by Stec, Susan
"I did. I used the hPhone he gave us when JoAnn was in hell. The first five times I got recordings stating the party I wished to speak to no longer existed. The last time it said I needed to buy more minutes."
"Where do we buy more minutes?" Zaire asked.
"I don't think we can, sweetie," Resi said, patting her mate's knee.
"Well, that's just crazy!" JoAnn was livid, spittle flying from her fangs. "We texted back and forth this morning, and I used the same number he always had."
Oh, man, now I wanted to kill her! She'd texted him and couldn't even mention the damn curse?
"JoAnn, give your sister your hPhone." Mom knuckled the picnic table twice.
"I told y'all, it's charging! And even if it wasn't, it's pretty clear Ralphie doesn't want to talk to Susan." JoAnn huffed. "I'm telling you, it's the voluptuouizin' shampoo."
Firing up all three brain cells now, baby.
I so wanted to encourage the shampoo insanity. But her reason for texting-up her ex all morning was heavy on my mind. I knew I'd live to regret asking what was up with that. Being immortal, that was long-term regret. I bit my tongue.
"I'm done with you today." Mom flipped her hand in dismissal. "Go read your bible. Pray for a cure."
"I resent your attitude, Mother," JoAnn said.
"If we keep getting older," Resi sang, "there will be a rapid decline in my sweet personality, and there are enough bitches in this house."
Zaire mumbled, "I love this family."
"Mom!" Resi got my attention. "Why not use your witchy skills to bring Raphael here?"
"I tried that, too," I said. "The summons didn't recognize Raphael's name. I even tried another spelling, and then his full title, Raphael, a demon in the army of Lord Rahovart, Tormentor of the Affluent, and so on and so on."
"That's it, Susan!" Mom shouted. "Slap your sister's ass in your witch circle thing and send her back to her ex."
We all looked at Mom.
We all turned to JoAnn.
"If she does that to me, y'all, I'll probably do time in the pits." JoAnn kissed the cross hanging from her neck. "It's hell in the pits. The food sucks, inmates are really scary, and we have lights out call at..."
I know I shouldn't have wanted to laugh, but for the love of blood, I felt like I needed to.
"Why do you think you'd end up in the pits, Aunt Jo?" Resi asked while gnawing on the throw pillow.
"Raphael's boss has a restraining order," I said without letting the giggle in the back of my throat escape.
Resi's brows rose and she pushed her upper lip up with her bottom one and nodded her head. "I once read that demons can change their summoning card.
"Was it in one of the Walmart paperbacks in your fantasy basket by the leather couch?" Eyes twinkling with amusement, my oldest daughter, Jeni, stepped through the sliding glass doors and into the dining room. She wore running pants, a sports bra, and sweatbands on her wrists. A bright yellow terrycloth headband held back her red bobbed hair. Jeni smiled at me. "I am so glad we don't have close neighbors. I could hear you halfway around the lake, Mommy Dearest."
Before I could drum up a snarky comeback, Jeni was down the kitchen stairs and I heard her bedroom door shut.
My mother stood, pointed, and yelled at my sister, "Your tits are smoking!"
Resi jumped off the couch, pillow clutched against her own breasts. "Oh my God, Nanna's right! Aunt JoAnn, you're on fire!"
~~~~
Two
~~~~
"I'm thinking she's been double-cursed," Mom said. "I bet that shampoo company she just swore to sue is run by a bunch of Republicans. They're all demons."
"JoAnn married a Republican?" Zaire wore a lopsided grin as she tossed Resi another throw pillow from the couch.
Resi glared over her shoulder at her life mate as she chased after my screeching sister.
"What?" Zaire said. "She'll heal?"
"That's easy for you to say." Resi slapped JoAnn's smoking chest with one pillow and covered her own store bought tits with the other. "You aren't cursed like us. Her Holy Communion crucifix from Great Grandpa ignited her skin."
"You could douse me with a glass of water, Susan!" JoAnn shouted, blood tears bubbling her words.
"It can't be the cross." I ignored my sister's plea. "It wasn't burning her last night. Besides, crosses, holy water, the sun, and garlic do nott work on us, remember?"
"So why's her water-bra bubbling over?" Mom wanted to know.
I laughed at my sister's wet chest. "Ask and thou shall receive, right, Jo?"
