Death's Hand (3 page)

Elise settled her chain of charms next to throwing knives in the top drawer of her desk and prepared a fresh pot of coffee. Once she started working, she could go through two pots before lunch.

Her email was as pleasant to read as her normal mail. Elise filled a niche market: financial services for infernal and ethereal businesses. Most demons came to Earth to make trouble, but a few came to get rich. Their scruples—or lack thereof—gave them good business sense. But demons also had no morals, which meant they often didn’t pay their accountant.

Elise paged through multiple emails full of excuses. Her frown deepened at each one.

“Fuck me,” she muttered, drinking deep from her mug. It was going to be a three pot morning for sure.

The only highlight was an email from James. All it said was, “Dinner tonight?” Elise responded with, “Sure,” and minimized her email program. The rest of it could wait. Her daily allotment of patience for clients had been expended upon Augustin Ramirez, and the only company she wanted now was math: silent, unemotional red and black numbers.

She glanced at her knives in the desk drawer. Math, and maybe a sharpening stone. It
had
been a long time since she gave proper attention to her arsenal.

Leaning back in her chair, Elise balanced one of the slender knives across a finger. The blade glinted in the fluorescent overhead light. It was shiny enough to serve as a mirror, and the braid over Elise’s shoulder was distorted across its surface like the promise of spilled blood.

If she had her clients’ lack of scruples, she would bill the Ramirezes for services rendered. Why shouldn’t she make money off her knowledge like any other consultant? The only problem was James. He would never approve of profiting off a five-year-old girl’s life.

Elise tested the edge of the blade with her thumb. Maybe instead of billing families in need, she could start threatening her pre-existing clients with violence. Yeah. That could work.

Except the whole point of retirement was laying low. Her past exploits made her famous, and there was more than one enemy that Elise and James didn’t want noticing them. Threatening demonic clients was a surefire way to attract the kind of attention they were avoiding.

Of course, laying low wasn’t paying the bills, either.

Elise speared the stack of mail with her knife. It gave a satisfying
thunk
as the knife’s point bit into the blotter.

The only warning her door was about to open was a single knock. Elise jerked the blade out of her desk and dropped it in the drawer just in time for a blonde tornado to sweep in with a folder clutched to her chest.

“Good morning, gorgeous!”

“Morning, Betty,” Elise said. “How did you get here?”

Betty was the exception to Elise’s steadfast refusal to develop a social life. Her roommate was (as she liked to describe herself) the sexiest research scientist in the West, and she played into that image with a dangerously low-cut blouse and what barely passed as a skirt.

“I’m just popping by. Cassandra and I are on our way to the university. I need a revision to my taxes!” Betty said, setting her folder on Elise’s desk with all the flourish of bestowing a gift upon her.

“No, you don’t. I prepared your taxes three months ago. They were perfect.”

“Yeah, but I think I found more deductions. Would you take a look? Please? I don’t want to have to pay the IRS this year.”

“You know every month you don’t pay incurs a half-percent fine, right?” Elise asked. “And aren’t you worried about splashing caustic chemicals on your cleavage?”

“I’m not doing work in the lab today. I have to see my mentor about my thesis,” Betty said, giving Elise a knowing grin.

“I’ll take another look at your taxes if you promise not to get kicked out of graduate school for sexual harassment. Nobody else is paying me anyway.”

“Great! Well, except for the part where you’re not getting paid. Are you going to make your half of rent this month?”

“Probably,” Elise said. She silently added,
I hope
.

Betty wasn’t fooled. She gave Elise’s hand on the desk a comforting squeeze. “We’re doing okay. Don’t stress about it. But maybe it’s time to hire some goons to have a talk with them, huh? Make them an offer they can’t refuse?”

“Would you believe me if I said I’m seriously considering that as an option?”

“I’ll believe anything with you, Elise. So what happened with your mail? Taking out your frustrations with a letter opener?” She wiggled a finger through a hole in one of the envelopes.

Elise shrugged. “They showed up like that.”

“Yeah? I wonder if it was the postal service or the mailroom guy,” Betty said. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Ooh, you know, I bet it was that guy that does the credit counseling services. He’s such a creeper. He always gives me looks when I go by his room.”

“I think he’s surprised anybody likes me enough to visit. It could also be your amazing disappearing wardrobe. I’ve seen strippers wear more than you.”

Betty laughed. “Elise! Why are you seeing strippers in the first place?”

“I’ve got some weird clients.” Understatement of the year. Betty didn’t know that most of the people she worked for weren’t people at all.

She swiped Elise’s coffee, took a sip, and set it back down with a sigh. “Hate to demand deductions and run, but Cassandra’s outside and my mentor is waiting.” Betty wiggled her eyebrows. “You going to be home for dinner tonight?”

“No. I’m going to go see James.”

“Oh
really
. So you’re planning on
eating out
? Get it? You know, like—”

Elise didn’t let her finish. “Not everyone lives in a porno like you do, Betty. It’s not like that.”

“I don’t know why,” Betty sighed. “If James was inviting me
over for dinner, it would definitely be ‘like that.’”

“Uh huh. I’ll let you know about your taxes tomorrow.”

“Thanks, love,” Betty said. “By the way, you got some ketchup on your blouse.” Elise glanced down, touching her injured lip. The smear of red on her collar wasn’t ketchup. “See you later!”

“Bye, Betty.”

She turned back to her computer, where the emails full of excuses were still waiting. Her smile slowly faded.

A lifetime of killing demons could never have prepared her for the ugly reality of being unable to pay her bills. It seemed cruel that she could be a skilled accountant creeping toward debt, but she didn’t think many demons would be impressed by phone calls from debt collectors.

