Once You Go Demon (Pure Souls) (15 page)

“It wasn’t my idea to come back,” he started, feeling like he should apologize. “I had no clue it was even possible. I was sure Lucifer’d have me on latrine duty forever.”

She swigged her beer. “I know.”

“And I’m sorry I kissed you,” he continued. “Just, you know, old habits, and you are so fucking beautiful it’s hard to go two minutes of the day without remembering how good it feels being inside you.”

A little smile brimmed on the corners of her mouth. “If you say so.”

He held his arms out wide. “This is what I am. I was evil for thousands of years, witch, and I was really, really good it at. Some fancy Angeletti suit ain’t going to change that. Which reminds me…” His chest folded over the table, keeping him balanced. He pointed back to the bar, where
Maria
eyed him warily. “I’m related to
that
?”

This time, Riona’s tone wasn’t so easy going. “
Marc
is, actually. His cousin’s wife. I don’t know many people from his family, but this bar was a favorite of his. He, Dee, and I used to come here. Maria’s usually good for a few free shots.”

“Well, she certainly would like to take a shot at me.” Jerry drank down half the beer in two back-to-back chugs. “And we both know it’s as much as I deserve.”

“Is it?” Crossing her arms over her chest, Riona glared. “Fine, let’s get it out there. I don’t think you were evil, Jerry. You just did a lot of bad things, and most of which you had no choice over. But, hey, you’ve saved my ass more than once, and you proved last night you’d be willing to do it again in a heartbeat. Maybe that’s why you were sent back, to be some sort of bodyguard for me?” She leaned in over the table, her eyes narrow. “You can tell me. I promise, I’ll keep it to myself.”

“Yeah, but I mean it. I really don’t know! One second I was pulling my soul out of Dee’s body so he could come back and heal you. Next moment, I was standing in front of the Council of Seven, each one of those dumbasses looking at me like they’d just seen a ghost. Then Archangel Larry—”

Riona’s hands flew up. “Wait,
Larry?
There’s an archangel Larry?”

He shooed her question aside. “He’s a floater for whenever one of the permanent members is on leave. Like Belgium at the UN or Celine Dion on
Idol
or something. But Larry tells me that he’s been instructed to send me back to Earth, and he doesn’t like it, but that’s the orders he’s gotten, so get ready. Only two catches: I’d have to be in Marc’s body, and I wasn’t supposed to talk about my human life.” The bottle lingered in the air on the edge of his lips. “Like I want to relive the memories of how I fucked up being a human and managed to be the first Pure Soul corrupted and sent to damnation. Unless you’re dying to hear that little ditty.”

“Thanks, but I think I have the basics down.” She studied the label on the bottle, playing with one corner that had started to peel away from the glass. “Except one thing I’ve wondered sometimes. Back then, when you were the Keystone, was there a … you know, did you have any one?”

“What, like a lover?” 

She nodded.

Vestige visions danced behind his eyelids. In a field of wheat, a dark-haired maiden darted like a gazelle, only acting like she wanted to outrun him. When he caught her in his arms however, the earthen-skinned beauty relented, letting his hands take root on her hips, letting him bring their bodies together as one. “Aristoe.”

“You loved her?”

Jerry felt his head nod. “I still do.”

Riona’s face fell. “Oh.”

“I didn’t mean that I don’t love-”

“Don’t.” She stood, taking a few greenbacks from her coat pocket. “It wasn’t about me. It was about … Nothing. I’m glad, Jerry. I’m really happy to find out you had someone like that in your life. We should get going. You need to sober up, and I have work to do for Ditter. Get your coat on. I’ll pay up the tab and try to convince Maria not to tell Marc’s mom that she saw you here.”

She didn’t say a word in the cab ride home, but Jerry wished that she would. Inside her mind, his admission must have her spinning. By the time they’d reached the brownstone, tears visibly pricked the corners of Riona’s eyes, her lips pulled tight as she bit in the air. Jerry settled up the fare, figuring he owed her for the bar.

He needed to talk to her. He turned from the cabbie to take her hand, ask if they could take a walk and get some fresh air so he could sober up proper. She acted as though she hadn’t seen him, pulling herself more quickly up the stairs. Like she was trying to run away from him.

“Even if I don’t see you crying, I’m going to know it’s happening.”

Her hands paused where they were trying to shove the right key in the lock. “What are you talking about?”

He followed her into the house as she managed to get the door opened. “Your eyes mist over and you bite your bottom lip when you’re trying not to cry. What happened? What did I say? I don’t want to hurt you, but even me just being here, looking like him ... Jesus, there’s no way I can’t stop hurting you, is there?”

He could see the gears working, trying to figure out a proper response. Luckily, at that moment, her body betrayed her confidence. A tear welled in the corner of her eye before streaking down her cheek.

