Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) (9 page)

Lucifer refocused. “True,
she
doesn’t think it’s a sin, but even Riona respects the sanctity of the priesthood. I wonder… If I could get the
two
of them in bed, I’d knock two Pure Souls off the map at the same time. Not really too interested in him, but I might take the priest if it gets me the witch.”

Jerry’s neck snapped in the direction of the Devil Incarnate, pacing across the room. “What good is a priest in Hell?”

“Jerry, for someone of your cunning and age, I’m surprised you don’t know better. The higher the recruit must fall, the darker the demon soul it creates. From the greatest heights, come the greatest depths.” Long-nailed fingers drummed against a leather-clad hip. “Still, I’m playing for the witch. She’s the goal, Jer. She’s the one I want. The priest, though? He could be a good backup plan. Hell, he could be a good lots-of-things.”

Chapter 9

All she wanted was to go home and just get into bed.

Riona took off from the gym with such urgency after getting dressed that she forgot to stop in to see Dee, letting him know that she was going to crash at her own place. Coming face to face with Marc after what happened (and what
didn’t
happen)
would have been awkward with a capital “awk.” Flight seemed a better option than sight.

Until she remembered the whole reason she’d gone to the gym to begin with.

“God damn…”

As soon as she found a spot to park, she whipped out her cell phone and texted both her guys, telling them they had business to discuss. Dinner would be served, she added, hoping that, if Marc was uncomfortable as she was, the promise of meal might lure him into the open.  Dee texted back right away that he’d be over at six with a bottle of pinot. Marc’s singular-lettered text , “K,” followed a few minutes later.

It was on days like these that Riona was happiest she’d given up the corporate world. For her two cents, home offices were the way to go. Statistics was one of the few professions where independent contractors had a better professional reputation than some of their full-time recruits-in-suits counterparts. Because she wasn’t tied to any firm, and because she was very selective about with whom she worked so she wouldn’t develop a reputation of being a leading-indicator-for-hire, her clients valued her opinions above her competitors’. Plus, being able to set your own hours was primo. What other job in this salary scale would let you come home at eight a.m., flop down on the couch, and fall asleep?

Outside of starring on an MTV reality show, none.

When she woke up at around two that afternoon, it wasn’t because she had enough rest. The insistent knocking on her door aroused her. Rolling off the couch, wincing from the sting in her eyes, she swaggered across the room. Lucy glared back from the hall, her eyes afire, her arms crossed.

The witch stumbled for words. “Lucy?”

Lucy’s expression remained unchanged. Riona began to wonder what form of insectus bugus was up her butt.

“What’s up?”

“What’s up?” The clicking noise turned out to be her neighbor’s heels pounding a warlike cadence against the floor. “You, me, lunch at one at the BLZ Bistro?”

“Oh, shit.” Riona hoped her hair wasn’t as oily as it felt when she ran her fingers through it. “I’m so freaking sorry. I … I was just so tired, and I came home from the gym this morning and fell asleep. I didn’t think I’d be out so long. I…”

“Shh…” Lucy’s fingers were silky against Riona’s lips. As she cut off her rapid fire apology, Riona’s eyes focused in on the plump bottom lip of the accosting woman. “I thought something like that might have happened. Look, we’ll just plan for another time. That’s the good thing about first dates, right? No matter when you do them, they’re always firsts.”

She nodded, opening the door further, hanging onto it for support. “Yeah, true. Or…”

Reaching out, Riona took Lucy’s supple wrist in her grip and tugged. “What do you say we do lunch here, now? Maybe take in a movie a la something black, white, and old, and just chill. That is, assuming you’re available.”

Lucy melted under Riona’s puppy dog eyes. “Yeah, yeah, bat your pretty eyelashes at me and convince me to stay. Okay, why not?  You better be a good cook, though. I was hoping for something hot and spicy.”

Looking at Lucy’s violet eyes and full lips, Riona secretly hoped she was talking about more than food.

Five hours and two romantic comedies later, two full grown women lay on the floor in front of Riona’s flat screen with empty bowls at their sides. Outside, daylight leached into the horizon, casting long shadows across the amber light that filled the modern-styled apartment.

This was the part of the first date — or any date, really — that Riona loathed: the uncomfortable, awkward goodbye. The afternoon was over, and so was the pleasant, get-to-know-you, if-I-have-any-ulterior-motives-I-won’t-be-revealing-them-now filler conversation that was the trademark of such events.

