by Stec, Susan
The lid popped up. "Don't you dare use the Lord, my savior's name in vain." The lid closed with an audible click.
"Hey, you just goddamned him all to hell a few seconds before you broke my goddamned fingers!" Zaire put both hands between her knees, blood tears trickling down her cheeks."
"Oh, shut up!" JoAnn's voice echoed from inside. "Your fingers will heal, but my heart won't!"
"Your heart is dead," I said.
"I won't forgive y'all for using me for rabid raccoon bait," JoAnn whined. "Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves. All y'all … Susan!"
I hissed and kicked the casket.
Resi opened the closet door.
Paul shut JoAnn's bedroom door, and then took a goalie stance in front of the window.
Guttural growls emanated from one of three large, brown boxes stacked in the corner of the closet.
Paul sucked in a breath. The rest of us didn't.
Resi knocked on the casket. "Jo, is it still inside the cage?"
JoAnn harrumphed. "Give me one good reason why I should help y'all? Y'all used me for bait!" She half-screamed, half-growled the last word.
Zaire coaxed a box off the top of the pile and onto the carpet. "This one's pretty heavy."
Paul gave it a shake. No noise from inside the box—in fact, not a sound from the closet at all. Paul ripped the box open.
"I hear that!" JoAnn's voice came from the coffin. "Y'all are gonna pack everything you unpack. I have a husband in Hell, and he has tattoos."
"Yeah, you might want to pull the badass demon card on someone else," Zaire mocked. "Sh—yeah, tattoos. Really? That's all you got? Maybe Resi and I will do a you-show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine when demon guy gets here—right before we send him back to Hell like the last time."
We did send him back to Hell with a sorcerer and a vampire-bitch ... only, he took JoAnn with him.
Resi sneezed, nose deep in the box. "Aunt JoAnn, why do you have nine coffee makers?" A white cloud of fine powder hung in the air around my youngest daughter.
"That's none of y'all's business," JoAnn snapped. "And when you repack them, you better not break anything! Especially the Cuisinart. I promised Ralphie I'd send that one with Lilith on her next scheduled Hell-visit."
I was lost for words. We couldn't even drink coffee. I didn't know JoAnn's demon ex could, either.
"This one's way too light." Zaire passed another box out to Paul.
Paul looked inside the box. "Unbelievable." He tipped it over and emptied straws and condiments from every hamburger franchise in Florida onto the carpet.
Back of her hand over her mouth, Zaire coughed. "What the fuck is all this white shit, Aunt JoAnn?"
"D E," JoAnn's coffin said. "It protects against bugs. You can drink it. I did. Y'all should try it. It detoxes your body. Yep, D E helped with my irritable bowels syndrome."
"D E?" Resi said.
Zaire was flexing her fingers. They were almost healed, but I could still hear them crack.
"Diatomaceous earth," JoAnn said, her voice muffled by the walls of the casket. "Look it up . . . after you get your butts out of my room!"
"And the straws?" I asked the closed coffin. "You actually stole all these straws? What the hell?"
The lid on the coffin clicked then popped up a half inch. Horror-flick gold eyes peeked at me.
"That was when you told us to practice mind-pushing. I got people to load them into trash bags, even people eating. They put down their quarter pounders and obeyed me. I keep them, because sometimes I need to remind myself how powerful I am."
The lid went down and the latch clicked. "Now pack them back up. And forget the next box. The stupid cage, with the raccoon locked inside, is under a pile of clothes on the floor behind the boxes."
"Open the last box," I said to Paul. I was about to taunt a bit more, but the front door bell rang.
"Anyone gonna get the door?" Mom yelled from downstairs. "I'm on the phone!"
Everyone looked at me.
"Crap! I turned on my heels and headed downstairs.
"Good riddens!" JoAnn said.
I smiled, shutting her bedroom door behind me.
Mom was shoulder-holding the house phone to her ear when I cut by the kitchen.
"Yeah, that's the one. Square jobbie. Oak right? Carving of a dove over a cross on the front? Yeah, that’s it. I'll need four."
"What are you buying now?" I asked.
