“Logan’s living room is gonna be green,” Thea said, taking a big bite of my would-be garlic bread. “It’s a great green. Sort of a cross between iguana green and the color of a Nile crocodile.”
“Fabulous.” Lizard wall color.
“Green is a good color,” Brady said solemnly. “Faeries like the colors of nature. Green, blue…”
Jasmine snorted and started talking right over Brady’s list of nature colors. “The queen is furious, and so she’s not thinking clearly. Sending the Terrasco demon is only one sign that now is the time you should make a move on her.”
“Yellow, orange…”
“Oh,” I said, also talking over Brady, mainly because I so didn’t care what color Logan’s house was or what colors Faeries preferred. “So the idea is for me to face down a furious, out-of-patience queen? Good call.”
“If you wait much longer she’ll have the time to gather her forces for an all-out attack on both you and the city of La Sombra.”
“Red, purple…”
I glanced at Brady, shook my head and looked back to Jasmine. “I thought you told me I wasn’t ready to face the Queen.”
“Saffron, brown…”
Jasmine bristled, and I wasn’t sure, but I thought I actually saw her hair move with the action. She shot a beady-eyed glare at Brady, then shifted that same glare to me. “You are more ready to face her now than you will be should she gather her strength.”
“Wow, that makes me feel all warm and cozy,” I said, and took another bite of spaghetti. Just keep chewing, Cassidy.
“Mom…”
“Ivory, red…”
“The queen is right now in a house by the beach….”
“Figures. Only a queen could afford beachfront property.” And I tried not to be bitter about that.
“Heliotrope—”
“Heliotrope?” I looked at Brady.
“Cassidy, are you listening to me?” Jasmine shouted.
My grandmother insists that when Jasmine was her trainer, the old demon was calm, cool and collected at all times. Never raised her voice. Never lost patience.
Apparently I can push anyone over the edge.
“Yes, I’m listening. Fight the queen. Got it.”
“You cannot.” Brady set his fork down and folded his arms over his pretty impressive chest. “The queen is most formidable.”
“And will only get more so the longer you wait,” Jasmine said.
“Mom, if you fight the queen, can I come and watch?”
“No,” I said, still eating. I was secretly hoping that if I just kept my head down and kept chewing they’d all disappear. Along with this pesky little problem of a demon queen who wanted me dead.
Then I lifted my head and met three sets of eyes—four, counting Sugar.
No such luck.
Chapter Eleven
An hour later, as I got ready to head out, the spaghetti wasn’t sitting so well.
It takes a lot to put me off my food. Apparently the thought of bitch-slapping a demon queen was enough to do it, though. And I was busy asking myself how I’d gotten myself into this situation. An hour ago we were talking about me taking on the queen. Now I was getting ready to go face her.
How had that happened so fast?
“You cannot,” Brady insisted, staring at me from his seat at the foot of my bed. “You are Sanctuary. You are the only one who can save me. You must not risk yourself with the queen.”
“Hmph!” Another Jasmine snort. She was leaning against my bedroom wall, keeping a sharp eye on all of us. “Your concern for Cassidy’s welfare,” she said, “would be more touching were it not for the fact that you’re mainly worried for your own well-being.”
A polite—who knew Jasmine could be polite?—way of telling him he was trying to save his own ass. And he was. But could I blame him for that? Besides, he was still the only one trying to talk me out of this!
“You can beat her, right, Mom?” This from Thea, stretched out on my bed, clutching one of my pillows to her chest like it was Einstein the Beloved.
“Sure!” I am the Duster. Superhero. Able to punch out demon queens and get back home for dessert. Did we have anything for dessert? Oh, God. For the first time in my life the thought of dessert was turning my stomach! This was not a good sign. What was I doing? I couldn’t face a demon queen in a fight! She’d clean my clock. And I couldn’t even find a cookie to take the edge off, because I was seriously feeling like I was about to yak (something I usually avoided at all costs).
