couldn’t imagine what would have happened.

  Depression seemed certain. But not much beyond that.

  Hitch’s extraction came with as many blessings. He took with him most of the neuroses and fears and left her with the quirks and the sass. She guessed she should be thankful for that. But there was an element of fun missing.

  Luce softened her expression. “Sometimes.”

  Wade chewed the inside of his mouth but nodded, understanding somehow.

  Across the plaza, Hitch was on the move.

  Sliding out of the bench, Luce crouched and then crossed stealthily to a nearby tree. She noted, glancing back, that Wade had resumed his newspaper reading.

  Luce hissed, “While you’re busy being incognito, Hitch is turning the corner. Let’s go.”

  She sprang forward, serpentining between tourists and vagrants alike as she wound her way across the open plaza of Pioneer Square.

  …

  Four months pregnant, and Luce was taking the lead in the operation. Wade guessed what he was feeling was pride. He’d been there every step of her journey, rediscovering herself as a whole person. Free of Hitch’s interference. Free of the false psychosis the possession had created.

  Hitch’s involvement had been subtle, for sure. Possibly as a result of splitting himself between so many and for so long. The piece that inhabited Luce had operated far less maliciously, even, Wade would agree, benignly. Maybe the demon even liked Luce, if that was possible, had certain feelings for her. But there’s no way in hell she wasn’t better off without him.

  And so much had changed, but not Wade’s fascination with his fiancé. Her personality was unscathed, as was her humor, her quirkiness. Everything he’d fallen in love with. But her drive had clarified as evidenced by the sizeable lead she’d taken in their charge after their perp.

  After Hitch.

  A sense of urgency, a surge of anger replaced his pride, and Wade rushed forward, catching up to her at the corner of the stretch of bars and shops that formed the centerpiece of the famous square. She pointed across the street toward a café about halfway down, sunken into the basement beneath a toy store. “He went in there.”

  That Hitch had returned to Seattle was cause for alarm on a good day, but their source had indicated that his meeting would be of interest to the highest levels within The Parts Department. The assumption being that there was someone on the inside working with him, of course, they might have misheard Chlorina—she did mumble.

  “I just know it’s Polly,” Luce hissed. “She may have you all fooled. But just because you bathe a rat and teach it to curl up on a pillow, doesn’t mean it isn’t still a rat.”

  “She’s a damn fine exorcisionist, Luce. I think you’re wrong on this.”

  “Just because she doesn’t hesitate to cut a bitch doesn’t prove I’m wrong. Besides, if it’s not her, then who?”

  “There’s never a moment where I’m not suspicious of the potluck gestapo,” Wade said with a grin.

  “Those quinoa muffins are undoubtedly hellborn. It’s true. But they don’t seem to be particularly ambitious beyond ruining the lunch hour. Now Polly, that’s another story. One that’s taking place right down there.”

  Luce crept forward toward the basement window cased set in a sidewalk alcove, her overcoat brushing the bricks as she flattened herself. Wade squeezed in close and then closer as Luce saw something and gasped. He pivoted around her to get a look inside and was completely caught off guard.

  A woman sat toward the rear of the café, her back to them and wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat.

  “In this weather?” Luce mumbled.

  The woman sipped from a mug, watching as Aaron/Hitch crossed to her, an immense smile glowing on his face, he sat down and crossed his legs elegantly and they began to talk.

  From their vantage, Wade and Luce could see the man’s hand reaching for the mysterious woman’s knee.

  Wade pulled Luce back to a hidden position against the wall.

  “Whaaaa?” the word leaked out of Luce’s gaping mouth. “Illicit. I had something much more nefarious in mind like plotting a demonic Parts Department takeover or forcing businessmen to wear kilts. But not…”

  “Maybe he’s seducing her in the hopes of doing either of those things…or both.”

  Luce nodded, inching back toward the window, but when she craned her neck to get them in her sights, she gasped. Wade jutted past her to get a look.

  The table was empty. The pair had disappeared.

