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

by Jennifer Stevenson

  The piano and cello combo started up “Lazy Afternoon.”

  Cricket took Lauren’s arm. They slow-danced in the middle of a widening empty space on the floor.

  “Beth, I wanna thank you. You were right. I think that did the job.” Cricket said later, when they were all jammed into the Lair’s rooftop hot tub with Irish coffees in their hands.

  Beth smiled.

  Across the tub from her, Reg blurted. “For you? Or for them?”

  “Both.”

  Cricket drained her mug, set it on the deck, rolled over, and shrank herself down so she could stretch-stretch-stretch in the few inches of space between bodies and not kick anybody. Then she sat back down in the space between Amanda on her right and Beth on her left, and grew bigger again. Everyone’s legs tangled companionably. The hot tub was so small, they were jammed in, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip.

  Cricket felt like she would never have to be lonely again. She was full up with big good feelings.

  She told Beth, “This demon body is terrific. Yep, you were totally right. I got to show them I love them, and tell them to settle down and stop worrying about me, and I didn’t have to say anything else.”

  “But you told them you were going on that cruise,” Beth said.

  “It isn’t what I said. I used demon mojo. I learned how to do that at the Ren Faire, remember?” Cricket pushed Amanda’s shoulder with her shoulder. “You think up what you wanna say, and you wrap it up like a present in your hand, and you touch them, and the message goes into them like a—like a slug of Mogen David. Sweet in the mouth and warm in the heart. I tried it on Sharon first.”

  “Is that when she started crying?” Beth said.

  “I never felt so sorry for her. She’s crabby all the time because that worthless mother of hers, who divorced my second son, was such a flake. Sharon wound up being mama to her own mama. Never got over it. I used the mojo to try to...make her feel better. Settled her right down,” Cricket said with awe. “Wish I’d known how to do that before.”

  “You weren’t a demon before,” Beth said.

  “I dunno about that. I mean, no, of course I wasn’t a demon before. But maybe I could have done it. I’ve felt like I did it sometimes. In the past. You know how it is. When you wish you could say a thing, but you know they’re not gonna listen, and they won’t take a hug because of whatever. So you just do a little touch.”

  Glances flew around the hot tub. Reg was the first to speak. “I wish I could of told my ma I loved her.”

  Jee looked at him. Cricket watched with interest as her eyes got shiny. Jee put one hand on his shoulder.

  Then something really interesting happened.

  Reg clonked his head against Jee’s, like a kitty head-bump.

  Jee went very still, except for her chest moving up and down.

  On Jee’s left, Amanda took a sudden breath.

  On Reg’s right, Pog flinched away from him.

  Amanda looked across at Pog, then at Cricket on her other left, and relaxed a little.

  And warmth flooded Cricket’s chest. Under cover of the water, she reached for Amanda’s hand and lay her own hand over it.

  Beth gave a convulsive sniffle and threw her arm around Pog for a one-arm hug.

  Nobody moved. Their legs tangled under the murky warm water, and the water seemed to hum.

  Ten long seconds later, Pog said, “Okay, that’s enough.”

  Jee stood quickly, water streaming off her body, and clambered out onto the deck. She pulled Reg up. Reg followed her to the stairs and down, sporting an astonishing schlong.

  Pog got out and gathered up mugs, not looking at anyone.

  Cricket gave Beth a hug. “Thanks, cookie. I’m glad we did it.”

  “Me, too. Wait, I’ll do that!” Beth leaped up to help Pog take the dirty mugs downstairs.

  When they were all gone but Cricket and Amanda, Cricket said softly, “The good thing, the best thing?”

  Amanda didn’t even grunt. She was listening, though. Cricket felt it.

  “I spent a lot of years making that family. With help. My husbands. Their first wives. Everybody does their bit, yeah, but I did a lot of it. I don’t look back, you know,” she said, stating the obvious.

  Amanda’s eyes were closed, but she smiled. Cricket felt heard.

  “Today I looked back. And it was good. All that love. All those connections. People tied to each other with love. I could see how my investments in all that love had—had matured.” It was a funny way to put it, but that was how it had felt. “And I felt stinking rich.”

