Accidentally Demonic (11 page)

Casey’s hands found their way to her hips, where she planted them, sticking her neck out and pursing her lips. “I’m sorry to be such an inconvenience, Mr. Vampire. I’ll try harder to keep my silly girlie fears to myself from now on.”

Clay’s face held another flash of sympathy, but it faded to the harder, more serious expression he’d worn earlier. “I think this is a man-woman thing. Venus and Jupiter—”

“Mars—Venus and Mars. Just so you have your planets all aligned,” she cracked.

“Mars, whatever. Women like to talk their problems out—men like to solve them and move on. It isn’t that I don’t want to hear you freak, or address it, Casey—it’s that I don’t have a lot of time to do that in. I’d really prefer not to fry sunny-side up for lack of sunscreen, while you’re feeling conversational and time ticks away. Or worse, pass out and be no help to you at all. Because when I sleep, I’m told I look like a body at a crime- scene investigation. I wasn’t joking when I told you that.”

A shudder crept over her arms and along her shoulder blades. If he was telling the truth, and he really would fry when the sun crept over the horizon, it was something she didn’t want to take a chance on having a bird’s-eye view of. Instantly, she was contrite—even if contrition was the last thing he deserved for being such a dumbass that he’d been skulking a very public place with demon juice. “Sorry. I keep forgetting—but just one more thing.”

“One more thing. Any more than that, and I’ll have to follow through with my evil plan to rule the world and bite you, turning you into one of my minions.”

Her eyes widened.

“That was a joke.” Shooting her an amused smile, his eyes glittered, and his jaw twitched.

“Don’t be sad if Kimmel doesn’t call you for a guest spot.”

“I’ll try to keep my disappointment on the inside. Now, that one more thing?”

“Where exactly are we
going
? Do demons live in subdivisions behind white-picket fences with two-point-five kids like everyone else?” Because her mental image was of a dungeon with an eerie glow created by thousands of candles and a room with a sacrificial altar where a mesmerized virgin in a white flowing gown lay beneath a pentagram on the wall, all hosted by a man in a hooded red robe.

His smile was wry. “I imagine some do, but not this demon. And we’re going to see someone who can help you,” he tacked on.

Casey gave him a pensive look. “Who?”

“Darnell.”

“The demon.”

The corner of his luscious lips lifted. “Yep.
Darnell the demon
.”

Heh.

“We can bring Wanda with us if that will ease your fears. She won’t add any hysteria to the current situation, at the very least. She knows enough about the paranormal to not be too surprised about whatever Darnell tells us.”

Wanda, her sister the were-vamp. Unfazed by anything extraordinary. Right. But there were Nina and Marty to think of. Just the thought of Nina made her fingertips grow warm. “Thoughts on how we exclude Nina from our little adventure without upsetting her? She and Marty seem to be a package deal, and while I like Marty, unfortunately Nina sets my teeth to grinding.” She frowned, still unable to quite grasp why she had such trouble dealing with someone of Nina’s caliber. “Though I can’t explain why. I’m usually pretty tough to rile. As erratic as I’ve become, I can’t promise she won’t end up with a sawed-off wooden spoon imbedded in her chest. I’m clearly a danger to her, and I don’t want anyone else hurt. Especially people who can’t self-heal, or . . . whatever.”

Clay laughed again. “Can’t say I thought I’d ever see the day Nina would meet someone who can rival her brand of pissed off, but I’ll make sure she goes home to Greg. He never likes when she’s away anyway. He complains too much for my taste about it, something about not being able to get comfortable in bed without her to spoon with. This gives him the perfect excuse to keep his pride intact instead of calling her every hour on the hour because he
misses
her.”

His scathing tone regarding Greg’s abundantly clear love for Nina made her wonder if it was because Nina had to be a hard woman to love, and he didn’t get it—which FYI, neither did Casey—or if it was just love in general that put that sarcastic mocking lilt to his words.

Not that it was any of her business. It was time to put her good-decision jeans on and stop waffling. “Okay—then let’s do this and get it over with so I know what I’m up against.” Or what new, unsightly appendage she might sprout.

He nodded, heading for the door in two long strides of his booted feet, his departure easing the tight ball in her stomach. “I’ll talk to Wanda and the girls. And, Casey…you’re a better sport than I expected.”

She blushed, then caught herself just shy of visibly preening because he thought she was a good sport.

