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

by Jennifer Stevenson

  A knot formed in my throat. I whispered through it, “Oh dear lord.”

  She turned her head to whisper against my hair, “We’re gonna kick Daddy’s good little soldier out the door.”

  I groaned.

  “C’mon. It’ll be fun.”

  It wasn’t fun, but we got it done. I’d been paying the condo fees and a housekeeping service on a live credit card all this time, and apparently no pipes broke while I was away for ten years, but the place was a tomb. Cricket opened all the windows and went Jewish-grandma-crazy with the vacuum cleaner and the Windex. I ordered a Dumpster.

  Every night we went back to the best hotel in Santa Barbara and I let her massage me until my brain went away, and the hormones took over, and it was pretty nice for a hotel vacation.

  Until we found the letter.

  It had come back from the VA in a plastic bag with Dad’s effects, after he died there, undergoing yet another procedure to get his heart to work. Uniform shirt, pants, slippers, museum piece original Gameboy, the belt with the commemorative buckle from his First Cav unit in Viet Nam, so that’s where that went, he’d wanted to be buried with it...and a folded piece of paper in the pants pocket.

  Cricket found it, of course. I hadn’t wanted to touch that bag when it came home, and I’d left it in the pile of stuff to be dealt with last, and I didn’t want to open it now.

  “You’d better see this,” she said.

  I couldn’t refuse. She’d been by my side for three days, working like a soldier, doing everything the way I wanted it, saying nothing, which must have cost her a lot, until I needed her to fill the air with chatter, for which I lavished all my gratitude on her when we got back to the hotel, until I had to cry, and she could distract me completely with her body and mine.

  I gave her a pleading eye. Like, Do I have to?

  She just nodded.

  It was in my dad’s shaky handwriting, on the back of page three of a patient information sheet about some medication or other. He’d written it in the hospital in the last two days of his life.

  Dear Amanda. This notice releases you from your obligation to observe the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. As you are not enlisted personnel yourself, and I assume I am dead by now, the policy does not apply to you.

  Your mother and I knew about your leanings for a long time, but it did not seem relevant, as you showed no sign of forming a friendship that could develop into a problem situation. If you were indulging your proclivities all along, I didn’t see it. Your mother might have. She didn’t mention it. May I say now that I thank you for your discretion.

  This is difficult for me to write. I’m certain I will not survive this surgery. That said, I must write it. Between ourselves, at this moment, we can afford a little fairness.

  I want you to know that I share the inclination toward persons of my own gender. I was aware of these feelings as a young man. Your mother did not mind. She wanted a home and children. She got you, anyway. The Army isn’t a home.

  I nearly balled up that letter and threw it at the wall right then, only I had to finish it first.

  I couldn’t tell anyone before. Your mother needed my pension, which she would not get if I were dishonorably discharged. After she went, I realized you would need my benefits to pay for all these godawful medical expenses. I trust you to have the sense to keep this to yourself. At least until I’m in the ground and the bills are all paid.

  You’ve always been my good little soldier. Now I suppose you’ll be something else to someone else. I hope it suits you better.

  He signed it with his full name and rank.

  I crushed the letter in my fist. I was trembling. Cricket put her arms around me.

  “Get me out of here,” I said to her neck. “Now.”

  We went back to the hotel, Cricket driving the rental car like a little old lady and I sitting with the letter crushed in my hand. At the hotel, she took the letter away from me, stripped me, put me into the whirlpool with some pine bath oil—we were staying at the San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara—and then ordered massive room service. While we waited for food, she gave me a bath, as if I was a little kid.

  She watched me all through dinner and two fifths of Knob Creek. At first I couldn’t meet her eyes. A lifetime of keeping my eyes ahead and my spine straight had taken me over. The liquor was what helped, eventually. Dad and Mom never drank, and I never did until I joined the succubus team. My demon body could handle half a gallon of whiskey, so I wasn’t even close to drunk, but the taste of it somehow got the message to the screaming, freaking-out teenager in my head that I was a grownup now. Dad and Mom were gone. The Army couldn’t get me.

