The man frowned, looking at the coin before shoving it back into his pocket. I wondered again how he’d managed to keep it. I’d have to have a word with the sheriff about this.
Or not. It wasn’t my business. I was a resident, not someone in charge of anything but my own damned life for a change.
“I don’t know how to call him. Usually I touch the coin and call and he appears, but when I did that last night, nothing happened. This town is…weird. It’s like there’s something blocking me here.”
A chill ran down my spine and I gave him a sharp look. My ancestor had set up the original wards around the town which my sisters and I reinforced every few months or so. It kept the peace, to a certain extent. And it did dull the abilities of our supernatural residents as well as block paranormal communications in and out of the town.
It also fucked up the cell signals. We were working on that.
Human? Or demon? Or something else? It shouldn’t matter. He was a client to represent, but someone I really needed to know.
“So you expect me to believe you’re really the son of the devil? That you came here for…what? To tie one on after a tough day torturing adulterers in the fifth circle?”
“Adulterers are in the second circle. The fifth is for those consumed with the sin of wrath, a personal favorite of mine.” He stretched his arms above his head and looked up at the ceiling. “You really should study up on this. As a lawyer, you’ll most likely wind up in hell. It’s good to arrive with a solid knowledge of the layout and tortures you’ll be enjoying.”
Right. “I’ll take that into consideration, but for now, let’s concentrate on your situation here, Mr. Lucien.”
“Just Lucien.”
“So Lucien, walk me through what happened last night. You arrive here from hell for an evening of relaxing fun. Alone. Why Accident? Were you driving through and just wanted to stop for the night? Is there a reason you picked our town and Pistol Pete’s?”
He shrugged. “Paris is so out this year? All the celebs are heading to Pistol Pete’s. I’m all about following the trends, you know.”
I looked at my watch. “Should I come back tomorrow? Would another day in this jail cell make you more inclined to seriously answer my questions and stop wasting my time. Time, I might add, that I’m not getting paid for?”
He smirked. “This is where Charon took me. The places I usually go just didn’t appeal to me. I was bored. I wanted to try something new, so I told Charon to pick, and this is where I ended up.”
Huh. That’s what happened when you let the Uber driver decide where you were going to party for the night. You wound up drunk and fighting it out with a werewolf and his friends, and then in jail.
“So the Uber guy, this Charon, dropped you at Pistol Pete’s?”
“Yes. A group of fairies propositioned me in the parking lot, but a satyr told them to beat it and took me inside to buy me a drink. He went off to screw a nymph, and I made my way over to the werewolves.”
I took a breath. The wards meant that residents of Accident felt safe walking around as nature intended them to be. It also meant this town wasn’t all that safe for newbies, humans, who didn’t know the rules. We had human residents, but the newbies were always one insult away from getting a minotaur horn up their ass.
“I’m assuming things didn’t work out well between you and the werewolves. So you had a few drinks, then you got into a fight outside?”
“The fight started inside, but the manager guy kicked us out. I wasn’t inclined to comply, but the others were. The guy had a towel.”
I knew exactly what that towel was because my sister Bronwyn had enchanted it for Pete herself. I wasn’t really that thrilled about a bar owner having something that could pretty much Taser a supernatural into a convulsing mess, but it did stop a lot of fights.
Fear the towel.
“Clinton Dickskin says you started the fight.”
Lucien snickered. “Dickskin. Seriously? I think I’d change my name.”
“When you’re strong enough to bench a tank, no one makes fun of your name.” Actually, everyone made fun of his name, we all just did it privately.
He leaned against the bars, his dark eyes meeting mine. “Yes, I started the fight. I would have finished it too if that sheriff hadn’t shown up with some knockout stick. I’m not a fan of law-enforcement people. They remind me of angels, and I really don’t like angels. I’m not so sure about this town either. My eye hurts, and this cut stings, and I can’t manage to get out of this cage or call Charon and I couldn’t incinerate that Dickwad guy with a snap of my fingers even though I tried. It was an interesting evening, but I’m ready to leave. Well, I was ready to leave until I saw you, that is.”