At the moment my stomach was sort of twisting and squirming and feeling like all of those spaghetti noodles had come alive and were writhing like snakes.
“If you remember your training,” Jasmine said, “you’ll be fine.”
Fine.
Well, there was a stellar vote of confidence. Although, coming from Jasmine, that was a pretty strong statement, right? Right. I could do this.
“Training. Okay. Training is good.” I did a couple deep knee bends and winced when my right knee popped. Should’ve trained harder.
“Vanessa is dangerous,” Brady warned, his features tight, his voice a low note of dread. “You should not attempt this, Cassidy. You should stay here. With us. I will make you a cake. A chocolate cake,” he added, sounding a little like the snake in the garden must have. “With whipped cream. Extra whipped cream. You will be safe, and so will we all.”
“The Faery is trying to dissuade you from your duty,” Jasmine said tightly. “Don’t listen to him.”
At least he’s on my side, I almost said, but let it go, because, hey, I was already looking forward to one fight. Did I really want another one?
I slapped one hand to my stomach and swallowed hard. With all this talk about Vanessa the Villain, I was really wishing I hadn’t eaten so much. Maybe I should have waited to go fight her until the next day. Or next week.
Or, hey, next year.
But as soon as I considered it, I let it go. No point in putting it off. Jasmine was right: The bitch queen was only going to get stronger and madder, and I might as well try to face her down before she got her shit together.
“Maybe we should go with you,” Thea said softly, and I turned around to look at her. Her blue eyes were filled with concern, and she was chewing on her bottom lip.
“No way.” I didn’t want Thea anywhere near this business. What if Jasmine was wrong about the whole “forbidden” thing? Until I could look into that theory myself, I wasn’t going to take any chances. “You stay here, with Jasmine and Brady. Stay in the house. Doors locked. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Wow. Cooperation. This was a big day for me.
“You should not go, Cassidy,” Brady said, standing up to walk to me. He laid one hand on my shoulder in a warm, insistent kind of grip. “This is not wise.”
Nope. Probably not. But then, I wasn’t generally known for my wise decisions. Sugar whined from the bathroom. I knew how she felt. I wanted to lock myself in there and hide in a bubble bath.
Later, I promised myself.
“Cassidy…” Brady was holding my shoulders, looking down into my eyes, and I knew he was reading my mind again when he smiled and whispered so only I could hear, “I will help you with the bath if only you will stay.”
Tempting.
But I had to do this. Brady’s life was at stake. But it wasn’t only him. Thea had been threatened only a couple hours ago. I had to stop the queen before this got even more out of hand.
“Hey!” I looked up at Brady as a wild thought popped into my brain. “I just thought of this. You’re a Faery. Can you fly? You never said, and if you can, then maybe you could sprinkle a little Faery dust on me and—”
“No,” he said with a slow, sad shake of his head, and shattered my little dream. “I cannot. Male Faeries don’t fly.”
“Well, that sucks.” I heard how disappointed I sounded but couldn’t seem to help it. Flying would have been very cool and would have given me a nice way to exit the fight if it wasn�
�t going well. Excuse me for looking for a safety valve. And yes, I was stalling. Sue me. I was in no hurry to go fight a demon queen.
“Female Faeries fly, though,” Brady said solemnly. “And they never let us forget it.” The look of disgust on his face led me to believe there was an interesting story about female Faeries I’d have to get out of him another time. “And Pixies, of course,” he added.
“Pixies?” I asked.
“Pixies?” Thea echoed. “They’re real, too?”
“Pixies are even worse than Faeries,” Jasmine said, pushing away from the wall. “Nasty, troll-like little things. Completely untrustworthy.”
I looked at her. “So not just a little untrustworthy.”
“They are evil,” Brady said, looking like he hated to agree with Jasmine about anything. “But they can fly.”
“So what do male Faeries do?”
“We guard the power.”
“Power?”
What power? Before I could ask, he gave me a slow smile and added, “We also do other things.”
I headed Jasmine off at the pass. “Snorting is really unattractive.”