Riona told Lucy all about her work — her
professional
work as a statistician; how she’d grown up in a small town in Northern Mass, of her desire to get a pug or chihuahua or even a cat, but fearing a pet would tie her down in a way that would make spontaneous trips to England or San Francisco or Taipei too hard, of her love for Beatles covers, though she hated the actual recordings of the Fab Four; and of being petrified of potato bugs. In turn, Lucy explained how she felt like the misunderstood black sheep of her family, and of her father, who thought her seven brothers were the greatest thing in all creation, of her enthusiasm for punk rock and modern art (she claimed that she was an unrequited artist), and mentioned in passing her position in HR at some good ol’ boys’ firm seeking expansion.

The present lull in conversation led to a silence that was getting heavier than a wet towel on a sapling spruce.

Lucy rolled her head toward the window — “Getting late, I should probably get going. Got some work to do and...”  Her eyes traced an arc back across the space and locked onto Riona’s stare, taking in the sight of a wicked grin.

Oh, so she was leaving it to Riona to make a move then? Well, fine.

As Lucy’s body began to roll, Riona dashed out her hand and pulled her back down. “You don’t need to go yet. Stay a little longer.”

Lucy propped herself up on her elbow, resting her head on her fisted hand. “Convince me.”

Their kiss was simple: a slow drawing of lip over lip, not sparking heat, but definitely wet and enticing. When Riona pulled back, her heart flubbed. The look on Lucy’s face was indeterminable, as though she hadn’t exactly gotten what was promised.

“Convince me
better.
”

The second kiss was a world away and dusted with starlight. Within seconds, Riona’s hand laced through Lucy’s black hair, pulling her mouth hard against Riona’s own. A fire flamed where their bodies connected, and as Lucy surrendered back to the horizon, Riona covered it with her own. They became entangled, a confusion of exploring hands, sloppy endearments, and little kitty-cat-like sighs. When Lucy’s hand began snaking its way under Riona’s shirt, she didn’t try to stop the action. The desire that burned within her was all-consuming and insatiable.

“Not exactly what I was expecting her to call us over for, but I’m game.”

Dee’s voice landed on them like a bucket of ice water. The lovers froze, jerking their heads in the direction of the door, and taking in the sight of the two men gawking at them from the other side of the room.

Riona shot off Lucy, who in turn, quickly scrambled to her feet and smoothed her Flaming Lips tee back down to her midriff.

“Please, ladies,” Dee continued, stepping further into the room, grinning, “don’t let us stop you. By all means, pretend like we’re not here. Right, Marc?”

It was then that Riona noticed Marc in detail. As far as impressions of corpses whose last earthly moments were recorded with a look of bewilderment and disgust, the priest’s was pretty spot on. His eyes were wide and glassy as his skin took on the shade of craft glue, and his muscles were tight, clenched.

Classic rigor “mortified.”

As Riona rose to her feet, Lucy cleared her throat. “Thanks for lunch and… yeah, well, everything else. I’ll, um… I’ll catch you later.”

She swept past Dee en route to the nearest exit, as anyone would when having two complete strangers, one of them wearing a priest’s collar, walk in on you and your date’s first make out session.

The second she was gone, Dee whipped back to Riona with a look of utter intrigue. “Oh, no fair, you’ve been holding out on us,” he whined as the door closed behind them. “All this time we’ve been building you up on your girl-on-goblin routine when we could have been partaking of some girl-on…”

“Dee!” She cut him off, both with words and a knock on the chest, hitting muscles that may have been made of stone. “My romantic life is not for your entertainment. Oh, my God, doesn’t anyone knock anymore?”

“We did knock,” Dee countered. “Perhaps very, very lightly, once we heard the moaning, but we
did
knock.”

“Marc?” She snapped her fingers two inches in front of the priest’s face, trying to drag him from his stupor. “Father Angeletti! Are you in there? Don’t you need to be invited inside by the owner of a house or something? Or is that just vampires?”

Finally, he fidgeted, his eyes blinking wildly as he turned to her. “It’s a ... ssssss…” he hissed beneath his breath.

“Huh?”

Marc’s eyes closed, his words now burning with rage as his face went from chalk to chimney. “It’s a sin!” he bellowed, his fists clenched.

