A couple of event-filled months had passed since we set up this field operation. First Beth showed up and got in touch with her inner slut so she could kick her ex-husband’s ass. Then Reg’s mom took him back, and we had to help Jee teach him to cut himself free.
Then we got sent Melitta, a freaking high-school student, so we could pry her away from her loser-abuser parents and convince her that she’d rather go to college than become a coed demon slut. By then we had learned our lesson with Jee, who was then and still is also under twenty-one. That whole time, Beth went into intense mommy mode, and Jee dragged around the Lair like a dog with his dick shot off because Reg was away, watching his mom die in the hospital. The only thing that got Jee out of her doldrums was kicking ass with the high school kid’s worthless parents.
Then Reg returned long enough to get intense over basketball with Amanda, and I put the arm on Ish to set us up some games with demons in the Regional Office, and Ish went one better and set up a whole tournament, which we won. Then our next recruit, Cricket, turned Amanda nelly and ran off to play bears in the North Woods with her, which made no sense to me.
In short, nonstop drama.
I was trying to remain calm about it all. I guessed, as long as it wasn’t contagious, who cared?
I cared way too much, actually. I looked around the Lair and everybody was paired off except me.
Jee’s Dom/sub thing with Reg had crumbled to mush. Melitta had careful weekly lunch dates with a guy from high school, although they went to different colleges at opposite ends of the city, and she checked him off on her monthly report so she could earn money for the grad school we all knew she would do. But she liked him. Nobody knew how often Beth saw Doyle. We even had gay pair-off. Cricket and Amanda were in love, but they’d had a few weeks honeymooning in the North Woods, and were more or less past the goo-goo-eyed stage.
Kinda.
Not really.
That left me Beth to talk to.
Beth loved that.
I was still adjusting to all these changes when, early one August morning, the doorbell rang.
Everybody was hung over. I’d been in my bathrobe in the kitchen, sucking down coffee and trying to think of something to make six people for breakfast that wouldn’t involve eggs staring at me with bleary yellow and white eyeballs. Beth was asleep. Jee was in the shower. Amanda, her big Nordic dumb-jock face a mask of suffering, sat at the kitchen table with me, drinking a morning-after beer and waiting for the shower. Reg was out, presumably arranging for someone to bulldoze that hell-hole he grew up in. We expected Melitta to come home any day now and spend the interval between summer session and the beginning of fall semester racking up temptations to cover this year’s tuition. She would be sharing Beth’s room, because only Beth would put up with a roommate. Cricket had driven out to north Chinatown half an hour ago to pick up a massive dim sum order when she realized I wasn’t up to eggs, thank goodness.
Amanda went down to answer the doorbell in her nightshirt.
She came back up with a funny look on her face and the weirdest thing by far ever to happen to me personally as a sex demon.
She had Ish Qbybbl with her.
Ish, our demon supervisor from Second Circle.
Our agoraphobic boss, who made the Angels’ Charlie look like a fraternity pledge party host.
Whenever I’d met him, Ish always looked like he did now: a Vegas pimp circa 1974: Shiny pointy shoes, tight flared orange corduroys, a shiny, purple paisley, long-sleeved shirt with big collar-points, open to the waist, a gold Scorpio medallion on a heavy gold chain, gray chest hairs, and late-Elvis sideburns and haircut, thinning on top.
I shook my head in fashion agony.
He followed Amanda into the kitchen, his eyes round, taking in the decor: six expensive recliner massage chairs, six vast wall-mounted TV/gaming screens, six refrigerator-freezers, two whole walls covered with nineties and aughts porn posters, my antique but serviceable sink and industrial stove, the vintage fifties kitchen table and chairs.
He had a suitcase in one hand.
What?
As soon as he saw me notice the suitcase, he put on some bluster. “What’s going on? Don’t you know it’s Tuesday? Where’s the work ethic around here? I don’t know, everybody in their pajamas, beer bottles all over the place, not a lick of paint on those stairs....” He trailed off.
I looked at the suitcase, and his knuckles white on the handle, then back at the whites of his eyes, no less bleary than those horrible eggs.
