Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “Mm-hm.” I tried to sound sleepy.

  “I wonder. If I do it again, can I arrange to get a tour of Viking heaven before I have to come back?”

  I groaned. “Promise me you’ll tell me if you’re going to do that again? You could get yourself into real trouble.”

  “How?” I heard the shrug in her voice. “I can’t die.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way,” I said positively.

  “How come everybody thinks I’ll get in trouble if I’m not supervised?” Cricket demanded. “Girlie, I’m ninety-eight. I’d have been dead years ago if I needed watching.”

  This made sense. I took a different approach. “Well, suppose you jumped in the river and went over a dam and got stuck in a turbine? You’d just whirl around down there, drowning, or maybe getting chewed up, then coming back to life, then getting chewed up again—” There was a visual I didn’t need. “You gave me heart failure this time.” Cricket was good at guilt. Maybe she was susceptible to it.

  There was a long pause. “Gotcha. Okay.”

  Halleluia, that worked. “Can we sleep now?”

  “It’s after four-fifteen. I’ll sleep now. Thank you for your patience, Amanda. You’re really sweet.”

  In the dark, turning over in bed, I rolled my eyes. “Good night.” But I felt warm anyway. It was nice to be thanked.

  I listened to Cricket breathe until I knew she had dropped off.

  And now I couldn’t sleep.

  I’d spent my whole adult life—my real life, before I slid imperceptibly into the Regional Office—trying to keep my parents alive. Mom hadn’t wanted to live. That was the worst. I was only fifteen when she started getting sick. She was ready to die, and she had only maybe five percent of Cricket’s enthusiasm and joy, even on a good day. It felt like I was always talking her into living a little longer. I’d felt so selfish and guilty about that. I was a kid. I didn’t see how I could stand living alone with my dad. Little did I know he was only waiting for his turn.

  Of course he couldn’t wait. When I was twenty, he started getting sick, too. For a while they were nip and tuck, Mom in a private hospital, Dad at the Veterans Administration. Home for a week, back to the emergency room, back to intensive care, back to surgery, back to recovery, back to a nursing facility, back home. One parent, then the other. Rinse, repeat. Sometimes both at once.

  That life was hell. Not a patch on a cubicle in the Regional Office.

  Right now I didn’t blame Cricket one bit for fleeing her cushy retirement home. Old age, my dad said once, was not for sissies. Wasn’t a picnic for the bystanders, either.

  On the upside, I had a feeling I’d actually convinced Cricket not to go on a tour of all the world’s underworlds. She wouldn’t do it now. Not because she wasn’t curious, but because it would upset me.

  I warmed up so much, thinking of that, that I was wide awake again.

  I shoved my arm behind my head and stared at the ceiling, thinking.

  How had I gone from living miserably to storing my half-alive self at my desk, numb and grateful for it, to this? I took stock of my new life for the first time, a little trembly in my legs and gut, because I was suddenly aware of how few options I’d survived on for so long.

  I had a home. I had a job that I could control and amazing pay. I had a pack of roommates who drove me crazy, who kept me awake, kept me interested. I cared about them.

  And they didn’t abuse that. Everyone here had their own thing going, and they took care of themselves. Well, Jee was very high maintenance. Thank goodness for Reg. Reg came along and needed suppressing, and there Jee was with jerk-whispering skills. Now she required his constant care.

  Was that what a relationship was like?

  Wouldn’t know. Never had one.

  Beth not only took care of herself, she tried to take care of everyone else. That went over okay, surprisingly. I didn’t let her mess with me. Pog let Beth into the kitchen, as long as she understood the pecking order: Pog chef, Reg sous-chef, Beth scullery maid. Pog was the one who best understood my dad’s favorite phrase for me, good little soldier. I had the feeling her good little soldier act was part of a don’t look at me thing, but I didn’t probe.

  I let Beth poke at Cricket. I didn’t poke people who had their pose worked out.

  Beth kept pushing Cricket toward closure to spare Cricket’s family anxiety and keep Doyle off our backs. Beth’s rules for right and wrong were deeply mixed up with her rules for what nice people do.

  Cricket poked. But Cricket cared. She really took an interest. I’d stopped cringing when she came at me now. She got me, and she put her finger right on the sore spot and somehow made it not so bad.

