Accidentally Demonic (10 page)

Casey’s eyes grew hot and so did her delectable anger. In fact, the stage had a certain amount of freedom to it she rather enjoyed, thus deciding, not entirely of her own volition, to test again—in Sybil-like fashion—on Nina. “Do you ever shut your mouth? Really, you’re the rudest species of cow.”

Wanda was instantly in Nina’s path. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying, Nina. Her hormones, not to mention her emotions, are raging—you know this. How about you try and be the bigger paranormal here and back down first?”

Nina was obviously giving thought to that, but it just wasn’t enough contrition for Casey. Nah. She instantly, and once again, quite illogically, wanted a piece of Nina’s ass to chomp.

Casey sauntered up behind Wanda’s back and peeked over her shoulder with a smug smile just as Nina’s chin lifted and her eyes bored holes in Casey’s. She wanted to make damn sure Nina knew she knew
exactly
what she was saying. “Moooooooooo,” she taunted.

Once more, chaos erupted as Nina reached around Wanda, grabbing at Casey. “C’mere, demonlicious, I’ll moo your lungs right out of your fucking chest!”

“Ladies!” Clayton roared, pushing past Wanda and Nina, and scooping up Casey by the waist. He gripped her to his side like she was light as a feather, wrapping her struggling legs around the back of his waist, and securing her by clamping her ankles together with one hand. He looked down at her, his face tight with how fed up he was. “You need to get ahold of yourself. All of you either sit down in the living room and shut up or go the hell home. Got it?” His sudden serious turn made everyone take notice.

Clayton stormed past the women, carrying a bouncing Casey with him. He shoved open her bedroom door with a booted foot and dropped her on her bed like a sack of potatoes.

Infuriated, she popped right back up, her fists in a death lock. “Who the hell do you—”

“I said,” he grated out with a throaty warning, “enough. And when I say enough, you’ll learn you’d better cut it the hell out, or I’ll
make
you cut it the hell out. The latter will be anything but enjoyable if you don’t.” Placing both hands on either side of her body, he stared her down. “Do we understand each other?”

Instead of cringing to the far corner of the bed, Casey found she’d far rather move closer to him. So while her brain told her to knock it off with the slutty, her womanly parts sang a very different tune. An arm, so obviously not in her control, draped over his wide shoulder. “You. Are. Hot.” An internal gasp as loud as the howl of a January wind sounded in her head. She’d just called him hot. Out loud.

Yes, yes, yes, he was. Oh, Heavenly Father, he was.

It was forward.

Which is better than backward
.

Clayton picked up her hand by her fingers and dropped it to the bed. “While I’ll admit that’s still nice to hear after all these years, you’re not yourself. So any and all compliments by you about me are going to be taken with a grain of salt. Now, it’s time we talk about this without interference. Sit down, still your mouth, and listen to me.” He backed away, standing in front of the window with his arms crossed, all forceful and powerfully brick shithouse.

Reason returned with a swift kick to her innards, followed sharply by embarrassment for her very vulgar display of wanton lust. Her cheeks grew as hot as she’d just thought he was. “I’m not sure what we have to talk about.”

“How do you figure levitating isn’t worth an ear?”

Score team vampire. “So talk.”

“There are things you need to know as a new demon.”

“But you’re a vampire.”

“So I hear.”

“My uneducated, paranormal guess is that’s totally different than a demon.”

“Astute.”

Casey ignored his jibe—as long as he stood across the room, she was back in control of most of her female faculties. “So what can you tell me about being a demon if you’re a vampire?”

Clay’s eyes fixed on her face. “I know enough to know that you’ll need to control that rage you just displayed out there with Nina, who, as I’m sure you’ve already witnessed, has some anger-management issues and never backs down from a confrontation. That rage you’re experiencing is something you’ll need to harness. You’re a mix of emotions right now. Part of that is due to the changes your body is going through, but you need to learn to control them. You can’t set fire to just anyone—especially a human. People talk. It’s a surefire way to be discovered. Not to mention the fact that if you tangle with the wrong entity . . .”