“Oh, I dunno if I can be called sporting. Doesn’t everyone take the news like a champ? I can’t imagine
anyone
complaining about being turned into a demon. How silly and shallow.”

Clay chuckled once more.

And she preened because he chuckled.

Bleh.

CHAPTER 6

Loud rap music spilled from the open window at the top of the apartment building Clayton pulled up in front of. The black cement front literally shook from the pump of the bass, though the street itself was eerily devoid of any movement. Barren of much but a streetlight with a fluttering bulb and a fire hydrant that was peeling and had seen better days, the building was dark and lone against the purple, inky sky.

Casey gave Wanda a quick worried glance over her shoulder. Wanda responded from the backseat with a reassuring hand to her shoulder. “I’m here. Trust me when I tell you, I can play the badass card if need be, Casey. You’re safe with me.”

For the thousandth time, Casey wondered who this Wanda was. The badass card? This from the woman who’d once spent almost an entire day hiding in the playhouse on the playground because Mary-Margaret McGooken had threatened to beat Wanda up for talking to her boyfriend after catechism.

But the illusion of safety beat the reality she’d been vividly creating in her overactive imagination on the ride here.

Clay came around to open the door for her and Wanda, and Casey couldn’t help but be struck by how wildly he made her heart thrash. She slid out, careful to avoid contact with the big hand he offered her.

No touching, she’d decided. None. Since she’d acquired her demonicness, her estrogen levels had risen to inferno proportions, and her body wanted nothing more than to plaster itself to Clay’s—whether she wanted it to or not. During the ride over, after she was done summoning stark, frightening scenarios that involved sacrificial rites of passage involving the blood of like a wildebeest, she’d found herself all but drooling over Clay, leaning into his arm for no other reason than to feel the pressure of it against her own. Her emotional state had narrowed to but two gears. Off-the-charts sensitive and irritable—or angry and owning it like fury had been created just for the likes of her.

Inhaling a shuddering breath of icy air, Casey hopped out of Clay’s pickup truck—a very large truck that also had her pondering such an odd choice of vehicles for a vampire. A sleek sports car or a luxury sedan seemed more vampire- ish, dark with tinted windows and leather seats. Definitely stereotypical, and without a doubt movie related, but this big monster truck didn’t fit the mystique surrounding a night dweller, which was what Wanda had informed her Clay was, and she herself was half of. His truck was nothing like what she’d anticipated. It was a silvery blue, and according to him, in his color wheel as per Marty, and from his rearview mirror dangled a rope of garlic—fake, he’d told both her and Wanda as a sort of karmic screw you.

“I like big,” he commented with a gleam in his eye, stepping aside to allow her space.

Yeahhhh. Me. Too.
Casey looked up at him with guilty eyes as though her thoughts had been shared out loud. “Sorry?”

“My truck. I can tell you’re wondering why a vampire would drive a truck. I like a big vehicle.” He slapped the hood of the shiny truck and smiled. “It’s useful—for, you know, the bodies. A big bed like this pickup has can hold a lot of ’em.”

Her eyes glazed over. “Bodies?”

A snort flew from Wanda’s glossed lips. “If you could see your face,” she said on a giggle. “He’s joking, Case. Vampires don’t collect bodies. In fact, most don’t even drink from an actual human—only each other. Where’d your sense of humor go?”

I set fire to it along with your stupid, psychopathic, homicidal friend. You wanna go, too?
She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, hoping to eradicate her horrible thoughts, giving them both a tight smile. “Sorry. I’m obviously not myself, and I’m having some rather unusual responses to situations I’d normally take with a grain of salt. I mean, I did get so angry with Nina I set her on fire. I think it’s fair to say, you know me well enough to know I’m not normally so edgy or so easily provoked. But that’s all gone the way of big hair and Tears for Fears
.
My only excuse is it’s been a long two days.”

Wanda threw a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I get it. C’mon, let’s go see what this Darnell has to say.”

Casey held Wanda back while Clay made his way to the red steel front door of the building. “Do you really trust this Clay, Wanda? Because I’m only being truthful when I tell you that I still don’t know if I’m over the nuts part of this night. Vampires and werewolves? I’m just not 100 percent sure I believe you, let alone this man who says he did this to me.”