"Looks like God took care of the dousing issue," Zaire taunted.
Mom added fuel to the fire. "JoAnn, you fornicate with a demon and God wakes up on the wrong side of the bed."
JoAnn covered her sizzling double-As with one arm, and swatted Resi's pillow assaults with the other. "The Lord forgives everyone—even a demon who repents—and thank God, I forgive, too."
My sister glowered.
"JoAnn," Mom said, eyes narrow, and lips tight. "Quit making excuses for the demon. He's an abuser. The best thing you ever did was leave him."
"Raphael put a curse on us, and you know it!" I shouted. "I'll bet he's responsible for frying your chest."
"Shame we can't take him to court." Resi looked thoughtfully at JoAnn. "We could gain full custody of Lily."
Lily was JoAnn's daughter—half-demon, half-vampire, scary smart.
JoAnn screeched, grabbed the crucifix, and ripped it from her neck. She looked like a Mexican jumping bean as she juggled it in her hand until she finally pitched it across the room.
While my sister alternately kissed her palm and patted her chest, we watched the cross slide across the oak floors and under the television set.
"Mom," Resi said. "Raphael didn't curse the crucifix; it burned a hole in JoAnn's chest because we are vampires." Resi tossed the unburnt pillow at Zaire. "This is not an aging curse! We're turning all Bela Lugosi, rise from the grave, vampire-ish. I will not let myself look like the Nosferatu guys in any of those old vampire movies." Resi stared at her red lacquered fingernails and shuddered.
"I don't blame you, Resi," JoAnn said. "I'd rather die."
Not firing on all cylinders.
My sister was ass up, head flattened on the oak floor, eyes searching under the television. I prayed she was stupid enough to pick the crucifix up again.
"When Raphael wasn't answering my summons or my calls, I got hold of Dorius's sorcerer in Miami. I asked him what it took to get a summoning name-change. It takes thirty to sixty days, Hell time. Do you know how long that would be here?" I turned to my sister. "Get out your new calculator app and figure it out for us, will ya, Jo?"
"You are a hateful woman, Susan," JoAnn said. "I'm going to pray for you."
"Jeez, at the very least, we'd wait almost a year if we applied," Resi said. "It doesn't seem fair."
"Resi, you could go to Hell and apply." JoAnn bent behind the television. "You can ask Ralphie if he put the stupid curse on us."
"How's the shopping in Hades?" Resi asked. "Any good leather shops?"
I wanted to slap them both.
"If you wait for me to call my husband and ask him," JoAnn said, ignoring my daughter as she continued her search for her crucifix, "y'all'll be dead and dust."
I scowled at JoAnn's ass jerking as her hand felt under the television, and then turned my scowl on Resi. "You! Wipe that smile off your face. I am not drawing a circle and sending you on a shopping trip to Hell on the premise you will resolve all of our aging issues with Raphael."
I paused while my daughter pouted.
"Anyway," I said, "Beelzebub had plenty of time to apply for the new calling while Lily—"
"He is not Beelzebub!"
"—sorry, while Lily finished her visitation."
"Just because he's a demon, does not make him the devil." JoAnn glared at me over her shoulder. "You are calling up evil, Susan. Yep, it'll be knocking on our door real soon."
She ha
d to be getting a kink in her neck. My eyes jumped from her face to her butt. I swear it had grown wider as she spoke.
"JoAnn," my mother injected. "Accept the things you cannot change."
My lips turned up. I couldn't help it.
"You know what ya'll are?" JoAnn asked. She didn't give us time to answer. "Y'all are bigots. That's what y'all are. Raphael will always be the father of my child. Get over it," my sister muttered, "and my daughter's ,name is Lilith, Susan."
My sister turned back to the television and rolled it a few feet away from the corner of the wall. Evidently she had finished labeling us. She reached behind the set.
With a yelp and a sizzle, JoAnn flew backward and landed on her ass against Mom's mini altar on the other side of the stone fireplace. A statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary fell from the altar, bounced off JoAnn's head and spun a like a top on the floor beside her. JoAnn whimpered and rubbed her head. Her hair was smoking where the statue hit her.