  Amanda didn’t say anything. She relaxed beside Cricket, letting her long legs float out like tentacles in the hot water.

  Cricket breathed with care, as if she had met a wise deer in the woods. She felt Amanda’s hand under hers, under the water. The hot tub boiled with good feelings.

  AMANDA

  Next day, Monday, was blustery but hot. More thunderclouds blew by overhead. Cricket and I took the bikes out after breakfast.

  “Where we going today?” she said.

  “You pick.”

  “Hmmm. The lake again. That place where we had our picnic. Will they let us in even if we don’t own a boat?”

  I said, “Who says we don’t own a boat?”

  She laughed.

  We turned our bikes north along Ravenswood to Montrose and then east, toward Lake Michigan.

  “You’re kidding. What kind of boat? I always wanted to go sailing.”

  “You’ve never been sailing?” There was something else we could fix on Cricket’s bucket list. I’d been feeling for a long time that it was my personal responsibility to see to it that that list got checked off down to nothing.

  Cricket shook her head. “One of my aunt’s cousins drowned when he was a kid. Scarred her for life. I never really learned how to swim.”

  We screeched to a halt at a red light. “Never?” I squinted at her. “You’ve never swum?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay, that’s it,” I decided. “Today you get in the water.” I turned north.

  “Where you going?” Cricket hustled up beside me.

  “Target. Bathing suits. Now.” We dodged around the El pylons that run up Broadway at that spot.

  “But—”

  “Swimming is on your bucket list, isn’t it?”

  “What isn’t?” But that shut her up, as I’d known it would.

  We stopped at the Target on Broadway and grabbed the first two swimsuits on the rack, not bothering to check the size. I also picked up a kickboard. Something she could hold onto if she panicked.

  It was still too early for the human hordes. We biked over to the dog beach and locked our bikes outside the potty building. Inside, we shucked our clothes and shimmied into our new swimsuits.

  “Gimme your phone and stuff.”

  She handed them over.

  I wrapped up our clothes, sneakers, keys, phones, and credit cards in the Target bag. “Go to the door. Is anybody coming?”

  “Nope. All clear,” she said from the door.

  The Park District had built a nice stout outhouse with big steel doors and a solid roof. While Cricket stood guard at the ladies’ room door, I did a standing jump nine feet straight up, grabbed a roof beam one-handed, and stuffed our bag into a corner of the eaves. For good measure, I drew a little finger-sigil in the air. The red-and-white plastic bag faded into shadow. Then I dropped to my bare feet on the concrete floor.

  “Some trick,” Cricket said. “Can you teach me that?”

  “Later. Today, you swim.”

  She shivered. I was getting the hang of her body language. This one was pure excitement.

  We walked barefoot down the dog beach to the edge of the water. I’d chosen the dog beach because it had an extremely long, shallow grade. This also meant that the water was blood-warm on a summer day like this. We had to wade out almost eighty yards before she was up to her chest in it.

  She kicked on the kickboard, flo
ated on her back, and practiced breathing and stroking while I held her up with one hand under her stomach. Her body twisted as lithely as an otter’s. I watched for signs of panic. Of course there weren’t any. This was the woman who’d drowned herself in the hot tub just to see what would happen next. She grinned the whole time. After twenty minutes her form still sucked but she was technically swimming.

  Then the dogs started arriving. As if a whole canine fanciers’ club had showed up, the gate opened and shut, over and over, and dogs leaped out onto the sand and crashed toward the water, with their owners trailing behind: big dogs, little dogs, fluffy dogs, sleek dogs, tottery fat old beagles and bouncy pit bull pups.

  Cricket stopped backstroking and stood up, staring toward the beach.

  Uh-oh. Was she afraid of dogs? Shit. How was I going to get her back to shore?

  An adventurous black Lab swam all the way out to say hi to us. Now I was panicking. I couldn’t picture how I could protect her from drowning and getting bitten at the same time.

  What was I thinking? This was Cricket.

