Kiss & Hell (9 page)

Delaney looked upward, her eyes connecting with his, desperately trying to avoid the elephant in the room.

His junk, covered—just barely—by his lean hands.

Only a male demon would conjure up a love shank like that. Even in death, the male ego won out on the list of things they were shortchanged with in life. “I don’t want money you most likely stole from someone else.”

His look said offended. “I can assure you, I would never steal.”

Her nose wrinkled. “I can assure you, you’re full of horse puckey.”

Clyde moved his head back and forth in an adamant gesture. “No. I absolutely did not steal it.”

Hookay. “Then how’d you get your hands on eight hundred bucks?”

“The explanation is easy enough. It would seem my accounts aren’t so otherworldly. At least one isn’t. I had a safe deposit box. No one knew about it but me. While I hate to admit it, I used one of these demon skills I now have to get into it.”

“How convenient. If bullshit was a corporate position, you’d be a CEO.”

Clyde’s face never changed. He never batted a single thick eye-lash. “I’m not bullshitting you. If you’d like, I’ll give you the name of the bank and you can see the account for yourself. It’s in my name and has been for almost eighteen years.”

Her eyes rolled at him. “Don’t bother. Even if I did believe your half-baked baloney, it isn’t like you couldn’t conjure something like that up with your demon prowess.”

“Hah!” he barked, making her jump with the sharpness of it. “I believe that particular skill is a level-six ability. I haven’t made it past level one—as you clearly saw after that woman with the accent attacked me from behind, wrestled me to the ground, and duct-taped me to your radiator. I’m just now learning how to disappear. I don’t like using anything that even remotely has to do with these demonic powers I’ve been given, but it gave me an advantage I needed today. I’d be a liar if I didn’t say it helped in a pinch, but it was no cakewalk getting in and out of that bank—
naked—
even if it was closed.”

Touché. Or not . . . she was having a hard time believing he wasn’t just playing poor widdle weak demon to fool her.

“So now we’re even,” he concluded with a satisfied nod of his head.

“No. We’re nothing. I don’t want your money. I do want you to get out of my house—my store. I only aid spirits who need help crossing over. You’ve officially crossed, and there ain’t no comin’ back from where you landed. That means I can’t help you and I’m not interested in why you showed up here.” Though that might not totally be the truth. She was a little curious after his admission that he was sent here to torment her. But demons loved to play games, and that was probably the case with this one. To waste time playing with them, asking questions, was fruitless and would only heighten a demon’s lust for the sheer joy of toying with a mortal.

Now his patience was running thin. She could see it in the hardening of his eyes, and the pulse at his right temple. “Then don’t take the money. Give it to the poor. Buy dogs one through six a helluva steak. In my mind, my debt to you is paid, and honoring a debt is important to me—no matter how skewed and misinterpreted by a medium the debt is.”

“Very civic, with just the right touch of Boy Scout. Now get out.” She’d deal with the temptation of coveting thy demon’s eight hundred smackers later.

He remained where he was with a posture that dared her to get her prism. “Nope. I’m not leaving until you listen, and if I have to, I’ll use one of my demon skills to make you. I won’t like it, but I’ll do it if the end result is we get this cleared up.”

He. Did. Not. “Pop off, demon. I know you didn’t just threaten me.”

Clyde narrowed his gaze.

She sighed, when he didn’t move a muscle, letting her irritation bleed through the long exhale of it. “Are you gonna make me get the prism again?”

His game face changed a hair. Not nearly as determined as it was a minute ago. “Please don’t.”

Delaney mentally took the metaphoric reins back. “It got rid of you the first time. Wasn’t that you who got all girlie about a little piece of glass? You back for more, hero?”

“If your eyes burning holes in their sockets is girlie, then just call me girl. You had an unfair advantage—a weapon I knew absolutely nothing about. But I’m learning . . .” He let his words drift off, then gave her a smug grin.

Delaney’s snort ripped through the silence between them. “Puulease. You know damned well what’s damaging to a demon. Don’t they give you classes on it in Hell? Isn’t that, like, Demon 101?”

Clyde’s lips thinned, his cheekbones becoming sharper, more defined, giving him a whole new appeal. “As I said, I’ve avoided as much participation in anything demonic as I could.”

