Gone With the Minion

by Renee George

  “Uh, Eliza,” said Afriel. “That’s not exactly—“

  I put my hand on the angel’s shoulder. “Don’t bother.”

  Christ on a cracker with cheese. I’d just gotten out of the biggest, hottest frying pan in the world, and my sisters had piggybacked over each other to jump right back inside it.

  Oh, Hell.

  Chapter 18

  One year later...

  “I’m back,” Elise said, as she strode into the house holding a document in her hand and waving it around. The screen door swooshed closed behind her. “I’m in!” She grinned at me as I sat on the couch, my son Johnny, swaddled in my arms.

  Johnny was two and half months old now, and while the delivery had been its own version of Hell, he had been worth every second of every bad thing I’d ever experienced in my life. Being his mom, promising to love him and protect him, this had been the greatest bargain of my life.

  I glanced up at my sister. It had taken me a few months to get used to all three of them wearing modern clothes. They all had their own distinct sense of style. Elise wore a fitted jumpsuit with a pair of blue jean heels.

  “That’s great news.” I’d used my contacts to get her, Eliza, and Charlotte birth certificates, social security numbers, and high school diplomas. The last one, Elise had specifically requested. “You’re an official college student. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Mineral Area College is a great place to get my toes wet,” she said. “Plus, it’s close by. I’m not quite ready to venture out on my own.”

  David came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishrag. I adored a man who cooked and cleaned. “Elise, you are welcome to stay with us as long as you want.”

  “Thanks, David,” she said. “If I become a doctor—”

  “When,” I corrected. I leaned down and sniffed Johnny’s head. I couldn’t get enough of new baby smell.

  “When,” she agreed. “Is Eliza back yet?”

  “Not yet.” Our youngest sister had been sent on a mission to Springfield. She was cryptic about the details, but I wasn’t worried. Working for Leonard had, so far, been the complete opposite of my minion work for Moloch. Not that her matchmaking was hearts and flowers. Leonard was a demon, after all.

  David sat down beside me on the couch. He put his arm around me, and I snuggled in. It was easy to forget my past sometimes since my present life was beyond spectacular. But two of my sisters were still tied to demons, and that was unacceptable. David and the PSPR boys had already been researching ways to break their bargains. I just hoped it didn’t take another 150 years.

  “What about Charlotte?” asked Elise.

  “What about me?” Char said, wearing a peach flouncy skirt and heels to match. She walked into the living room with Ennis on her tail. They’d been working in the basement all morning, and she was holding a pair of lady’s western boots. She and Ennis looked mighty pleased with themselves. “The soles are a little thick but check these out.” She punched the heel of the boot three times, and a pointy rod shot out from the tip. She and Ennis fist bumped. Charlotte was learning modern ways quickly.

  “I don’t want you chasing down demons, Char.”

  “Well, you don’t get to tell me what to do anymore, Liv,” she replied. “It’s cool, though, right?”

  “Awesome,” I said sourly.

  “They’ll be nice to have in Branson.” She punched the heel three times, and the rod retracted. “Kobal is sending me there to track down a musician. Some guitar player.”

  My heartbeat tripled as it always did when Charlotte or Eliza was sent to do minion work. “Be careful.”

  “I will.” She made a cross over her chest with her finger. “Cross my heart.”

  “I got to go,” Ennis said. “I have some errands I need to run.”

  “You staying for supper, Ennis?” David enquired. “Frank and Ray are coming over.”

  My heart sped up again but this time with happiness. Ray had decided to do his last three chemo treatments after everything that went down. He said he wanted to stick around to see what happened next. Yesterday, the doctor told him he was in remission.

  “You betcha,” Ennis said. “I will be here.”

  Johnny made a small noise that roused my attention. “I think someone’s getting hungry.” I sniffed as a poo smell crept up from his britches. “Or needs a diaper change.”

  “I’m out,” said Char.

  Elise’s eyes widened. “I’m coming with you.”

  Ennis was already out the door, without a glance back.