Well, he hadn’t changed much. He still hated being here. Not just here in the Lair, but here in the field. Like a lot of desk workers in the Regional Office, Ish was most comfortable when nestled in his beige office cubicle, numb and alone.
Something had brought him here, though. And he wasn’t happy about it.
“You need coffee,” I suggested. I signaled to Amanda with a glance. She steered him to a chair at the kitchen table. I put a steaming cup of my high-octane brew in front of him.
“I’m moving in,” Ish blurted, not looking at the coffee mug. He pulled the suitcase closer to his knees with both hands.
What?
“Right.” I nodded, remaining calm. “Right. Amanda, get hold of Reg and tell him he’s gotta move in with Jee. And put Ish’s bag in Reg’s room, please?”
My savoir faire faltered as Jee wandered in, stark naked and dripping wet, her now-squat little bronze body padded with an extra sixty pounds. I felt like apologizing to the boss for how gross she looked, but how could I explain?
Ish didn’t seem to mind at all.
He loosened his grip on the suitcase and stared at Jee, openmouthed.
Amanda deftly slid his suitcase away. From the kitchen door she said, “You’ll explain all this to Jee, right?” and disappeared before I could protest being left holding the bag.
“Explain what to Jee?” Jee said, yawning, and poured scalding coffee into her mouth straight from the pot. She saw Ish, choked, and sputtered, “What the—is that really Ish?”
“Ish is moving in,” I said, talking fast. “Naturally, he’ll bump Reg out of his room. I would send Reg downstairs, only I think you’d rather have him closer to hand. In case your laundry needs folding,” I added, wink-wink. Until now, Jee could send Reg back to his room when she was mad enough at him.
Then we got three more recruits. We only had the five bedrooms. Place was filling up.
And Ish was moving in?
Someone would have to fix this too, stat.
Jee lowered the coffee pot slowly. I stepped over and took it from her and put it back on the warmer. She was glaring at Ish.
I said, “It’s not that unusual, having our supervisor drop in for an onsite inspection,” reminding her that Ish was our boss. “You can share with Reg for a couple of days.”
“Weeks,” Ish croaked, and flinched away from the incredulity and outrage in Jee’s eyes.
I stared too.
Beth came into the kitchen wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and no top, and Ish goggled at her, too. Hm. Our supervisor was susceptible to the sight of naked women. Of course, I realized. He’d been numb in the Regional Office so long, a little nudity would blow his mind.
So that problem might resolve itself, just as the Reg problem had. Although what the heck we were going to do with Ish for weeks—
I suggested, “Ish, I think we should have our briefing right away.”
“Before breakfast?” Beth whimpered.
My stomach growled in agreement with her. “What was I thinking? After breakfast. Beth, put some booze in his coffee. He seems to be stroking out.”
Ish seemed stunned.
“Who’s stroking out?” Cricket chirped from the doorway. She staggered in under a huge stack of dim sum carry-out boxes. For once she looked like a grownup but not a senior citizen. Ironically, ever since she started this thing with Amanda, she looks sexier.
“Hey, Cricket,” I said, trying to sound calm. “You remember our Regional Office supervisor
.”
Two hours later we were all fed, and Beth and Amanda had trickled off to the shower in shifts and returned wearing more clothes, and Ish seemed to have calmed down.
Personally I was a little hysterical. “Let me see if I understand you. Our dinky little basketball tourney win got you promoted—”
“—The memo, I just got the memo, nothing solid yet—” Ish babbled.
“And some big bug in the Regional Office thinks you want his job—”
“That’s his name, Buugh, but let’s not say it out loud, okay?” Ish was sweating now.
“And you had no choice but to leave your desk and come all the way up here.” That was flabbergasting enough. Ish out of the office by his own choice? Wow. “Where something better is going to happen?”
“Better than having a duke of hell mad at him,” Beth guessed.
“Drowning in a lake of molten asphalt,” Ish said. “Flagellation with red hot icicles. Eaten alive by steel-jawed dogs. And then, twenty years of filling in the insurance forms.”
