I gave him another push and then stepped away, watching Michael topple backward through the portal. There was a splash and then another, sharper scream as he hit the icy water. He pushed himself up, head first out of the water, and I let the portal shrink.
“Hey, Michael,” I said once the portal had shrunk to the size of a bowling ball. “Stay out of my ICU. Or else.”
“You demonic slut,” Michael screeched before a wave crested over his head and dunked him under the freezing waves. His head broke the surface and he started to splutter, coughing up water as he tried to keep himself afloat. “You wait. I’m going to call your uncle and I’m going to—”
“Oh please.” I snapped my fingers and the portal slammed close with a sharp crack, trapping him on the other side.
“You should have trapped him under an iceberg,” Harold said.
I turned to see my favorite poltergeist pediatrician leaning over Madeline, checking her over.
“Or with a particularly horny narwhale. Those are the ones with the sharp swords on their snouts, right?”
“I think so.” I came over to stand beside him. “How is she?”
“Fine. Vitals are stable. She seems to be responding to treatment. No signs of infection that I can see. My gut feeling is that she’s going to make it—potentials list or no potentials list.”
“Good. That will be something to tell her father when the poor man finally gets here.”
“What happened?” Harold asked.
“The Army had a delay and he didn’t make it for the surgery. What with her being bumped up the list so quick because of the compatibility match. It’s good to know he’s not going to come all this way for bad news.”
“She’s not going anywhere.” Harold was the best pediatrician I knew—alive or dead. If he said she was going to make it then I was going to believe him. “I can’t believe you set the Archangel Michael on fire. Not that he didn’t deserve to suffer a bit, but you know how long it takes an angel to recover from hellfire burns.”
“Yeah, blame the human part of me for that little show of demonic temper. I refuse to give up the belief that life is sacred. Besides, she wasn’t on the dead list. I don’t care if I have to set an entire legion of angels on fire. I refuse to hand over one of these kids until I don’t have any other choice.”
“Stubborn to a fault Nurse Bettincourt.” Harold floated close enough that I could feel his shadow brushing against my shoulder as we stood staring down at the little girl in the bed.
“Stubbornness is an integral part of being a demon. I mean, did you hear what he said about Lisa? Zapping a patient during surgery to keep them alive isn’t just stubborn—it’s downright ballsy. ”
“Yeah. Which means both of you girls did well tonight. I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks.” A warm rush of pride flooded through my chest. I mean I knew I was a good nurse but it sure didn’t hurt to hear someone else say it on occasion.
“I’ve only got one complaint. The next time you girls decide to go all superhero could you please warn me ahead of time? Do you know how much I would have loved to get that on video?”
“Really?”
“The other doctors on the ghost golf circuit would have paid good money to watch you set the Archangel Michael on fire—especially when you toppled him into the water afterward. Where was that? Alaska?”
“Fifty miles east of Antarctica.”
“Nice.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulder, his fingers sliding through my skin and making me shiver.
“Now what are you going to do about Dr. Freckles and her two sidekicks?” He nodded toward the door and I turned, suddenly remembering everyone else outside of the room.
“Play dumb?”
“That’s only going to work a few times on that one,” he said, pointing to Dr. Malan. “She’s young but she’s pretty clever. She’s got that ‘sense’ if you know what I mean.”
“You don’t think she’s been warned by Dr. Lee, do you?” I thought about the tiny pediatric oncologist who frequently gave me sideways glances.
“Nah. Bai has agreed to keep her mouth shut about us. I think Dr. Malan is a bit more tuned in than she realizes. Throw a confusion spell on her and you should be fine, though. Her sight isn’t nearly as strong as Bai’s. We can keep her clueless for a while longer yet.”
“Right. Good.” I snapped my fingers and felt time begin again. Dr. Malan rushed into the room, the nurses hot on her heels.
She slid to a stop and looked first at the now quiet monitor and then at the patient. She looked over at me, then through Harold to look at the monitor, and then back at the patient, her jaw working the whole time.
“Is something wrong, Doc?” I raised an eyebrow while I wiggled the fingers on my hand to cast a quick cloud of confusion across all of them so they wouldn’t decide to start trying to figure out how I’d gotten here before them.
“What happened to the alarm?” Dr. Malan asked. “I heard the alarm and came running.”
“The alarm?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even. “The alarm for this room?”
