Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (46 page)

Again the priest didn’t say anything right away. I heard another throat clearing, and then he spoke. “What is it, my child?”

If I told him the truth he’d think I was completely nuts. I was fairly certain that whatever a priest heard during confession was completely confidential — sort of a holy attorney/client privilege — but I didn’t want to risk a visit to the rubber room, either. Just in case.

“I was just wondering whether — that is, I just wanted to know if you had any advice on dealing with the Devil.”

“Excuse me, my child?” The accent sounded a little more pronounced. Latin American of some sort, but it didn’t sound Mexican exactly. Maybe from somewhere in South America?

“Well, okay, I know there’s exorcism, but since I’m not actually possessed — ”

“The Devil represents temptation,” the priest said, sounding as if he were trying to latch onto the only thing I’d said that might have made sense. “Trust in God, and He will give you the strength to resist such temptation.”

I hadn’t paid much attention to God in my life. Somehow I’d always thought if He really did exist, He and I could work out any minor transgressions somewhere down the road. But I didn’t think a statement like that would go over too well with a priest, so I just asked, “So…you’re saying I should pray for help?”

“Prayer is your connection to the Holy Spirit,” he said promptly. “By praying, you open yourself to God. If you are filled with God’s love and his strength, then you can avoid the temptations of the Devil.”

The priest obviously had no idea I was speaking literally of the Devil, not the temptations that people thought led from him, but I decided the point wasn’t worth arguing.

Logic suggested that if there were a Devil, then there must be a God as well. And since Luke had actually spoken of some sort of rules, then it would follow that Someone must have set them. Did God know the Devil was here in Los Angeles, luring lonely females to their doom? Did He care? Or was there something else going on here that I simply hadn’t figured out yet?

I had no idea whether my case merited divine intervention. Then again, asking for help couldn’t hurt, either.

“Thank you, Father,” I said at last. “I’ll try that.”

There was a soft sound from behind the latticed grille, as if the priest had uneasily shifted his weight. “If you’re in some sort of trouble, child — ”

“I’m all right,” I said. “That helped a lot. Really.”

And before he could say anything else, I slid out of the booth and headed for the nearest exit in a clumsy run/walk. I didn’t want to risk him asking any other potentially awkward questions.

I’d never prayed before in my life, except for those rare moments when even agnostics send some sort of plea out into the universe.
Please, God, let me get into UCLA even though I blew chunks on the math portion of my SAT. Please, God, let me sneak into the house at 3 a.m. without getting caught by my parents. Please, God, let that not be the sound of my transmission failing.

You know, that kind of thing.

Still, as I slid into the driver’s seat of my car and turned the key in the ignition, I did as the priest had instructed. I clenched the steering wheel and thought,
Please, God, help me. Tell me what I should do.

Of course I got no reply.

E
ither God was occupied
with more important things, or He had just decided my case didn’t warrant any direct help. I went home, nuked a Lean Cuisine for dinner, and watched TV because I was too stressed out to try to read or do anything else constructive. I’d halfway been expecting some other sign of Luke’s affections — a box of chocolates, more flowers, maybe my rent paid for the next year — but everything was as it should be, as far as I could tell. What I really should have done was put in a good hour at the gym, because I knew that too many more meals like the one I’d had on my birthday, and I could kiss my size-six jeans good-bye. However, when push came to shove (i.e., when I crossed the intersection where I should have turned right to go to 24-Hour Fitness), I just couldn’t do it. As far as I could tell, being in shape was highly overrated. It certainly hadn’t helped my love life any.

The next day passed without any flowers, or anything else out of the ordinary. Oh, there was some minor drama at work when the press passes for the fundraising gala at the Museum of Natural History went missing, but they eventually turned up — you guessed it — buried under the rubble on Roger’s desk. And so it went. I did whatever work crossed my desk, surfed the Internet, and posted another entry on my private blog about my adventures in Catholicism.

So I went to a priest for help, which even at the time I thought was really reaching, but I didn’t know what else to do. I should have known I wasn’t going to get any helpful advice. Maybe there are still some priests out there who believe in the Devil as a real entity, or at least a real force in the universe, rather than the inner voice of our lesser selves, but I didn’t get one of those today, that’s for sure. And of course I couldn’t be specific, couldn’t tell him what’s really going on.

Not that the priest would have believed me anyway. I have a hard time believing all this myself, and I’ve met Luke, heard him casually admit that he’s the Devil. I guess I figured a priest would have some insight on this sort of thing, and really, who else can I even talk to about this? Nina would think I’ve gone completely batshit crazy if I tried to tell her, and she’s the only person I would even try to confide in. Micaela’s so busy, she doesn’t need to hear about my problems, and Jennifer’s wrapped up in her wedding plans, and…

Oh, well. Looks like I’m flying solo on this one.