Flirt. Too bad he was a client.
I looked down at my file, thinking about the circumstances of the case and what angle I should take to make all of this go away.
No money. No ID. No last name or residence beyond the “hell” scrawled on the paperwork. But Clinton had been in more fights this year than I had fingers and toes, and the guy did appear to be a newbie, which worked in his favor. Hmm. “Let me see if I can get you out on your own recognizance. If the district court commissioner says ‘no’, then is there someone you can call to post bail?”
“Sweetheart, if I could call someone, I wouldn’t be in this jail cell right now.”
Flirt.
“Call me sweetheart again and you can sit here for the whole weekend.” I waved for Officer Watts to come in. “Let me do the talking, okay?”
This dude was smoking hot, but my job was to get Lucien out of this cell and out of Accident. Assault two. Drunk and disorderly. Property damage. Shouldn’t be too hard to get this all dismissed if I spent my Friday night smoothing feathers around town. If I could get everyone to drop the charges, then this man could go back to hell, or wherever it was he came from, and I could get back to my normal life.
It was an ideal solution, but somehow the idea of my normal life was unusually depressing.
Chapter 4
Lucien
A witch. My blood quickened at the thought and it was all I could do to keep from reaching through the bars and touching her. It had been nearly three thousand years since I’d seen a witch, but even taking that into consideration, my reaction to her was far from normal.
Beautiful. Smart. Confident. And her energy called to me with the strength of a siren’s song.
No wonder my infernal powers were blunted. A witch. A real witch. A powerful witch. No doubt that weird electric feel I’d had as Charon and I had entered the town limits had been some sort of wards. We were particularly susceptible to witch magic. It all made sense now why I hadn’t been able to fry that werewolf, or instantly heal these wounds, or break out of this jail cell and go home. This explained everything.
Well, except for my coin not working. I had a feeling that had something to do with Charon, that rat bastard. I might not kill him when I got back, because this was turning into an interesting sort of vacation, but I did intend on making him suffer mightily for ignoring my call.
When I got back. I eyed the gorgeous witch and thought that I might just want to stay here for a few more days. Hell, I just might want to stay here forever.
As soon as I got out of this stupid cell, I was going to…
Going to what? I hadn’t seen a witch in three thousand years. How did one go about wooing a witch in these times? I doubted bringing her a dozen goats and the head of her enemy would work. Or maybe it would. We didn’t often have to do the wooing. Usually it was the witches who summoned us and told us what they wanted in exchange for what we wanted.
I just had to find out what she wanted, then propose a deal—a deal that also involved her naked in a bed with me.
The policeman who’d locked me in this cell came in, jangling keys in his hand. He proceeded to have an argument with the witch, insisting the handcuffs go back on before he opened the door. His eyes had glowed like the werewolves, but
I got the feeling he wasn’t a wolf. Maybe a rat from the way his nose twitched at me, but I wasn’t one to judge.
This town was so fascinating. I’d been all over the world, but never had I seen such a concentration of non-humans, boldly walking around in their natural forms. Yeah, there was something weird here blocking my powers. Yeah, my bruises and cuts hurt, and seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to heal. Yeah, I was pretty sure Charon had set me up as payback for something I’d done in the past. But I was still having the time of my life here.
Especially now that I’d met this witch.
I eyed the woman in front of me. Cassandra, she’d said her name was. Cassandra. It was a powerful name for a powerful woman, and it made me wonder if she had any of the prophetic ability of her namesake.
That dark red hair, the way she bit her lip as she thought. The flush that rose on her cheeks when her eyes met mine. I wondered about that slim body under the suit, followed the v of her shirt neckline to the faint hint of cleavage. She was gorgeous.
