1 Straight to Hell (27 page)

“I’m not finished yet.”  Now his eyes were really somber.  “I want you working at one of the homeless shelters downtown…”

Was he
kidding
?  I could only imagine what went on in those places.  I’d be eaten alive.

“I want you to know that none of this was my fault,” I argued.  Thunder rumbled.  I hadn’t realized how the sky was darkening.  “It was Sarah Goodswain who made this deal, not me.  And she did it because
your
people were going to hang her for being a witch.” 

The creases in his face grew deeper.  Suddenly, he looked much older.  “Who are you talking about?”

“The Mathers,” I said.  “Cotton and what’s his name.  Increase.  They were ministers.”

“Those weren’t my people.”  He picked up his fiddle again.

I thought about William.  “What about Reverend Landers?  Do you know him?”

“I know everyone.  But a lot of people who claim to be working for me are actually in league with Miss Spry.  Whether they realize it or not.”

The Mathers were in league with Miss Spry?  I wanted to argue that he was lying, but as I thought it through, it made perfect sense.  Miss Spry would have convinced the Mathers that God wanted them to hang a witch.  In turn, the innocent, young girl would willingly strike a deal with the Devil.  The twisted situation had the old hag’s fingerprints all over it.

“So why didn’t you force them to stop?”

“Force them?”  He smiled wryly.  “How did you feel when you forced Ariel to do what you wanted her to?  I want people to make their own choices.  And so do you.  After all, didn’t you just tell me that Grace should be allowed to decide her own future?  And aren’t you fighting Miss Spry because she’s stolen your own free will?”  He winked at me.  I wanted to say something scathingly bitter in return, but I couldn’t think of a thing, so I sulked instead.

“Helen is very good at creating disasters, then sticking me with the blame.”  He played a sour note on his fiddle.  “Her propaganda machine is in fine, working order.”

“She says the same thing about you.”

He smiled sadly.

I could see that he wasn’t going to budge in his offer, and if I really wanted him to help me, it would be at the expense of my home, my car, my money, my daughter and my own safety.  It wasn’t much of a bargain, in my opinion.  But, on the other hand, it would mean that I’d get to keep my family.  No more flying off to do Miss Spry’s bidding.  And the curse would finally be broken.  It was a hard bargain, to be sure, but somehow I’d been expecting it all along.

“Okay, I agree to your conditions.”  I stuck out my hand.  “Deal.”

He ignored my outstretched fingers.  “One last thing.  I want you to reconcile with your ex-husband.”

“Oh
hell
no!”  I was on my feet in an instant.  It had started to rain now, fat drops pelting the grasses and making them quiver.  The birds had fallen silent.  “I came here for help,” I said.

“And I’ve offered it.”

“You have no clue about what you’re asking.  Do you have any idea what that asshole put me through?”

“I have some,” he said drily.

“I don’t think you do.”  He didn’t look angry, but I was pissed.  “I put Ted through dental school, did you know that?  Yeah, and because I was the only one working, it was me who took out a loan for him to buy his way into a practice.  A loan I’m still required to pay off, by the way.  Yet after all of that, he cheated on me.”  Behind me, thunder rumbled again, closer this time.

“I’m asking you to love, Lilith Straight.  That’s all.  And part of love is forgiveness and reconciliation.”

“I can’t do it,” I said.  “I just can’t.”

“Love is hard,” he agreed.  “Much harder than hate.”

Angry tears formed at the corner of my eyes.  “I’ve had a really
shitty
year and this isn’t helping a bit!”

“I know what kind of year you’ve had,” he said softly.

“So why didn’t you
do
something about it, then?  Wave your magic wand or whatever?”  My lifelong rage at God was back in a flash, and with it a crash of lightening that shook the ground and made the porch tremble.  I didn’t care if he did look like Pa Engels, or that he was fiddling on the porch of my childhood dream home.  “Why did you stand there and let it happen?”

“That’s the same thing Sarah Goodswain asked me after she’d been locked up.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“That one event down on earth is interconnected to every other event.  It’s like a web.  And once I started plucking strings, the entire thing would come apart.  And I’m not ready for it to come apart.  Not just yet.”

“That’s a really crappy answer.”

He smiled.  “That’s what she said.  Though not in so many words.”

“Did you offer her a deal?”

“Not really.  I told I’d take care of things, but she had to have faith.”

Now I was furious.  A jagged line of lightening cut the sky in half, and a second later, thunder roared once more.  The wind swept across the prairie, flattening the grass in waves.  “That’s terrible!  Do you have any idea what they did to those women?”

“If you recall, I spent a lifetime down there,” he said.  “And it didn’t end well for me, either.”  A shadow crossed over his face.  “Humans hurt each other better than Miss Spry ever could.”

I couldn’t tell which was worse.  The shame of crawling to him for help, or the disappointment from not getting what I wanted.  “So you won’t help me?”

“I won’t back down on my conditions, no.  If you really want me to defeat Miss Spry, then you need to trust me, Lilith.  You need to have faith.”

Faith.  What was faith against the likes of Miss Spry?  “To me, faith is nothing more than wishful thinking,” I said.  “And I’m too much of a realist for that.”

He smiled sadly.  “Then I’m sorry.  I can’t help you.”

