“Halloween. It’s two weeks away, and I haven’t done anything about it yet.”
Rachel slumped, rolled her eyes and said, “Oh, for God’s sake. Did you have to give me a heart attack? And aren’t there enough demons in your life at the moment?”
I knew she didn’t really mean that. Rachel loves Halloween as much as I do and I’m crazy about Halloween. Christmas is nice, sure. Who doesn’t like presents? But come on. An entire holiday devoted to candy? This is the kind of celebration I can really get behind.
Usually, in a world where Thea and I are not being visited by Faeries and demons and other miserable members of the otherworld, we have the house decorated for Halloween by the first weekend in October. Every year we add a few more goodies, like cutout witches on the front door, the hanging guy from the tree, fake cobwebs dotted with plastic spiders (the only kind of spider we approve of, by the way).
On the actual night we dress up, hand out candy to the kids, and buy way too much so we can eat the rest of it ourselves. I know people who only buy the kind of candy they hate so they won’t be tempted to eat their own stash. What’s the point of that? If I’m going to buy candy, it had better be Hershey’s. Or Milky Ways. Or Three Musketeers. Or Baby Ruths.
God, I love Baby Ruths. And those little snack-sized ones? Hell, there were hardly any calories in them, they were so small. It was like you weren’t really eating them at all.
“You’re thinking about Baby Ruths, aren’t you?”
I looked at her. Best friends since we were kids. Nobody knew me better than Rachel. “Yeah.”
“Do you really think you’ve got time for the Halloween thing this year, Cass?” she asked as we started walking again. “I mean, what with queens out to kill you and kidnapped Faeries and all?”
I glanced in the window of a costume shop as we passed and I saw the mannequin wearing a Wonder Woman costume.
Hmmm.
Rachel saw it too, and laughed. “Until they make a Sugar Woman costume, you should just go as you are.”
Then she grabbed my arm and tugged until I was walking again. Fine, fine. But on the way home I was stopping at the market to get some candy. This weekend, come Hell or high water, (which in my life meant actual Hell), Halloween was coming to the Burke house.
A woman pushing a stroller and dragging a screaming toddler by the hand briefly got my sympathies, but the kid trying to force flyers on us for a free makeover at Merle Norman got a snarl. Was he saying we needed makeovers? True or not, how rude was that?
Then I caught the scent of garlic, pepperoni and cinnamon and concentrated on following my nose to nirvana. Rachel, though, could find food and talk. Multitasking.
The hallmark of a woman.
“Thank God you called and rescued me from another day of dental misery. Simon was working on a Pacheko demon when I left,” she said, a twinge of disgust in her voice.
I winced, stopped, looked around, then hissed, “Maybe you could say ‘demon’ a little louder?”
“What?” Rachel asked, her voice rising. “You think anyone’s listening to us? Watch.” She looked around at the wandering shoppers, put both hands on her hips and called out, “Beware, people! There are demons in La Sombra.”
Most people kept walking. A fat guy with a bald, sweating head jolted like he’d been shot and scuttled off down the escalator. I was guessing, Demon. Then an old woman handed Rachel a dollar bill, said, “Get some help, dear,” and kept walking.
Rachel shrugged, tucked the money into her purse and laughed. “See? Nobody cares.”
The little fat guy had cared, I thought, but didn’t bother saying. After all, she was right about everyone else. No one was stampeding the exits or tying to call a cab from Nutcake Hotel to come pick Rachel up and give her a private suite. They were just going on about their lives as if demons didn’t matter.
Lucky bastards.
“Fine. You win. It just makes me a little nervous talking about it, that’s all.”
“You’d have been more nervous if you’d seen the Pacheko demon,” Rachel said, walking again now that she’d made her point. “They’ve only got four teeth in their pointy heads, but they’ve each got to be three inches long, at least. He couldn’t even close his mouth over them. Which explains the drool.”
She shuddered, hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and followed me to the front of the line at Dairy Queen.
Hmm.