Mom flapped her hand at me. I glanced at the altar.
Perched on the rim of Jake's coffee cup, Gibbie scooped another thimble full of the creamy liquid and took a sip. "Third cup. This is it for me or I'll be buzzed the rest of the night." He laughed. "Get it? Buzzed?" He revved his wings.
Mom read the numbers off her credit card to whoever was on the other end of the phone.
Gibbie said, "Sounds like she's ordering four boxes for ashes like the one she got for your father when he passed."
"Why does she need four cremation urns?" Jake looked horrified.
"Mother you better not have killed anyone," I yelled back as I opened the front door.
The guy standing on the other side stared at me with a face full of questions.
"Video game," I told the guy. "She always cheats when I leave the room."
He lifted his ball cap, scratched the crown of his balding head, and backhanded a damp brow. "I got a couple of double-wide coffins in the truck. I need to know where you want me to park them."
"Mom!" I yelled. "Your theater props are here. Where do you want them?"
~~~
TWELVE
~~~
I was sitting at the picnic table with Christopher, Resi, Zaire, Mom, Paul, and Jeni lined up across or beside me. Jake stood near the open sliding glass door, and Betty and Sonny were seated at the breakfast bar. Gibbie was riding his fan blade carousel above as usual.
"Are you planning on telling me why you ordered those cremation boxes, Mom?"
"You should be thanking me for the doublewides," Mom said. "I paid for them out of the kindness of my shriveled up dead heart."
Everyone turned to me.
"Thank you," I pleasantly said. "I know Marcus will appreciate it as soon as we figure out how to get it up the stairs and into my bedroom. You should've measured the hall space. I'm not tearing out a doorway, or two, to get it in there."
"Unlike you and your sister, I'm not an idiot. I did measure. All you gotta do is stand on Zaire's shoulders and slide the coffin over the balcony to Resi. It will fit through the French doors," Mom said. "Resi and Zaire's will go through the garage, into the hall, and then through the bedroom doors. That's why I got them the low-rider model."
My fangs popped over my lower lip. I tongued them back up. "Or you could use your telekinetic powers and float it up to me and Zaire."
"Yeah, but I don't have the time. I got it for you, figured out how you can get up there ... you should be grateful."
My jaw tightened. "Why do you need four wooden boxes for ashes, Mother? What did you do?" I enunciated each word in the last sentence.
"I didn't do shit," Mom said. "Just planning ahead—just in case."
I growled.
Mom smiled. "I'm gonna line them on the fireplace mantle as a reminder. No one is really immortal."
"You can plant flowers in them for all I—"
Paul obnoxiously cleared his throat. He'd been the one who'd assembled us here tonight. "Dorius contacted me and asked that I come over and present a plan he has for the issues in Italy."
Christopher started to say something, but Paul lifted a hand and stopped him. "I know half of you are aware of what we are dealing with in Italy, but some of you are not. I'm here to bring everyone up to speed." He smiled at Christopher and continued. "It came to Dorius's attention through Lily and Christopher during a mind-meld earlier this evening that the team in Italy was up against an Otherworld creature that we don't come in contact with very often."
Christopher looked pre-orgasmic; only an obvious
desire to jump into the conversation sat between him and climax. I shot him a 'get over yourself' look as Paul continued.
"The man that boarded the BAMVC jet in Miami was a dead werewolf who had disappeared from the Italian comuni a month ago."
"How is that possible?" Mom said.
Christopher was almost out of his skin.
"He was being worn by a doppelganger, Chick," Paul answered.
I was in awe of the power Paul must have possessed over my partner. I'd never seen Christopher keep his mouth shut like that.
"Dorius is now concerned whether the Italian satori, Karl, was enticed to start a war between the wolves and vampires in Italy to bring everyone together. Karl and the comuni may actually be victims in this issue."
"What the hell is a doppelganger?" Mom was wearing her old dentures. Her real teeth were lying on her pillow when she woke. The false teeth slid as she talked because her old tube of denture cream had dried out.
"It's a creature created by a demon conjuring gone awry," Jeni answered. "They inspired the myth everyone has a double. Doppelgangers are supposed to carbon copy a human and then shake things up when others see two of them walking around."
