My Way to Hell (17 page)

“Yes,” she hissed on a harsh breath.

“What was in the box, Marcella?” he demanded, keeping his voice low, but apparently unable to hide the harshness in it.

Pressing a fist to her lips, she spoke around her hand. “Something horrible. Vile. Heinous. Oh, Jesus, Kellen. How could a kid like Carlos have that box?”

“Tell me what was in the box.”

Over Kellen’s shoulder, she saw Carlos’s eyes taking them in. The last thing he needed was more turmoil. “Not now. Not in front of Carlos. I have to go, Kellen. I’ll be back, and I’ll tell you. I promise I’ll tell you.”

The tight line of his mouth expressed his aggravation at having to wait, but she pressed two fingers to his lips.
“I promise,”
she whispered. Clenching her eyes shut, she forced herself to smile once more.

“Carlos,
chico
? I gotta blow. So I’ll check ya later, okay?”

“Aw, how come?”

His question, laced with such disappointment, made her chuckle. “Dude, I’m a ghost, and it’s getting late. Ghosts work at night. We have important ghostie things to do like houses to haunt and doors to open and close so we can freak people out. We can’t spend all night playing Rock Band,” she joked. “So I gotta roll. I’ll catch you soon. Now remember what I said. If you need me, just think me up and I’m in, okay?”

He sighed, clearly resigned to her leaving. “’Kay. ’Bye, Marcella.”

“’Bye, Tommy Lee.” She blew him a kiss and sent Kellen a meaningful glance before floating to the front of the store and out the door.

She literally flew to the park, rushing to the bench where she’d told Darwin to meet her. The bench was devoid of anyone, hosting only dead leaves scattered along the seat from the tree above.

“God damn it, Darwin. Where the fuck are you?” she yelled into the brittle chill of the wind. “I need you to get your hairy ass here now!” As if yelling was going to help.

“Gurrrlll, shoot. You don’t gotta yell.”

Whirling around, she came face-to-face with a woman, a very large woman, with garish makeup, overblown lips, and so much frosted blue eye shadow she’d surely keep those women who sold that ridiculous Bobbie-Sue Cosmetics in business for life. Her platform boots wobbled beneath her enormous feet, and the pink boa she wore, covered in glitter, ruffled in the breeze, creating a gaudy halo around her neck.

Marcella expelled a huge sigh of relief, then paused. “Darwin? Please tell me you’re not three sheets to the wind. I swear, I’ll neuter you myself if you’re under the influence.”

He bent his hand at the wrist, placing the other at his hip. “Oh, honey, I’m not under the influence, but I’ve decided I wish I were. This she-male’s thoughts are insidious. What would ever possess her to want to have her Mr. Peabody turned inside out surgically so she can finally make the ‘big money’? It’s unthinkable.”

Marcella would laugh, if she didn’t want to cry. “
Ay chihuahua, chico
. Could you have found anyone uglier?”

Darwin rubbed his Rubenesque ass, his long, gleaming red fingernails getting tangled in his boa. When he responded, for a mere moment he sounded like the old Darwin. Her Darwin. “Have pity. I’ve been violated.”

Reaching for his large hand, she clasped it between hers. “Listen to me. Did you go back to Chez Dreary? Did you find anything out?”

His lips curled in disgust. “I went back, I did. I didn’t find out a friggin’ thing. Gurrrlll—I mean, girl, that shit’s tighter than my goddamned frilly thong. Which, I’m not ashamed to tell you, is unforgiving, if you know what I mean.”

Marcella would laugh at Darwin’s war with the transsexual hooker’s clothing and mental processes if everything weren’t such a blessed mess. Tears formed in her eyes again, and she swiped at them with angry fingers. “Oh, God, Darwin. Something horrible’s happened.”

His overly made-up eyes cast her a look of confusion. “Worse than that dress you got on, sugah?”

She eyed his pleather miniskirt and cropped corset where the bushy hair from his belly puffed out in dark tufts. “You should be throwing stones?”

He looked down at his breasts, overflowing from his corset like the doughy dinner rolls you bought in a can and opened by cracking it on the side of the counter. “Noted. So what’s happenin’? Tell old Brittany all about it, honey.”

Her eyes bulged.
“Brittany?”

Cocking an eyebrow at her, he stuck his neck out, circling his head. “From what I hear her tell the younger, less experienced girls, Brittany says that using a younger, uh,
stage
name makes men feel virile when they scream it out during the, you know”—he winked—“passion making. I don’t choose the names of the prostitutes and addicts I possess. Cut me some slack, girlie.”