In hindsight, maybe I should have steered clear of anything with queen in the title, but I needed a sundae. Then some fries. Maybe a slice of pizza. Cut me some slack. Brady hadn’t been around to cook, and Thea and I were making do with cereal, bagged salad and the last of my Pop Tarts.
Pitiful was what it was.
And my life was too iffy to risk leaving dessert till last.
“Can I help you?” A woman with blond hair teased into a lacquered tower, bottle green eyes and bright red lips looked at me from behind the counter.
“We need sugar, honey,” Rachel said for me. “Ice cream smothered in hot fudge. Don’t forget the whipped cream.” She paused thoughtfully. “Actually, make that extra whipped cream. It’s been a tough day.”
“Right.” The blonde kept one eye on me while she went about filling two cups with the soft swirl ice cream, then spooning hot fudge over it.
She was creeping me out a little with the steady staring, but I was willing to let it go. I didn’t even care at the moment if she was a demon. As long as she handed over the hot fudge, live and let live.
I was having a Zen moment.
“No nuts,” I warned her. I don’t like polluting my ice cream with salt. Salt had its place, and it wasn’t in my sundaes. Nuts in a Baby Ruth? Completely different situation.
The blonde nodded, slid the finished sundaes across the counter, and when I reached for mine, she locked her long fingers around my wrist and squeezed till I wanted to yelp. “Duster.”
Crap.
So much for Zen.
“Can’t I get away from this for a minute?” I demanded, trying to wriggle free of her grip. Damn. She had fingers like steel bands or something. “Can’t I have ice cream in peace?”
Rachel jumped in and started hitting the blond bitch’s hand with her purse, trying to spring me. The blonde didn’t even glance at her, just picked up one of the sundaes and smashed it into Rachel’s face.
Rachel was sputtering and wiping thick hot fudge off her face, and I was getting madder by the moment.
“Is there, like, a rule or something where you guys have to jump out at me from everywhere?” I asked, really pissed because my hot fudge was cooling, and the ice cream was going to be melted before I could get to it. And I really needed that ice cream. Not to mention Rachel was wearing her sundae. “Because you know, if there is a rule, I want it changed.”
Rachel gave up with the wiping of chocolate and ice cream and swung her purse in a wide arc, aiming for the tower of bleached hair. But the blonde ducked, used her free hand to give Rachel a shove that sent her staggering back and managed to tighten her grip on my wrist until I thought she was going to twist my hand off.
“What is wrong with the world?” I asked nobody in particular. “I can’t go to the mall anymore? Is no place sacred?”
“That’s it. You stupid demon bitch, if I had you at the office I’d use one of Simon’s drills on you!” Rachel was back and grabbed me from behind, her high heels sliding on the marble floor and slipping on the ice cream. I appreciated the effort, but this wasn’t going to work.
“The queen’s going to pay me well for this,” the blonde said, and she ran her tongue across her chapped lips and sort of reminded me of Sugar when she was anticipating a snack. Which just grossed me out.
Enough was enough. She’d pushed my friend, shoved ice cream in her face, ruined my appetite and was cutting off the circulation in my arm.
I drew my free hand back, bunched it into a fist and slammed it into the blonde’s face. I felt her nose crunch and watched a shower of green blood spr
ay across the counter. What was left of my sundae looked almost festive.
If disgusting.
“Oh, gross,” Rachel said, letting go of me to skip back out of range of the green flow.
“You ruined my ice cream, you bitch,” I said, too mad at the moment to think about who might be watching. Besides, Rachel was right. Who noticed?
The blonde’s fingernails were biting into my skin, and her grip was really starting to annoy me. She was shrieking, which I couldn’t blame her for; I’d have been shrieking too if somebody just broke my nose. But she seemed determined to hold on to me, so what was I supposed to do?
I planted my feet at the bottom of the counter for balance, gave a hard tug, and my Duster strength sent the blond demon flying across the counter and smacking into me like a bag of cement.