Her arms crossed over her chest; her stance grew defensive. “Really? That sounds like a very convenient answer. Like maybe something I want to hear to pacify me until you wail me when I’m not looking?” She cocked a suspicious eyebrow at him.

His wide chest heaved in a ragged sigh. Aw, look. The poor demon was fed up. Wah-wah. “That’s why I was sent here, Delaney. I’ve been trying to tell you that since you accused me of bilking you out of eight hundred bucks. My
original
assignment was supposed to be some sort of punishment for my refusal to be a team player—if I don’t do what I’m supposed to, my eternity will be spent in the pit.”

The pit? What the frig was the pit? Marcella’d never mentioned a pit . . . “The pit?”

His nod was curt. “All your worst fears come true—for
eternity
.”

God, that would totally suck. For her, that would mean they’d take
Ghost Whisperer
off the air or something . . . how heinous.

As she pondered the potential for a Friday night disaster, Clyde finally asked, “Aren’t you even a little curious as to why Satan
himself
would send someone to terrorize you? That’s a pretty strong message he’s sending, if you ask me.”

Yes, she was curious. No. Yes. No. Delaney shook her head as though that might clear up her misgivings. She refused to delve into this any further. If Satan wanted her, he’d just have to get his spineless ass in gear and come get her himself. She wasn’t indulging, or for that matter divulging anything to, this Clyde.

Before she had the chance to voice her rather ballsy thoughts, Mrs. Ramirez appeared at the store door, pressing her round face to the glass and motioning for Delaney to open the door.

“Who’s that?” Clyde asked from on high.

“Crap. Mrs. Ramirez. She comes to help me in the store sometimes and she loves to play with the dogs. She
cannot
see you or there’ll be no keeping you under wraps. Disappear or something, would you?”

Clyde cringed, attempting to make his body smaller. “Do you have any idea what it took for me to do that the last time? I nearly burst a blood vessel.”

Mrs. Ramirez pounded on the door, shaking the handle. “Ju open de door, Mees Delaney. Ees locked.”

Delaney looked up at Clyde with a ragged sigh, hoping Mrs. Ramirez couldn’t see with great distance into the depth of the store. “Can’t you squeeze really hard or something? She can’t find you here or the whole block will know about it.”

Delaney went to the door, popping the top lock and sticking just her nose out. She faked a sneeze in the general direction of Mrs. Ramirez’s cherubic face. “I’m sick, Mrs. Ramirez. I’ve got it covered today. You go home.”

Her black eyes pierced Delaney’s with sympathy. “Oh, ju seeck. I come een an’ make ju soup, jes?”

“Jes, I mean, no. I don’t want you to catch it. Go home and come back next week. I’m sure I’ll be better then.”

Her brow furrowed with deep lines. She planted chubby hands on her stout body while the wind whipped her salt-and-pepper hair from its tight bun at the back of her head. “No. I come een an’ take care of de store an’ de babies. Ju go to bed.”

Delaney shot another fake sneeze at her and followed up with the best hacking cough she could summon. “I’m going to leave the store closed today, Mrs. Ramirez. Promise. Hurry up and go home before you catch something.” She sniffled for good measure.

“Ju sure?”

She nodded at her friend who was more like a grandmother. “Jes . . . er, yes. Thanks, Mrs. R. Give Alonzo a big hug for me, okay?”

Mrs. Ramirez ran a finger along Delaney’s nose, then turned to stroll away from the store, her luggage-sized purse swinging from her elbow.

Relief escaped her lungs in a whoosh of air.

“She gone?”

Now back to Clyde. “Yes, she’s gone. Okay, so I have a question.”

“Fire,” he said, stretching his legs back out, defining every last sexy muscle in them.

“If your mission is to capture me and get me to Hell, why would Lucifer send a noob who hasn’t learned his demon ass from his fire-breathing elbow? Dude, that’s just insane. Especially when you’re dealing with someone who knows the spirit world like I do, not to mention the talent for bullshit you demons are so gifted with.”

Now Clyde snorted, long and loud, making the notion of his ability to capture her seem even more preposterous. He shrugged his shoulders indifferently, but his eyes left her face and stared down at his toes. “If you know the spirit world, then you know sometimes it has no rhyme or reason. And Satan doesn’t need a reason to do anything. He does as he pleases.”