She wore a canary yellow tank top and had changed the color of her hair to lighthouse-beacon red, with a feathering of bright colors in her bangs: fuchsia, blue, and yellow. The blouse accentuated the feathering and the beacon-red made her green eyes lively.
Paul frowned at my daughter, and then continued. "In this day-and-age, Doppelgangers are lethal. They more often destroy the real human, which gives the double a shorter shelf life."
Paul's eyes wandered down the table. He had everyone's attention.
"It's hard to contain a doppelganger, and it's virtually unstoppable when confronted by any Otherworld creature. They are a myth," Paul said, smiling at Jeni, "with no flesh, no name, no sex, and no identity unless they wear a human, or one of us."
The wolf turned back to us. "They're smoke in the wind, a shadow on the streets, or dust in a dark corner—completely indestructible."
"Nothing Down Under is completely indestructible," Gibbie warbled. "They can be taken down by their own kind—a select few of the old-timers. The strongest can absorb another doppelganger. It's not often done. And it doesn't come without risk. The being hunted can turn into the hunter if it absorbs the other doppelganger first. Dorius and I ran across one a few hundred years ago. It was wearing a vampire of interest, trying to draw Dorius in, to get closer to his sister, Antoinette. But Dorius was warned by another doppelganger, and together, they thwarted the bastard's plans to do Antoinette harm."
"But they didn't kill it," Christopher said.
"So is this the same doppelganger?" I asked.
"That's what Dorius is afraid of," Paul said, "even though there was word that the creature he had history with was killed by his friend, her fledgling doppelganger, and a Wendigo."
Paul took a deep breath and slowly continued. "Dorius attacked Karl's son during the council meeting—after Lily and Christopher's warning—and it shed the double right there in front of the council."
Christopher jumped up. "Did it get anywhere near Antoinette?"
"No. It tried. Dorius and the others surrounded her," Paul said. "The damn thing took a good size chunk of meat from Dorius's neck and dispersed in a cloud of smoke. They heard the creature laughing as it wafted through small cracks in the mortar walls around the sealed up window in the room."
It was so quiet around the picnic table; I could hear electric current traveling through the wire buried under the dining room walls.
"He's fine," Paul said in a comforting voice, palms facing us. "Dorius drank from one of the council members and healed quickly."
Gibbie darted to the front of Paul's face. "Does Dorius know why the thing bit him and just left?"
"What do you mean?" Paul's brows furrowed. His eyes were hard.
"They don't bite a human unless they're marking them," Gibbie squeaked. "It will be able to find Dorius now."
"Even with our mate thing?" Betty asked.
Gibbie stared at her for a few minutes. "I'm not sure."
I didn't realize hearing Dorius was hurt could affect me. Even Christopher looked majorly worried. His demeanor had relaxed considerably as Paul told us Dorius sucked on one of the old immortals, but got even tenser with Gibbie's enlightenment.
Betty found her voice and gathered inappropriately misdirected attention. "Whose neck was my man suckin' on? It better not'a been one of those ancient old floozies with tits so firm you can't move 'em with a jackhammer."
"Holy shit," I said, helping her make light of the situation. It felt good. "How do you draw blood from a stone?"
"No shit," Christopher said.
"Was it a man or a woman?" Betty wouldn't give up.
"I didn't think you cared what Dorius did in his free time as long as the cash kept flowing," my mother said. But there was an empathetic smile on her face.
Sonny patted Betty's knee, and that's when I noticed Jake wasn't leaning in the doorway between the dining room and the screen porch.
"Where's Jake?" I asked.
Gibbie bolted to the sliding glass doors, then the kitchen window.
"I'm out here," Jake's soft whisper answered, "reciting soothing affirmations. The conversation was putting me in rape and pillage mode.
"Out where?" Mom wanted to know.
"Sitting in the dark," Jake said as the sliding door slowly moved toward the metal door frame. "There's lightning bugs lining the cypress knees. It's so beautiful. But none of you should come and see at the moment."