At least I’d tried.  “Okay then,” I said.  “I guess I’ll be going.”  Although I didn’t like the idea of choosing hate over love, at least if I stuck with Miss Spry, I’d get to live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood.  After I went back and turned the demon loose on my insurance agent, that was.

“If you ever change your mind, let me know.  The offer is always good.”  He returned to his fiddle, playing a melody I first thought was a hymn but then recognized as a Coldplay song.

When I reached to the old, wooden door and placed my hand on the knob, I realized that I’d made the exact same decision that Sarah Goodswain had all those years before.  And just like Sarah, I was in Miss Spry’s clutches.

The fierce thunderstorm had abated.  The wind had died down, and the lightening had stopped.  All that remained was dense line of clouds obscuring the sun.  Well, that and a feeling of despair that made my heart feel a hundred pounds heavier.

When I re-entered the church courtyard, William was nowhere to be found.  I drove home alone.

Jas was no longer sprawled out on the couch, but unforgivably maudlin music drifted up from the basement.  It was the Barry Manilow CD that I always tormented her with when she wouldn’t get up in the morning.  Now she was using it to torture herself.

I knew she liked Tommy, but had no idea that she was so in love with him.  After all, she’d treated him as carelessly as all of her other boy toys.  But I didn’t have the energy to muster so much as an ounce of pity for my stepsister.  Jas would have to work out her heartache herself.

I fed Tea, washed a couple of glasses that had been left in the sink, and turned out the kitchen lights.  Passing through the living room, I noticed that the couch was still in disarray from my passionate entwining with William.  I straightened the cushions and folded the afghan, wanting to erase the evidence of what had taken place.  I was ashamed at how easy I’d given in to his charms.  Thank God, I’d come to my senses.  Because if I’d told Ted that I wanted Grace to live with him, he would have been at the apartment in under an hour with a new custody agreement so ironclad that an army of attorneys wouldn’t have been able to crack it.

I shuddered at the thought.

I stopped in the girls’ room to kiss them goodnight before I went to bed.  Ari slept in the top bunk, curled in a tight ball and clutching a ragged, stuffed dog.  Tomorrow, we’d have that chat about how she could not leave the playground at lunchtime.

I sat on the bottom bunk to kiss Grace, but her bed was empty.  “Grace,” I whispered.  I patted down the mattress, to make sure I hadn’t missed her.  “Grace?”

My heart tripped over itself as I crossed the hallway and went into my own bedroom.  I flipped on the lights, but my little girl wasn’t in my bed, either.  The bathroom was empty as well.

I ran down the stairs to the basement.  Jasmine lay on her bed with her arms flung over her face.  “Jas, where’s Grace?”

Jasmine muttered something.

“Jas?”

“She’s sleeping, I said.”

My stomach was like an elevator that was free-falling to the bottom floor of a skyscraper.  Feeling giddy, I charged back up the stairs to look in the girls’ room once more.

I want to see you right now, Lilith Straight!

It was Miss Spry, shouting at me from the otherworld.  Suddenly, I knew right where my daughter was.

All of the artifice – the jail cell, the hallway, my mother’s moonlit path, Miss Spry’s office – had been stripped away leaving nothing.  To try to speak of it now, to describe it in some way, is impossible.  Was it dark?  Yes.  Hot? Yes, in a way.  Stifling would be a better word.  The very air suffocated me, crawling down my throat.  I dropped to the ground, my cheek on the slimy floor, fighting to catch my breath.

Get up
.

Miss Spry’s voice spoke inside my head, drowning out every other thought.  I pushed myself to a sitting position and struggled to stand.  With nothing to hang onto, the task seemed impossible.  And once I got to my feet, a sudden lunge of vertigo knocked me back down.

GET UP!!

Somehow I did, though I staggered like a drunkard as I tried to keep my balance.

“You’ve made me very unhappy, Lilith Straight.”

The lights went up, and I yelped when I saw her.  The ice-blue eyes, the sensuous mouth, these were gone.  Her skin on her back and arms was bumpy and slimy, like the back of a toad, and her pale underbelly pulsed as if she’d recently swallowed a hundred living beings who were still writhing in pain.  Her face was human, but barely.  Orange hellfire raged in the pits of her eyes, and her mouth was a cavern of jagged teeth, ready to shred me to bits.  This was not the glamorous movie star, nor was it the monster I’d glimpsed whenever she got angry.  No, here was a creature made of hate.  “You’ve broken our deal for the last time.”

I wanted to defend myself, but couldn’t.  All I could do was cover my head with my arms and moan.

“Look over there,” she said, and I did.  Curled on the floor, sound asleep, was Grace.  “Meet my new succubus.”

With a horrible shock, I realized what I should have known all along.  Just as I had followed my mother into the Devil’s service, and she had followed my grandmother and so forth back to Sarah Goodswain, Grace now had to follow me.  “NO!”

“She’s young, but she’ll be effective.  I’ll put her to work immediately.”

“Oh God,” I moaned.  “Jesus.”  I began to weep.

Miss Spry laughed, a sound that scraped backwards against my nerves.  “God?  You want to call for His help?”  She tilted her hideous head back and bellowed loud enough to make the ground trembled.  “God?!  Are you there?  Lilith needs your help.”