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

by Jennifer Stevenson

  “I think he’s stopped trying to get you to forgive him,” she offered.

  “Thank goodness,” I said hollowly. “Picking on him was getting exhausting.”

  “Exactly,” Beth said in that annoying voice, and sailed ahead to arrange the seating at our table.

  I realized, watching her officiously placing team members where she thought they should sit, that she was putting them where I would have put them. Reg and Jee sat together because there was no separating them. Melitta sat on Jee’s other side so Jee could teach her Temptation 201. Amanda and Cricket came next, and Ish next to Cricket, because she could keep him entertained with her chatter forever. Beth would buffer me from Ish, or Ish from me. And I sat between Beth and Reg. Reg would murmur and fuss over Jee the whole time. So I would be alone with my thoughts and Beth’s company.

  I guess I did prefer her company right now. She was babying me in a way I’d never known. I could feel my anger crumbling as the spiky core of my strength lost its spikes.

  Was this what had happened to Jee? Did she fall apart simply because someone was kind to her for the first time in her life?

  It was like feeling some fatal disease overtaking me after watching my best friend get it.

  Or maybe it was a new addiction. You don’t even know you’re taking a drug at first. By the time you know, it’s too late. You have to have it.

  With these thoughts, I laid my handbag by my water glass and went to the buffet. I checked my look in the mirrored pillar as I stood in line, unreally tall, in a black Glenn Davis cocktail frock that let my bones show. From my Louboutin shoes to the diamond tennis bracelet that Jee once gave me, I looked thin, hot, heartless, and expensive.

  The rest of the team spread out around the ballroom, picking up snacks.

  Except, back at our table, Jee and Reg had their heads together. I saw a middle-aged couple walk past them and give them a scornful glance. I glared. That’s right, they’re fat. Get over it. I wanted to throw my plate at the scorners. I also wanted to tell my teammates to get under the tablecloth, get out of the hotel, they were doing themselves and the team no good.

  Suddenly I was sickened by that thought. One of the great things about being a succubus is you never take any crap from anybody, never get out of anybody’s way, and never feel like you’re just not good enough. How could I be having those thoughts about my teamies? How could I have said those things to them?

  Then I realized just who that middle-aged couple was.

  Reading from left to right, they were my father and my mother.

  There they were, tricked out in their understated dress clothes: Paul and Wendy Schoenvetter, my mother proudly sporting a ginormous Committee name tag. I froze. They looked quite a bit older than I remembered. Right. They would be in their mid-fifties by now.

  My mother wasn’t aging well. Her hair had faded. The blue of her eyes seemed paler, and her mouth had bitter vertical lines on either side. She was still, of course, so thin that it didn’t matter how much her dress had cost, for it hung on her like a sack.

  My father had authority-figure gray hair at his temples, and his face was much more wrinkly and leathery tan. That was what he got for yachting with the cool people. My pulse thudded in my throat.

  A few seconds later, they glanced my way and met my stare. Then they did a double-take.

  Someone moved too fast to my right. Ish bounded halfway across the ballroom and now slid up behind me in time to keep my plate from slipping out of my hand.

  “Hang in there, sport,” he murmured. “You wanna blow this pop stand?”

  I clutched his arm. “My parents are here.” It suddenly occurred to me that I’d been playing with fire by trolling benefits and fund-raisers and gallery openings with my team all summer. How had I avoided them this long?

  I could only conclude that on some level I had wanted to run into them.

  I wished I could get in a time machine and smack some sense into my past self.

  “I saw them.” Mal put my plate down for me and led me behind a pillar. “Take it easy. I’m here.”

  I felt as if my skin was expanding like a balloon to touch the ceiling, the walls, and the people nearby. “They’re coming over here! Mal, they know me! How could they know me? I’m so different.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said soothingly.

  I blinked. “You’re not either. You look like you did in high school.”

  It was some comfort to know that Mal was thrown off balance as much as I was. He looked eighteen, weedy and doe-eyed, with a giant honker.