Hip cocked, hand waving wildly in the air, Riona went into full
oh-no-you-didden mode.
“Ex-
cuse
me, Father, but who are you to come into my house and lecture me on morality?”

Eyebrows raised, both Marc’s index fingers pointed immediately at the ring of white, linen-covered cardboard around his neck.

“Not of my church,” Riona retorted. “This is who I am. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it if we’re going to work together.”

He rolled his eyes. “Of course, you think it’s about you. Listen,
Keystone,
”
the title coming out like an insult, “I don’t give a rat’s left nut what you do or whom you do it with. Just … don’t let me see it again.”

“Fine.”

As they stared each other down, Dee clapped his hands together. “Well, this is quaint. What do you say we take the powder out of this here keg by getting down to business? Riona, you had something to tell us?”

“Assuming the sermon is done and Elvis has left the pulpit?” She glared with the animosity of a ticked-off honey badger. “Marc?”

The priest refused to meet her gaze. It wasn’t until Dee dope-slapped the back of his head that he rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I’m done.”

“Good.” Riona jerked her head in the direction of the love seat and matching armchair that consumed fifty percent of her living room. Her guffawing guests seated themselves side-by-side on the sofa. “Ramiel has given us marching orders. Marc, you know anyone at St. Cecilia’s School?”

Recognition filled his features. He stumbled with his answer, like he was responding to a magician’s ability to know what card he had in his pocket. “One of my mentors in the priesthood is the principal.”

“Great. We need to get in there. There’s an evil at the school, a demon presence we need to track down and eliminate.”

Dee chuckled. “You mean, besides a whole bunch of horny teenagers?”

Riona’s gaze turned steely. “Teenagers? Hell, I’m not worried about them. I’m more annoyed at the overly righteous, tight-assed priests.”

Chapter 10

It smelled like chalk. Which was odd, given that there was, in fact, no chalkboard. Instead, a smudge-plagued white expanse stretched the width of the room, marked over in random intervals with blue formulae, green announcements, and blood-red prayers to the saints.

“You sure you’re up to this, Ms. Dade?”

St. Cecilia’s principal, Father Hector Hermosa’s hand landed reassuringly on Riona’s shoulder. For such a senior clergyman, she was shocked to learn that he bought the whole fabricated story so easily.

Ramiel had gotten a special dispensation for the witch to cast a sickness hex over three nuns who were on the teaching staff as they walked into school. Ordinarily, the use of darker spells on innocents was a big no-no, but as long as it didn’t leave scars or induce vomiting, she was given a pass for the sake of the mission. Marc, who sometimes actually did sub or volunteer at the school, suggested his two “colleagues” as qualified and ready-to-serve stand-ins. It had taken all of them a little by surprise that the principal agreed without hesitation. Marc’s powers of magical manipulation must have been further developed than he led on, Riona thought.

She looked at the faces of the innocent teens before her, swallowed hard, and answered. “Sure, what could possibly go wrong?”

Riona once heard that you shouldn’t show fear to either dogs or children. Apparently, they could sense it. Or was it, smell it?

Maybe fear smelled like chalk.

Hermosa shook her hand like an old friend and left her in her classroom unarmed.

With a cough, Riona cleared her throat and tried not to feel overwhelmed by the twenty-two sets of eyes boring into her. “Good morning, class. I’m Miss Dade. Sister Mary Alice is out sick and I…”

“You’re not a nun.”

Shit.
S
he told Dee this wasn’t going to work. She might have all command over magic and dominion over demons, but teenagers were one type of monster she knew she had an ice cube’s chance in hell of standing up against. Clearly, they saw right through her façade. When Dee suggested going into the school undercover, Riona thought he meant perhaps as janitors or with her dressed as a secretary. Riona, a teacher? Like trying to pass off Lady Gaga as a well-mannered IRS agent.

The petite, blonde-haired girl with tweed-covered arms and a face partially obscured by a pink bubble threw out the words like an accusation, putting Riona immediately on the defensive. What? Was she sixteen again? Was she going to let herself be intimidated by a bad attitude and a worse dye job all wrapped into size two skinny jeans? Hell-to-the-no.

But, as Riona cocked her hip and plastered on a conspiratorial grin, the confirmation of just how much a fisher-of-men out of water she was in front of the parochial school classroom slipped out before she could stop it. “A nun? Ha! Honey, I’m not even Catholic anymore.”