  “Hi, puppy!” she squealed, and splashed invitingly. The Lab came right up to her, trying to swim and pant and wag its tail at the same time. Some kind of shepherd mix swam up out of nowhere. Now the two of them were buffeting Cricket from two sides, chest-butting her as if to get her to play. I looked up. A whole flotilla of dogs was headed our way.

  Cricket laughed and splashed and tried to pet three dogs at once.

  Dog owners were calling from the shore.

  I tugged her elbow. “C’mon. We’re becoming an attractive nuisance.”

  “Oh, boo.” She picked up her kickboard and slung it like a frisbee back toward shore. It flew twenty feet and flopped flat on the water. All the dogs plunged after it. Seconds later, the black Lab caught up and seized it and triumphantly swam away with it, pursued by the other dogs, while Cricket laughed and laughed.

  If she was this good at having fun, how come she’d been so bored and unhappy at the nursing home? Aside from the whole too-old-to-walk-straight thing.

  I knew the answer to that one. Fun wasn’t fun for Cricket unless it was with company. Not the sitting at the same table in the cafeteria kind of company.

  The intense kind.

  Only kind Cricket did.

  Reflecting on the past couple of months with my team, I couldn’t actually argue with that viewpoint. Certainly hanging with Cricket was fun. She was so alive all the time, she woke me up in ways that surprised me. She grabbed the nearest person and danced.

  Now she started wading away from me, toward the shore. “What’s that dog doing?”

  I followed her. She grew her legs longer and started splashing faster. Oh, good grief. People were gonna think she was a freak. But as she neared the beach, her legs shortened again. Damn, she was getting good at this.

  When she was standing ankle-deep in ninety-degree water, I caught up with her and looked at the dog. It was a poodle mix and it was rolling around on its back in ecstasy.

  I wrinkled my nose. “It found something dead, Cricket.” I could smell it.

  “She really seems to like that.” Trust Cricket to notice the dog’s gender. She bent closer.

  A lanky boy with a man-bun and double sleeve tattoos ran up. “Bowser!” He grabbed the poodle mix by the collar and pulled it away. “Bad girl! You stink!”

  Now we could see the dead and dried-out salmon lying on the sand, considerably more beat-up than it had been, I imagined, before the dog got at it.

  “If she likes it so much, why doesn’t she eat it?” Cricket wanted to know.

  “Beats me. Ew. I can’t believe you never watched a dog roll in something dead before.”

  “Not up close. That’s chazer. Garbage. My aunt wouldn’t even want me to look at it.” Cricket was looking really closely at the dead fish.

  I had to laugh. “And you’re a bad girl. Go ahead, roll in it. There’s a shower over by the potty building.”

  She looked up over her shoulder at me with wide eyes and an O of oh-boy on her lips. Her glance darted around us. I looked, too, uneasily. There was nobody within fifty feet, probably because the dog owners had noticed the poodle mix’s encounter with the dead fish and wanted to keep their own animals out of it.

  Cricket grabbed my hand and pulled me deeper into the water. “Come with me! I need you to grab my suit.”

  “What?” I followed.

  She splashed out until the water was two feet deep. Then, before I could ask her what the hell, she slid under.

  Crap, not again.

  But no. Her pale body suddenly vanished. A moment later, her swimsuit floated up to the surface. Panic gripped my heart.

  Then a little golden-brown puppy popped to the surface. It yapped sharply. Then it begin swimming earnestly for shore.

  “Cricket?”

  The puppy ignored me. I grabbed up her swimsuit and followed.

  When she got to shore, the puppy dashed for the dead fish and stuck her nose into it and sniffed so deeply, she sounded like a bassoon.

  Then she started rolling in it.

  Dumbfounded, I stood up to my shins in the lake and watched.

  If Bowser had liked that dead fish, Cricket loved it. She flopped down on it and wriggled on her back. She leaped up and ran around it. She threw her shoulder down onto it and pushed. She gave little gruffly yowping noises. She whimpered. Her paws waggled in the air. Her butt wiggled, tail going almost too fast to see. Her eyes closed and she sniffed deeply, sneezed, sniffed deeply again, yipped, and wriggled some more.

  Then she flipped up onto her paws, panted up at me with crazy in her eyes, and bowed in that puppy posture that says, Come on, it’s fun!