She scowled at me. “Are you ready?”
I hooked a bottle of demon spray to my belt loop. “As I’ll ever be.”
I sure wished I had a female Faery handy. I could have really used one. Or an Uzi. Or a new job.
I looked from Brady to Jasmine to Thea. Every light in my house was on, and the air still smelled like spaghetti. It was cozy. Safe. And I soooo didn’t want to leave. I was still new to this dusting business, and the longer I thought about facing off with the queen, the harder those spaghetti worms in my stomach did their little tangos.
“Guess I’d better go,” I said, hoping someone in the room would convince me not to.
“Good,” Jasmine said, and I sneered at her. She was supposed to be on my side. Why was she in such a big damn hurry to send me off into battle? If she lost me, she’d have to wait another sixteen years before she got to order Thea around.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m going.” Because I had to. Because Brady needed help. Because if I didn’t kill this bitch, she might wait around for Thea to come into her power, and it was better for me to face the queen than to worry about my baby girl doing it.
I hitched my jeans up, shoved the sleeves of my gray sweatshirt back over my forearms and headed for the door. I didn’t look back.
Because I knew if I did, I wouldn’t leave.
Queens lived well.
At least, this one did.
I parked my VW on the street, in front of a mansion that looked a lot like Tara from the old movie Gone with the Wind: lots of columns and second-story balconies and lights glowing in practically every window.
It sat alone on a bluff overlooking the ocean, and its nearest neighbor looked to be at least half a block away. Apparently demon queens preferred privacy.
I swallowed hard, hoping the spaghetti would stay put, and told myself I could do this. Hereditary Demon Dusters were born to do this. Go, Cass! Kill the queen! Yay, team! Okay, too much time spent listening to Thea and Brady in the backyard.
When my cell phone rang I shrieked, jumped straight up, then yanked the damn phone out of my jeans pocket before the tinny version of “Every Breath You Take” could alert the queen that her doom had arrived.
I didn’t even glance at the caller ID, just flipped it open and said, “What?”
“Tell me you’re not at the queen’s house,” Devlin said.
I looked around, half expecting him to pop out from behind one of the wind-twisted cypress trees. How the hell did he know where I was? Good question, so I asked it. “How the hell did you know where I was?”
“Doesn’t matter how I know. Damn it, Cassidy, I was afraid you’d do something like this,” he muttered. “Go home. You’re not ready to face Vanessa.”
He was right, of course, but that so wasn’t the point. And Vanessa? He was on first-name terms with the queen? Well, why not? He’d been working for Judge Jenks when I took him out. Seemed like Devlin was pretty high up in the demon food chain in La Sombra. Back when I thought we were a couple, that might have actually been comforting. The way things stood now, though, I had no idea what—if anything—it meant for me.
So when I answered him, I went for my standard. When in doubt, attack. “Excuse me? Who’re you to tell me what I’m ready for?”
“I’m the guy who…”
Long pause.
Interesting.
I realized I was holding my breath. Did I actually care what he might be about to say? Hmm. Okay, yes, focusing issues. I was about to fight a demon queen and I was wondering what my demon ex-lover might be thinking. But, come on. So would you. “Yes?”
“The guy who cares whether you live or die,” he finished.
Not what I might have hoped for usually, but nice nonetheless. Even if it was coming from the demon who had cheated on me. And that thought was enough to bring me back to focus. “I’m hanging up now, Devlin. I’ve got places to go, queens to kill.”
“Damn it, Cass. Don’t do it. Or at least wait for me to get there. I can help.”
“Why would you help me kill your own queen?”
“She’s not my queen,” he said, then blew out an exasperated breath. (He did that a lot around me.) “And before you ask me, it’s a long story.”
Wasn’t everything?
“Some other time, then.” The longer I stood there, the harder it was going to be to make my feet move. I had to go face her down. After all, I was already there. Might as well be now. Right?
“Cassidy…” Devlin’s voice was low, thick and warm. “Please don’t go in there alone.”
