Demons in My Driveway (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

I swallowed my initial response to Marcus’s question about where to put his suitcase. Several creative and painful places crossed my mind. I had more than enough going on without having to play ambassador to the Hidden King of Canada, or whatever he was. I didn’t care about his actual job title, other than “more important than Bernice.”

Unfortunately for him, Bernice’s title didn’t impress me in the slightest, so her boss wasn’t going to be any more interesting. Or intimidating.

“It’s a small house, Marcus. You should have called first. We could have gotten you a nice hotel room.” I smiled sweetly.

“I’ll be staying here where I can monitor things more closely.”

Sara grunted, but remained otherwise silent. Marcus glanced at her, looked away, then did a double take.

I smiled. “I never turn anyone away, Marcus. That’s my policy. But I’m afraid you’re relegated to Tent City. No room in the inn. Sorry.”

A shadow crossed his face, but the cheery smile never wavered. “I suppose if you have nowhere else, I’m sure your tents are perfectly comfortable. Why don’t you give me the grand tour?”

I took a deep breath and counted to ten, waiting for the heat in my face and the urge to throat punch this guy to recede.

It didn’t work.

“We’re a little busy here, Marcus. Unless you’ve got the answer to all our problems, you’ll have to wait your turn.” I may have been a little sharp. Okay, I was a lot sharp. But I didn’t give a flying aardvark patty if he thought I was a poor hostess.

A pooka named Silas had once walked into my house with a similar attitude to what Marcus was giving me. Between Silas and the bureaucratic bullshit I’d been forced to put up with in the past from Bernice and her flunky, Art, I had zero tolerance for pushy people who thought my job was to do as I was told. I’d have thought Marcus would have figured out the last time we met that he should take a milder approach if he wanted anything from me.

Apparently, Marcus was slow.

His cheery grin slipped, and his jaw muscles tensed, as if he were grinding his teeth in an effort to keep himself calm. “I’m here to help you.” He spoke through clenched teeth, so I’d probably been right about the grinding. I’d send an apology note to his dentist later. “You’re obviously in need of assistance, considering how many attempts have been made on your life, and the fact that you were unable to keep those poor women we sent you safe. I’m sorry to be blunt, but someone needs to step in and take over. And I happen to be the one most qualified.”

No wonder Bernice’s panties were in such a bunch. Two minutes with this guy and my blood pressure was through the roof.

Come to think of it, he’d had the same effect on me the last time I saw him.

I opened my mouth to say something scathing, but Riley cut me off before I could utter the first syllable.

“How about I show him around? You guys finish up in here, and I’ll get... Marcus, was it? I’ll get Marcus settled in the VIP tent.”

There was no VIP tent in my backyard.

Riley leaned in and kissed my cheek, then winked at me as he rose to escort Marcus outside. I tried not to grin at either the kiss or the wink. The first made me tingle, but the second made me want to laugh. I knew what Riley was up to. There was one area on the south side of the property line that was a good distance from the rest of the living areas.

A lot of creatures came and went in my small campground, each with varying tastes and sensitivities. Some—swamp bogeys, for instance—preferred a more
pungent
environment. And no matter what kind of creature stayed with us—course or elegant, ethereal or substantial—they all had to take a dump eventually. The south side of my property was where it all ended up before it was composted.

Riley, love of my life who was no longer estranged from me, was taking my latest problem and setting him up by the latrine.

If I hadn’t loved Riley before, I’d have fallen all over again.

The moment they were out the door, I bolted for my room and snagged my phone from the bedside table.

It rang so many times, I nearly gave up.

“Yes?” Bernice sounded apathetic, as if she didn’t care who was on the phone and had no intention of helping whoever had called.

“Bernice, why didn’t you tell me Marcus was coming? Are you okay?” She should have called me. The fact that she hadn’t set off warning bells in my head.

She was silent at first, but I could hear her breathing. “So, that’s where he went off to.” Ice clinked in a glass. I wondered if I needed to worry about how much she’d been drinking lately.

“You didn’t know he was coming?” What the hell was going on out at headquarters?

A lighter clicked in the background as she lit a cigarette. I hadn’t known that she smoked. Maybe she hadn’t before.