Casey’s chin lifted. That sounded ominous. “Entity?” There were more entities? What kinds of entities was he talking about? She shook her head, holding up a weary palm. “No, don’t say it. I’m on mystical-information overload. I think I need some time, maybe. Time to let this just sit. Please. Maybe you could come back tomorrow—or next week.” It would be a battle, but if her anger was what was triggering these off-the-wall magical powers, she’d chew her fingers bloody before she allowed herself to rip anyone’s head off.

Lips thin, Clay pinned her with his intense eyes to convey he wasn’t joking anymore. “You don’t have time, Casey. I think that’s obvious after tonight. Well, unless you’re a thrill seeker and you get off on the element of surprise. If that’s the case, I can just go home. Which would be fine with me. TiVoing a Giants game sucks out all the fun.”

Frustration turned ever so rapidly into irritation. Sliding to the end of the bed, Casey rolled up the sleeves of her dirty, wrinkled shirt. “I’m trying really hard to keep a grip on this, but here’s where I’m at. I hope you don’t mind if I just get it all out so we have some sort of understanding about my emotional status.”

Clay nodded his head in consent as though he was
allowing
her a moment of self-indulgence. “By all means.”

Casey rose from the bed and paced before Clay, staying far enough away that she couldn’t be tempted to touch him against her suddenly wayward better judgment. Her voice was tight, but her thoughts were crystal clear. “So here’s where I am. I’ve been locked up in a place where criminals roam dank, dark cells and threaten to make spaghetti out of your intestines and sop it up with your small bowel. I haven’t slept in thirty-some-odd hours for fear I’d lose, at the very least, a finger and I smell like the inside of a dirty outhouse. I was in that dank place because of
you
and your penchant for aged blood—or whatever.” She stuck a knuckle in her mouth to keep from screaming her horror, sucking air into her lungs.

But she wasn’t done. Facing him, she blew her wad. “I attacked an off-duty police officer like a rabid animal because you had something so dangerous on you, you may as well have had a ticking time bomb. If that wasn’t bad enough, I had to call my sister—a sister I hardly ever get to see or talk to because I have the job from hell that I’m too much of a chump to demand time off from—and beg her to bail me out of
jail
. And it wasn’t cheap—in fact, it’ll probably take me a lifetime to pay it off. I come home, thinking this is all some crazy nightmare, only to find out the nightmare’s just beginning. I not only float like a helium balloon, but I set fire to possibly the most frightening woman with clear homicidal tendencies this side of the Mason-Dixon. And if the rumors are true, my eyes glowed red while I did it. As if that wasn’t the icing on my triple-layer cake, I sprouted horns.
Horns!
So if needing just a little time to gather my wits is too much to ask—tough shit!” Somehow, she’d landed right in front of him, an accusatory finger waving under his long, straight nose, her voice bordering on a screech.

However, it appeared not much daunted him by his dry response to her impassioned plea. “We don’t have time, Casey. First, there’s the issue of the literal time. I only have a few hours until sunrise. Second—you didn’t see that guy fly across that bar like I did. I say this with all seriousness. After that, you could be drafted into the NFL. The point here is, you had no control over it—you don’t even remember it. And don’t think I’m so callous I don’t understand this has been traumatizing for you.”

“We just don’t have time to indulge in your trauma, but I promise, later, if you want, we can hold hands like they do in therapy; you can give your testimonial and put it toward earning your demon chip.”

Casey watched his lips toy with another smile, infuriated by it. “In what way is this at all funny?”

His eyes flashed a small hint of sympathy. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make light of your situation. I’m just trying to impress upon you that we can’t allow your emotions to hinder our progress. You’ve already displayed signs of demonic powers. It’s pretty crucial you get them under control. You can’t afford to hurt someone.”

Those words deflated her rant, leaving her feeling exhausted with defeat. She would never willingly hurt someone, and she’d done it not just once, but twice, in twenty- four hours. If she walloped someone innocent with an errant fireball by mistake, she’d never forgive herself. Just the crazy in that thought alone should make her throw every single one of these supposed turning, shifting, flying paranormal lunatics out of her apartment.