  The Regional Office had been like more Army. Ten years of numbness at a desk. The field rocked my concentration, but I’d been servicing men for money all summer and getting used to it, getting Daddy’s little soldier back.

  Cricket had got to me in less than a day.

  I looked across the little table in our ocean-view hotel room at a woman whose shape shifted as the tears swam in my eyes. Young, old, tall, short. I felt like my skin had been ripped off.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said finally.

  “You think you’re ever gonna feel different about throwing out that stuff?”

  I shook my head, shivered, and shook it harder.

  “So we finish it tomorrow and go home. And then get to some woods. The air in that condo is two thirds dust.”

  At the sound of her voice, sweet and high and gravelly like a cartoon whisky-pixie, I took a deep breath.

  “Deal.”

  Cricket called Pog at the Lair to tell her we were in California and coming home “soon.” I could tell from the quacking through her phone that Pog wanted to know more. Cricket stonewalled in her cutest little-old-lady way. I don’t think Pog realized how little she’d said until after she hung up.

  But it was soon, after all. Two days later we went back to Chicago and the Lair. By airplane. Which was miserable. Crowded, smelly, noisy, too full of human animals—if Cricket hadn’t held my hand, I’d have jumped out of the plane and trusted myself to grow wings before I hit the ground. While she held my hand, I smelled only her, I felt only her, I heard only her voice. I still shut my eyes the whole way.

  CRICKET

  Cricket was glad she had phoned ahead to put their roommates out of their misery. Back in the Lair, there was much celebration. Amanda blushed for hours. Beth and Jee and Reg howled like drunken sorority sisters. Pog gave them both a scolding for not checking in before they checked out.

  “You mean you didn’t tell anyone where you went?” Amanda asked Cricket, over the hooting and popping of beer bottles.

  “You didn’t.” Cricket was soaking up the attention and grinning and shaking beer out of her frizzy hair.

  Pog delivered one solid punch to Amanda’s upper arm. “Never again, dammit! Couldn’t you call or leave a note or something? What the fuck?”

  Amanda hung her head.

  “It’s personal,” Cricket said, intervening. “We had to clear out her Dad’s condo. It’s been standing empty for ten years.”

  “Oh, my god,” Beth said, stopped dead in mid-howl by this admission. “Was it filthy?” She gave a housewife’s shudder.

  “And dusty,” Amanda admitted.

  “Was he a hoarder?” Beth said avidly.

  Amanda shook her head. “Army. Tidy. Not clean, but tidy.”

  Cricket noticed she wasn’t saying, And I lived with him my entire life. She nodded to herself. Right. Lip zipped. She watched, ready to field any other questions that might come Amanda’s way.

  But Amanda made a speech. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk.” She sent Cricket a question in a look, like, unless you’d rather do the talking? Cricket shook her head. Standing stiffly like a boy scout—or an army guy, Cricket realized—Amanda announced, “Short explanation, Cricket and I have gone nelly. We are leaving soon on a vacation together. It’s been”—she choked a little—“really great working
with you. We’ll probably be back. Don’t know when. That is all.”

  Pog’s jaw dropped.

  Reg and Jee exchanged looks, and Jee said to no one in particular, “Told you.”

  Beth erupted with questions. “You what? Are you—you mean you’ve—when did this happen? I can’t believe I didn’t—”

  “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Cricket said, making a hand like a traffic cop. Then she grinned. “But we’ll still share that room when we get back.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Amanda added. “Melitta can use it on her semester break, while we’re gone.”

  Pog was still speechless.

  “Do you want some money?” Jee said.

  “We won’t need it.” Cricket sent a wicked smile to Amanda. “You can hang onto my paycheck.”

  Amanda sent her a now what? look. Then she turned to their team leader. “You okay with this?”

  Pog gave a helpless shrug. “I was just thinking of something Ish said. Guys will stay sex demons forever. Women tend to hang around for a while and then move on.”

  “Personal growth,” Beth said knowledgeably.

  Pog scowled. “Like you know.”

  Beth stuck out her tongue. “I have the tee shirt.”

  “Never mind her,” Pog said, dismissing Beth with a nyah face. “The thing is, I guess, you guys will come back again, right? We—” She paused and swallowed. “We can’t play basketball with four.”

