1 Straight to Hell (26 page)

She lifted her head and looked up at him in startled amazement, taking in his soulful eyes and the strong lines of his jaw.  Then her expression hardened.  “Dude, I hardly
know
you.”

When William drew back, affronted and perplexed, I snickered.  I couldn’t help it.  Knowing that there was one woman in the world who wasn’t head-over-heels for him made me want to sing.

As William and I walked outside, I couldn’t resist making a dig.  “She’s just not that into you.”

“She’s distracted, that’s all,” he said, trying to sound indifferent.  He wasn’t fooling me, though.  I knew that his ego had been badly bruised.  “You don’t understand how difficult our job can be because you’ve been given only the easy cases.  But most of the time, temptation is more complicated than it appears.”

If you say so, I thought, but held my tongue.

“Where’s the doorway,” I asked.  Now that my demon had fled, I’d never find it.

“I suggest we drive.  If I try to take you to heaven by using the otherworld corridors, Miss Spry will catch us for certain.”

Good point.

Deciding that Jas owed me for all the times she’d borrowed my car without asking, I found the key I knew she kept hidden in a magnetic box under the back bumper and unlocked the doors.   “Why did you offer to help out Jasmine?”  I blew on my fingers to warm them before touching the icy steering wheel.

William shrugged and said nothing, but I was still doing a slow burn over how he’d used me and refused to let him off that easy.  “Spill it,” I said, backing out of the parking space.  “Is Jasmine a succubus?  Is that it?”

His lips twitched in a partial smile.  “I don’t find her particularly alluring.”

Yeah, right.  “So what’s the story,” I pressed.

He leaned over and, without my consent, turned on the heater, directing the vents his way.  “You said that this Tommy is her spiritual advisor?”

“Yes.”  I gave him a pointed look from the corner of my eye and then dialed down the heater, which was still blowing cold air.  “But he’s not a church-going man.  He’s not your Reverend Lathers or whomever.”

“Landers,” he corrected.  He took a pair of gloves from the pocket of his coat.  “And I don’t care what kind of religion this chaste, young man practices, I felt sorry for your sister, that’s all.”

The answer didn’t sit right with me.  After all, I’d never seen William Darcy act charitably toward anyone.  But when I replayed his response in my head, I realized that he’d accented the word ‘chaste.’ “You don’t care about the religious part, do you,” I said.  “What bothers you is that he’s celibate.  You’re upset because Tommy is placing his religion ahead of his lechery.”

William put on his gloves and flexed his fingers.  His face was set like granite.

“Tommy’s a vegan, too,” I continued.  “And he doesn’t drink alcohol, smoke, or gamble.”  William continued his stony silence, so I decided to press a little harder.  After the humiliation he just put me through, I loved having the knife to his throat.  “He calls himself an ascetic and claims that deprivation brings him closer to God.”  At this, William flinched, and I felt a flush of triumph.  Direct hit.

I decided it was time to shove that knife in up to its hilt.  “I think your father and Reverend Landers would have really admired him.”

I’d been out for blood, and boy, did I draw it.  William turned on me like I was his enemy.  “Do you know what’s wrong with people who act so pious?  They’re frauds, that’s what.  They may pretend to be virtuous, but inside, they’re completely corrupt.”

“Not Tommy,” I argued.  Then, thinking of all the things he’d done – starting with making cookies and ending with giving me rent money – I added, “He’s a saint.”

“A saint!  No earthly man is a saint.”  The street lights slid over William’s features, and I could see how furious I’d made him.  I’d been so focused on wounding him, that I’d forgotten I still needed him to show me the way to heaven.  I had to take this down a notch.

“I meant he’s a good guy, that’s all,” I said soothingly.  “That he’s genuine.”

“I’ll bet,” William muttered.  “I’m sure that he’s completely incorruptible.”  He looked out the window, brooding.  “Turn here,” he said finally.

I did.  William guided me down several residential streets before we finally pulled into a church parking lot.  It was an old-fashioned place of worship with an archetypal peaked roof and steeple.  “Seriously?” I said, disappointed that yet another cliché was proving true.

“There are many doors to heaven,” William said as he got out of the car, “but this is the only one I know of.”

I followed him across the parking lot, around the side of the building, and into a courtyard in the back.  A few birdbaths, capped in snow, stood under some stunted, ornamental trees.  An enormous concrete sundial with a bronze gnomon dominated the center of the garden.  And at the very back, was an old wooden door.

Unconnected to any building, the door stood like a stage prop.  I could clearly see both sides of it from where I stood.  “Are you sure this is it?”

William nodded.  “Yes.”

I braced myself and put a hand on the doorknob, but before I could turn it, William stopped me.  “Don’t forget to give my regards to Reverend Landers.”

I waved at him over my shoulder, then opened the door.

The snowy garden, the dark church and the sound of cars passing by had disappeared.  In their places was a sprawling field of gently waving grass.  Brilliant meadow flowers polka-dotted the green.  Birdsong came from the little birds clinging to the taller stems.  The sun shown, but on the horizon, dark clouds threatened.

A few paces away stood a log cabin.  The windows were nothing more than roughly-hewn squares in the walls, but there was a covered porch.  And sitting there on the porch, a fiddle on his shoulder, was an olive-skinned, bearded, young man with long hair.