“I don’t keep track of what he does, and I don’t care.” She paused, presumably to take a drag, then exhaled. “It’s not my job to care.”

Her self-pity soaked through the phone and made me want to slap her. “It
is
your job to care. We’re trying to hold off the end of the world, Bernice. Help me out a little, here.”

I heard someone say something in the background, and she answered sharply. There was some muffled noise, like the phone exchanging hands, then another voice came on the line.

“Zoey? Is that you?” The sound of Art’s voice filled me with relief.

I’d hated the guy once. Now, I’d never been more relieved to hear from the obnoxious windbag. “Art, what’s wrong with Bernice? Is she drunk?”

“Yes.” He pulled away from the phone and spoke to her. “Give me that.” They had a heated exchange I couldn’t hear, then he came back. “I had to put her cigarette out before she set fire to the place. She was falling asleep.”

“What the hell is going on over there?”

“Marcus fired us. Or rather, he intends to fire us when he gets back from wherever he went.” Bitterness spattered my cheek through the phone.

I sucked in my breath. “Fire you? We have two people on a thirteen-person board, and he’s getting rid of you?”

Art’s voice was dry. “Canada is taking over. Turns out, Bernice wasn’t crazy in thinking there’d be a territory grab if another country got wind. Marcus doesn’t have a full board, either, but he has more than we do. We’re being replaced.”

I dropped on my bed and pulled my fingers through my hair. “That’s bullshit. That’s not right.”

“No, but it’s happening anyway. We found a letter in his desk after he left. It was pretty clear that we would be out and they’d be in.”

Poor Art. All he’d ever wanted was to advance to the level of board member. I’d helped him get there. We both seemed to regret it, now.

“He’s here, Art. That’s why I called.”

“He’s there? Why? What does he want? I figured he went north to get his people ready to come down here.” Art was a little out of breath, and I suspected he was pacing. “I’ll tell you one thing. I’m not going out without a fight. I spent most of my working life trying to get where I am right now, and I refuse to roll over and get drunk, like some people.”

My heart felt a little lighter knowing that at least one of them wasn’t giving up. Bernice had probably been through too much already to have anything left to fight with. But Art had become something greater than he’d been before. Someone stronger... “I honestly don’t know why he’s here. As far as I can tell, we’re a day, maybe two away from the end of the world, and he’s making a power play.” I rubbed my forehead with my fingertips. “Listen. Just take care of Bernice for me. Don’t let her do anything stupid. I’ll figure all of this out. Either the world ends in a few days or everything goes back to normal. You will not be ousted from your job for anything less than the apocalypse, okay?”

He gave a dry chuckle laced with irony. “You know, I used to despise that stubborn attitude of yours. Now, I think it’s the only thing that might save us.”

* * *

To my surprise, Marcus didn’t object to his VIP placement next to the dung pile. He was, however, an even bigger micromanager than we had imagined. No wonder Bernice had increased her daily intoxication level and had started smoking.

By the following afternoon, I understood why he didn’t object to the smell of his tent—he was too busy trying to control everyone else’s business to actually spend any time in there.

He’d spent his first day following Riley around for the grand tour he’d requested, pointing out anything he saw as a security flaw and demanding ridiculous changes be made. While I was now well aware of the weakness at the far corner of my property near the woods, I was not inclined to put up barbed wire around everything I owned. Aggie didn’t need a password to cross into my yard, and Maurice most certainly didn’t need to sign in and out before travelling to other locations through a closet.

Marcus was out of his freaking mind.

The last straw came at lunch on his second day. Maurice had baked several quiches and served them with homemade roasted-red-pepper-and-tomato soup. Sara collected the empty plates while Maurice ran water in the sink. I grabbed the leftovers to wrap up and put in the fridge.

Marcus sat back in his chair and patted his stomach. “Well, that was certainly satisfactory. My congratulations for finding such efficient help.”

Maurice’s back was to us as he loaded dishes into the soapy water, but his shoulders twitched at being called
help
. It wasn’t the first time we’d run across this sort of prejudice—Bernice had treated Maurice the same way when she’d met him. Until I stuck a boot up her ass and made her stop.

Everyone went quiet. The tension in the room squeezed like a lycra bathing suit two sizes too small.