  “Well, crap.”

  “Damn, sweetheart, our boy smells like he’s got the devil in him.”

  I plugged my nose. “Or a really stinky angel.” I handed David our son. “Your turn.”

  David laughed. “I would change all the poopy diapers in the world if it means I get to hold you every day for the rest of our lives.”

  I tilted my head back, and David kissed me. After, I blinked up at him, my heart bursting with the depth of my love. I caressed his face. “You got yourself a deal.”

  -The End-

  Devil On A Hot Tin Roof - Chapter One

  Madder Than Hell Book 2

  What happens when you make a bargain with a demon to be his lawful minion? You join the family business to keep yourself out of Hell, of course!

  Ex-ghost, Charlotte Madder, and her sisters can't catch a break when it comes to their demon-sized problems. Charlotte's made a deal with an egomaniacal demon lord named Kobal, the self-proclaimed Entertainment Director for Hell, and he is always on the lookout for talented souls. When Kobal calls on Charlotte to do his bidding, she can't say no. Literally.

  Charlotte, in her new flesh and blood body, tracks Kobal's target, Aloysius the Magnificent, a magician, to Branson, Missouri. On her mission, she meets sexy-hunka-hunka Jared Jackson—a man with deep, soul-binding ties to Aloysius, and their attraction is immediate. But she soon discovers that in order to do Kobal's bidding, it might mean sending this new man in her life straight to Hell. Charlotte is torn between two masters—her demon boss and her heart.

  Charlotte and Jared's attraction intensifies as they fight a common enemy while trying to keep Charlotte out of jail. Treacherous lesser demons, a wily old magician, and a double-dealing soul stealing demon lord are about to learn Hell hath no fury like a Madder than Hell sister!

  Chapter One

  Orange, in my estimation, is not the new black. It is a color that sallows pink skin tones and gives someone like me the appearance of being sickly. Which is how I currently felt as I grudgingly dialed the touch-tone phone in the sterile blue room. And wishing I’d just done the job Kobal, a demon lord, had sent me to do.

  You see, I am beholden to Kobal for one hundred years because of a deal I'd made a year ago under the most dire of circumstances. He wasn’t nearly as frightening as the demon lord my sister Olivia had made a deal with back in 1868 after Poppa died and left her to take care of me and our two younger sisters, Eliza and Elise. The other landowners and the bank made it impossible for four women during the post-civil war south to run a farm. It was then that Olivia, in her own act of desperation, had made a deal with this wretched demon named Moloch.

  I’d been isolated by that horrible Moloch in Purgatory when he was trying to manipulate Olivia last year. But then Lord Kobal appeared in a shower of gold streamers and red balloons looking every inch the ringmaster. In my closest estimation, he reminded me of the fella from the movie The Greatest Show On Earth, all top hat and coattails, a real showman. He told me Olivia could be freed from her demonic contract and my other sisters could become living, breathing mortals.

  All I had to do was track down folks who'd made soul-bargains with Kobal, you know the kind where a person gets talent or wealth or love, and at the end of their life, they get a starring role in Kobal's three ring circus. I couldn’t think of a darn reason to say no. I mean, other than the obvious, you know, soul-related reasons, but I’d been flitting in and out of Olivia�
��s exciting life for one hundred and fifty years, and the deal gave me the chance to save her life. In truth, though, I think a part of me selfishly wanted to do some living in the real world.

  “Such an exciting life,” I muttered as I dialed Olivia’s phone number. There were two rings before I heard an automated voice say, “You have a call from inmate…”

  “Charlotte Madder,” I said in the space provided.

  “…at the Taney County Jail. Do you accept the charges?”

  “Christ almighty!” I heard Olivia, my eldest sister, exclaim. “Yes.”

  “Do you accept the charges?” the voice asked again.

  “Yes,” Liv said emphatically. “I accept.”

  “Hold while you are connected.”

  After three short clicks and a second of static, I took a calming breath, and said, “Olivia, are you there?”

