Demon Hunting with a Dixie Deb (20 page)

S
assy stared at the haughty stranger. She had an aunt, an actual Peterson. Someone who could satisfy her curiosity about her father's family. Someone
alive.
Not a ghost like Junior, who popped in and out at the drop of a hat. Not a dog like Trey, who barked and ran off into the woods to chase squirrels.

This Susan Peterson blah blah Harwood wanted to buy the mill. Awesomesauce, right? Sign the paperwork and sail back to Fairhope. Mission accomplished. Best of all, the business would stay in the family.

Then why was her stomach dancing the fandango?

Like any princess of perk worth her salt, Sassy was able to judge the moods of others. The matronly receptionist, for instance, was in full-blown hormonal flux over a certain Grim-sicle, and Jim Marvin was a-twitter about something, although Sassy did not know what.

Mrs. Harwood? She was a no-go. The woman was encased in emotional Kevlar. Her smooth, unlined complexion indicated intimate knowledge of good skin care, and she had impeccable taste in clothes. Her vintage Chanel LBD and Jimmy Choo pumps screamed assurance. A diamond the size of a walnut sparkled on one manicured hand. From appearances, the woman had money and lots of it.

But clothes and jewelry do not a person make, Sassy reminded herself. Melba Hampton owned half of Baldwin County. She treated her servants—in fact, most of the planet, including her husband—like poop. And plenty of people at the club dressed well and lived w-a-a-y beyond their means.

Susan Harwood could be a black widow spider, a seductress who married older men for their money, then killed them off. Or maybe she had a taste for younger men,
expensive
younger men who drained her dry. Or she could have lost a fortune at the tables in Monaco. Stranger things had happened. The Suttons back home had lost everything in a Ponzi scheme. Low-cost fuel out of beets, the investor had promised, and they fell for it. The flimflam guy and their money were vacationing somewhere in South America. Permanently.

Predators circled the murky waters of business. Daddy Joel had taught Sassy that. She had a moral responsibility to Trey and the community to find out more about Susan Harwood. If that meant she'd have to spend more time in Hannah . . . well, that was an added perk. Mama, of course, would have a fit at the delay, but Mama would have to wait. Sassy had a moral imperative to find out more about Susan Harwood. She was on a quest. How exciting! She'd hire a detective to do a background check on Mrs. Harwood, but first she'd do a little investigating of her own.

Sassy turned up her charm a notch. In her experience, most people underestimated the power of pleasant, something Sassy had used more than once to her advantage. Smile, listen, and learn. Let your adversaries think you're a ditz, then leave them reeling.

“Do you live in Hannah, Mrs. Harwood?” Sassy asked in her
most
agreeable manner.

“Call me Susan.”

“Susan.” Sassy gave her a megawatt smile. “And I'm Sassy.”

Her vivacious persona always affected people in a positive way. Not this time. Sassy got a big fat nothing from Susan Harwood.

“I know,” Susan said, calm as an eggplant. “Clarice and I stayed in touch through the years. She spoke of you often.”

Sassy held on to her smile with an effort. “My grandmother spoke of me? How interesting. We weren't close.”

Close? They were rarely, if ever, in the same county.

“Blake ruled Clarice with an iron fist,” Susan said in a tone that said
she
wouldn't have tolerated such nonsense. “All the same, she found a way to keep tabs on you.”

Color her skeptical. Sassy's grandmother had not once contacted or visited her. What little Sassy knew about her grandmother, she'd read in the papers. Clarice Peterson had been a big deal in the Hannah social set, a generous contributor to her church and the community, and a supporter of the arts.

“Mrs. Harwood hasn't been to Hannah in fifty years. We're thrilled to have her home.”

Mr. Marvin announced this bit of news with the awed enthusiasm usually reserved for royalty or rock stars.

“I'm thrilled to be here, James.”

The silver-haired lawyer flushed. “Your aunt's a real cosmopolitan. She speaks five languages. She's lived all over the world.”

Oh, snap. Mr. Marvin had a baby crush on Susan Harwood. Old people were so cute.