  “I’ll fix it.” He passed a hand over his face as if in thought. Now he looked about thirty-five. Hm. He looked way better, older. As if he noticed that, he made another pass. Now he was practically a Marlboro Man. Damn. Who knew Mal would look better as he aged? Way better than his puffy-faced dad. Plus the duds he’d borrowed from Reg made him look kinda hot.

  I peeped around the pillar at the approaching enemy. Somewhere under my gibbering panic, I noticed how my parents seemed hungrily curious and ratlike and expensive without being vulgar.

  The pillar had a mirror on each side. I checked. My scrawny newscaster-slash-supermodel disguise was in place.

  “How on earth did they recognize me?”

  “Relax, babe. You got this,” Mal said.

  I pulled him farther behind the pillar. “You can’t leave me!”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He towed me out into their path.

  My mother started gushing from five feet away. “Polly? Is that you? Oh my goodness, you look wonderful!”

  For a moment I thought she would grab my hands, and then she didn’t. Might have been the horror in my face.

  “Wendy is on the committee,” my father said, starting the first conversation we’d had in ten years at what was, for him, the important part. “She wasn’t going to accept, because she’s already on five committees this season, but Rebecca Covington begged her to help, so of course she agreed. It’s because we brought both my partners to her last event—”

  I stood there, just waiting for my father’s self-congratulatory droning to run down, trying to see him with succubus eyes. That wasn’t working. He was an older version of the man who threw his own daughter out of the house for being overweight.

  Mal laid his hand on my nearly-bare shoulder. “Hey, babe. ’Sup?”

  My mother was taking in every pennyworth of my outfit: my little black designer dress, my diamonds, my shoes, my trivial little twelve-hundred-dollar clutch on a long 24-karat gold chain.

  My father shut up when Mal spoke. “Introduce us to your escort, Pauline.”

  I pulled myself together and patted Mal on the hand possessively. “Father, Mother, this is Ishmael Bloomberg. You remember his father, Morty Bloomberg? He owned that darling club on Stony Island.”

  Immediately my mother offered her hand. “So pleased.” Didn’t she hear me? Her stare returned to me—to my body, not my face. “Doesn’t she look marvelous? She must have lost a hundred pounds! Sweetheart, you’re amazing!”

  “Very presentable,” my father said, apparently also missing the part about Morty Bloomberg.

  So it was going to be like that? Did they really not hear any of this? Or were they pretending not to hear, because of the exalted donors in the room?

  “I know, right?” I said through my teeth. “It’s amazing what charging for sex can do for your figure.”

  My mother talked right over me, speaking to Mal. “Of course Glenn Davis is the man these days for late afternoon dresses.”

  I could feel steam rising off the back of my head. “What’s he call it now, Mal? He must have declared Chapter Seven about fifty times. Kit Kat Club, Snatched, Tear It & Toss It, Titi L-O-L, The Slow Reveal, what am I forgetting, Mal?”

  Mal picked right up on my cue. “Don’t forget it was male strippers for about five minutes. I think Dad called it For Her Eyes Only.” He patted my hand. “Honey, last time I saw your parents, they told me you were dead.”


  That was news. I narrowed my eyes. “Really?”

  “Really.” He swallowed. “Why do you think I was suicidal?”

  “You can’t wear Glenn Davis if you have the teeniest stomach,” my mother burbled.

  My father addressed me directly for the first time. “You should talk to Rebecca. It would be great to have you on the next committee with your mother.”

  But I was staring at Mal. “You thought I—you believed them?”

  “I swear,” he said. “I jumped off the Skyline Bridge into the Calumet.”

  I blinked.

  I turned back to my father. “And then I went to work for hell. We have a terrific dental plan.”

  My mother said, “Honestly, I had to get stapled before I dared to wear a Glenn Davis ballgown to the Oscars.” She looked me up and down again. I was a foot taller than I’d been in college, which should have warned her that something was up, but the woman seemed to be living on her more tasteful and above all thinner planet. “Gracious. I can remember when we hired pony rides for your birthday and you had to let another child take all your turns, because you were too big for the pony.”

  “You know, Mother, I’d forgotten all about that until you mentioned it.”

  Mal draped his arm around my shoulders. “Shh, baby, we don’t think about the past. Living well is the best revenge, eh?”