  Wade pushed into the café and scanned the few tables. No Hitch. “Is there a bathroom?” he shouted at the stunned barista, who glanced sheepishly to his left and a dark hall, barely visible against the near-black paint adorning the walls.

  Three doors. One locked and the other restrooms. Wade opened the men’s room, to empty tile and porcelain, the stench of age. When he turned his gaze to Luce, she shook her head outside the open women’s room.

  “Nada,” she said.

  They both focused in on the locked door. It had to be where they’d disappeared to. They certainly hadn’t snaked down a pipe, though the thing inside Aaron could certainly manage them.

  Wade shouldered the door open and into, inexplicably, a storage closet.

  “What the hell?” the sentiment could have come from either of them, but the words belonged to Luce, she spun and raced back out into the café.

  Wade darted after her.

  “The couple that was sitting right there,” she stabbed a finger toward the table. “Where did they go?”

  The barista squinted, clearly confused. “What couple?”

  “They were just right there. A woman in a big, floppy hat and a very good-looking—”

  Wade coughed.

  “Moderately attractive man in a black peacoat.”

  “I don’t know. I just pull the shots. You want some coffee?”

  Wade and Luce stared at the boy long enough for it to get weird and then wandered back out onto the sidewalk, at a loss for what had just happened. And what it meant.

  “This isn’t going to end well,” Wade said.

  “It never does.”

  Wade slipped his hand in hers and fixed her in his stare. “Well just the once with us.”

  Luce smiled and hugged him tight.

  Wade’s gaze fell on the horizon, the frigid water of the Sound glistening like new snow. There’d be plenty of time for Hitch or Aaron or Astaroth or whoever the disappearing blond guy really was, but he’d learned one thing in the years of demon chasing.

  Cherish the moments you have with the people you care about.

  You never know how long you’ve got.

  Acknowledgements

  When Candy Havens at Entangled contacted me about this project, I was not in a great place creatively. In fact, I’d nearly given up on writing as a career. There’s something about the feeling of being sought out as someone who has something…different, unusual. Writing Parts & Wreck was reinvigorating and I’m so grateful to everyone at Entangled Publishing for taking a chance on such an outrageous premise!

  Huge thanks are due to Alethea Spiridon Hopson who put up with one of the craziest messes a first draft could ever be and somehow knew that I’d be able to pull it together into a novel. And Candy Havens and Liz Pelletier for their kind instruction as to why a Carrie homage featuring a bucket of urine might not go over well with the romance set.

  Thanks to Katie Clapsadl for pimping my ass out all over the place, I’m sore, but happy.

  To Curtis Svehlak, cover artist, JAYSUS, this shit is adorable!

  My agent, Jim McCarthy
has stuck with me through many a maudlin period of self-doubt a.k.a. “I’m broke! What we gonna do?” Why he does is anyone’s guess? I suspect masochism. Thanks Jim.

  As always to the folks in my life that have to hear me bitch and moan in person, a tremendous debt.

  To my wife, Caroline, that you haven’t killed me and buried me in the crawlspace is a testament to your love and patience. Thanks for being there and believing.

  A big thanks to my friend Sabrina York, who graciously sat with me while I pumped her for information about all things romance.

  To all my friends, IRL and online, for helping to get the word out and keep this writing thing going, THANK YOU! You know who you are!

  And lastly, to my parents. I couldn’t do this without your support.

  I really couldn’t.

  About the Author

  Before breezing into the lush, some might say ‘moist’—not him, only a sicko would say that—world of humorous paranormal romance, MARK HENRY put his pen to snarky comedic urban fantasy (the Amanda Feral series, HAPPY HOUR OF THE DAMNED), science fiction (SEAFOAM), and young adult fantasy (VELVETEEN as Daniel Marks). He spent twelve years toiling as a psychotherapist, family and crisis counselor, where he cultivated a terrifying case of gallows humor as a coping mechanism. No worries, he’s done with the helping professions and is currently committed to scarring minds, exclusively. He lives in the Seattle area with his wife, Caroline, and three furry monsters with no regard for quality carpeting.

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