“Sounds glamorous,” Sassy said. “Guess that's why I never heard of you.” That and the whole family dysfunction thing. “Was Granddaddy Blake your older brother?”

“Younger by two minutes. We were twins.”

“Having a built-in playmate must have been Fun City.”

“Hardly.” Susan's eyes darkened from purple to black. “Blake and I saw little of one another. I was shipped off to a Swiss boarding school when I was eight.”

Sassy's sensory cilia waved in alarm. There was a visible crack in the older woman's bland façade. On impulse, Sassy touched the velvet pouch Mose had given her and received a shock. Red, black, and sickly green bands of emotion twisted and coiled around Susan's aura, an aura that leaked dark energy, like antifreeze seeping from a punctured radiator.

Bunny rabbits, she'd wanted a reaction out of the woman. She'd gotten one.

“So young?” Sassy said, managing to hide her reaction. “Weren't you homesick?”

“I missed my mother.” The pulsing loops surrounding Susan writhed like snakes. “My father didn't have much use for girls.”

Ooh, somebody had major daddy issues.

“You must allow me and the missus to host a little get-together to celebrate your return, Susan,” Mr. Marvin said. “My wife will skin me for a purse if you say no.”

“That would be lovely.” Susan turned toward the office, the cloud of dark energy trailing in her wake. “Let's get down to business and sign the papers. I have another engagement.”

Now what? Sassy wasn't about to hand the mill over to Dorothy Vader. As she groped for a polite way to say
No, thank you, I'd rather not
, an alarm sounded outside.

“That's my car.” Sassy threw the lawyer and her aunt an apologetic smile. “Be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail.”

“I'll go with you.” Evan opened the door and winced as the steady, high-pitched shrill from the street intensified. “I know my way around alarm systems.”

Susan Harwood looked down her patrician nose at Evan. “I have no doubt you do.”

Sassy dashed out the door and down the sidewalk to the screaming car with Evan at her heels. Sassy's Grim-o-meter, which was always up and running, told her a certain demon hunter had followed, too.

Up and down the street, people poked their heads out of doors to investigate.

Sassy smiled and waved at them. “Sorry about the noise. It's just my car.”

She patted the Maserati's hood. “Good girl, Mea. That's enough.”

The alarm stopped shrieking on cue.

“Huh.” Evan tugged his earring. “Must be malfunctioning.”

“No such thing. Mea rescued me. She knew I was in trouble.”

“You're in trouble, all right, Lolly. Listen. You can't sell the mill to your aunt.”

“I agree.” Grim's expression was troubled. “There is something about that female I misdoubt.”

“I know.” Sassy sighed. “I hate to be negative, but I don't think she's a very nice person.”

“Nice?” Evan said. “She's Blake Peterson's twin.”

“So? I need a better reason than that not to sell her the mill.”

Evan made an exasperated noise. “Sassy, your grandfather was a powerful demonoid and one scary dude.”

“Explain,” Grim said.

“Old Blake claimed he had a weapon that would kill the Dalvahni. As you can imagine, the demons were
very
interested.” Evan leaned against the side of the car and crossed his ankles. “They promised to make him a big shot if he played nice and shared with them. Blake died in a fire and the deal fell through.”

Grim's golden eyes went flat. “How do you know this?”

“I was raised by demons.” Evan's sulky mouth twisted. “After Blake died, the 'rents sent me to Hannah to negotiate an arms deal with Trey. He got flattened by a car before we could tie things up.”

“Conall said you consorted with demons.” Grim's sword appeared in his hand. The metal was etched with runes. Flames danced up and down the blade. “He failed to mention you conspired with the djegrali to kill the Dal.”

“Water under the bridge, Big 'Un. I've turned over a new leaf.”

“The leopard cannot change his spots.”

“You don't believe me?” Evan smothered a fake yawn. “I'm tore up. Be a good little demon hunter and put the sword away. I'm Conall's brother-in-law, remember?”

“I doubt he will mourn you overmuch.”

“Stick a hole in me and find out.”