  “So how did you do it?” My mother unleashed her envy at last.

  “What do you do, now?” my father said simultaneously to Mal.

  I turned a smirk toward Mal. “He might listen to you.”

  Mal smiled at me, then said to my father, “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” He pointed a pistol-finger and pulled the trigger. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you. And then drag you down to the fourth circle of hell and let vultures peck at your balls for three hundred years.”

  “He’s not kidding.” I snuggled against him. “Shouldn’t we eat something before the auction starts?”

  “You don’t eat at these things,” my mother said, shocked.

  I showed my teeth. “Yes. I do. I have to eat forty-five hundred calories a day, minimum. I’m a terrific cook.”

  “She’s a terrific cook,” Mal corroborated. “I’m getting fat on it. And she loves me that way,” he added, rubbing it in.

  The color was draining out of my mother’s face.

  “Sometimes cooking is a chore.” I shrugged. “We get out four or five times a week. Thank goodness there are so many starred restaurants in Chicago!”

  My father said, “Ah,” in a voice of discovery. “You’re with one of those hinky secret government agencies.”

  My mother jumped at this suggestion. “Is that it? I heard they have pills now that they don’t release to the public.” I stared at her. “To keep you thin,” she said.

  My father said, “I hope they pay well.”

  This conversation had carried me way, way out on a revenge ledge. I heard myself say maliciously, “Well, obviously.” I brushed hair out of my eyes with the hand that was wearing two hog-choker diamond rings and a diamond tennis bracelet. I was stiff with rage and getting colder by the minute.

  “They’re giving you something that lets you eat all you want!” My mother’s fingers curled and uncurled.

  I shook free of Mal’s arm and squared off to my parents. I might never see or speak to them again. Although considering my work habits, it looked as though I’d have plenty of opportunity. I looked at them closely, memorizing their dumbfounded expressions. My mother was actually hunched over. That meant her acid stomach was acting up. My prosperity and my thin, thin beauty were making her physically ill. I’ll always remember you like this.

  “That’s right, Father. I’m a demonic operative. Sorry, I can’t really talk about it, but I thought I’d get in touch with you.”

  Somebody up at the far end of the room tinked on a glass with a spoon, and he jumped. “We’d better get back to our table, Wendy.”

  “And finally we have the buffet to ourselves, beautiful,” Mal said to me.

  But I wasn’t done. I looked my mother up and down. “You’ve pudged out a bit, haven’t you?” I said cruelly. “Yeah, they gave me this treatment, it’s amazing, I never worry about what I eat anymore. Can’t tell you about that either. Classified.” I smiled meanly into my mother’s whitening face. “But really, it doesn’t matter. You’re healthy. You don’t have to hate yourself just because you put on a few pounds. You’re still a person. You’re still my mother, right? Right, Mother?”

  “You’ll come for Thanksgiving dinner?” my father said, still selectively deaf.

  “We insist,” my mother croaked.

  My father said, “Join us at our table now!”

  “We’re with a group,” Mal said.

  The glass-tinking started again. My father hauled my mother away, and she nearly twisted her head around like an owl, staring back at her daughter, who was now five-foot-eleven, size zero, covered with diamonds and class, and, I hoped, completely over her fucking parents.

  I was shaking when we got back to our table. Someone had spoken to catering, obviously, for tuxedoed waiters stood around putting tidbits on our teammates’ plates, or stopping by with big trays of baby egg rolls, or caviar on toast, or bites of sushi.

  Ish led me to my seat with a hand on my back. I sat. While I fed my own face, I watched my friends eat. They had never seemed so beautiful.

  Obviously they’d been eating for some time, because when Ish said to the caterers, “Thanks guys, I think this will do us now,” they made no outraged complaints.

  “Eight more bottles of the red?” Reg said.

  I looked up long enough to notice that Reg was tipping the waiter heavily, and everyone was looking at me.

  I looked down at my plate. It was a big caterer’s platter. It used to have sushi on it.

  I’d eaten twenty maki slices and twenty-two pieces of nigiri in ten minutes.