  I realized I wasn’t just trying to excuse Cricket’s taking care of me. I was trying to excuse my letting her do it. I enjoyed it.

  This was a big no-no in the Army.

  It’s not like I never took care of anybody. But it was not okay for me to be on the receiving end. A good little soldier doesn’t need taking care of.

  A part of me panicked whenever Cricket said one of those things that just melted me inside. I told myself to hold on, not get weak, not let myself open. Because why would she do that? It couldn’t last. Mostly my panic said, Holy shit, I’m feeling something, that can’t be good.

  Cautiously, rebelling against the panic, I thought of her saying thank you just now, and I relaxed.

  I took care of her. She took care of me.

  Crazy, huh?

  CRICKET

  “This is so exciting!” Cricket said for the fourth time. She bounced on the van seat. Her new teammates looked at one another.

  Cricket knew she should be trying to mimic their languid boredom, but that just wasn’t her.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Beth said for the sixth time. “You know you don’t have to have sex with anybody.”

  “Then why do it?” Cricket bounced some more. It was a glorious summer morning. Pog turned the van off the highway onto a country road. “Look, there’s a sign!” The sign said, Bristol Renaissance Faire. Thys waye to chariot parkinge. “I wanna have all the fun!” Cricket couldn’t wait.

  She wondered if she would meet a knight in shining armor at the Faire. Or one of those guys with a guitar and a big feather in his velvet hat. Arman had always said those guys were gays back then, but this was now. Maybe the Faire couldn’t get enough gays to wear velvet hats in this heat. What did Faire work pay, after all? She sent a slanting glance at Amanda, calm and silent beside her in the van. Okay, she’d save the questions for stuff she couldn’t ask the feathered hat gays themselves.

  The van turned into a gravel drive behind another van, and another van, and another van. Teams of teenagers with bright orange wands waved each vehicle into a parking spot on the grass. As soon as each vehicle parked, it opened all its doors, and hordes of small children emerged.

  The demon sluts got out of their van, looking, in Cricket’s opinion, like a million dollars.

  Pog was dressed up like Cricket’s great-granddaughter Lauren, a Goth princess, all torn black tulle and sparkly tiara, with black high-top sneakers and a handbag that looked like it was made from a polyester skunk.

  Beth wore a nice khaki wrap-around skirt and soft pink blouse that looked much too old for her. Amanda explained to Cricket that Beth’s role-play today was being Pog’s mom. That wouldn’t fly if a man thought how young Beth looked. But he probably wouldn’t be looking at Beth’s face, because Beth’s skirt blew open with the breeze and revealed that Beth wasn’t wearing underwear. The right guy, the one Beth specialized in, would find her.

  “She specializes?” Cricket was fascinated.

  Amanda ambled beside her through the chariot parkinge lotte in a loose-fitting sundress, flat sandals, and a handbag almost as big as the dress. If she was dressed up as anybody, Cricket couldn’t tell.

  Ahead, Jee complained about the rutted grass underfoot, tottering on Reg’s supporting arm, wearing spiky high-heeled shoes and a
skin-tight leopard-print dress with a big straw sunhat and a tiny gold purse on a long chain. Cricket wondered about the leopard-print dress but, remembering how Jee had got hysterical over a compliment on her tiger-print outfit, she held her peace.

  Cricket had chosen one of her spandex biking outfits and running shoes with no socks. She’d remembered to turn her hair dark today, and tied it up on her head into two big black fluffy knobs like Mickey Mouse ears. She felt very daring. “Do you think I should specialize?”

  “Let’s get you scoring first,” Amanda said drily.

  “Explain this scoring to me,” Cricket said.

  The two of them sauntered side by side down the gravel track laid through an old oak savannah. Under the high trees sat short little shacks in twisty winding rows: funny mugs, handmade brooms, beer, ye olde paintings, witches’ hats, beer, handmade drums, roasted nuts in paper cones, an outdoor theater showing a performance of slapstick that looked a lot like vaudeville to Cricket, and beer. The rest of the team scattered: Beth (pretending to be a cougar) trailing discreetly behind Pog (pretending to be an out-of-control teenager), and Reg (wearing a silk Hawaiian shirt and dark silk trousers) either strutting, pimp-like and lordly beside Jee, or playing lowly serf to Jee’s grand lady act. Jee only did grand lady. Cricket guessed she had gotten her own lowly serf stuff well out of the way in her pre-succubus years.