But my attraction to her wasn’t just that she was a witch or that she was beautiful. She treated me with the sort of confident authority I’d only experienced from two of hell’s denizens—my father and my mother. Although outside of that confidence, she seemed to be nothing like the two that had given me life. Lucifer was…well, Lucifer. My mother, Lilith, was the demon equivalent of a praying mantis. She was vicious, violent, and she liked to kill those she had sex with. My father was the only exception and that wasn’t through any lack of trying on her part. Actually, this witch reminded me a bit of the angels I’d encountered here and there in my life. She was sharp, single-minded, with a biting sort of humor that normally made me want to start slicing wings. Except in her, it was a bit of a turn-on.
Okay, it was a lot of a turn-on.
The police-rat must have been convincing because the cuffs went back on before he opened the metal jail cell door. He gripped my arm with white-knuckled nervousness as we followed Cassandra down a hallway and into a room. Rat-cop pushed me into a chair and Cassandra took the seat beside me.
“Did you check him?” The bald man seated behind the desk asked.
I decided to be silent and let her talk, as she’d requested—less because she’d demanded it of me and more because I was curious where all this was going. Well, and I really wanted out of that cell, and for someone to take these damned handcuffs off me. My call to Charon clearly wasn’t getting through, and he was just the sort of asshole who wouldn’t come look for me if I failed to call him. No, I would end up rotting in that horrible cell for a few years before someone needed my input on something and tracked me down. Best to keep my mouth shut and be smart about this whole thing until I figured out how things worked in this town.
And figured out how to convince this witch I was the demon she wanted to spend her life with.
“Check him?” Her voice rose and she touched her necklace. “No. Why would I check him?”
“Because…” the bald man looked at the file. “He says he’s the son of the devil.”
Cassandra rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in a dramatic move that had me biting back a grin. “You’re kidding me, Aaron. One of the Dickskins beat the crap out of him. Does that sound like the son of Satan to you? He looks like he got run over by a truck, and he’s spent the night locked behind iron bars. At best he’s drunk or high. At worst, he’s off his meds.”
The bald guy snorted, then looked up at me. “What’s your last name, son?”
Son? I choked back a laugh. “I don’t have one, dad. I was given the name Lucien.”
He glared at me. “Where do you live?”
“Hell.”
“And your parents are…?”
“Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, the Morning Star, the Infernal Master of Hell and All Who Reside There, and Lilith, the Dark Mother.”
“Lucifer. And Lilith,” the bald man repeated. “And you’re Lucien.”
I shrugged.
“They had a thing for the letter L I guess?” he asked. “Couldn’t just name you Robert or Steve or something?”
“My father chose the name. He would have named me Lucifer after himself, but it would have caused confusion in hell, and Junior doesn’t sound menacing enough for the son of Satan.”
Bald Guy glanced over to Cassandra who shrugged. “See? Human. Crazy. And it’s not like everyone in this town isn’t secretly wanting to knock Clinton Dickskin to the ground.”
He snorted then turned back to me. “If I release you, you need to reappear for the trial, unless your attorney works out a plea deal with the prosecutor.”
“They’re seriously going to continue with this?” Cassandra asked.
The bald man nodded. “Dickskin is furious, and that guy who had his arm broken might file charges as well.” He turned to me. “No getting out of this one, Junior.”
I continued to keep my mouth shut and tried to incinerate the man. I had as much success as I had in trying to incinerate that werewolf.
“For Christ’s sake, Aaron,” Cassandra snapped. “He has no money, no family. He can’t post bail, and these charges are ridiculous. You know Clinton probably started the whole thing. And Stanley probably deserved that broken arm as well. How many times have you guys intervened in fights between Dickskin’s gang and the others in town? This is a regular thing with those wolves, especially this close to the full moon. I’m not going to let my client, an innocent newbie, sit in jail for weeks over what in a wolf pack is a minor dust-up.”
“I get it, Cassie. I do. But I can’t exactly send a deputy to hell to pick him up if he doesn’t show up at his hearing,” the bald guy retorted. “The guy has no last name, no ID, and no earthly address. What am I supposed to do?”