Mom had turned JoAnn immortal when she was a senior citizen. Like the rest of us, she reverted to her twenties, physically, but held on to her dysfunctional moral upbringing and senior mentality. With a small upper body, full hips, and an inhuman glow, JoAnn had immortal strength, stamina, and a strong loathing for blood. She often warmed it in the microwave and drank it from a Starbucks' mug through a bendy straw.
"Does anyone care the cross I got when I made my first Holy Communion just blistered my fingers and burned a hole in my chest?" JoAnn got up off the floor.
I had to fang my forked tongue to keep from touching that question.
"Figlio di puttana!" Mom shouted. "I am not going to hobble around in the same wrinkled husk I had before we got fangs! And I'll be damned if I'm going to bingo just to find food!"
Mom was a seraph, a vampire who couldn't drink processed blood. Seraphs were the only vampires sanctioned by the council to feed on humans. Mom lured them from local bars with sex, to feed without killing them. Bingo was full of senior citizens. I tucked my lips between my teeth and bit down to keep from laughing at that mental image.
"We need to get in touch with the council," Mom said. "Let's let them deal with JoAnn's demon gigolo. It's in the divorce decree; he needs to keep open lines of communication."
Mom slid the laptop in front of her, lifted the lid, hit the on button, and sat back.
JoAnn strolled across the living room. "I don't want to admit it, but I think the vampire thing is wearing off and the voyeurizin' shampoo is making it worse."
"It is volumizing, Aunt JoAnn. And you're drowning in a sea of denial," Resi sang.
"More like a pool of citrus-smelling voyeurism," Mom said.
My lips wiggled. I bit down harder.
My older daughter, Jeni, walked through the kitchen and into the living room. "Aunt JoAnn, sweetie, I don't think thickening shampoo and conditioner can un-undead you into an early grave." She scanned the room. "This is priceless. Your perky little tits and firm asses are rotting right off your undead carcasses."
"Well, it's not Raphael! No siree!" JoAnn said. "It's God, smiting our existence." She sounded smug. "I'm not giving up! I'm going to confession Saturday night, gonna do my penance, and I'll be free of sin. And tonight, I start using moisturizing shampoo and Oil Of Olay. I already started using the exfoliating cream I bought last night. Thank God Walmart's open twenty-four hours. I can't stand the sun anymore."
"No shit," Mom said. "Before I hit the casket this morning, I slipped outside to catch the sunrise--burnt my retinas so bad it gave me daymares. At least they healed while I slept."
"This is not about you, Mother." JoAnn puffed annoyance and put her shoulders and eyes into it. "I wasn't finished talking. Do you always interrupt?"
Mom raised a testy brow, head bouncing like a bobble doll.
JoAnn ignored her. "When," she said exaggeratedly loud, "I lifted the lid of my coffin tonight and saw myself in the mirror, I could already see a big difference. My body is exfoliating dead skin; it's all on the inside of the coffin! I had to use the dustbuster." She palmed up her bangs and pointed to a patch of peeling, brownish-pink skin. "See? Tell me God isn't forgiving."
Jeni pulled a bright purple MP3 player out of her shorts as she kicked off her shoes. "Aerobics time; we humans need to work at staying young. Maybe you dead-chicks should join me."
I glanced over at Zaire, still sitting on the white leather couch, directly under a mounted deer head. She tried so hard to hold her laughter she had blood tears rolling down her coffee-colored cheeks. When she saw me staring, she knuckled the tears away, wiped them on her jeans, and said, "This is better than stand up."
Plugging in a set of earbuds, Jeni clipped the MP3 player to her t-shirt.
"Do y'all not see my skin peeling?" JoAnn asked, her gaze bouncing off each of us. "Uh-huh, God is cleansing me of all vampiric possession."
Bats in the belfry.
"Him, and Oil Of Olay's Daily Exfoliating Body Wash," Mom mumbled.
Nose in the air, JoAnn strutted into the kitchen and ripped a piece of paper towel off a spool dangling under the cabinets by the sink. She ran it under the faucet, squeezed out the excess water, and walked back past Mom with all the arrogance of a cat on a mission.
Resi said, "Aunt JoAnn, you know your skin is sun-fried and flaking, right? I can't even walk by the front windows in the morning without getting a little color."
In the living room a few feet away, Jeni hopped sidewise, one knee pumping while she strummed an air guitar.
"JoAnn," Zaire offered, "you need to drink more blood. It helps."
