1 Straight to Hell (30 page)

I could tell from his pained expression that my arrow had finally struck him dead-on.  “My mother did ask you to look out for me,” I reminded him.

“Look out for you, yes.  Not battle your demons.”

“But you’ll do it?”

He closed his eyes and sighed.  “Fine.  I’ll do it.”  Then he looked at me.  “But you owe me a new pair of pants.”

“Deal,” I said.

I held very, very still and watched the gentle rise and fall of DuShawn’s chest.  He’d only been asleep for a few minutes.

“Are you positive that he can’t see us,” I asked Mr. Clerk.  If I was caught in the bedroom of one of my students, I’d probably be locked away so deep that even Miss Spry wouldn’t be able to spring me.  “Or that the monster can’t hear us?”

“Don’t worry,” he said.  We were balanced on the thin ledge that separated our worlds.  Mr. Clerk had taken off his jacket and tie in my living room, and now he rolled up his shirt sleeves.  “The two of us should be able to take it.  We do have the element of surprise, after all.”  But for all his big talk, he looked ready to jump out of his own skin.

So was I.  When I’d first seen the monster, I had to clamp my jaws together to keep from screaming.  How DuShawn had managed to remain silent every night was beyond me.  The boy had an inner strength I could only imagine.  The demon’s sinister goggling eyes never left DuShawn, and its pincer-like hands clicked over and over again like an enormous insect’s mandibles.  One green-mottled appendage slid under the covers, ready to pull out DuShawn’s foot.  Inside, my demon squirmed with revulsion, apparently loathing the creature as much as I did.

“Ready?”

I swallowed and nodded.

“Now,” Mr. Clerk cried.  We both dashed in.  He grabbed the huge demon around the throat while I went for two of the arm appendages.  It was like wrestling a fully-grown alligator.  The monster thrashed its head and opened its toothy mouth trying to bite us, but we held on tightly.

We yanked the monster backward, into the realm of the in-between.  Then, with a speed that surprised me, the three of us whirled around until we were in a new room in a new house.  The place was dark, lit only by a TV whose picture had dissolved into snow.  A naked man with a shock of white hair sat in front of a coffee table scattered with pornography so vile it made my skin crawl.

We burst through the barrier between the otherworld and the human one and released the demon.  “Look there,” Mr. Clerk panted, pointing to the man in front of the TV.  “Food!”

Whether the demon understood or not was unclear, but when the man with the white hair scrambled backwards, the monster was on him like Drinking Tea on a crumpled piece of tissue paper.

We retreated back into the safety of the otherworld hallway.  Mr. Clerk’s clothing was rumpled and his hair was messed up, but he looked as if he’d had more fun in the past five minutes than he had in the past hundred years.

We stayed to watch the show.  A rumbling noise filled the room as the demon spoke, warning the man that if he screamed, it would eat his guts

“He’ll scream,” I said.

“You’re right,” Mr. Clerk agreed.  “But how long do you think it will take?”

I regarded the whimpering man who crouched on the floor.  “Ten minutes.”

“I’d give him five.  In fact, I’ll make a bet.  If he screams in five minutes, then you owe me two pairs of pants and a pair of shoes as well.”

“Agreed.”  I shook his hand.

As it turned out, the man didn’t even last two.

Two weeks later, I was back in my old neighborhood watching men haul ruined furniture from my house and toss it into an enormous Dumpster that sat in my driveway.  The contractors I’d that hired had promised that we’d be able to move in by the time school ended.  It’s amazing what a combination of succubus charm and a huge insurance settlement can do.

I felt William arriving before I saw him.  He dressed in a jacket, plain t-shirt and jeans.  His hair was damp, and he carried a scent of manly body wash, as if he’d just stepped out of the shower.  He looked grouchy.  He folded his arms over his chest and frowned as he surveyed the men working on the house.

“What’s got your tail in a knot,” I asked.  If anyone had the right to be upset, it was me.

“I had an assignment last night,” he said.  “I didn’t get any sleep.”

“A woman?”  I tried to sound casual.

“Yes, a woman.  And yes, we slept together, in case you’re wondering.”

“I wasn’t.”  Since I’d done the same thing with Tommy, I certainly couldn’t go around casting stones at William.  But still, it hurt to think of him in another woman’s bed.  “So you stayed all night.  Was she especially hard to convince?”

He looked uncomfortable.  “No.  She gave in almost immediately.  Technically, it wasn’t necessary to bed her at all.”

“So why did you do it?  Did you need another conquest?  Another notch on your bedpost?”  I was furious.  I know I shouldn’t have been, but I couldn’t help it.

“What do you care,” he asked.

“I don’t.”  It was a lie because as much as I hated to admit it, I missed him.  He was great company when he wasn’t being all coy and seductive.  But I wasn’t about to let him know that.  “What you do on your own time is up to you.”

A long silence stretched between us, and then he said, “I stayed because I was lonely.  That’s all.”

I completely understood.  Since Tommy and Jasmine had left, I’d been terribly lonesome as well.  Each night, after the girls went to bed, I curled up on the couch with pint of Ben and Jerry’s and a LifeTime movie.  And no matter how dreadful the movie was, it always made me cry.

“I’m sorry, William.”  I touched his arm.