Hearing his voice, even embodied in this heifer of a transvestite, pushed her over the edge. Fat tears streamed down her face, disappearing before they ever hit the ground. Sinking to the bench, she gripped the edge of the seat on either side of her legs and drew in ragged breaths. Her shoulders sagged as the weight of seventy-six years seeped into her bones. “Darwin, oh, Jesus, Darwin. This is so bad. Everything’s gone to shit.”

Cupping her chin, he pulled her eyes to his. “Who the fuck are you, sister? The Marcella I know sure don’t”—he sighed in clear exasperation—“
doesn’t
cry. She’s a hard-ass from way back.”

Yeah. Who the fuck was she? “I don’t know!” she yelped in helplessness. “I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with me. All of a sudden I have all these weird bodily functions. Like, I’d swear my heart beats, and I can’t stop crying over everything.”

“Phantom pain, sugah. The heartbeat thing, breathing, a pulse is what the souls call phantom pain. Like when you lose a limb and your brain tells ya it’s still there.”

“Those shitty-ass souls have an explanation for everything, don’t they? Can anyone explain why I’m a shitwreck all the time? Why I’m getting attached to a little boy who’s in some serious dookey? I mean, me, Darwin,
me
—attached to a nine-year-old child. Kellen’s behaving like he’s found the meaning of life with Tibetan monks, so he won’t fight with me anymore, and now there’s the box.” Tremors of anxious panic swept up her spine.

“The box . . . Christ almighty! I remember talking about the box—but damn if I can remember what I said, I was so trashed. What’s so important about the box?”

Marcella began to wail. Highly uncharacteristic and so out of the blue, even she was surprised. “Carlos has the box, Darwin,” she sobbed.

His garish lips formed an O. “What’s in the box, sugarplum?”

“My d-d-dead husss-baaand.”

His O-shaped lips fell open. “You had a husband?”

She sprang up from the bench, clenching her fists and yelling to the sky, “Yes! God damn it all, yes! I had a husband. He was a disgusting, filthy, lying pig, but he was mine! It makes me want to vomit just saying it, but yes, yes,
yes
! I had a husband.” It shouldn’t feel good to say that out loud, but it did. Fuck-all if it didn’t feel good to finally spew her hatred for that monster out loud. Sinking back onto the bench, she inhaled deeply.

Darwin also took a long, shuddering breath, and when he released it, the condensation of warm breath hitting cold air created a puff of cloudy steam. He dropped down beside her in a slump. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a husband?”

The disbelief that settled on her face went straight from her brow and out her mouth. “Why would I tell you anything, you mange-riddled mutt? You hate my guts. Everyone hates my guts because I’m a bad-girl demon. I’ve found peace with that. We’re not friends. I don’t confide in you unless you make me. I wasn’t always a demon, you half-wit. I didn’t just hatch. I once had a life and I shared that life with a husband.”

“Easy there, girlie. Okay, so we weren’t friends. Did we have to be friends for you to tell me you had a husband? One that’s in a box . . . Wait. Did you put him in the box?”

Oh, indeed she had. “You bet your ever-lovin’ ass I did, and I’d do it again, that fucking prick.” Her eyes narrowed just thinking about that day. The betrayal, the urgency, the horrific choice she’d had to make in a matter of moments.

He peered at her from beneath his false eyelashes. “Was he in pieces when you put him in the box?”

“No, you moron. It’s a long story. One I don’t want to get into, but now he’s out of the box, Darwin. How could Isabella let that box get away from her?”

“Marcella?”

“What?”

“I need you to move at a slower pace. I’m fighting a mind that thinks turning your Mr. Peabody into a Mrs. is going to garner her at least a buck over minimum wage per hour. Who is Isabella?”

“My sister.” God, she missed Isabella. They’d been so close until she’d married that bastard and he’d kept her from everyone she held near and dear.

“Again, I didn’t just hatch. I had a husband, a sister, parents, a house, a—” She bit her tongue. “A very real, rather ordinary life with all the things real, ordinary people have in it.”

“Did your sister hack your husband up and put him in the box?”

“No, Darwin.
He
wasn’t in the box. His soul was in the box. And now it’s loose and running around somewhere. I have to find that scumbag. If I don’t . . . Oh, God. What if I don’t?” It was unimaginable. Unthinkable. Un-everything-able.