“That sounds awful.” Cricket clearly thought he was kidding.
Beth squinted. “What comes after that? You get sent to the Regional Office version of Siberia?”
“Second Circle is Siberia.” Ish waved a hand as if swatting a really big fly. “Ain’t no corner of the Regional Office more remote than Lust. That’s not it.” He gulped. “They were gonna promote me.”
“Ah,” I said. He was lying. Maybe not about the promotion. But about something. I decided to play along until I could get him alone. Then I’d get some answers. “More meetings.”
Ish nodded gratefully. “And at least six times as many reports.”
“Quality circles,” I said with a straight face.
“A hundred and seventy more memos per day.” Ish shuddered. “Divisional productivity competitions, and those are always rigged. Quarterly presentations to the joint chiefs. Powerpoint,” he squeaked, and hunched his shoulders, as if trying to get smaller in his chair.
Jee was now wide awake. I was relieved to see that dangerous look back in her eye. “So I have to share a room because you’re afraid of meetings?”
Ish raised both hands placatingly. “Now, Jee, honey,” he began.
Her voice rose. “Poor Reg has to share a room because you’re afraid of running a slide show?”
“Just until it blows over,” Ish whimpered.
Couldn’t the others tell he was lying? There was definitely something scarier than Powerpoint waiting for him back in the Regional Office.
“Why don’t the boys bunk in together?” Beth said brightly. Both Jee and Ish looked at her with venom. She raised her hands. “I just asked.”
Ish sent me a look of dumb suffering.
I shrugged. “It’s gotten complicated since we, uh, started the team.” Besides, I thought, if a duke of hell comes after Ish, it’d be nice if he’s the only guy in the room when they firebomb it.
“Yeah,” Jee said. “For one thing, you keep sending new people to us without warning.”
“Like an onsite manager,” I pointed out, suddenly mad about that all over again. I got to my feet and stood over him. “What the fuck was that? You said I would be running this team.”
“I explained that.” Ish waved his hands. “I had no choice. I can’t add more than three people under me without adding another layer of management. It’s a growth policy.”
“Growth?” Amanda spoke for the first time. “The whole pyramid is crumbling. Lust is a hollow layer. There are neighborhoods in Detroit with more activity in them.” I glanced at her with surprise. Amanda doesn’t usually go in for artsy analogy. “I was down there for ten years,” she said, “and not one freshly-damned soul came in. Three quarters of the desks were empty.”
Ish blinked at her. “Really?”
The kitchen door opened. “Hey,” Reg said, breezing in with his arms full of grocery bags. “What’s with the suitcase in my room?” Jee could dress him up, but he hadn’t lost his dorky sort-of-blond kid brother look. And now that he wasn’t eating, his belly overflowed his designer jeans. He took in Jee’s stormy expression and our faces around the kitchen table. When he saw Ish, he said, “Wow,” and dumped his bags on the counter. “Hey, boss.”
“Ish is taking your room,” Jee threw out, her voice a challenge.
I saw Beth open her mouth and shut it again.
Reg went straight to Jee and got down on his knees before her. “Whatsa matter, mistress? You look upset.”
“Mistress?” Ish repeated, staring at Reg. “Is this the guy—”
“You said you’d be back last night,” Jee snarled at Reg.
He bent to kiss her feet. “I fell asleep. I was helping the Readymen clear junk outa ma’s house, and after they left, I just dropped in the living room.”
“You sure you didn’t just drop into a strip club?” Jee snarled, grabbing a fistful of his hair.
I saw Ish wince.
“Swear to god,” Reg assured her. “I brought you champagne and caviar, babe. I took a shower back at Ma’s, too,” he added proudly. He jerked a thumb at the door. “I was going into my room to change clothes, but then I found a suitcase in there, and anyway the bubbly and fish eggs oughta be in the fridge.”
Jee must have slackened her grip on his hair, because he jumped up and started unloading the grocery bags.
“Come back here when I’m yelling at you!” Jee wailed.
“This is the guy I hired for your onsite manager?” Ish said to me.