We both careened back with lots of momentum, knocking Rachel over. On her way down to the floor Rachel yelped and slammed into the ATM machine. The poor old outdated thing toppled with a crash, and a couple of teenagers ran over, eagerly stepping across Rachel’s prone body to get to the ATM, thinking maybe they’d hit the jackpot.
The demon was all over me, snarling and spitting, and when I looked up into her narrowed (now red) eyes, all I could think was, How did this happen to me? Why the hell was I the damn Duster?
Blondie grabbed a handful of my hair and yanked, and that really pissed me off. A demon doing the girlie-fight thing? I bucked her off me, planted my foot in her flat belly and lifted her back and over my head. This was finally enough to break her grip on my wrist (without actually breaking my bone, and yay for me). She hit the floor hard and slid across the shining marble like she was a ball in one of those skeet machines at a game arcade.
She slammed into the wall of Macy’s, smacking her head against the faux stone. It had to ring her bell, because the impact had knocked her tower of ugly-ass hair to one side, and now she looked like she had the Leaning Tower of Pisa on her head. She was still trying to focus her spinning eyes when I went up to her.
“You should’ve just given me the damn ice cream,” I said, and reached into her chest.
Her eyes went wide, and she had just enough time to say, “Oh, shit.”
A second later I had her heart in my hand, and a moment after that she was the janitor’s problem.
I just sat there for a minute, too tired to complain. So you know how tired I really was.
Rachel staggered up to me, using a napkin to wipe the rest of the mess off her face. She grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet, then looked down at the pile of dust, gave it a kick to scatter it and said, “You know, maybe ice cream isn’t the best thing right now. We should get a burger instead.”
“Good call.”
Then we leaned into each other and walked like drunks to McDonald’s, at the back of the food court.
Nobody paid any attention at all.
La Sombra.
Home of the selectively blind.
I needed music. Terminator music. Or maybe the Rocky theme. Something to get me pumped without worrying about the pesky details of death and dismemberment.
Unfortunately, all I had was a houseful of demons.
Yep. You heard me. Demons.
Devlin had called in some favors. Now I was hip deep in demons loyal to Devlin. He’d made them promise not to try to kill me and got them to fight on our side during the Assault on the Queen.
This little maneuver had taken on capital letters in my mind. Who could blame me? I had demons helping me fight demons and an ex-boyfriend looking at all of them like Halloween had come early.
Thea was sitting on the couch with a one-hundred-pound chicken/dog in her lap. Sugar’s whimpering was almost enough to carry over the sounds of shuffling demon feet and the whisper of demon murmurs. Jasmine was wandering through the crowd giving everybody looks designed to turn their souls to salt.
And let me say…demons? Not the prettiest branch on the evolutionary tree.
Logan pulled me aside, got me up against a wall and leaned in close. “Who did you say these people are?”
I glanced to one side and caught a glimpse of a two-nosed guy with a single horn in the middle of his forehead. Yeesh. Then I looked back at Logan. “They’re friends of Devlin’s. He got them to help us get Brady back.”
“Friends.” Logan swiveled his head around to look over the bizarre collection of demons in my living room. “Figures he’d have freakish friends wearing masks. I keep telling you there’s something off about that guy.”
“I know. He’s a demon.”
Logan’s eyes did the roll-back-into-his-head thing. “Let it go already.”
I was on edge anyway. I hadn’t had my ice cream, and my hamburger, fries and chocolate shake were nothing but a fond memory. So I grabbed Logan’s black sweater with both hands, curled my fists into the cashmere and said, “Take a look around, Logan. These guys didn’t show up in costume for a fight. They’re demons. Actual demons.”
His mouth worked as if he wanted to say something but he was forbearing (a word? who knows? and who cares?), since he knew it would only piss me off. Good call.
“I’m just saying,” he finally said through gritted teeth, “I’m keeping an eye on Devlin Cole.”
“You do that.” I let go of his sweater and smoothed down the lumps my fingers had made in the fabric. Really nice fabric, cashmere. “While you’re doing that, though, don’t forget you’re here to help me.”
“I know why I’m here,” Logan said, and leaned in closer. Now I could feel his chest against my nipples, and my heart started slamming against my ribs.