That day I did force myself to go to the gym, even though I crapped out after about thirty-five minutes. Still, thirty-five minutes was better than nothing, and I felt a little bit better about myself by the time I was done. I let myself in my apartment, listened to my one and only phone message (from Nina, trying to schedule a belated birthday dinner now that her sinuses had finally unclamped), and then opened up my laptop so I could check my email.

Mostly it was the usual junk, the stuff that gets through no matter how much your ISP beefs up the spam filters. A few daily logs from a couple of Yahoo groups I belonged to, mostly for writing critique circles to which I had never actually contributed anything. At one point I’d harbored a few random literary ambitions, but as time wore on and I didn’t write anything much beyond the entries in my blog, I realized those dreams were getting as stale as week-old bread.

Then, something from him. The email address was [email protected]. I didn’t know anyone else named Luke, and although he hadn’t given me a last name, this one seemed to fit.

So the Devil’s Italian?
I thought, grinning despite myself. I clicked on the email to open it.

One line:
Wear comfortable shoes. See you at seven tomorrow.

And that was it.

Comfortable shoes? What the hell? Was he taking me mountain climbing?

The more I thought about it, the more ominous it sounded. I mean, if he were taking me out for another decadent meal, he wouldn’t be worried about my footwear, would he?

Since most of the day had been spent in radio silence, I’d been harboring the vain hope that perhaps he’d decided I wasn’t sport enough and had moved on to bigger and better things. The email, however, shot down that idea pretty effectively. As far as I could tell, the date was definitely still on.

Okay, God
, I thought.
You can step in here whenever you like. Really.

No answer, of course. Maybe all my years of blissful agnosticism really had ticked Him off.

Nothing from Danny, either, despite his posturing about not giving me up without a fight. Typical. Not that I really wanted to hear from him, but a snotty email or a wounded message on my answering machine would have at least proved that he’d meant what he said.

Fine. I could handle this. After all, no matter what sort of game Luke was playing at, so far he’d done nothing that would have roused my suspicions if he were anyone other than the Devil. Maybe I should stop holding that against him. Maybe he had turned over a new leaf.

Maybe you ought to get your head examined
, I told myself.
Preferably by someone who’s not Freudian. I can only imagine the field day some shrinks would have with this.

Probably I would have had less contempt for the whole psychoanalysis industry if it weren’t that my father was a very successful psychologist. He certainly hadn’t been able to keep himself from making a mess of his own family. But that was a can of worms for another day.

In the meantime, I had to take stock of my closet and figure out what I had in the way of sensible shoes....

B
y the time
Friday evening rolled around, I was pretty much a bundle of twitching nerves. I made some completely stupid mistakes at work, but luckily one of the editors caught them before I told the art department those articles were okay to go to press.

“Having a bad day?” the feature editor asked as he tossed the marked-up layouts onto my desk.

“Long week,” I said. I really didn’t feel like explaining to Brian Matthews (who was one of those people whose world always seemed perfectly ordered) that I was having some issues in my personal life. Besides, he had problems of his own to deal with. I knew he’d been hoping for the executive editor position and was mightily put out when Roger got it instead. It probably didn’t help that Roger was such a disorganized mess.

Since Jacqui knew I had a second date with my mystery man, she let me flee a few minutes early so I would have enough time to get ready. I’d already pretty much lined up what I was going to wear, but an extra fifteen minutes never hurt anyone.

The phrase “comfortable shoes” led me to believe we probably weren’t going anywhere too fancy. There seems to be a corollary that the more glam your footwear is, the more painful it has to be. So I’d picked out a pair of flat brown boots that still looked very smart because of the buckle detail at the ankles, my favorite pair of jeans, a white button-up shirt, and a tweedy fitted jacket in muted greens and browns. Put together, the ensemble looked very
Town and Country
, very English gentry rusticating for the weekend.

I slipped in a pair of plain gold hoops, and decided against a necklace. But a few Christmases ago my father had given me a heavy gold ring set with a square-cut green tourmaline, and I put that on as well. Then I fiddled with my hair, trying to decide whether I should pull it back or wear it down. In the end I went with leaving it down — with it pulled back in a barrette, I looked just a little too much as if I were about to go fox hunting or something.

After all that I started to wonder why I was wasting so much effort on my appearance. Did I really care what he thought?
Should
I care? I mean, here I’d been having minor freak attacks all day at the thought of seeing Luke again, worrying whether this night would be my last or something, and yet I was being a typical girl and futzing
ad nauseum
with my hair. Something was definitely wrong with that picture.

I made a sound of disgust and threw the hairbrush back in its drawer. At that inopportune moment I heard a knock at the front door.

Great. Despite my efforts to remain calm, I felt my heart begin to beat more quickly in my chest. I took a breath, tossed my hair over my shoulder, and went out into the living room. My fingers trembled as they worked the deadbolt.

Wonderful
, I thought.
He’s not even inside, and you’re already a big ball of goo.

I wrenched the door open. He stood outside, looking casually gorgeous in a black leather jacket over a white button-down shirt and dark jeans.