“Didn’t it go off?” Confusion and doubt filled her eyes.
“No. The alarm in here didn’t go off. Everything in here is fine. I’ve been in here for a few minutes, doing treatments. I was working toward Leslie and Kim so that I could tell them to go on break. Why? Did you hear an alarm?”
“I could have sworn…” Dr. Malan looked from me to the alarms again, her mouth hanging open. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and then flinched as she tried to move her weight off back off her right knee. She turned to look at Leslie and Kim standing behind her. “Tell me you two heard the alarm?”
“No, Doc,” Leslie said her voice full of conviction. “We saw you running and followed.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Dr. Malan ran a hand up over her face. “I know the alarm was going off.”
“It’s late, it’s quiet, and you probably dozed off for a second and dreamed you heard one.” I gave her my most reassuring smile.
“You think?” she asked, sounding skeptical.
“I do it all the time on my days off,” I said, and both Kim and Leslie nodded in agreement. “I’m sound asleep and then all of a sudden I dream that I can hear an alarm or a call light. Next thing I know I’m wide awake and half out of bed before I realize that I’m home in my jammies and not here on the ward. It’s part of the job. You’ll get used to it over time.”
She shifted again and then winced. “I guess, but man do I feel stupid right now. Running after phantom alarms and scaring all three of you.”
“Don’t worry about it.” My shoulders relaxed. She was going to let this go easier than I expected. “Hey, Doc, are you feeling okay? You keep grimacing.”
“I think I banged my knee against my desk when I decided to go on a mad dash down the hall. I’ll probably have one heck of a bruise by the time we go off shift.”
“Ouch.” I wrinkled my nose at her and pretended to be sympathetic instead of relieved at how easily she was letting this all go. “Why don’t you take a minute and take a breather? Go grab a bottle of water or some coffee. We’ll be fine up here.”
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“Go, take Kim and Leslie with you. All of you could use a few minutes of peace. Bring me back a Mountain Dew. I’ve got some money stashed in the nurses’ station.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Dr. Malan shoved her hands in her lab coat pockets. “I think after all this excitement I can buy everyone some caffeine.”
I watched the three of them make their way to the stairwell and sighed in relief as they left the hall. The last thing I needed was someone catching on to the fact that patients tended to die less when I was on shift than they did otherwise. Medical people were always a superstitious lot and the last thing I wanted to bring attention to was the fact that Satan’s youngest daughter was a charge nurse on the pediatric intensive care unit. People tended to get touchy about th
ose sorts of things.
“You know we wouldn’t have this much excitement if you’d have gone to secretarial school,” a deeper voice said behind me.
I turned to see my bodyguard turned personal Greek chorus floating next to me in his three-foot grim reaper costume, the black cowl pulled low over his skull and two large, black eyes staring back at me from the shadows. “Come on, Mal, I thought you liked all this excitement?”
“Yeah, well, I knew typing wasn’t your strong suit. Now, how long until you’re off shift and we can go get some decent coffee?” he asked, his deep voice rumbling around in the empty black cloak where his body should have been.
“About four hours.”
“Four hours? Christ on a cracker that’s a long time. I’m going to go find late night porn on the visitor’s lounge television and try to stay awake.”
“Hey!” I put my hands on my hips and glared at him. “We’ve got kids in here.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Malachi retorted as he turned and began to float off. “They should all be asleep, genius. That’s why they put porn on late night TV.”
“Hey, Mal?”
My personal demon stopped then slowly turned to face me. “That thing with Michael tonight…”
“What about it?” he asked.
“You don’t think it’s weird that he tried to show up and poach someone who wasn’t on the list do, you?”
“Faith, he’s a reaper. Everything they do is weird. Don’t let him get to you.”
“Do you—”
“They all get a little crazier than normal around review time.” Malachi shrugged his tiny shoulders toward where his ears should have been. “Don’t worry about it. I mean, it’s Michael being his usual idiotic self.”
“You think?”
“I know. Trust me, if you’d ever met his boss you’d think Michael was the angelic version of a knight in shining armor.” Mal hovered there for a second. “Then again, there’s a good chance that if you two ever met, the Angel of Death would try to draft you into service.”
“Ugh.” I shivered. “No thank you. Death is definitely not my thing.”
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter One
Devil May Care Page 28