  Ish leaned close to me. How had he wound up next to me? He touched my upper lip with a napkin, and a grain of rice fell off. He smiled. “You did great.”

  I’d stopped trembling anyway.

  Glances crossed the table. They were being tactful.

  Cricket said in her chirpy voice, “So who was that?”

  “Those were my parents.” I still felt stunned.

  “We heard.” Beth said. She was holding herself in with mighty restraint, I could see.

  Melitta ate, ignoring me.

  “Did you hear them?” I challenged her.

  “What?” She looked up. “My mom is a backstabbing crazy, too. Are you going to their house for Thanksgiving?”

  There was a wild idea. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  Why should I? They didn’t know me or love me. They only saw what they wanted to see. I couldn’t think about it yet. It had been ten years, and the sound of their voices had sent me into an almost Beth-like tizzy.

  Ish said, “Hey, Jee. You know how you keep your room so quiet?”

  Jee was eating! I’d been so mind-whacked, I hadn’t even noticed. Her mouth was full. She pointed at Amanda.

  Ish looked at Amanda.

  “I put a cone of silence over her room,” she said.

  “Can you give us one now?” Ish said. What the hell was he up to?

  I didn’t care. I was hydrating with lemon water, and my teammates passed more glasses around the table to me as I drained them, one by one.

  Amanda started sketching on the back of a program. Then she waved her finger in a tight little pattern. A minute later she said, “We’re secure now.”

  Ish said more quietly, “Those people probably never hit Pog—did they, honey?”

  I shook my head, swallowing. What was he doing? I noticed I was thinking of him as Ish again. Was that because he was bossing my team? Or because my parents had gone away?

  “Uh-huh.” Ish nodded. “But they hit you with words. Everybody here, you’ve been getting hit with words all your life, am I right?”


  Jee said, “And hit with hits.”

  Ish spoke softly, slowly, somehow impressively. “So I don’t want to hear anybody hitting with words on this team. Not to each other. Leave that to the assholes out there.”

  I saw that the whole room was dim now. The far end was alight at the dais, where a guy was giving a talk of some kind, his mouth opening and shutting. But I couldn’t hear him. Nor, apparently, could people at the nearby tables hear us. They watched the speaker.

  At our table there were only the sounds of coffee spoons, wine bottles touching our glasses, and our breathing.

  Ish talked quietly. “Be kind to each other. Nobody says fat or old or ugly or stupid or any of the mean words. We’re all we’ve got.”

  Murmurs of agreement went around the table.

  “Speak for yourself, sonny boy,” Cricket said. “I’ve got twenty-four grandkids and thirty-eight great-grandkids. But I choose to live here.” She patted Amanda’s hand.

  How did he do that? I never tried to appeal to people’s better nature. I couldn’t have scolded them. Even Beth didn’t try that.

  I remembered something. Ish grew up hanging around the strip club. He’d been surrounded by hot women throughout childhood and, later, through his young hard-on years. We’d been inseparable until we were fourteen, and it had been pretty obvious to me that he hadn’t exercised any droit du seigneur with the strippers.

  In fact, he admitted freely that the girls had walked all over him.

  Just as my team walked all over him.

  He must have developed some interesting skills.

  I was quietly hysterical the rest of the evening. I couldn’t even work. Now I knew how Jee must feel, with the past flying up in her face and blowing her mind. The idea of taking off my thong tonight for some schmoe for ten pieces of silver didn’t make it. My insides trembled for two hours. I waited out the evening until everyone else had scored enough.

  Beth drove the van. I rode shotgun. The team talked quietly in the back, pointedly not discussing my moment of drama.

  I didn’t have a chance to really think about it until late that night, when half the team had hit the showers and I was setting up for tomorrow’s breakfast, raiding the freezer for chorizo, making sure we had enough fresh tortas, bollito rolls, and poblano peppers, and setting out three dozen eggs to warm. Beth brought rum up from the downstairs booze locker and put it in her fridge for tomorrow’s daiquiris. Melitta and Ish had taken Beth’s old beater Beemer to the all-night grocery for chips, salsa, orange juice, and the rest of the permanent emergency list on the slate on my fridge.