  “I declare, Charlotte. How in tarnation did you end up in jail?”

  Well, I’d certainly shocked my older sister. Liv only went full-on Southern when her emotions got the better of her. I swallowed the cold lump in my throat as I tried not to cry. “Assault. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need a lawyer and bail money.”

  Three hours and some change earlier, before all Hell broke loose…

  “Oh, God. I have died and gone to Heaven.” Not literally, of course. I hadn’t even gone to Heaven the first time I died, but Vaskin’s Deli on Gretna Road in Branson, Missouri felt pretty darn close to what I imagined it might be like. I took another huge bite of a giant gyro, the lamb and beef, combined with creamy tzatziki infused with bright cucumber, and all those veggies inside a grilled pita bread exploded my taste buds. “Yu—urmm-ie,” I said while chewing and drooling over my plate of food all at the same time.

  At eight-forty, it was dark out, and with twenty minutes until close, the dining room only had three empty tables, a testimony to the excellent food. I liked the daylight, but the night was when I really let loose—on some demonic heinie, that is. I’d put my very first mission for Kobal on hold so I could track down one of Moloch’s foot soldiers who had made it onto my sister Liv’s radar. Olivia might have trapped her treacherous demon lord away where he couldn’t hurt us anymore, but his lesser demons, without a master to keep them in check, were still riding around in human meat suits creating havoc for the humans. We Madder sisters felt a keen responsibility clean up the ghastly mess.

  Besides, I figured Kobal could wait one more day for me to track down his man, after all, he’d been waiting since he’d made the deal with the magician in 1965. Unlike the demon currently residing in Roger Willis, who needed to be banished right now. Willis owned the restaurant two buildings down from Vasken’s, and according to his sister-in-law’s post on the forum DemonsAreAmongUs.com, Roger’s entire personality had changed after he suffered a heart attack two years before. He’d been technically dead for more than fifteen minutes before doctors revived him.

  I had bad news for his family. Roger had died, sure enough. And a demon had stepped inside his cooling corpse. The sister-in-law’s post had talked about Roger’s cruelty to her sister and nieces, especially in the last year. On Moloch’s leash, ol’ Roger had been different, but not a complete rogue. Off the leash? He’d turned batshit awful. This was one of many posts that compounded Olivia’s guilt about Moloch’s lesser demons running amok. And I would do anything to help my sister rid the earth of demon scum.

  In-between trying to track down the decrepit magician, a task that had turned up absolutely nothing for me, I’d also done a little investigating of Roger Willis. Willis’s restaurant closed at eight every evening but Sundays when it was closed for the day, and believe me, the irony of him operating a family restaurant and pretending to be a good Christian by closing on Sundays while terrorizing his own family wasn’t lost on me. He was a creature of habit, though, which made my job a little easier. He spent about an hour every evening doing paperwork, supervising clean up, or whatnot, and then he would leave five minutes after nine. That gave me a few minutes to enjoy my meal until it was time to take him down.

  I took another juicy bite. Lord have mercy, you can never understand how good real food tastes until you’ve been a ghost forever and a day.

  I stopped mid-chew when a large, masculine hand holding a napkin interrupted my mini-vacation to food paradise. I glanced up and tried hard to swallow the massive amount of food still in my mouth.

  “You got a little sauce on your chin,” a man with pale blue eyes, short dark hair, and bone structure that would have given Da Vinci a new model for his golden ratio of beauty.

  I finished swallowing the huge bite, then delicately took my right index finger, and in a very lady-like gesture, I swiped up my chin, capturing the offending glob of tzatziki and pushed it right into my mouth. I smiled at the man. “Too good to waste.”

  He grinned. “Fair enough.” The guy set the napkin down on the table. It was summer, and he wore a short-sleeved tee-shirt, Royals’ blue—you know, like the Kansas City Royals—and the thing fit snugger than a pair of Spanx and showed off his broad chest and muscular arms. He cocked his head sideways. “Where you from? Arkansas?”