  I laughed, but I was...well...fascinated. The idea of rolling in dead fish didn’t appeal to me, but it had never occurred to me to use my demon body’s gumbying powers to turn into some other animal, even though Jee and Reg claimed they could.

  I tossed her suit onto shore, slid under the water, and crabbed backwards until I was in deep enough to hide the fact that I was trying something weird.

  I just had to think puppy. Old dog wouldn’t do. I wanted to be puppy enough to have no inhibitions.

  Then suddenly I was tangled in my swimsuit straps, struggling to keep my snout above water. I leaped, thrashed, wriggled, slipped out of the suit, and made for shore. There was something there that I had to find out about.

  The fish smelled totally different now. Its musky sweet goodness spoke straight to my heart. I loved how the sun and sand warmed it, intensifying the smell, filling the lakey summer air. It was the best smell I’d ever smelled in my whole life. I wanted that smell all over me. I dove into it, rubbing myself against the papery skin and the smell, the sweet smell like a cloud of magic making the world come alive and sing, oh boy, oh boy! Yelps and moans came from my throat. I heard the other puppy saying the same, good, huh? Oh, yeah. Oh yeah! Oh! Oh! Oh! Yeah!

  The two of us rolled in that dead fish until all that was left were tiny fragments ground into the sand.

  We stood up, shook ourselves, and raced into the water, snapping at each other’s tails, yelping and crowing and choking and leaping and pouncing and splashing. We raced each other to the shore and back out again. Other dogs showed up and chased along with us, and we raced them in and out of the shallow water, neck and neck, that puppy and I. When we were finally out of breath, we sat up to our shoulders in the warm, warm water and panted, well-pleased with each other.

  Someone walked over to the wet swimsuit lying on the sand.

  I was just barely collected enough to remember that that belonged to us. I barreled out of the water and stood over the swimsuit, snarling puppy snarls at the human. Mine! I’d never felt so fierce in my whole life.

  The human stood up. He stared out at the lake with puzzlement coming out of his very pores, shook his head, and walked away.

  The effort of figuring out what he must be thinking and planning brought me out of the dog place in m
y head.

  I looked back at Cricket, still sitting up to her shoulders in the lake. She yipped at me.

  Oh. Right. And, shit, where was my swimsuit?

  I grabbed her swimsuit in my jaws and brought it out to her. Together we towed it farther out. Thank goodness, there weren’t any waves.

  Cricket-puppy vanished suddenly and I thought, Oh, no, which just shows that I never learn.

  Because then her head, her human head, popped up above the surface. Cricket grabbed her swimsuit and got busy, immersed to her neck. Then she stood up and looked down at the water all around us. Sounds came out of her mouth, which I ignored. I was looking and listening to her tone, smelling her—she still smelled deliciously of dead fish—sensing her mood and her intentions toward me. She barked something and waded away. I swam after her, tired but happy. I would follow her anywhere.

  She picked up something floating on the water. Then she looked down at me. She was so happy. I could feel it, hear it in her voice, smell it on her skin.

  “Wanna stay a puppy for a little while? We can go back to the potty.” She pointed. I didn’t look where she pointed. I looked at her pointing arm. She laughed. “Come on, cutie.” She waded away again.

  I floundered after her.

  On shore, I felt cold. My human picked me up in her warm arms and cuddled me. It was the nicest safest feeling I’d ever had in my whole life. I sniffed deeply, breathing in the love and tenderness coming off her skin. I could stay here forever.

  But she carried me into a building and put me down on my feet on cold concrete and stood under a cold shower, brrr, while I shivered and yawned safely beyond the spray.

  She jumped up to the ceiling and came down again. “Rats. Just have to grow up to it.” She went to the door, looked out, then came back and stretched. She stretched a long, long way up. She brought down something plastic that also smelled like her and me. I yipped, Mine! so she would know that I understood.

  “I don’t think you get it, cookie. I can’t take both bikes home by myself.”

  I shook myself all over and sneezed. I knew she’d figure it out.

  “Nope. Sorry. You’ve gotta come back now.”

  I waited for her to decide what happened next.