Once You Go Demon (Pure Souls) (26 page)

“Goddess in the grave, do you have any idea how much I want you?” He hissed it out before he had realized it.

Riona fidgeted as he finally let her hands go. Her fingers went up to his cheeks just as he brought his lips down to hers, quickly brushing over them with the ghost of a kiss.

Closing his eyes and letting his forehead fall to hers, he forced the remainder of his statement out through incredulous lips. “To trust me.”

Her eyes went wide. “What?”

“You don’t want to do this. I don’t.”

She swept her legs out to the side, using the leverage to roll her hips, causing him to grind against her. “
That
suggests otherwise.”

With every ounce of determination he could muster, Jerry removed himself from her, rose to his feet, and created a space between them in more than just the physical aspect. “If I had known you’d be so easy to go with it, I never would have pinned you to the bed.”

Riona shot to her feet. “So, what? You were just toying with me? Seriously, you should open up an amusement park. You build the tallest emotional roller coasters on the planet.”

“Oh, come on. I’m a good guy now, but I’m still an arrogant ass about some things. You can’t expect me to go from a prick to a prince in no time flat. Don’t you try to be something you’re not either.”

She crossed her arm and cocked her hip. “Meaning?”

“Don’t you get it? You’re half-angel. That means more than just a little more
umph
in your punch. You are one seriously strongly sexual being. It’s in your genetics. And, hey, I don’t hold that against you. In fact, it’s come in handy in the past. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting a little physical comfort when you’ve dealt with so much shit lately. You think that this would make you feel better. And it would. For, like, an hour. Then you’d plummet back down in despair when you realized you just used me, someone who has honest feelings for you, as a drug to numb yourself. You’re not that type of person.” He fetched the towel from the bed and appropriated himself.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Riona argued, trying to step up to him again. “It’s like you said, sometimes a fuck is just a fuck.”

He bit his lip and threw back his head, before snapping it forward again. “I didn’t say that, Freud did. And while I believe it’s true, it wouldn’t be just a fuck for me. I don’t want to be with you just so you can get off on Marc’s body. I don’t want to be with you just so I can get off on yours. I want to be more than that.”

“Jerry Romani, are you refusing to sleep with me?”

“No. Yes.” He laughed as he put his arms around her and drew her violently against him, all while back stepping her toward the door. “Yes, but with qualifications. I promise you, the day will come when I’m going to fuck you certifiably crazy. I am going to take you down on my bed, or on your bed, or hell, even the kitchen counter, and do things to you that will make you think the rapture has come. I will make you come so hard, you’ll want to start a new religion based on my ability to fuck. But mark my words,” he let her go, opened the door, and pushed her in to the hall, “I won’t do a thing with you until you look at me and see something you’ve gained, instead of something you’ve lost.”

And with that, he slammed the door in her face.

Chapter 28

“And this one?”

Riona turned around to see her father pointing at a faded picture posted to a yellowing page.

“Disneyworld, when I was twelve.”

“That place with all the crazy rides and full grown people dressed as cartoon characters?” Michael brought the photo album closer to his eyes and inspected more closely. “Did Molly dye her hair? I can’t imagine anything that would cover that red.”

Pushing away from her desk with a sigh, Riona resigned herself to the fact that she wasn’t about to get any real work done while her father was in the mood to trip down memory lane.

“No, that’s not Momma.” She flipped to the next page where both her, the other little girl, and a woman with short, brown hair posed with an imagineer dressed as Snow White. “Cindy Kirkpatrick, my best friend all through junior high. Her mother took pity on me and invited me on their family vacation. Thought it was the Christian thing to do for the poor little girl whose mother couldn’t crawl out of the bottle long enough to drive to the store some days.”

Michael’s grin soured. He looked to his daughter with empathy only freaking angels dared. “I’m so sorry. Your childhood should have been ideal. You should have known about your birthright. You should have been raised in the ways. If nothing else, you should have been raised with love. I never expected that Molly would become …” He heaved a sigh as he buried his chin in his chest. “It must have been hard for her, Riona. When she vanquished me, the council decided you weren’t safe being raised knowing what you were capable of, of who you were, without someone to guide you. Molly was a damned good witch, but she wasn’t a Pure Soul, and there’s no way she could have stood her ground against a hormonal half-angel. Binding your magic and replacing her memory of who I really was with a fake persona of a drunkard seems extreme, but it was the best solution I could think of at the time. She had to remember me as someone deplorable enough that neither one of you would ever want to track me down. I didn’t know what that would make her.”