  “First of all, Beth’s not just being protective of you. You don’t have to fuck anybody to score. You just score higher if you do.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Amanda shrugged. “Home Office values. Sex is bad unless it’s for making babies. We don’t make babies. So the Regional Office makes points whenever we fuck. But arousal counts too. So if you raise a boner on a guy, boom, that’s eighteen points.”

  “Why eighteen?”

  “Who understands Regional Office accounting? You remember all those soccer boys, and the bike team we passed on the trail the other day? Did you count them as we passed?”

  “No. Boy, guess I should have, huh?”

  “You get in the habit, when it means money. I’ll help you with the monthly report. There’s a way to double-score those guys if you know how to do it.”

  “And then we get paid extra. Wow. So how many—wait, I remember, De—the recruiter said if we score three times, we meet our quota.”

  “Right.”

  “But how do you know you’ve scored? I mean, you can’t take the pants down on all those high school soccer boys. Can you?”

  “You can count your score by smell. Give it time. You’ll train your nose to detect arousal in a man. Like Beth says, you don’t have to touch him. Get him hard and boom, that’s a third of your quota. Make him come, that’s a bonus.”

  Cricket smiled reminiscently. “I made my husband come in his pants with my dancing a few times. My third. Now he was a horny guy.”

  “Easier than that. Beth gets them off with a touch. Jee just makes eye contact and boom. What’s more, it’s probably the best sex they’ll ever have, because you’ve got succubus mojo. It practically incapacitates them. I don’t mess with it much, myself. I go after the meat-and-potatoes guy, the one who wants to get off and isn’t fussy how.”

  Cricket thought about that for a while. “That could be convenient. Do you get repeat customers?”

  “I don’t bother. Not worth it. We get paid best for volume, not for brand loyalty. Pay attention.” Amanda nodded toward a pair of obvious dads dragged out to the Faire on their day off, huddled over pint cups of beer. A pile of shopping bags sat on their picnic table. “Those guys have been here for hours. The wives and kids are off somewhere. It’s only eleven, so I’m guessing the poor bastards won’t escape until long after lunch. Let’s say we go sit down.” She looked Cricket over with narrowed eyes. “Can you do a little younger?”

  Cricket thought about it. “Not if I can’t see myself.”

  “Here.” Amanda steered her into a booth selling princess get-ups for little girls, complete with sparkle wands, sparkle tiaras, sparkle socks, sparkle shoes, sparkly pointed princess hats with long sparkly scarves floating from them, sparkle rings, and an endless array of fluffy puffy spangled tulle skirts in all colors...but mostly pink. She winced.

  Cricket grinned. “Turn it all black, and Pog would have a field day in here.” She peered into the mirror. “Younger, huh? Usually you’re after me to look older.” But with a little thought she was able to dial back her age until she looked like herself at eighteen. Slap a tiara on her and, hm, she realized she looked like the average customer in the sparkly booth. Nine years old.

  “No!” Amanda shook her head, laughing. “I take it back!”

  “Didn’t think so,” Cricket said smugly. “What then? Who are we?”

  “Hm. With all that dayglo spandex, you’ve got two choices: bored teenager or hot grandma.”

  “Oo! Oo!”

  Amanda smiled. “Go for it.”

  Cricket mugged into the mirror for a minute, pulling at her face and smoothing it over until she thought she had a combination of herself at forty and the more adult-looking Delilah. She knew better than to say that name. She pulled the ties out of her hair and rubbed her hands over it until it darkened and straightened and lengthened sleekly down to her collarbone.

  “The hair doesn’t go with the spandex,” Amanda objected.

  Tilting the mirror, Cricket had to admit, she was sultry from the neck up and noisy spandex from the neck down. “Uh. Hm. Okay.” She tousled her hair until it went lighter, shorter, and messier. “Like I just took my bike helmet off,” she suggested.

  “Mmmmyeah. Here.” Amanda handed her a lipstick. “It’s not red enough, but it’ll do.”