“So he sent you here with absolutely no backup? No heavy hit ters to help you out?” This made no sense.

“None of that matters now. That’s why I need you to listen. Satan sent me on a mission I have no intention of completing.” He looked around as if someone—someone they couldn’t see—might hear them.

Delaney looked around, too—because he’d passed the suspicion baton on to her and she was beginning to feel pairs of invisible eyes on her that probably didn’t exist. “And why’s that?”

Clyde’s voice was low when he spoke again. “Okay, one more time for posterity: I don’t belong in Hell.” He held up a hand to stop her from interrupting him, thus revealing far more flesh than her almost reconstituted virginal eyeballs could take in all in one gander. “Before you say another word—no, I absolutely did not choose Hell as my eternal destination. I didn’t have a choice. Like I said, one minute I was in my lab, the next in a place that’s beyond Africa hot. And forget the idea that I led this shitty life you accused me of earlier. I’ve never raped, pillaged, plundered, cheated, or committed any of the deadly sins I’m sure you know by psalm and verse. I was a decent guy, if distracted by my work and sometimes forgetful that there were other people with feelings that occupied my space. I highly doubt being so absorbed in my work was how I ended up in Hell. Now I have a month back here on Earth to figure out how a decent guy ends up in Hell. That’s how long Lucifer gave hi—er, me to bring you to him. Now, if I’m completely honest here, I’ll admit I’m pretty bent out of shape. I have to tell you, it really doesn’t pay to have any morals at all in life if you’re only going to be screwed in death. If the life I led was what put me on the path to Hell, I expect the reigning pope to show up any minute in my ‘Demons Do It Better’ class.”

Delaney looked down at her slip-on shoes, waving a hand in the general direction of his southerly locales, her cheeks hot and pink with embarrassment. “Put that thing away.”

Clyde cleared his throat, slapping his hand back in place over his goodies. “Shit. My apologies.”

She heard him shift on the armoire, his skin sticking to the wood when he did. And now everything was situation normal all fucked up—which gave her a thought. One she couldn’t let go of. A little factoid that didn’t connect all of Clyde’s dots. His story was a good one, unusual and unique, but he could have made all of it up to string her along. Sort of a reverse psychology thing. Play nice, pretend you despise your horned leader, suck in the medium, then nail her balls to the wall for the coup of the century. Satan pats him on the back, and he earns another rung on Hell’s ladder.

Perfect, right?

But this had been nagging at her since last night when he’d been on her bed in her bathrobe, jacking up her Friday night.

Her dogs loved him.

To some that might seem really odd, or even weak, that she was toying with the idea that her dogs could determine good from pure evil. But animals, and even some children, had a keen sixth sense, and her dogs had literally mourned his leaving her bedroom not just last night, but this morning, too. She knew her babies like a mother knew her human offspring, and her babies knew a malevolent force when they saw one.

She hoped.

Another thought occurred to her, too. Her dogs also loved Marcella. Totally dug her. She didn’t love them back much because they were always tearing her nylons or chewing up her shoes, and even then, they still loved her. Had from their very first meeting when she’d called them some name, one that probably wasn’t full of warm squisheys, in Spanish. Marcella was definitely a demon. Not a demon that would hurt a fly without cause, but a demon nonetheless. If Marcella could be a peace-loving unwilling resident of Hell, why couldn’t Clyde?

Delaney grabbed an old throw she kept in the store due to the draftiness in the winter. She hurled it up to Clyde so he could cover his fun stuff just as she caught the glimpse of a woman standing in the corner by the rack of herbal oils. She froze in place, forgetting that she really should ask this errant demon what his supposed mission was about and how it involved her, because the familiar goose bumps rising on her arms while her chimes swayed with a shiver took precedence.

“Delaney?”

“Shhhhh,” she whispered up to Clyde. “Do you see her?”

“Her?”

“In the corner. The lady with the poofy dress and the thing on her head that looks like a doily.”

Clyde shifted to crane his neck. The moment he did, the woman began to fade, then her wavering form turned fuzzy like snow on a television set. Like when the picture faded in and out. Clyde stirred again, running a hand through his hair, and once more, the apparition crackled with static—almost in sync with his movements.

“Sit back up,” she ordered.

Clyde grunted, leaning back to his left and centering himself atop the armoire again. “Is it Aunt Gwyneth again?”