“He’s a terrific cook,” I said. May as well let him know how things were. It didn’t look as if he would be going back to the office to put a green sheet in Reg’s file anytime soon.
Jee got up and went to help Reg put groceries away—Jee, helping with a chore! she must be really rattled—and to scold in a low voice.
“Reg, can we have some beers over here?” I called, and he brought us two six-packs of microbrew without interrupting his fight with Jee.
Ish watched all this with eyes getting rounder and rounder. He was sweating again.
“You okay?” I said.
“I’m fine,” he said mechanically. I popped the cap on a brew and put it in his hand. He looked at it as if he’d never seen a beer in his life. “What’s this?”
“It’s beer,” Beth said helpfully.
“It’s an extra bitter ruby brew with chocolate, toffee, and malt notes,” I said. “Drink up. It’ll put more hair on your chest.”
Ish stared at it suspiciously. The label pictured a drawing of a crouched and evilly-grinning goblin. This seemed to reassure him, and he took a pull at it. A look of dumbfounded joy crossed his face. “Holy shit.”
“Beats the cats pee in the Regional Office vending machines, eh?” Amanda said. She was smiling again.
I remarked, “Now might be a good time for you two to move Reg’s things into your room, Jee.” I glanced back at Ish. He’d already finished his Hobgoblin Legendary Ruby ESB.
“Is there any more of this?” he said, after a last wistful suck on the bottle.
Beth handed him another one off the sixpack on the table. When he tried to unscrew the cap, she handed him the church key.
I looked pointedly at Jee.
“Come on, Reg,” she said darkly.
“Almost done, mistress,” he said, his head in her fridge.
She smacked him on the ass. He shut her fridge in a hurry and scampered after her, devotion in his eyes.
Ish followed all this over the neck of his second brew.
“Uh, yeah, that,” I said. “There’s a few things you need to know about how things work here.”
And a few things he was going to explain to me when we could get away from the circus. Because, like Jee, I didn’t believe it was fear of Powerpoint that sent him scuttling from the Regional Office.
ISH
After breakfast Ish showered and retreated to the bedroom Reg had surrendered. He lay down on fresh sheets, nice, staring at the ceiling, listening
to his heart beat. It was weird being so aware of his body all the time. Back in his cubicle, he’d felt nothing but the occasional craving for a cup of steaming cats’ pee or some Ding Dongs out of the vending machine. He’d never got a stiff back from hunching over his beehive monitor. He hadn’t craved alcohol—holy shit, that beer was good. He was tempted to get up and sneak some out of the kitchen right now.
Hey, he was the boss. He could take their beers if he wanted.
Yeah, right. Ish knew from ancient experience that he would be no match for these girls. Not face to face. He’d barely managed to manage them when they were on another plane of existence.
He’d always assumed field operatives got paid extra because it sucked being in the field. Or because it was so dangerous. Now he knew that the field was its own best defense. After a few beers and a breakfast of dim sum, filled out with Cheetos and some salted nuts, he was suddenly aware that he was starving, and that he hadn’t felt hunger in, well, years.
Down in the Regional Office, all sensations were merely habit.
Up here, they were compulsions, temptations, overwhelming kvetches of the body so loud that they drowned out everything else.
Like sex. Brother. He hadn’t thought about sex in forever. Suddenly, images of Team Succubus obsessed him.
Jee plump, naked, and glistening from the shower. Beth topless, unashamed. Amanda with her rangy strength. The new girl Cricket, like a hot, flirty version of a forties burlesque girl. Even Pog, who struck him these days as the most sexless of the bunch, with her long scrawny body, so different from her body back when. Even Pog looked good to him. Especially Pog. He’d had a boner since he got here.
Forget food. He wanted to poke somebody.
Tentatively, because it had been a long time, Ish touched himself.
He went off like Krakatoa and sploodged the sheet.
He squirmed away from the warm wet spot, and his dick accidentally touched the sheet, and he went off again. He grabbed it to stop the feelings from battering him and he went off again. And again. I’m gonna dehydrate here, straight out of my dick. He rolled around in bed, struggling to find a position where his dick wouldn’t touch anything at all.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 85