The glass door clicked closed. Gibbie bolted by. My eyes briefly followed him to the window over the sink.
"This thing tried several more times during my immortal lifetime to hit on Antoinette, through Dorius," Christopher said, bringing us back into the moment. "The last time was here in the US—Savannah Georgia during prohibition. Antoinette was a real piece of work, then, and . . ."
"She still is," Paul said.
"Yep," Christopher said. "Smart, sexy, and lethal, but she doesn't stand a—"
"It's the fairies, not lightning bugs! Did someone call in the fae?" Gibbie demanded, frantically darting around our heads. "Or do I have to take the dragon out back and encourage the rape and pillage side of his personality?"
Even through the closed doors, I heard Jake's yelp followed by a bolt of fire that momentarily lit the screened porch like blazing Tiki torches.
"No. You stay put. I called them under orders from Dorius," Paul answered. "And before you go ape-shit, Dorius did tell me to confer with you before I sent the troll out after them. I tried to find you, but you were nowhere around."
"He was with me," Jake's voice floated into the room before his face pressed against the glass door. "I needed his help to lure the raccoon into JoAnn's room earlier. Gibbie was nice enough to pose as JoAnn. The raccoon wasn't listening to his alpha friends. We decided to assist."
My eyes were jumping from Paul, to Gibbie, to Jake, and back again. Now they were locked on Gibbie.
The fairy took a deep breath, landed on the oak table, and strutted toward Paul. "There must be a reason you did this before speaking with me, wolf. I trust you with my soul."
Paul smiled and nodded at the fairy with respect. "Because, before morning, they will be Down Under, preparing the way for you and Jake. You're going into the sewers to talk to Dorius's doppelganger friend; the one that helped him save Antoinette. But we need to find the creature first. A bit tricky, that. Dorius feels volume is in order; the fae will spread out, comb Down Under, and seek it out."
"Are my man and his brother stayin' in Italy?" Betty asked.
"Yes, for the moment, Betty. They're going to attempt to join forces with the wolf pack, spread out, and search to see how far, if at all, the infection has spread to the wildlife in Italy. Like Sonny, Karl seems to have attracted a few fanged critters, which the pack has destroyed. They're willing to bring proof of this
to the council and Dorius. The Italian pachetto was unaware the doppelganger had killed Karl's after making a duplicate of him. In other words, they were as surprised as us. The alphas of the pack are meeting with Dorius, Marcus, and the council as we speak."
"So what the hell is this Down Under?" Mom asked, and pushed her uppers back onto her gums. I kind of hoped Mom wouldn't get any denture adhesive. I liked her verbally handicapped.
"It's the whole Otherworld, Chick," Christopher said. "The council frowns on us going down there. I'm sure that's why Dorius kept it hush-hush. But everyone is welcome Down Under. It's considered a place of safety for all Otherworld creatures."
Why do I think that the last statement is geared toward a developing—get my ass in trouble, again—plan?
"Vampires do not frequent Down Under. The atmosphere encourages questionable behavior and breeds danger," Paul emphasized. "Let's all remember how Dorius got into this mess in the first place."
Jeni burped a laugh. "I hope the entrance has a combo lock or something." She stared right at me. "My mother's middle name is—"
"Butt-ass-stupid," my mother finished. "And this is the perfect time to remind you why I ordered cremation boxes."
"I am not going down there!" I spat at my mother. "Neither is my partner." I nodded at Christopher.
"The coolest Down Under place here in Florida is the bar, Purgatory," Christopher said. "It's kind of a Star Wars bar of the underworld. Very cool place. They have cage fights. Every imaginable creature can be found there. I once had a thing with this succubus—sexier than hell—and-"
"In your daydreams." Mom laughed through the wisecrack.
"Exactly," Christopher said behind a thoughtful smile.
I looked at him, brow furrowed. "Isn't that some demon nymphomaniac that creams your dreams?"
"Close enough," Gibbie squawked through a plethora of bell-like giggles.
~~~
Thirteen
~~~
"What the fucking hell is all the goddamn noise about?" Zaire bitched as she flew through the kitchen, past the breakfast bar, and onto the screen porch.