  “I’ll make it redder,” Cricket said blithely, swiping at her lips. Yeah. Now she looked like one of those gals in the menopause medication ads from Modern Maturity. She ignored Amanda’s astonished face and dove across the path to the picnic bench.

  AMANDA

  I watched Cricket swagger up to the picnic bench where our marks slumped over their beers and their wives’ shopping bags. She looked like nothing I’d ever seen, biking spandex and dayglo sneakers and, wait, how for the love of Mike had she made that lipstick redder? We could modify our bodies, sure, but our makeup? Clearly nobody had ever told Cricket you can’t do that. About anything.

  Because now she was chatting up the marks. One of them actually gave her a sip of his beer!

  Time to work. I went to the beer shack next door, bought four pints, and hurried back to catch up with my rookie teammate before she outpaced me. “Did you drink up all their beer?” I scolded her. “I’m sorry,” I said to the marks. “She’s such a mooch. Here.”

  “Thanks,” said one, and I earmarked him as mine just for that. I sat down opposite him, beside Cricket. The marks were seated side-by-side, so I guessed they weren’t close friends. Good. Should be no problem to peel one off for a quickie. I stretched my legs out and let my ankle touch Mr. Polite’s hairy calf. His eyes flew to mine. I gave him a reassuring nod.

  “Amanda, this is Ben and this is Cameron,” Cricket said. “We’ve been talking about kids.”

  “That’s so sexy,” I said, deadpan. Hairy-legged Ben looked at me with widened eyes. I looked him straight in the eye and sent him a jolt of succubus goodness through our leg contact. He smiled tremulously. I let the eye contact last a moment longer, signaling, Yes, really.

  Cricket was watching wide-eyed.

  “They love this place,” Cameron said broadly, showing off in front of his buddy. “Costs a fortune but it’s worth it. I take ’em here and wear ’em out, and then the wife and I can get some nooky time.”

  Cricket cackled. “I know what you mean.” She held up a hand. “My second husband had two boys from his first marriage. You gotta get creative if you want to keep it fresh.”

  “Huh,” Cameron said scornfully. “Catch my wife being creative in the sack.”

  Cricket leaned forward and put her hand on his beer-
cup-holding hand. “You never know. She’s going crazy with the kids. Take it from me. You just lead the way.” I could almost see the jolt of succubus juice she sent into his hand. I knew Beth was a sexual politics crusader. Now Cricket, too? They should get together and compare playbooks. “Married sex is the best sex anyway.”

  Cameron squinted. “How do you figure?”

  Cricket expanded as if she’d been having this conversation all her life. For all I knew, maybe she had.

  “You know each other already. There’s no first-time awkwardness. Stuff happening ‘off schedule’ and like that, know what I mean.” She gave him the elbow. Good grief, she was toying with the guy. He had a red-hot boner, I could smell, and from the sweat on his forehead I guessed that he was closer to popping off than he wanted to be. “You drive each other crazy, then you let off steam. You have a fight and hoo boy!” She waved her hand in front of her face. “Fireworks!”

  That reminded me. About now Ben ought to be swelling up like a fresh mosquito bite. I sniffed. Yeah, full boner. I could feel his arousal through our leg contact. His beer was gone.

  I tossed back the rest of my beer. “Pardon me. Ladies’ room.” I collected Ben’s glance, got up, and lounged toward the potty building, a substantial cinderblock box with a nicely sheltered alley behind it.

  Behind me, I heard Ben say, “Uh, me too.”

  When we got back to the picnic table, arriving separately, there were three little girls in pink sparkly tutus swarming around and on the table. Cricket was still touching Cameron’s hand. I thought, Uh-oh, just as a young woman came marching up with a glare for Cameron.

  Cricket was saying, “Trust me, she’s the best thing that ever happened to you in bed.” She looked up at the new arrival and smiled. Suddenly I saw that she had grown back some wrinkles. Cameron glanced behind him guiltily. When he looked back at Cricket he did a double-take.

  The wife clapped a hand on hubby’s shoulder. He turned to her again, just as Cricket gave his hand a final pat. Cameron spasmed just a bit. Oops.

  And there it was.

  Cricket was using her succubus power to mend this married guy’s sex life. Good grief!