I scraped leftovers into the garbage and didn’t look up. “Maurice isn’t the help, Marcus. I didn’t hire him. He lives here.”

Marcus dropped his napkin on the table. “Excellent. Then I won’t have to compensate you for his loss when he goes with me to run my kitchens.”

The fork I was using dropped into the trashcan. “What?” I was too startled to come up with anything scathing as a retort. Normally, I’d have taken him down a size or two, but he’d caught me off guard. No one else in the room seemed to have any powers of speech either.

Taking advantage of the stunned silence, Marcus scooted his chair out and left the room, a vaguely pleasant smile on his face. On his way through the living room, he stopped to change the angle of one of my overstuffed chairs, then went out the front door—no doubt to pester someone into rearranging my flowerbeds into a more efficient pattern, or re-parking the cars in the driveway into a more uniform configuration.

The moment the door closed, the room erupted into chaos.

“Zoey, I don’t want to go with him!” Maurice’s hands dripped suds on the floor. “I’m not running anybody’s kitchens. That’s ridiculous!”

Sara stood in the archway between the kitchen and the living room, hands on her hips and scowling at the front door. “One more word from him. Just one.”

I had no idea what she would do if he uttered that one more word, but Sara had always been formidable, even as a human. We didn’t know what she was capable of doing as a demon.

I half wished he’d come inside and test her so we could find out. Two birds. One stone.

Mom surprised me the most. Her face was as stony as a gargoyle’s, and her fists were clenched into hard knots. “No one’s touching my boy.” Her voice was almost a whisper. If I hadn’t been standing right next to her, I probably wouldn’t have heard what she’d said.

Kam didn’t say anything at all. She sat, unmoving, staring after Marcus. At first glance, she looked perfectly calm. But I knew Kam, and there was no mistaking the fire burning within her pupils, turning the blackness into angry flames. No. Kam wasn’t calm at all.

Dude needed to watch his back. He’d managed to mangle the last nerve of several powerful people.

Riley, alone, seemed unaffected by Marcus. I glanced at my boyfriend across the room and he winked, then shrugged. He was the only person among us in the full-time employment of the Board, which was why he’d taken it upon himself to escort Marcus around and try, as much as possible, to act as a buffer between his boss’s boss and the rest of us.

From Riley’s attitude, I gathered what we’d just witnessed was what Riley had been putting up with since Marcus’s arrival. And Riley didn’t take it seriously. I’d have to try to take his lead and not let the Mr. Pushypants get to me.

“Okay, guys,” I said, once people had settled down a little. “Here’s the deal. Marcus isn’t staying forever. And no, he’s not taking anybody with him when he goes. For now, tolerate him. If you can’t tolerate him, ignore him. Under no circumstances should anyone bait, argue, or otherwise negatively engage with him.” I handed Maurice the empty plate I’d finished scraping, along with the fork I’d had to dig out of the trash. “Tonight is the last night of the full moon. If Lionel wasn’t the only priest the church had—and I think we’re pretty sure he wasn’t—we need to be prepared for more portals to open.”

Riley nodded. “The cultists are still out there. We gave them a beating the last time they were here, but we had to let them go when we realized they were decoys so we could get to you out back. The ones at the clinic got away too. If we have a portal tonight, we’ll probably have an aswang attack.”

I wiped my hand on a towel and dropped into a chair. “Guys, it’s our last chance. If we don’t stop them tonight, they’ll probably get the zombie lock figured out.” I looked around the room at all my friends—minus Darius who was up on the roof keeping watch. “This is it, guys. Tomorrow could be the end of everything, and it all comes down to us.”

Sara snorted, but gave me an affectionate look. “Drama queen.”

“I know, right?” Maurice mimed a high five at her from across the room. “We’re the good guys, Zo. We’ll win. Relax.” He went back to washing the dishes.

Kam collected the empty coffee cups and rose to carry them to the sink. I’d have sworn she was wearing shorts and a tank top a minute before. When my attention was elsewhere, she’d changed.

Her gold-beaded, green dress hung straight from sleeveless shoulders to a few inches above her knees, and ended with a beaded fringe. A thick ribbon of green satin rounded her hips and formed a huge bow on one side. Her long hair had turned into a short bob and was held down around her forehead by a beaded band with several fancy feathers waving over her head.