“I’m watching out for you, Cassie,” Logan said, dipping his head until his mouth was so close I could have licked it. “I don’t trust Cole, and I’m going to make sure he doesn’t drag you into anything stupid.”
Ha! I was the one dragging the two of them into something stupid. But apparently Logan still had his illusions about me. Like I was still the naive sixteen-year-old girl he’d gotten pregnant one fine summer. Which was exactly why I couldn’t give in to whatever I was feeling for him. He didn’t see the real me. He didn’t get what my life was like now.
“As for the rest of these guys…” Logan shook his head. “I didn’t know there were so many freaks in La Sombra. It’s like an early Halloween party.”
Yeah, only with real demons. Okay, fine. Logan likes living in the land of denial. Not much I can do about that. I was just grateful he was here to help.
Devlin came up beside me, completely ignored Logan and said, “You ready?”
No.
Absolutely not.
Does terrified count?
“Sure,” I said, and my voice cracked only twice on that one-syllable word. “Let’s do it.”
Devlin grinned like he knew I was faking the whole Dirty Harry attitude and approved.
Logan dropped one arm around my shoulders, pulled me in close and said, “Stay where I can see you, Cole.”
“Detective,” Devlin said with a barely perceptible nod in Logan’s direction, “I didn’t realize you were in charge of this little operation. Not exactly police-sanctioned, is it?”
Hell, no, it wasn’t.
“I’m not here as a cop,” Logan said, giving me a squeeze just to prove a point to Devlin. “I’m here to watch out for Cassie.”
“Funny,” Devlin said, not looking as though he found any of this amusing, “that’s exactly why I’m here.”
The testosterone was rising to a dangerous level. The air was practically bristling. Just what I needed before a big fight—a big fight.
“Logan, get a grip,” I said. “Devlin, get your demons.”
I squirmed out of Logan’s grasp, even though a part of me really appreciated that big, strong arm around me. Then I walked out in front of both of the men in my life to lead the way to the Faery in my life.
Chapter Fourteen
Things started happening pretty fast after that. And you know me—I’m all for top speed. But there was a part
of me that wondered if we weren’t rushing into trouble. Which, of course, we were.
I felt the stares of dozens of demon eyes boring into my back as we walked to the cars and knew that some, if not most of Devlin’s little handpicked army would like nothing better than to kill me and forget this whole thing. Apparently, though, they were more scared of going against Devlin than they were of facing the queen.
Worked for me.
Logan drove his SUV. I was in the front passenger seat, and Devlin was in the back, with Jasmine right beside him. The other demons were behind us in a parade of cars that I tried not to pay attention to. I was twisting my hands in my lap and trying to ignore the flutter of dragon wings in my stomach. My mouth was dry, my palms were damp and I was suddenly wishing I were anywhere but there.
“Nothing to be nervous about,” Logan said, and I heard Jasmine snort from the backseat. One day she was going to blow her nose right off her face.
“Right,” I said.
The headlights of passing cars flickered across his features, and I took a second to admire the view. Even when he irritated me—which, yes, was often—Logan could still make me think of hot summer nights and long, slow kisses. (I already explained how I have inappropriately timed fantasies.)
He glanced at me. “I’ll talk to this chick, get her to let Brady go.”
Now Devlin snorted.
“Logan…”
He threw a dirty look into the rearview mirror and said, “If Brady’s there against his will, it’s a police matter. I’ll explain it and we’ll go home.”
“You make a mistake if you underestimate the queen,” Jasmine said, her voice soft, but heavy with dire portents. (She was excellent at that.)
Logan steered the car along PCH until he came to the right drive, and I told him to park on the highway. No point in letting ol’ Vanessa get a heads-up that we were coming.
Let’s not forget my ass had been kicked by this queen already, and I was in no way ready for that to happen again. Although I have to say that I really wanted another shot at the bitch. Yes, yes, Cassidy Burke, allergic to exercise of all kinds and known to need a nap after just watching someone else being athletic, was ready for a smack-down.
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