He stepped back as if I’d burned him.  “Damn it, Lilith!  How do you do that?”

I was surprised.  “Do what?”

“Bring out my human side.  Every time I’m around you, I become vulnerable.”

“But I like your human side,” I said.  “Much better than the demon one.”

He ran his hands through his hair.  “You, of all people, should understand that our human sides are weak.  They lead us to love, and love makes us defenseless.  Or haven’t you learned anything from your experiences with Miss Spry?”

Actually, I’d learned a lot.  Like I was capable of horribly cruel acts of betrayal.  And that the world was full of evil beasts like Miss Spry.  And that, when backed into a corner, I’d do anything to save the ones I loved.  But what I said was, “I know that I need to cherish every little scrap of love that comes my way because there’s so little of it in this world.”

His eyes went hard.  “Then that’s where you and I disagree.”

Two men came out of the house hauling one of the couches from my living room.  It was so black with soot that I hardly recognized it as the one that Ted and I had spent six months shopping  for.  Now it was nothing but another piece of garbage that would be dragged to the landfill.  In fact, it was sort of a metaphor for my marriage.  Not to mention my life.

I began to twine my fingers in my hair.  Over the past few weeks, I had picked up the annoying, yet unstoppable, habit of tugging on it.  Some of it was starting to fall out.

William put his hand over mine and gently moved it away from my head, stopping me from hurting myself.  “It will be okay, Lil.  I promise.  In a few months, your life will be back to normal.”

I gave a bitter laugh.  “No, it won’t.”

“I could make things easier to bear.”  He put his arm around me.  “Let me keep you company.  We could be very good together.”  I caught a glimpse of his demon in his rakish smile.  “We could ease one another’s suffering.”

He was right, of course.  The chemistry between us was definitely there.  But Ted’s betrayal of me and my betrayal of Tommy were still too fresh in my mind to consider a ‘friends with benefits’ arrangement.  I didn’t want sex; I wanted love.  Something I knew William would never give me.

“Sorry, but no,” I said.

He sighed, but looked as if he’d been expecting this all along.  “Any time you change your mind, let me know.”  He slid his hand down my back and let it cup my ass.  “I promise you, I’ll make it worth your while.”  Then he disappeared without saying good-bye, leaving me with nothing but a terrible sense of sadness.

After William left, I drove over to my dad’s, hoping to find Jasmine there.  She’d been refusing to talk to me, even though I’d filled up the in-box on her phone with messages begging her to call.  I’d gotten so upset that one night, when the girls were at a sleepover, I drank an entire bottle of wine then spent hours posting nearly a hundred (yes, a hundred) drunken FaceBook status updates, most of which said, “I lov my sistr so muchh”.  It was such bizarre behavior that most of my friends un-friended me.

My dad greeted me warmly enough, but after we spent a few minutes talking about the repairs to my house, we sat at the kitchen table in awkward silence.

“Is Jasmine home,” I finally asked.

“No.”  It was clear from the look on his face that ‘no’ probably meant she was in her bedroom, refusing to come out.  Like me, my dad is a terrible liar.  “You girls have been fighting?”

“I did something really awful to her,” I admitted.  Though there was no way in hell I was telling him what that ‘something’ was.  I’d already disappointed him enough over the past few months.  “I keep trying to apologize, but she won’t let me.”

“Maybe the best thing you can do is give her time to be angry,” he said.  My dad has heavy-lidded eyes that make him look wise and old.  Like a turtle.  So when he says things like this, they tend to sound as if they’ve come directly from the Buddha’s mouth.

“I suppose,” I admitted.  “But I’m tired of feeling like crap.”  I’d been buried in guilt for the past few weeks and was beginning to understand why William’s eyes always held such a doleful expression.

“She’ll forgive you eventually.  She loves you.”

“I hope so,” I said.  I stood and collected my purse.  “Tell her I stopped by, okay?”

“Sure.”  He hugged me.  “Can I ask you a question?”

I tensed.  “Okay.”

“That boy she was seeing.  The one with all the jewelry in his face?”

Now I was really getting nervous, wondering if my dad had some kind of sixth sense about what had transpired.  “Yeah?  What about him?”

“Is he still living with you?”

“No.”  Dear, sweet, Tommy who had been a hard-used pawn in my devilish chess game had wanted to stay in Detroit with me.  In fact, he’d begged me to marry him.  In a weaker moment, I might have given in.  After all, Tommy was gentle and kind-hearted and would have done everything he could to take care of me and the girls.  But it would have been wrong.  As much as I cared for Tommy, I didn’t love him the way a wife should love a husband.  And I’d hurt him so much that I didn’t deserve to take anything else from him.  Especially not his future.  So I did what I thought was best for both of us: I set him free.

It had taken a lot of convincing on the part of my succubus, but I’d finally talked him into making the pilgrimage.  He cried when I drove him to the airport. 

I’d hoped that with so much space and time between us, my succubus’s influence would wear off like it had on Ted and Jasmine, but that wasn’t the case.  Either Tommy’s affection for me had run deeper than I’d realized, or my succubus had done her job exceptionally well, but Tommy wouldn’t let go of me.  He texted me at least twice a day – probably sending his cell phone bill through the roof – and the last e-mail he’d sent from an Internet café in Tokyo declared his undying love for me.