He reached out and caught it on his fingertip. “You know, if we were human, this would be the part where I would try to kiss you goodnight, hoping you’d invite me back to your room.”

“But we are human,” Riona muttered.

“Well, one of us is, aren’t we?”

He couldn’t remember making the decision to kiss her. He couldn’t remember the moment before leaning in and pressing his lips to hers. He couldn’t remember what had compelled him to tell her as he kissed her again that he loved her, that he would always, that he wished she could just try. He only knew that the taste of her tears mixing in with the flavor of her mouth would be something he could never forget.

Still as death, she stayed unmoving when he stopped, except for the rise and fall of her chest in time with his.

“Jerry, I … I …”

“See, I did it again!” Jerry stumbled back. “You’re all confused, conflicted, and contorted or something.”

“No, I’m …” She looked uncomfortable in her own skin. “I liked it. And I know I shouldn’t. I don’t
want
to like it. I shouldn’t like it. I shouldn’t like you.”

“Ah, now you’re saying what you’re really feeling.” He wagged a finger at her. “You shouldn’t do a lot of things you do. Why is kissing me so special?”

She planted her balled fists on her hips. “Like what?”

“Like wanting me.” He pinched her lips together before she could manage an objection. “I can see it in your eyes. I can smell it in the air sometimes. You have a PhD in Shouldn’t, honey. You shouldn’t be attracted to me. You shouldn’t want me, the least reason of all which is that I currently have a long-term lease on the body of the last man who made your lady bits go pitter-patter. You
should
feel guilty about liking when I tease you, when I kiss you, when I want to do more than kiss you. You can calm your pretty little heart there. I know it’s only a physical reaction. You’re lonely and sad and you want comfort, but I have no intentions of sleeping with you right now. I’m drunk, and I think it would be devious of you to take advantage of that.”

“Well, aren’t we presumptive?” Riona’s face screwed up. “Me take advantage of you? Jerry, you’re the one that’s been trying to bag me since you shot up back to life like a daffodil.”

His finger poked into her chest. “Exactly, and I don’t think you should take advantage of that. You shouldn’t have sex with someone just to make yourself feel better.”

“You wrote the damned thesis in support of the statement, Mr. I’ve-had-thousands-of-women-in-my-afterlife. Besides, I don’t think an emotionless hook up would change the fact that I don’t like you.”

“Don’t kid yourself, both you and I know it wouldn’t be emotionless. Hell, it would have every damn emotion in the book, and some of them not too pretty. But here’s what you really
should
do, sweetie: decide to move on with your life, and preferably with me. Because that’s what we
could
do, just as soon as you get over your coulda-shoulda-woulda debate.” He pressed her body into the banister, the balustrade pinching between her shoulder blades. In her expression, he could read the conflict of wanting to pull back, but not wanting to distance herself. He lowered himself over her, his lips skimming over the skin just beneath her jaw. “No matter how much we both want it, I’m not going to cloud that decision by fucking you and making you scream my name. Though believe me, I would. Repeatedly. Bilingually.”

He licked up her neck. Through ragged breaths, she huffed, “I didn’t even know I could speak Farsi until that time.”

“By the time I’m done with you, you’d be speechless.”

He backed away from her, turning toward the stairs, leaving her panting and still, her hand at her throat where a moment ago his mouth had been.

“It all comes down to this, Riona. You’re either going to end up with me, or you’re going to end up in Hell with Marc. We both know that. So I’m not running game anymore. You better make up your own mind. I hereby declare your period of mourning officially over. Next time we get close and I’m sober, you’re either going to get what you need or get what you want.”

His hand went down to his pocket as he left a petrified witch behind him. Jerry staggered down the stairway. Reception in the basement was sketchy, but at the moment, he had full bars. He couldn’t shake the image that had plagued him for days: of arising from Hell, of going home to find his human mother still in mourning, wondering if her son would ever return from the battle. He had wanted to console her, wanted to tell her that yes, he died, but in a way, he survived. Of how surprised that, even though he’d become a demon, he was still capable of so much compassion.

Scrolling through the directory, he found the name he was searching for and wrote out MOM, SORRY. BEEN BUSY. LOVE YOU.

A few minutes passed before the answer came. THANK GOD. THOUGHT YOU DIED.

I DID, BUT I’M BETTER NOW.

As Jerry collapsed on the bed, the taste of Riona’s lips, their particular shade of blush when he kissed her without mercy, danced before him. God, he wanted her. But no matter what he did, no matter how much she liked his kiss, she wasn’t over Marc yet. If she gave in to him too fast, it would come back against him later.

One more night of waiting couldn’t hurt.