“You know what gets me the most?” Riona crossed her arms. “Forget me and my horrible upbringing. It was no picnic, but damn, I got through it. And she wasn’t always bad. I always had clothes on my back and food on the table. But if you loved my mom so much, why the hell haven’t you run your ass up to Salem to see her?”

“She’s not the same woman.” Michael sighed. “Remember, she thinks I tied her to a bed for nine months and forced her to have a child against her will. I could undo that, of course, and let her remember the way it really was, but then, think what she’ll be like when, her mind restored, she looks back on all the crap she’s done wrong with you. It would kill her … I can’t be responsible for that.”

“But you’ll stand by and let her think of you as a kidnapper?” Riona’s eyes pierced through Michael’s shame.

“I’d rather have her hate me than somehow come to blame you. Not saying that would be right,” Michael shrugged, “but the human heart makes a liar of the innocent. Let her hate me. I can endure it. She’ll see all one day in the end.”

Riona wondered if her father meant to imply when her mother went to Heaven. She wasn’t quite sure Molly’s boarding passes were punched for that destination.

“Well, if it helps at all …” Riona went to her bookshelf and pulled down another chapter of her life in photos. “… she eventually got herself straightened out. When I was fourteen, she hit bottom and gave up the booze. I won’t pretend that she transformed into a saint, but she tried her best.” She kept herself from adding,
No thanks to you or any of the heavenly host.

When her phone chirped from the desk, Riona had no doubt who was on the other end. She was an hour late in giving back the report. The report Ditter had made very clear was urgent when he’d phoned earlier. Her father, it turned out, was a total attention sponge, and barely let her go two minutes without relating another flashback to her dark days as the child of Molly Dade. The concept of working for living didn’t exactly make sense to him.

“I know what you’re going to say, and no, not yet,” Riona answered without even saying hello. “I’m sorry. I’m just about finished. Ten more minutes.”

“If you promise me,” Ditter answered, “then I won’t be mad. But only if you tell me why.”

She shrugged, thinking that a round about truth couldn’t help anything. “My dad just flew into town. We’re catching up.”

“Of course.” She could picture the pale-faced man nodding. “I guess I should have assumed you’d be very busy right now, with preparations and the such. By the way, I’ll be arriving the day after tomorrow.”

Misunderstanding slapped Riona across the face. “Um, okay. Why?”

Ditter’s chuckle brought a nerve-induced smile to her face. “Don’t be silly, darling. I’m coming for the wedding. You do remember inviting me last year, don’t you?”

She knew angels’ sense of hearing put a human’s to shame.  Riona wondered if her father picked up on the tiny blood vessel in her brain bursting. “Wedding?”

“Yes, for you and that fabulous hunk of a man, Gerald was it?”

“Jerry,” Riona corrected. “No. I mean, yes. Yes! Of course I remember inviting you now. I’ll, um … I’ll finish up that report and I’ll let you know the details of the big day um … soon as I figure them all out. I mean! As soon as I figure out the report, then after that. Yeah, I’ll send it to you. Bye.” She clicked the phone closed and went as white as the wall her back slowly slid down.

“Riona?” Michael put aside the photo album and rose to his feet. “I did not know you were betrothed.”

A high pitch squeal only dolphins would recognize as laughter leapt from the back of her throat. “I’m not!”

Michael examined her reproachfully. “Clearly you have not inherited my inability to lie. I don’t understand, daughter. If you are not betrothed, how is it you can be wed?”

She didn’t have time to think about that now. With newfound determination, Riona rose to her feet. Time was ticking, and she had a deadline. “How indeed.”

Breath racing was an understatement. Her panting could qualify for the Indy 500. And head spinning? Yup, like her middle name was Linda Blair. 

Memories took her back to Ditter’s last visit a little over a year ago, when she’d been dating Jerry. Dating Jerry, before she knew Jerry was a minion of Hell sent to spy on her and before she’d known her mere words could julienne French fries and demons alike. Ditter was perhaps one of the most pleasant, easy-to-talk-to, and genuine clients she’d had in her five years since getting her Masters in Statistics from Boston U. But he also had a stubborn, traditional streak that he looked for in his clients. For the most part, Riona, with her old school work ethic and determination to tell her clients the truth rather than tell them only what they wanted to hear, fit the bill pretty snug.