Her fingers went to the top of her head, feeling her horns—
oh, Jesus, horns
—and she knew her options were few. The general consensus was that she’d been officially inducted into this super race of paranormals, and her new state of being wasn’t going to change. Ever a realist, odds clearly stacked against her, she had to face this practically.

Casey backed up, setting herself on the edge of her bed. Cradling her head in her hands, she asked, “So what can you, the vampire, do about me, the demon?”

“I can help. Or I know of
someone
who can help.”

“Really? Is this someone in possession of the
How To Be a Demon
playbook?”

His laughter drifted through her small bedroom, husky and low, surprising her with the ease it displayed. “No, but it will involve you trusting me enough to come with me.
Now
.”

Her eyes glanced at the alarm clock on her nightstand. It was almost two in the morning. “I can’t go with you. I have to get up in four hours for work.” If she wasn’t in her downstairs office at seven sharp every day, Mr. Castalano would shit day planners. She couldn’t afford to lose her job.

Clay held out his hand to her, sticking it under her nose to prompt her to take it. Oh, no, brotha. She wasn’t touching him ever again. Evah. “You’ll just have to take a sick day.”

“I don’t have sick days. I haven’t had one in five years.” Not even when she’d had bronchitis and all but hacked up a lung on Mr. Castalano himself.

“Today you will.” He said it as though it was a demand versus a request. “Of course, there is always the chance you could levitate in front of your boss, and then you won’t have to worry about a job at all. So I think you don’t have a choice.”

Casey snorted her displeasure. “Yeah. Choices seem to come my way in a limited quantity as of late.”

“I did apologize.”

“Magnanimous should be a hyphen on your name.”

“Casey . . .”

She jumped up off the bed, moving around his offered hand, but heeding the warning in his tone. “Okay. Fine. I give. I’m not so unreasonable that I don’t see I obviously have a problem. But I have a couple of questions before I go anywhere.”

“Make it quick,” Clay ordered, glancing outside her window, his eyes fixed on the skyline.

She might have made a stink about how bossy he was, but then she remembered a vampire fact. “Right. Daylight or whatever.”

“Right. A sizzling one at that, but it isn’t as much of a problem as it once was. When sunscreen was invented my horizons broadened. The problem is what’s known as
vampire sleep
. Come dawn, no amount of NoDoz can stop it. So unless you want to free- fall until the sun sets tomorrow, I’d suggest you hold it together for just a little longer. Not much can wake me once I’m totally under.”

Vampire sleep. More new catch phrases. She’d have to leave the eleven billion questions that phrase brought up and put them on the back burner.

There were other things that troubled her.

Some thoughts had begun to slowly form as this demon thing sank further in—images, not to mention the folklore surrounding demons, brought with it some frightening memories from her Catholic school days. Images and tales she couldn’t believe she hadn’t given any thought to at the onset of this debacle. Casey well remembered the book about demons Sister Theresa Ignatius had on her desk. She’d peeked at the pictures when Sister Ignatius was with Father Hoolihan. She’d also had nightmares about those pictures for most of her elementary school days. Her stomach took a hard dive. “Demons are—are—well, they’re evil. They’re not exactly winning any Nobel Peace Prizes. . . .”

He fingered the frame of a picture of her and Wanda on her dresser. “No. That’s true, but not all demons are in it for the sheer joy of destruction. Some are just mischievous, nothing more, nothing less. Some were tricked into choosing Hell as their eternal resting place. Some were too weak to deny themselves the remote chance the promise of eternal goodies really does exist in Hell, and they bailed due to fear of retribution from above for past indiscretions. The flip side of that coin is, some are most definitely evil, and you’ll have to learn to watch for the difference. Closely.”

“And that makes me which side of the coin?” If her performance thus far was any indication—she was on the downhill run to felonious acts.

“You weren’t pegged for Hell, and you weren’t coerced into making a deal with a demon. You certainly didn’t shun the light. This was an
accident
. I don’t know exactly where that leaves you. That’s what I hope to find out, but I can’t do it while we stand here.” His impatience with her pesky questions was clear. His “time’s a-wastin’ ” attitude irked her.