“Hi,” I said. Wow, that was brilliant.

“Good evening,” he replied. Then a corner of his mouth lifted as he looked at me. I’d continued to stand in the doorway, blocking the entrance. “May I come in?”

I hesitated. Maybe I shouldn’t let him in. If I let him in, maybe that would give him some sort of strange power over me, just like —

“I’m not a vampire,” he said, lip curling a bit. “I promise I have no dastardly intentions.”

For someone who said he couldn’t read my mind, he was doing an awfully good job of it. But I didn’t want him to see that he’d gotten to me, so I stepped aside and let him enter my modest living room.

Compared to his newly acquired home in Hancock Park, it wasn’t much. But I’d carefully selected each piece, from the chenille-upholstered couch to the rustic-looking tables from World Market, and I had to say I was proud of my apartment. It was warm and welcoming, in shades of soft tan and brown with accents of brick red. I hated cold-feeling houses, which was partly why I’d disdained his first choice of that modern ’50s place in the Hollywood Hills. Likewise, I didn’t much care for the way Traci — I refused to call her my stepmother — had decorated my father’s house. She’d brought in sleek, uncomfortable furniture and expensive modern art, all of which made the place look more like a gallery than a place where people actually lived. Whatever. It wasn’t the house I’d grown up in, after all, and they had to live in it, not me.

“It suits you,” he said, after a brief glance around the living room.

“Um — thanks,” I replied, feeling a little awkward. I wondered if he’d somehow discovered that I’d tried to enlist the big guns for a little divine assistance.

“You’d better get a coat,” he advised. “It’s chilly out.”

Feeling even more mystified, I went to the hall closet and retrieved the brown leather ankle-length coat that was my end-of-season splurge at Loehmann’s last spring. The coat always made me feel chic and tall, and I figured I needed all the help I could get at this point.

After I’d locked up and we’d descended the stairs to the ground level, I got another surprise. Instead of the big dark-green Bentley, a fire-engine-red Jaguar convertible sat at the curb.

I shot Luke a questioning glance.

“This is a little more maneuverable,” he explained. “Better for tight spots.”

That sounded…dubious…but, not knowing what else to do, I went ahead and climbed into the passenger seat after he’d opened the car door for me. He got in the car, started it up, and headed east toward La Brea, then turned left.

“So where are we going?” I asked.

“Hollywood first,” he replied.

Hollywood? Not really my destination of choice, even though the city really had done quite a bit to improve its reputation the past few years. And at the end of January, it wouldn’t be quite as overrun with tourists as it was the majority of the time.

It was still busy, though — Friday nights could be horrendous, with everyone trolling along both Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards. Even though the police really tried to crack down on random cruising, it was still pretty obvious that a lot of the people who shared the street with us didn’t have a particular destination in mind. They were more interested in showing off their tricked-out cars. The Jag could more than hold its own, luckily.

We turned right on Hollywood and headed east, crawling along from light to light. It was the sort of traffic that would have made me chew the dashboard in frustration, but Luke threaded his way through the packed cars with ease. Finally he turned down a side street and parked in a pay lot.

As I followed him back out to Hollywood Boulevard, I realized what our destination was. I’d never eaten there before, but Musso & Frank’s Grill was a landmark, a restaurant that had been in the same location for more than eighty years.

“You sure do know how to pick them,” I commented, as he held the door open for me and I went on into the building, which was clubby and dark. I felt as if I’d stepped back in time to the ’50s.

He smiled. “Let’s just say that I do enjoy the finer things of this world.”

That much was obvious. Not bothering to reply, I watched as he spoke in a brief undertone to the maitre d’, then trailed along after them to a high-backed booth upholstered in red leather. After we were seated and handed heavy menus that looked as if they’d been around since Hollywood’s heyday, I said, “I still don’t see where the comfortable shoes come in. If I’d known we’d be coming here, I would have dressed up a bit more.”

The amused look never left his face. “Don’t worry — I saw several other people in here wearing jeans as well. You Southern Californians are remarkably relaxed about your dress codes.”

Well, I couldn’t argue with that. I’d seen people wearing T-shirts in expensive restaurants and sporting flip-flops at cocktail parties. Micaela told me she’d once spotted someone wearing tennis shoes at an Oscar party, but since I hadn’t been there, I couldn’t confirm that sighting.

“The chops are particularly good here,” he said. “In case you wanted something besides steak.”

Personally, I was the kind of girl who couldn’t ever get tired of steak, but I thought I’d give the grilled pork chops a try. Luke requested a porterhouse from the red-jacketed waiter who took our order, asked for wine recommendations, and settled on an Australian cabernet.

“What is this all about, really?” I asked, after the waiter had returned with the wine, poured a measure into each of our glasses, and then departed with an air of having bestowed a great favor. “All this wining and dining? This captain of industry act you’ve got going? I just don’t get it.”