“Release him on his own recognizance and trust me to get these bogus charges dropped. I’ll handle it.”
The bald man eyed her, slowly raising an eyebrow. “You’re telling me you’re going to finally grab the family broomstick and take charge?”
Cassandra flushed. “I’m a lawyer. This guy is my client. I’m going to do my job—the job I chose. The one I went to school to do. The one that doesn’t involve a damned broomstick.”
Bald guy looked disappointed. “Well then, Lawyer Perkins, your client can stay here as our guest until he produces proof of a valid earthly address as well as one thousand dollars bond.”
Suddenly this vacation was looking a whole lot less interesting. Normally I wouldn’t care about a jail cell, but if they kept these cuffs on me, I wouldn’t be able to escape. Actually, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to escape if they took the cuffs off me. The memory of that officer’s stick from last night, and Pistol Pete’s Towel of Doom, along with the knowledge that my powers and abilities were pretty close to nonexistent made me eager to stay as far away from that jail cell as possible.
“He doesn’t have a thousand dollars,” Cassandra argued.
“Well then he’s staying here until the hearing. Which given that today is Friday, will most likely be Monday or Tuesday.”
“You keep him here, and you’ll regret it,” she snarled, her energy beginning to coil around her hands. I stared, fascinated. Turned on. And very aware that of the three of us, I was probably the only one that could actually see her magic.
Bald Guy’s eyes narrowed. “Regret it how, Cassie? Because I’m pretty sure you’re not threatening the town magistrate with bodily harm.”
She glared back at him. “Forget about coming to Sunday night family dinner. No porkchops for you this week. And forget about borrowing the boat over Memorial Day weekend too.”
“Cassie, that’s not fair!” he shouted, rising to his feet.
My eyes went back and forth between the pair. Clearly from their familiarity and first-name usage they knew each other on more than just a professional basis, but family Sunday dinner? There was no resemblance that I could see. Was he an in-law? A distant cousin? A neighborhood kid she’d gone to grade school with that was
almost an adopted part of her family? He better not be her boyfriend or fiancé, because this witch was mine.
Well, I hoped she’d be mine. If I ever got out of these handcuffs, that is.
She sighed, reaching up a hand to rub her forehead. “You’re right. I’m sorry. But you’ve got to see how ridiculous this whole thing is. He’s a newbie. Just let him out. And I’ll…I’ll deal with Marcus. I’ll get the charges dropped.”
That last bit was said between clenched teeth, as if her idea of dealing with Marcus involved decapitation or possibly evisceration.
The bald man gave her a sideways glance, as if he was thinking along the same lines as me. “You don’t know demon-boy’s address, or even his last name. The man has no ID or money. But somehow if the charges don’t get dropped, you’re personally going to ensure that he’ll show up for his hearing?”
She sucked in a breath and sat back in her chair.
Bald guy smoothed a hand over the top of his head. “Tell you what, Cassie, I’ll let him go if he’ll wear an ankle bracelet—one of Bronwyn’s ankle bracelets. And he needs to attend at least one anger management meeting before the hearing.”
“I don’t want him at that meeting,” she shot back.
“Cass, if this thing ends up going to court, it’s in his best interests to have been attending the meetings. He’s your client. Stop with the knee-jerk reaction and think about how it will benefit his case.”
She muttered something about stupid meetings, and why the werewolves weren’t made to attend them. “Fine. The meeting, but not the anklet. Since when does a newbie require one of Bronwyn’s ankle bracelets?”
“He wears one of Bronwyn’s monitors, or he stays in jail, or he posts bond. Pick one. I’m not taking a chance that he vanishes off to hell, and I end up with Marcus and the entire Dickskin pack trying to take my head off.”
Cassandra blew out a breath, balling up her fists. “Fine. Fit him up and let’s get out of here before everyone starts closing up early for the weekend.”
Brimstone and Broomsticks: Accidental Witches Book 1 Page 3