Elise’s gaze wandered to the drawer with her knives again. Demons only responded to violence.

Screw discretion. Maybe it really was time to start speaking their language.

Click
.

The sign outside Motion and Dance Studio flickered and turned off. Rain tapped against the control box on its side, dripping onto the brown grass and running off into the gutter.

Elise locked the door on the control box and headed inside. Her footsteps echoed through the main hall as she moved from window to window to shut them. Elise's reflection on the mirrored wall behind her mimicked her actions, a dark silhouette of a long-haired young woman in an open blazer and low heels.

She peeked into the second, smaller dance hall. It wasn’t quite as nice as the main one, since it had recently been converted from a garage. The studs were exposed on one side and boxes with branded t-shirts were stacked against the wall.

The windows were already locked, so Elise turned to leave again. Her own motion in the mirror caught her eye. She hesitated in the center of the dance hall.

A scar on her left breast peeked over the neck of her blouse, glowing pale white in the light from the street lamps. That injury had been delivered by a stone knife in the hands of a woman claiming to be a death goddess. She tortured Elise for hours by chaining her to a wall and drawing lines in her flesh. Most of them healed cleanly, but the one over her heart had been deep enough to scrape bone.

It was the last time Elise hunted a demon. She prevented apocalypse that day, but the costs had been too high. Yet her memories of that night were as sharp as though the wounds were still fresh.

She thought of the death-goddess's laugh, throaty and rumbling. “
I am the cold kiss of Death,
” the goddess whispered as she twisted the point of the knife, “
and you can never defeat me. Alive or dead, I will return for you.
”

And then, a quieter echo from another time and place:
Colder
…

She shivered, averting her gaze from the mirror. She couldn't think of Lucinde without the creeping suspicion that the death goddess’s prophecy might come true.

Elise clicked off the flood lights before locking the front door, wiggling the handle to make sure it was secure. She hugged the side of the building to avoid the rain as she took the stairs to the second floor.

The door upstairs was ajar. She hung her coat on the hook beside James’s jacket and shook out her hair.

“James?” she called, stepping into the kitchen.

All the lights in the apartment were off. Elise flipped the switch to the stove’s overhead light. Golden potatoes simmered under a glass lid, and two wine glasses were waiting nearby on the counter. The wine itself was still on the rack.

Her eyes scanned the arrangement of the furniture, the appliances. The table had been moved from the informal dining area to the living room. Half-melted candles marked with pentagrams and anointed with oil were arranged on low stands around the edges of the room. A large crystal had been set on a velvet cloth in the center of the table, and the last edition of the Sierra Witch’s Almanac lay by its side.

It looked like James had been preparing for a ritual, but she heard no sounds in the house beyond the occasional hiss of steam and clicking as the stove’s temperature shifted. He would never leave dinner unattended.

Where was he?

Elise slipped off her shoes, a thread of adrenaline thrilling through her stomach. She turned off the light again and approached the hallway. Lifting her skirt over her knees to free her legs, she lowered into a half-crouch.

“James?” she called again, softer this time.

Creak
.

Danger.

Elise spun too late. The closet door slammed open, and a tall, dark form flew at her from its depths. Her hip hit the arm of the couch and sent the side table crashing to the ground. She let herself roll over the side, and the assailant flew past her.

She was on her feet again in a heartbeat, sweeping her leg high to strike his back. He cried out, stumbling forward, and Elise kicked again, lower this time. Her foot connected with a muffled
thump
.

He lost balance, barely catching himself on the half wall. He threw his arms up to block Elise’s next kick, catching her ankle. She jerked and broke his grip.

Her attacker’s fist flashed through the darkness. Elise twisted away. The blow landed on her right shoulder instead, and her arm numbed.

The blows between them were fast, smooth, like a choreographed dance. He swung at her, and she blocked him with her forearms to strike low, seeking a hole in his defense. Kick, kick, punch—Elise caught his arm and threw him against the opposite wall.

She grabbed him by the throat and pushed his head back. She tightened her fingers around his esophagus. It didn’t take much force to hold him in place, even though he was nearly a foot taller than she was; one wrong move and his airway would collapse.

“Got you,” she growled.

A frozen moment hung between them, his struggling breath hot on her face. He smelled of breath mints and aftershave, and a little bit like summer grass, and he all but radiated heat. He had been inside—waiting—for quite awhile.

Her assailant gurgled. Elise relaxed her hands.

“Oh, sorry. Are you okay?”

He coughed once and cleared his throat. “Yes… I think so. You haven’t lost your touch, have you?”

“There’s no chance of that happening with your help.” Elise backed off, allowing her aspis to step away from the wall. She flicked on the living room light, and James rubbed his neck.

“You could have pulled your punches,” he said. “Didn’t you recognize me?”

Elise smiled. She would have recognized him in total darkness. “It would be insulting to go gentle on you. What’s that I smell in the oven?”

“Prime rib roast with red wine sauce.”

She picked the side table back up. “Sounds great. What would I do without you?”

“Starve, I imagine,” he said as he pulled an apron that said
Kiss the Crone
over his head.

James returned to his cooking while Elise fixed the mess she made in the living room. The apartment was small, but he made good use of the space; James’s sense of aesthetics was far superior to hers. All his furniture matched in a Pottery Barn kind of way, his walls were decorated with fine photography, and he even had some kind of fancy throw rug. Elise’s idea of decorating was putting up movie posters with thumb tacks.

“It took you a long time to get up here,” he remarked from the stove. “I hid for ages. What were you doing downstairs?”