She’d invited Ditter over for dinner one night, and since she and Jerry were pretty serious, invited Jerry as well. Somehow during their conversation, the fact that Jerry spent most of his nights at Riona’s apartment crept into the conversation, met with Ditter’s disapproving glare. Jerry had saved her ass by announcing their impending nuptials. “A year from now, on Christmas Eve,” he had said, adding, “I always wanted a Christmas bride. And I hope you’ll be there, Mr. Schmitz. I know it would mean a lot to Riona and I.”

She tried to stop the recollections before she recalled the tenderness of the conversation between them later that night, when she’d joked about how ridiculous the idea of them being married was. “It’s not ridiculous at all,” Jerry had declared with undeniable sincerity as he ran a thumb over her bottom lip. “Don’t panic, I’m not proposing. But who’s to say? A year from now, you might make me a very lucky man.”

She’d forgotten in the intervening time to tell Ditter the fake wedding was off. Why hadn’t she told him over the phone now? Well, for starters, because she didn’t want to waste any more time delaying that already-late report, but more because she was afraid Ditter might question her morality knowing she’d been semi-shacking up with a guy she later dumped.

Riona  ran her fingers through her hair before shooting to her feet and throwing herself out her door, down to flights of stairs, and to the door she’d had unceremoniously slammed in her face the night before.

Riona’s frantic, harried state spiked his pulse in to high gear.

Jerry backed away and let her into his room. “Egads, Riona, what’s happened?”

Her hands clenched, released, clenched, and released in time with the throbbing of a vein on her neck. “Jerry, we have to get married.”

She could have said, “Jerry, I’ve just had my liver eaten by a raccoon while Richard Simmons slapped me with a herring,” and he’d have been less shocked.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Married,” she repeated. “Soon. Like, in a few days.”

Okay, was she high, under a spell, or had Dee paid her a hundred dollars to pull his leg?

“Riona, about last night … I didn’t refuse to sleep with you because of some old fashioned notion about ringing the finger before you finger the ring.”

Closing her eyes, he could almost hear her teeth gnash. “Last night was a mistake. A
near
mistake. I got carried away, but this isn’t about that. This is about my job, about Ditter Schmitz.”

“Um, okay, I’ll bite. How’s an old Puritan-in-a-wool-sweater leading you to want to make an honest man out of me?”

“Do you remember what you told him we were going to be doing this Christmas Eve?”

Could he? Jerry had retained most of his memories as he shifted from incarnation to incarnation, but as a demon he had also passed out lies like he was the Sierra Club at a strip mall. Yes, he did remember Ditter of course; it took seeing such a specimen to believe that so much pretention could be stuffed into one human body. But he was Riona’s biggest client, stuck-up traditionalist that he was, and since Jerry at the time was hell-bent on doing anything he could to keep her happy, and since Ditter had given him the stink eye when he mentioned that he and Riona stayed in most nights instead of going out—wink, wink, nudge, nudge—he had had to make good with the guy by …

“Holy shit!” Jerry slapped a hand over his mouth to hold back his cursing. “I told him we were getting married. I even freaking invited him to the wedding, didn’t I? Fuck, Riona, I didn’t honestly think anything would come of that. Look, if you have to tell him I was a creep, that I cheated on you, that you caught me stealing money from orphans or something, I’d get it.”

Riona shook her head madly. “No, Ditter thinks people choose their friends the way they see themselves. If he knows I was engaged to a womanizer or a thief, he’ll suspect secretly that’s what I am.”

He cocked his head at her. “So … what exactly are you suggesting? You want to actually get married?”

“Hell no!” The retort was as loud as it was definite. “I’m suggesting we
pretend
to get married. I’d tell him we just ran off an eloped, but I’m afraid he’ll be slighted since I just reconfirmed on the phone that he’s planning to attend. Damn it, Jerry. I’m so sorry. How could I have known a year ago that you and I wouldn’t be … Whatever it is we were.”

In love,
he wanted to say. Only, for his part, that was still true.

He swept his hand down in front of him, motioning at his torso. “I don’t exactly bear much resemblance to the man he met before. Marc and I aren’t doppelgangers, you know.”

She bit her lip for a moment before her eyes brightened. “A glamour?”