  “Mistress?” Reg was saying to Jee, and Jee nodded. He turned to Amanda. “So can I get a goodbye hug? I won’t cop a feel or nothin’.”

  Amanda squeezed him hard. Then she hugged Jee. Then she hugged Pog and Beth. Then everybody hugged everybody one after another, and Beth slapped Reg for copping a feel, and Cricket wormed her way between the bodies and sent a big blast of her happiness through them all, because who knew how soon she’d get another chance. She wallowed. She had a whole new family, and she didn’t have to pretend to be the grownup. She was married again—Amanda might not be sure yet, but it was done. By now she knew Amanda wasn’t that different from a husband in one respect. Give her sex, regular and plentiful, and she went from calm on the outside to calm on the inside. That alone had done it. Cricket planned to spoil the shit out of Amanda. Girl didn’t stand a chance.

  AMANDA

  There was a lot of sniffling, but except for Beth, nobody asked questions I couldn’t answer. And Cricket was there, running interference whenever Beth opened her mouth. Taking care of me. Weirdest feeling ever. Cricket’s final answer was so brilliant, I memorized it. Might need it again.

  “How can we tell you?” She shrugged those itty bitty shoulders. “We’re still asking ourselves those questions.”

  And Beth shut her mouth. Brilliant.

  Cricket herself oozed smugness, like she’d been made prom queen or something. Because she’d, well, got to me. Because she had me. I didn’t feel had. I felt embarrassed and horny and still pretty confused and ridiculously pleased and deep-down safe. Somehow I’d come in out of the cold, dead, stormy night and Cricket had saved a warm spot for me.

  If she thought she was going to talk my ear off the whole vacation, though, she was dreaming. I knew how to shut her up. Just get her out in nature. Preferably in puppy form. She wouldn’t be able to resist. And then I’d get some quiet.

  “Well, we’re only here for a few hours,” Cricket said.

  Reg caught that. “Where you going? Niagara Falls?” He cackled.

  I shrugged. Cricket had a plan she hadn’t told me. Instead I said, “Reg, can you take care of the marijuana crop for two months?”

  “He’s busy taking care of me,” Jee said.

  “I dunno, Amanda,” Cricket said. “That’s a pretty tricky job. All those tricolor thingies, and buds and resins and ten degrees warmer for two hours a day, eck cetera.”

  “Hey, I can handle it!” Reg boasted. “She was teaching me before you came.”

  What a partner. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

  No point worrying now about what else could go wrong while I was gone.

  Pog had made us a massive meal. Down on the basketball floor, beside the grill, we ate giant prawns marinated in butter and garlic, grilled, and served with cold, spicy guacamole; grilled filet mignons, Mexican-style helados on a stick frozen with Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur, and beer. Then we went upstairs for chicken divan, buttermilk biscuits, mashed potatoes, gravy, asparagus, french green beans in mushroom soup with crumbled fried onions on top, a congealed salad that looked like a basketball made of orange jello full of shredded carrots with raisins forming the stripes, and more beer. Out of politeness, and because I was starving after the red-eye flight from LA and changing planes, and because I had no idea when I would taste Pog’s cooking again, I waded in.

  Eventually, though, Cricket touched me on the elbow. My body heated up all along that side. I turned red. Suddenly everyone was looking at us.

  Cricket raised her beer. “Okay, here’s a toast to the coed demon sluts!”

  “To the sluts!” Pog yelled. She was pretty lit.

  “The sluts!” Jee said, and from the floor where he was rubbing her feet, Reg called, “Sluts!”

  “To good friends,” Beth said quietly.

  “To all of us,” I said, feeling lame, but speechless as usual. I could feel Cricket’s unrevealed plan like a welcome draft from an open door on the back of my neck. Knowing I would escape soon, I looked my roomies in the eye, one after another. Pog was openly crying. Beth looked puzzled but proud. Jee smirked right back at me, eyeball to eyeball, and I looked down quickly at Reg, who leered.

  Cricket was still touching my elbow. “C’mon, cookie,” she murmured.

  We all got into the van and drove to the Foster Avenue breakwater. It was after curfew and full dark, and on the horizon a three-quarter moon rose out of the lake, throwing a crackled pathway of moonlight across the waves.