He played beautifully.  The music was fluid, the tune peaceful.  His fingers moved effortlessly, and he tapped his bare foot in time to the music.  Then, suddenly, he stopped and looked at me.  “Any requests?”

“Um…Amazing Grace?”  Outside of Christmas carols, it was the only remotely religious song I knew.

He played the song with such feeling that tears rose to my eyes.  Forgetting myself, I came onto the porch and sat down next to him on a wooden barrel.  “That was lovely,” I said when he finished.

“Why thank you, Ma’am.”  He set the fiddle aside.  “So what can I do for you?”

With his torn jeans and rock-n-roll t-shirt, this man looked and dressed like the cashier at the party store near my townhouse.  He looked young, but his eyes were old.  Really old.  Like they’d been around long enough to see the Big Bang blow our chunk of rock into orbit around the sun.

I found myself tongue-tied.  Prayer had never been my forte.  Even those desperate, mumbling bargains that most people instinctively make when stressed (like, “Please, God, if you let me lose twenty pounds before my next class reunion, I swear I’ll be a nicer person”) have been beyond me.

So, despite my previous urgency, I opted for small talk.  “Nice place you have here.”

“Doesn’t any of this look familiar to you?”

In fact, it did.  But I couldn’t recall where I’d seen it before.  Then, it came to me with a vivid jolt: the prairie, the cabin, the man with the fiddle.  “Little House on the Prairie?”

He grinned.

That series of books had been my mainstay in elementary school when I’d been trying to deal with my dad’s new wife, baby Jasmine, and a hundred other things.  I’d lay in bed at night, imagining Laura Engels Wilder’s little cabin, her sisters, and her fiddle-playing pa.  I’d never actually been to a prairie, but these images became my safe places where I hid when life grew too hard.  Recognizing my safe place made something loosen in my chest, and I felt a little better.  “Okay.  The reason why I’m here is kind of a long story.”

 “Well, I’ve got time.”  He smiled kindly and leaned back in his seat.

I stared at my folded hands, unable to meet those sympathetic eyes.  “Well, it seems that I’ve gotten into a mess.”  I waited, hoping he would finish the story for me, but when the silence stretched out too long, I blurted out, “I’m a succubus, but I don’t want to be!  I keep getting these terrible assignments, and I have to leave my daughter.  I’ve tried to get out of it, but no matter what I do, they won’t leave me alone.  I need you to fix it.”

“So you must have met Helen.  Miss Spry?”  I nodded.  His smile deepened.  “The next time you see her, say ‘hi’ from me, will you,” he said, sounding neighborly.

“Sure.”  Whatever.  I made a mental note: Tell Miss Spry, ‘hi’ from Jesus.  Feeling safer and a little more reassured, I edged closer to him.  “So can you help me?”

“Well, maybe.  What are you offering in return?”

This surprised me so much that I finally looked him in the eyes.  I had not been prepared to bargain.  “Um, I don’t know.”  I tried to think of something valuable.  “My car?”  By the way, despite its mechanical problem, my car wasn’t just any bit of trash.  It was a Lexus, last year’s model, and something I had won in the divorce.  Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have put it up on the auction block, but this was my future and my daughter’s life we were discussing.

An amused light danced in his eyes.  “Do you see any roads out here?”

Good point.  “Okay.  How about hours of community service?  By the way, I want you to know that I did take in Ariel.  And she’s not even my relation.”

He nodded as if he knew the whole story already.  Which, if he really was God, I suppose he did.

“How about if I take the girls to church?”

“Better,” he said, tuning his fiddle.  “But if you’re expecting me to go up against Miss Spry, you’ll have to do more than that.”

“So tell me, already.”  I was growing frustrated.  “What do
you want?”

So he told me.  But when I heard his conditions, my heart sank.  This was not going to be easy.

“For starters, I want you to sell everything you own, give the money to charity and move to the inner city.”

“Everything?”  My brain was clicking away like mad, calculating what this would involve.  Would that include the eventual insurance settlement for the house?  Was I suppose to try to
sell
the house?  And if so, did I need to fix it up first because, as smoke-damaged as it was, it was in no condition to sell.  Plus, I’d take a beating in this market, for sure.  And move to the inner city?  Did that mean that was Grace would attend Detroit public schools?  Ted would hunt me down and shoot me if I tried that.

“Everything,” he confirmed.

“What about my car?”

“Yes, sell that too.  You’ll have to start taking public transportation.”

I groaned.  This was going to be much harder than I’d ever imagined.  But still, for Grace’s sake – not to mention my own – it had to be done.  “Okay,” I said.

“And, yes, I want you to start taking your daughter to a place of worship.  Your father’s church is fine, but it can be a synagogue, temple, mosque, ashram, whatever.  I want her mixing with some of my people.  And when she gets older, you need to encourage her to get a medical degree.  Nursing, doctoring, it doesn’t matter.”  His brown eyes were serious.

“Why,” I asked cautiously.

“So she can go to Somalia.  Or maybe Kazakhstan.  Someplace that desperately needs help.  It’s her choice as long as she serves.”

“Oh, come on,” I protested.  Why was it that every supernatural being I met wanted to tell me what to do.  “Shouldn’t she be allowed to make her own decisions?”