“May I remind you, I’m a simpleminded hooker? And take no offense. I’m certain there are oodles of hookers who have an IQ the size of seven continents. This just isn’t one of them, and her thoughts stray; they muddle. Thus, it’s hard to focus while I fight her desire to hit Harvey’s Hut of Hanky-Panky, where business is good this time of night. So explain slowly. How did you get your husband’s soul? That makes no sense. I can’t articulate why, because I’m hampered by a limited vocabulary. But take my word for it, it makes no sense.”

Marcella’s mouth thinned to a line of hatred. “I killed him. I nailed the motherfucker when he wasn’t looking. Then I summoned his black soul and I put it in the box. A locked box no one was ever supposed to figure out how to open.”

“Oh. Of course you did. I mean,
ordinary
people kill their husbands every day and summon their souls so they can put them in a box—that’s locked. Film at eleven.”

“Forget it. You wouldn’t understand. All of that doesn’t matter now. What does matter is he’s out. Free to roam. That cowardly fuck.”

“So I finally know how you became a demon. Murder is frowned upon. You know, that crazy commandment about thou shalt not nail the motherfucker?”

No. No, that wasn’t it at all. But she didn’t owe Darwin or anyone else an explanation. She couldn’t speak of her reasoning behind killing Armando because it hurt so much it made her physically tremble. “Right. Look, that isn’t the point. The point is Carlos let him out of the box. I don’t understand how he got his hands on the box, but he has it, and it’s been opened. I sealed that myself and made Isabella swear she’d bury it where no one would ever find it.”

“So this sister of yours, she’s some slacker, huh?”

His dig fell by the wayside due to Marcella’s terror. “Something must have happened to prevent her from burying it. She knew how important it was. She knew Armando had to be stopped. I told her. Begged her.”

“Did she believe you?”

Marcella frowned. Isabella had never believed entirely. Not in the afterlife, and certainly not in demons or the supernatural. But the day she’d gone to Isabella and begged her to bury the box, surely her hysteria was enough to convince her that Armando’s soul could never escape that box. Would her sister have ignored her last wish? And even if she had, how in the name of all that was holy had Carlos gotten his hands on it? “Isabella wasn’t a believer in Heaven and Hell. She didn’t believe in my gift of sight, and she definitely didn’t think Armando could hurt anyone after he was dead.”

Darwin scrunched his face up. “Whoa there, girlie. You had the gift of sight? What else did you have in this ‘ordinary’ life?”

So many things, she couldn’t speak of them. Her head nodded with a slow bob. This was more than she’d ever shared with anyone since she’d chosen Hell, and it was like having her teeth pulled one by one without aid of anesthesia. “Yes . . .” She blew the admission out with reluctance. “When I was alive, I had medium abilities.”

“Astonished” wasn’t a word she’d use lightly when referring to Darwin’s tone. “So you knew there was another side?”

Hoo, boy, had she ever. “Yes. I knew.”

“And you chose Hell? I always thought you were a bitch, but not a dumb one.” He clucked his tongue with scorn.

Hold up there. Anger fused her brows together and narrowed her eyes, but her words were measured and hissed from between her teeth. “
Fuck you, Darwin
. Fuck you, you judgmental asshole. You know what?—go away. Go now before I wrap my hands around that thick neck of yours and squeeze until your Mr. Peabody turns itself inside out without any help from a surgeon’s knife. You don’t know me, Darwin. You don’t know a damned thing about me except for what you
think
you know. So take your trashy ass on outta here. I asked for your help because a little boy’s in danger. An innocent little boy. It isn’t for me. I’d rather be banished to a place a million times worse than Plane Dismal than ask for help for me. Just go away. Better yet, I’ll go away. And stay away from me from now on, or I swear, as I stand here in front of your freaky ass, I’ll figure this ghost thing out, and when I do, I’ll make being run over by a big ole Lincoln seem like cake and ice cream.”

She didn’t give him the chance to defend himself before she floated as far away from the park as she could, because, knowing Darwin, he’d be happy to offer up more of his pious views on her life before death.

Rationally, she knew he had nothing else to go on but bits and pieces of a story that involved her killing her husband and locking his soul in a box. With the little she’d shared, he certainly had every right to judge. But she’d been judged for more years than she cared to count, and now it was all coming to a frothy head, bubbling over in angry splashes of guilt and secrecy.