  The team stood on the top of the breakwater and watched.

  “So what’s the plan?” I said to her as we clambered down the to the lowest row of limestone blocks forming the breakwater. Cricket was as tall as I was these days. I had realized by now that she wasn’t kidding—she only reminded me how much older she was when she wanted to pull rank. Or yank on my sympathy. Or get me to underestimate her. Keeping up with her took all my attention.

  I was beginning to see how this vacation was going to help me focus.

  And then she kissed me. My head spun and my heart skipped and my blood heated and I was Superwoman, I could do anything, as long as it didn’t mean letting go of Cricket.

  “Are you ready?” she whispered into my ear.

  “I guess.”

  “Watch this.”

  She slithered down out of my grasp, suddenly slippery and bristly and a thousand times more intense-smelling. What? Kind of musky.

  I looked down. At my feet, a black bear stood on all fours. Not very big. She reared on her hind legs, maybe four foot ten that way, looked up at me, at the moon, and then back at me, and I swear she grinned.

  I knelt and put my face into the fur at her neck and breathed in her scent. That smell went straight into my heart. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever smelled.

  I gumbied my body into bear shape. From now on, any doubts or questions I ever had, I could look at Cricket beside me, smell her, lick her nose, and I’d know.

  This was what she had been teaching me on those bike rides in the woods, and in the lake, while we splashed around as puppies. With our demon senses, we could know stuff that had no words. Which was good, because I wasn’t all that good with words anyway.

  In bear form, I felt more compact and yet less strung out. I could smell Hudson’s Bay on the wind. My pelt was heavy and hot, as if the moonlight burned—my bear eyes saw how the tips of her long, soft hairs were on silver fire. My edges fuzzed out and I felt the enormity of the lake, sensed its cold depths full of live salmon and pike, felt the pull of the moon and the push of the wind that called to us down the
whole length of Lake Michigan from the Canadian North Woods.

  I turned and plunged into the water. Cricket cannonballed in after me. We set out swimming strongly to the north.

  Acknowledgements

  Many people have made these books possible. I want to express deep appreciation to my publishing team, Mark Collins and Chaz Brenchley, and for advice from Vonda N. McIntyre, Jeffrey Carver, and Dave Smeds. Terrific research help came from Angela Johnston, Matt Insley, and Mal Brown. My heartfelt thanks go out to all my beta readers and supporters: Jeanne DeVita, Kate Early, Pat Rice, Mindy Klasky, and Sherwood Smith, Michelle Hoffman, Kristine Davis, MJ Reynolds, Kimmie Nelson, Roger Jean Fauble, Anne G. Kasaba, Karen Kumprey, Brandee Heller, Shirley K. Lohrricci, Michelle Hoffman, Cheryl Liacos-Halstead, Beverlee Smith, the enigmatic lrap1230, Jennifer Hill, Mary Szigeti, Julia Wallace, Linda and Rob Williams, Bari Silver, Loralei Moir, Sue Heneghan, Shirley Márquez Dúlcey, Emily Pennington, Cheryl L., Tammy Brazeau, Evonne Hutton, Anna Trombley, Mary Nickell, Pamela Gramlisch, Silva Presler, Peggy Fowler, Mrs L J Williams, Julianne H., Beth L. Rodriguez, Aimee Bowyer, and Sandra Spilecki.

  If I have omitted someone from this list, it is because my sieve-like brain cannot contain the immensity of the world’s kindness and generosity. If I have erred, it is not their fault, but mine. If I have offended, then I guess I’m doing my job. If I have entertained, thank goodness.

  Copyright

  COED DEMON SLUTS: AMANDA

  Jennifer Stevenson

  Published by Book View Café

  www.bookviewcafe.com

  Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Stevenson

  ISBN 978 1 61138 627 1

  All Rights Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Cover design by Mark Collins

  Horns headband logo design by Mark Collins

  Copyedit by Chaz Brenchley

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, locations, and events portrayed in this book are fictional or used in an imaginary manner to entertain, and any resemblance to any real people, situations, or incidents is purely coincidental.