Wanda’s tongue rolled along the inside of her cheek, a sign that she was growing impatient. “I told you I could show you.You want fangs or fur?”

Casey licked her lips with a nervous, darting tongue. “No! I’m sorry. I am, but you have to at least remember what it was like not to believe any of this was true. You couldn’t have just accepted it and not at least had a few moments of doubt.” And if Wanda hadn’t, she might have to rethink the butterfly net where her sister was concerned.

“Of course I did. When Marty first shifted in front of me I spent several days afterward denying what I’d seen with my own two eyes, kiddo. I was just shy of the corner of a room and the fetal position. But we don’t have time for denial, Casey. You’ve got something going on that will keep you from doing that slave labor you call a job, and just in general living your life. You had at it with Nina.
Nina
. Not only is she bat-shit crazy, she’s a hundred times more fearless than a kamikaze pilot. Even I, on my best days, shudder to think what she’d do to me if she were ever to call me on one of my many bluffs when I shoot her down, and I’m technically twice as strong as she is.You saw in the jail what she was capable of when she did nothing more than growl at that man ogling her back end, and still you chose to poke her. Whatever triggered that kind of anger has to be dealt with before you hurt yourself or someone else.”

What was worse was that she’d reveled in the chance to provoke Nina. Like, a lot. She’d wanted to wrap herself up in antagonism like a weenie in a blanket. “All that aside, what do you really know about this Clay? How do you know he’s really bringing us to meet a real demon? I mean, c’mon. . . .”

Wanda’s head cocked and her lips pursed. “How do you know he’s not?”

Valid. “I don’t. I don’t know anything anymore. I just know that this is so surreal, so Stephen King, I just can’t seem to wrap my brain around it.”

Her sister’s grin was wry. “Yeah. Been to that rodeo. But I do know one thing—Clay can be trusted. He’s Nina’s husband’s closest friend, and a really good guy. They have clan rules that strictly forbid them from harming anyone purposely, Casey. If Greg found out this was something he’d done on purpose, Clay would be shunned. Shunning’s a hot mess not many would risk—especially someone like Clay who’s next in line to run the clan if something happens to Greg. And he’s not too shabby on the eyes, either. How he’s eluded a mate all this time and continued to exist is beyond me.”

“A mate,” was Casey’s wooden response.

Wanda’s shoulder-length brown hair whispered in the breeze when she shook her head. “Forget it. Another paranormal deet that pertains to vampires and werewolves—of which you’re neither. It doesn’t matter if this guy turns out to be some hack, Casey, or even if he’s dangerous. I’m here. I’ll protect you.”

“Wanda?”

“Yep?”

“Do you remember when you were in middle school and I was still in elementary school?”

“Vaguely.”

“Do you remember when Nunzio Titaglioni pulled your hair when we were walking home from school and made you cry?”

“Yeah, I think so. Why?”

“Do you remember who punched him in the head with her Strawberry Shortcake lunchbox for it?”

“You did.”

“That’s right.
I
did. The
I
in the sentence being the operative word. I always protected
you
, Wanda. When did you go all fierce?”

Her wry laughter cloaked Casey in the dark night, swirling around her head in circles. “When I met Marty and Nina. I didn’t realize how much I needed a spine until I met those two. A lot’s changed for me, Casey. I’m not the wimpy woman who was married to an asshole podiatrist. Some of those changes are because of my friendships with Marty and Nina—I learned more than just how to be tough because of them. I learned what it is to have someone’s back. And now I’ve got yours. Nowadays, I don’t so much let life roll over me, I roll over
it
.” She grinned. “But it isn’t just that, Casey. I’m half vampire, half werewolf. That has some serious advantages that leave me unafraid of much. Not to mention, if anything ever happened to me, Heath and my clan members would be so on this Darnell the demon’s ass, he’d wish the devil himself had taken him directly to Hell without passing go.”

Stabs of guilt needled her. She’d have known about all of the changes in Wanda’s life if she hadn’t been so selfishly absorbed in doing a job that was so meaningless. To find out that Wanda had battled something as severe as ovarian cancer, that she’d turned to her friends for help, and had never said a word to her own flesh and blood, left Casey chilled to the bone and so filled with sadness. Yet here Wanda was, offering her help as if their relationship of late had consisted of more than just three- minute phone calls and a Christmas card. Straight up, she was a shitty sister and not even that stopped Wanda from being selfless.