  “Georgia.” By way of Limbo. I picked nervously at a lacy, decorative seam in my pale pink skirt. “I haven’t been home in a long while, though.” My accent wasn’t as strong as it used to be, but I hadn’t been able to master a Midwest accent like my sister Liv.

  “I’m an Okie, myself.” When I gave him a blank stare, he added, “From Oklahoma, just outside of Tulsa.” He sat in the empty table next to mine. “What’s good here?”

  “The food,” I said, and waved the last bite of my gyro at him before I finished it off.

  He grinned. “What are you eating?”

  “Vasken’s Famous Gyro.” It was the first thing on the menu, and one of the best things I’d ever tasted. When I was growing up, there wasn’t any such thing as Mediterranean food around our parts. Of course, that had been in the mid-1860s, and there weren’t restaurants on every corner. I hated to say it, but the variety of delicious foods available nowadays had been the greatest pleasure of being alive again.

  After a few minutes of him sitting there across from me at the nearby table and me finishing my roasted garlic hummus and fried pita wedges, I wiped my mouth with the napkin he’d provided and leaned forward. “You know you have to order at the counter, right? And you best hurry, the place closes shortly.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve already had dinner, but I enjoyed the view too much to leave.” His gaze made it clear I was the view in question.

  My cheeks warmed at the compliment. “You got some kind of food fetish?” I’d read about people who like to watch other people eat in one of my sister Eliza’s magazines. That girl was crazy for popular culture.

  “Nope.” His eyes crinkled at the corners when he grinned, and it made my heart beat a might faster. “Just an appreciation for real beauty.”

  Now my heart hammered in my chest. I’d had a few men make passes at me since I got my body back, but none that made me fantasize about settling down and having babies. “Uhm, thanks.”

  The guy stood up, his chair squeaking as it slid back from him. “I’m Jared Jackson,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  I debated whether to tell him or not, but there didn’t seem any harm in it. “I’m Charlotte.” I picked my purse up from the seat next to mine. “Charlotte Madder.”

  “Tourist or transplanted townie?” Jared asked.

  “Neither. Business.” And by business, I mean the business of tracking down talented entertainers for the demon lord Kobal who owned my butt. Except in the case of Roger Willis and ilk. Those unseemly characters got a one-way invite to Hell. “You?”

  “I moved here about a year ago.”

  I settled my purse onto my shoulder. “Cool.” Jared was fun to look at, but I was on a mission of demonic proportions, and I didn’t need any mortal distractions. “I best be getting on. It was nice to meet you, Jared.”
>
  “Have you ever played mini-golf?” Jared asked abruptly.

  It was an odd question. “No, I never have.” Another thing invented well after my time.

  “How about you meet me for mini-golf tomorrow night?” He flashed a charming smile.

  I know that modern-day people think the South was all like that Gone with the Wind movie, but let me tell you something. It wasn’t. A woman in the 1860s had less rights than your pet dog. But we had protocols for courting. You never, ever, went out alone with a caller. I swear my Poppa would just die if he got a look at that Tinder app. “I don’t even know you.”

  “That’s the point of mini-golf. It’s a nice slow game in a family friendly place where we can get to know each other.” He shrugged. “And if you don’t have fun or you feel uncomfortable at any time, you can always leave.”

  I pressed my hand to my chest. “Why, I don’t know...” I needed to stay focused. Besides, I worked in an extremely dangerous business, especially for humans. In other words, even if I wanted to, dating a guy while I was on a mission would be dangerous for him and dumb as dirt for me.

  Jared produced a rectangle piece of paper from seemingly nowhere. It was a business card for a place called The Tin Roof Revelry. There was an address and a website, and it boasted being Branson’s number one variety show. He flipped it over, and a handwritten number was scrawled on the back. “That’s my cell phone number. Text me if you change your mind.”

  I girded my loins, because frankly, that traitorous part of my body needed some major girding, and took the card. “I’ll let you know.”

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  Paranormal Mysteries & Romances

  By Renee George