“Bye, Devlin.” I hung up. See? I can be brave. Or stupid, depending on how you looked at it. Yes, it might have been nice to have Devlin’s help. He’d helped me out with the judge, after all. But things had changed. We’d been a couple back then, and now we weren’t, and maybe he was holding a little grudge for me squirting him and his demon babe with all that acid.
Now was definitely not the time to test that theory.
The phone rang again almost instantly. Mental note: Turn the damn thing off. I snapped it open. “Devlin, I don’t need your help to kill the queen.”
“Good to know, but I’m not Devlin, and why would you want to kill the queen? I mean, sure, she never treated Diana very well, and she has hideous taste in purses, but Cassidy—some restraint, huh?”
“Rachel.” My shoulders slumped and my chin hit my chest. Who else but me would be fielding phone calls while planning an assault on a demon queen? “God. I can’t talk right now, okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sounds like you’re busy, all right. What with queen killing and everything.”
“Rach.” I cut her off because Rachel could talk even more than I could, and that’s saying a lot.
“What’s going on, Cass?”
“Um…” I turned my back on the queen’s house, as if she could look out a window and read lips or something. Hearing Rachel’s voice had made me realize there was something I had to take care of before I started this little rumble. “Look, I’ll explain all the queen stuff later. But just in case…if I run into trouble here, you’ll take care of Thea, right?”
Cut me a little slack, okay? I mean, I knew Jasmine would watch out for Thea—the next little Duster, after all. But I hadn’t had time to actually realize that there was a really good chance I might not make it out of this fight alive. If I didn’t, I wanted Thea to be with someone who loved her nearly as much as I did. Sure, Logan was her dad, but he was new. And yes, he’d be right there to step into Thea’s life. But Rachel was as close as Thea could get to having me around.
Terrifying.
I really wanted to not die.
“Take care of Thea…Cass, what’re you doing?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow.” There. I had made plans to meet Rachel, so I couldn’t possibly die now. If you had plans to meet someone, you had to be
there. So now I was sure I’d survive this. Almost sure. “So will you?”
“Of course I’ll take care of Thea, but what’re you—”
“Thanks.” I blinked away a sudden sting of tears, hung up, turned the phone off and forced my feet to move. They didn’t want to, and I have to say I agreed with my feet. This was such a bad idea. Every step that took me closer to the queen’s mansion only made me realize that more completely.
She was a queen, for chrissakes.
I stepped up onto the manicured grass and slipped down the wide, graveled drive to the back of the house. The moon was playing peekaboo with the clouds, so light filtered down in an unsteady wash of silver. The lights in the house weren’t able to reach into the dark surrounding the huge place, and I was squinting while I crept along, hoping like hell I didn’t trip on a sprinkler or a car or, God help me, a demon hound from Hell.
GULP.
Great. I scared myself.
Shadows were thick and the night was quiet. On this exclusive street there were no basketballs, no howling dogs, no Van Halen pumping out of a garage. Here there was just quiet and the steady slap of the ocean against the rocks below the house.
Well, and the pounding of my own heartbeat.
Fear slid through the pit of my stomach, mixing with the spaghetti in an ugly way. My mouth was dry and the palms of my hands were damp. I wiped them off on my jeans, then slipped my demon spray out of the belt loop. Wrapping my hand around the neck of the bottle, I rested my finger on the trigger and told myself Vanessa was just another demon.
No big deal. I’d been doing this for a month now, and I almost never screamed and ran away anymore.
Who’s afraid of the big, bad queen? Yes, I hummed to myself. It was too dark. Too quiet. Too scary. And I don’t do scared real well. Let me tell you, the Fates or the gods or whoever had picked the wrong Burke woman for this duty. I was a weenie. And a very happy weenie. The only reason I was really here at all was that I’d been backed into a corner. There was no way out but straight ahead—or maybe digging through the wall at my back, but I couldn’t think of a way to do that.
So here I was, singing to myself and trying to get the drop on a demon queen.
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