Grim's sword vanished. “Conall has instructed me not to kill you, and so I will forbear. But know this, Beck. I will be watching you. One misstep and you will feel the kiss of my blade.”

“Aw, Grimsey. You say the sweetest things.”

Sassy regarded Evan with mingled horror and sympathy. “You were raised by demons? That must have been awful.”

On impulse, she laid her hand on Evan's arm and received an electric jolt as a stream of images flooded her brain. Awful? Evan's life had been a grotesquerie. Tossed aside at birth like so much garbage, he'd been used and abused by the demons that found him.

New bodies, new thrills, bigger and better highs—more, the demons always wanted more. Evan satisfied his “parents'” every whim or suffered the consequences. And the consequences were harsh. Burns, beatings, broken bones, starvation, sensory deprivation; Evan had suffered it all.

If he tried to escape, they punished him. They wove a curse into his flesh to keep him bound to them. One word from the demons and the bindings tightened, cutting through skin and muscle, squeezing Evan's throat until he passed out.

His demonoid ability to heal had been a curse and a blessing, healing him to suffer again and again. No love or tenderness, no happiness or respite from the certainty of abuse.

Somehow, Evan had survived the years of captivity and cruelty.

A disgusting odor permeated Sassy's nostrils, and she recoiled. She was sharing Evan's olfactory memories, too. Burnt popcorn and demon smelled a lot alike, she realized, wrinkling her nose in distaste. The constant reek of the demons' rotting flesh had left Evan with a diminished appetite and a violent aversion to microwave popcorn.

Sassy jerked her hand away and the mini horror movie ended. If this was a side effect of her fairy injection, she didn't want it. It was intrusive and sad. Sassy didn't do sad.

“Hel-lo?” Evan waved his hand in her face. “Where'd you go?”

Sassy rubbed her palm against her thigh. Maybe if she rubbed hard enough, she could wipe the images from her mind.

“I'm sorry. What were you saying?”

Evan jerked his chin in the direction of the office. “Blake's twin shows up after a fifty-year absence. Coinkydink? I don't think so.”

Sassy's head spun. In a span of moments, she'd fallen down the rabbit hole into Evan's memories and learned her grandfather was a very bad man and her brother had trafficked with demons.

Small wonder Mama had fled from Hannah. The Peterson side of her family was a cross between
The Sopranos
and
The Adams Family
.

“She's trying to pick up where Trey left off and make a deal with the demons,” Evan said. “Why else would she be in this one-horse town?”

Sassy thought about this. “Why buy the mill?”

Evan lifted his shoulders. “Who knows? Maybe she plans to use the mill as a cover.”

Grim gave Evan a look that made Sassy shiver. “Or mayhap her business is with you. You admit you are in league with the djegrali. You had dealings with Trey and knowledge of this weapon. You can name your price.”

“
Was
in league with the demons. In case you've forgotten, I've been in Ora Mae's shed the past month.”

“So you say. Perhaps you are in bed with the witch as well.”

“Please.” Evan shuddered. “Spare me that image.”

Sassy gave Grim a Look. “The witch was fattening Evan up to eat him. They are
not
besties. If you want to know more about this—this weapon thingy, ask Conall.”

“Yeah,” Evan said, flapping his hand at Grim. “What she said.”

Mr. Marvin came out on the porch and peered down the sidewalk at them. “Everything okay? Mrs. Harwood's waiting in my office. Tilda's made coffee.”

“Showtime.” Evan gave Sassy a questioning look. “Think you can handle this?”

“Of course.” Sassy tucked a stray curl behind her ear to hide her nervousness. “She can't make me sell the mill.”

“Don't underestimate her, Lollipop. She's a halfsie like me, half demon, half human.”

Sassy did some quick calculating. If her grandfather was a halfsie did that make her an octoroid?

No, absolutely not. She refused to be called anything so indelicate. It sounded like something you'd find on a tube of Preparation H.
Apply to affected area three times a day for relief of swelling and itching.

“I'll be careful,” she promised.

Inside, they found Taryn sitting on a couch holding a steaming mug in one hand.

She took a sip and made a face. “Bitter. It smells better than it tastes.”