Heavens and Hells, Jerry questioned the creator’s good senses, sending him to a sitch like this. As though Big Boss had read one too many teen romance novels, and needed to see a triangle with a twist play out in real life. With Marc looming in the background and foreground, what chance did he have with Riona? If he truly was the person who the prophecy spoke about, and was destined to be with the witch, why were both her heart and the future so set against him? What was the point of even trying, knowing she’d fall right into Marc’s damned—literally,
damned
—arms when he arose?

None.

It was like Big Boss had set him, and her, up for failure. Riona was the Keystone, but she wasn’t going to vanquish Marc. No way in Hell her heart would let her do that.

“Holy shit!”

Rare were the times when the truth hit you so hard, it actually sent your body reeling. This was one such time, and Jerry’s bum was going to be sporting a record bruise from hitting the floor.

Of course Riona wasn’t over Marc. And how could she be expected to, when really he’d only died six weeks ago? Hell, she had asked about his own ancient love, and more than two millennia later he still had a soft spot in his heart for Aristoe. Had this fate been theirs, he knew he’d never stand a chance of permanently doing away with the woman he loved. Of course the Keystone was going to have problems vanquishing Marc when he came back topside. She wouldn’t care that he was evil, or under Lucifer’s control. Her heart would only see the man she loved.

But Jerry was
also
a Keystone Witch, and Marc wasn’t exactly his type.

“Oh, my God!” he gasped out as both his hands tugged at his hair. “I’m here to vanquish Marc.”

Chapter 18

After spending half the night reading up on different varieties of Louisiana swamp were-creatures and the poisons their saliva contained, Riona felt refreshed to be turning her attention to voodoo of entirely different slant: statistics. Even if housing costs were no longer a worry, Persephone drew the line at picking up the gas and electric bills. On top of that, her student loan balances failed to be effected by hexes; currently the repayment schedule predicted a period of six years between paying off her college bills and being eligible to file for social security.

Charts, data, and leading trends, oh my. The work Ditter Schmitz threw her way accounted for more than half her annual income. Consequently, Riona made pleasing Ditter a priority. Usually. Six emails from in the last twenty-four hours told her that his patience was running shorter than a good Irishman’s bad temper. He needed the numbers crunched on his Bulgarian campaign yesterday. Schmitz International, of course, had its own in-house guys to do all the heavy lifting where analysis was concerned, but he felt reassured with an outside, independent opinion to back up their reports.

Enter Riona Dade, highly independent and extremely outside.

As the computer programs she favored spit out the final set of percentages, her conclusions solidified. Something wasn’t adding up in the general vicinity of Ditter’s Balkan campaigns. She looked back over her shoulder at the alarm clock on the mantle. Ten-thirty on this frost-bitten morning in Boston meant it was four-thirty in the Netherlands. She put on her ear phones and clicked through a series of screens on her computer to place the international call.

“Ree-yoon-ah, darling. Finally.” Ditter had a voice that brought to mind every single clichéd eccentric European character in every movie ever made. She could practically picture him behind a glass-and-chrome desk, a mock turtleneck, black-rimmed glasses, and a spiky buzz cut hairdo on top of his noggin.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Schmitz. How are you?”

“So much better now that you’ve called. Are you making my ducklings to be walking in a line?”

“If you mean am I putting all your chicks in a row, yes, sir, I am.” A few clicks on the program, and the files whizzed through a web of ocean-dwelling fiber optics to his overseas computer screen. “I see what you were concerned about. There’s an inverse effect of your ad campaigns. You cut money back on the Zoltan investment, but its sales have risen thirty-five percent, while the Nishnikov investment has shown the opposite last quarter.”

“Um, yes. I saw this, too. The question is why.”

“Actually, the explanation is fairly straightforward.” She clicked on the next set of documents and pushed that through. “I think it’s just an internal accounting error. I can’t make out much about that local office’s reports. Cyrillic script and I have never broken bread. But luckily I speak the international language.”

“What’s love got to do with it?”

A smile tugged the corner of her mouth. Tina Turner would be on replay in her mind all day long. “Not love, sir. Mathematics. I think it’s just a case of the financial reports for June having been accidentally swapped. When I tried that out and reran the analysis, everything balanced.”

“And you’re getting to the bad news?” There was suspicion in his voice.

Riona sighed, then clicked through to the third set of documents. Parallel lines ran in Zen-like harmony across the x-y axis. “Yes, sir. That means that neither account saw growth in response to advertising. I’m sorry. It’s a very tough market to crack, with so many subcultures.”

“As usual, Riona, your analysis is
shpot
on. I appreciate your time and attention as always.” He paused, and she could almost picture the thin-haired man in his early sixties as he removed the spectacles from his face and rubbed his eyes. “You will be going away for Christmas this year?”