"I'm fasting until I lose ten pounds." Joann said, and alternately spritzed Windex and wiped down the sliding glass doors with the dampened paper towel.
Jeni slid across the oak floor in her stocking feet, hand whipping the strings of her guitar. Her deep red hair was damp and hung in chunks near her neckline.
With a furrowed brow, JoAnn continued. "Okay, okay, pretend you don't know what's happening. Don't listen. Don't pray. I'm gonna check online to see if the aging cream company sells a full body cream. And I was reading about diatomaceous clay, the fossilized remains of marine plankton, and its cleansing and healing powers. So when my dead skin finishes sloughing itself into a slower aging process than yours, and my body is free of demonic possession, you have no one to blame but y'all's selves for not joining me."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah," Jeni squawked, and bit her lower lip, chin jutting and head bouncing.
Zaire leaned over and effortlessly moved her clunky black boots farther from the stuffed gator. Her tight jeans barely creased the dark almond flesh over the top of her belt. She stood and rubbed a flat, firm tummy under her wife-beater tee. With gray eyes sparkling and full lips smiling, Zaire said, "Speaking of blood, we got any?"
"Came this morning." Resi grabbed the flab over her jeans and gave it a shake. "In the fridge."
We'd signed a contract with Buffy, the receptionist at BAMVC to have our blood supply shipped directly to our door three times a week when we joined the BAMVC family. BAMVC was a multi-million dollar Morizzio-family operated corporation that dishes out blood and managed Otherworld creatures. They have an import/export business as a cover.
With her heart-shaped butt bouncing, Jeni danced and twirled her way across the living room floor, arms high and fingers snapping. She seemed to be enjoying her exercise routine. It made me smile.
"The internet has a lot of stuff on it," JoAnn said. "Did you know there's a drug called blood-cocaine?"
Everyone with fangs turned toward my sister.
"Why are you searching for drugs, Aunt Jo?" Resi spoke in her best Dora the Explorer voice.
Maybe I should yank her Internet away.
"Because cocaine curbs your appetite." JoAnn tossed a soiled paper towel into the trash can at the end of the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the large living room, dining room combo. "Y'all don't get it. I am seriously going on a health cause. And I strongly suggest you join me."
; "Régime," I said, "or you could say 'on a health crusade.'"
Jeni flopped into a recliner at the edge of the dining area, looking amused and content as she plucked out her earbuds.
Now that Jeni wasn't using the middle of the living room as a gym, Resi walked across and sat in a leather chair near the floor-to-ceiling windows on the front side of the house. JoAnn's reflection on the television screen tried to keep up with her immortal speed as she paced in front of my daughters.
"This family is very trying, sometimes," my sister said. "I could die tomorrow and it wouldn't kill me. Y'all know why? I walk with God."
An intellect rivaled only by a bottle of Windex.
Mom sat at the picnic table typing on the laptop. The table was against a wall between two sliding glass doors leading out to a screened porch overlooking the lake. Every time heat lightning shot spindly fingers across the moonlit sky, I could see our boat strain its lines taut as it bobbed on the water at the end of our dock. The boat didn't get much use nowadays. I was not big on night cruises.
"Has Lily tried to mentally contact you, JoAnn?" I asked.
"No! And Lilith's not going to until it's time for her to come home. That's part of the joint custody agreement," JoAnn said. "I'm going to apply more aging cream. It says to put it on at night, but then says, when you go to bed. It's confusing. I better be safe and do both."
"You can't slather away a curse," Resi told her.
"Y'all are in denial. Yep, denial is y'alls middle names," my sister said as she hit the stairs up to her bedroom. It was right across from mine.
Mom slapped the lid down on the laptop, moaned, and grabbed her back as she got up. "Dorius said this sounds like a classic aging curse. Try summoning the demon again, Susan. If it doesn't work, I'll call the council."
"Did he tell you to have me summon Raphael?" I asked. "And does he know you're gonna call the council?"
Dorius Morizzio was head of training, organizing and dispatching rogue hunters. Our team worked in Critter Control because of my idiot sister and her ability to turn vermin immortal. I knew Dorius didn't trust my witchy skills, and none of us were supposed to have direct contact with the council. That was kind of hard to do when I was sleeping with the head honcho—a big thorn in my boss's side.