Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie We're In Trouble! (The Toad Witch Mysteries Book 2) (24 page)

“You sit at the Crossroads and wait for the Devil,” a deep voice answered.

Chapter 44

I
made Gus hide behind the base with me while the Devil stepped out from the other side of the broken angel statue. He was enormous, his cloven hooves shaking the ground, like an earthquake.

He was the most alien-looking thing I had ever seen. His body was so well-defined, he could have been a statue, his muscles hewn from meteoric rock. He had horns on top of his head and enormous bat-like wings. No wonder Mrs. Lasio had freaked when she saw the statue of Baphomet in my apartment last summer. There was definitely a resemblance there.

“You worked so hard to get my attention. Aren’t you going to come out and play?” He asked, his voice loud and deep and echo-y.

I was flattened by how incredibly sexy that voice was. It sounded like hot fudge, generously poured over naked bodies, which were then covered with whipped cream and topped by rum-soaked cherries. Even though I was terrified, all I wanted to do was hear him speak again. The vibration of his voice went through my body to my very soul, like listening to the best radio in the world with the bass cranked all the way up. I was pretty sure if I listened to him long enough, I would have a spontaneous orgasm. I looked over at Gus and could see he felt the same way. That shorty wetsuit didn’t hide much.

“I can’t believe we’re talking to the Devil,” Gus whispered. “This is so cool.”

“I can’t believe you dragged me with you to talk to the Devil.” I replied.

“Come on, children. What will it be? Don’t you have some kind of offer to make me? Some kind of interesting trade?”

Holy moly, it was starting to get hot in that cemetery. I was thinking of all sorts of trades that were entirely inappropriate. It was like my thoughts were running away from me and I had absolutely no control. There was a deep chuckle, as if the Devil was reading my mind. Well, he
was
the Devil after all. He probably was.

“This has got to be negative karma points, for sure.” I muttered.

“No one asked you to come. I was fine, doing this on my own.”

“You would have been knocked unconscious and drowned on your own,” I pointed out.

“Maybe. But look on the bright side. We’re in a funky toadstool world and we get to meet the Devil. Who else can say that?”

“Who else would want to?” I muttered.

“Children, it’s rude to make the Devil wait. Are you intentionally trying to anger me?”

I could tell he was getting pissed, because his voice had changed from the sound of guilty pleasures to the sound of painful torture, promising worlds of hurt if we didn’t conclude our business.

It made me cringe but at least it brought me back to my senses.

“Before we come out, we want some assurances,” I yelled.

“And what would that be?” The dark voice replied, back to its silky, cloying self.

“No soul-stealing, soul-contracts, soul anything,” I said. “No blood pacts, blood oaths, blood vows.”

There was a long pause.

“Fine,” the Devil said.

“Swear by the light of Lucifer,” Gus yelled.

“You do know how to ruin a fun time,” the Devil sighed. “All right, I swear by the light of the Morning Star, I won’t steal your souls—at least, not tonight. However, I reserve all future rights.”

I peeked around the base of the statue. “We’re not negotiating with you while you’re Jolly Green Giant-sized and we’re Munchkins,” I said. “You should at least give us an illusion of a level playing field. It’s only polite.”

The Devil roared with laughter. But a few minutes later, he was down to our size—almost. We came out from behind the base and we were at eye-to-nipple height with him, which was better than the eye-to-giant-disturbing-penis height we had been at before. Although it didn’t seem to make much of a difference, as far as Gus was concerned.

“Va-va-voom,” said Gus, staring at the Devil’s dark, muscular chest.

“Are you kidding me?” I smacked Gus’s arm. “That’s the Devil.”

“And yet, somehow, my libido doesn’t care. Penis and boobs? Total wet dream combo.”

“Excuse us for a sec,” I said, and dragged Gus back behind the statue, while the Devil chuckled, amused and flattered by Gus’s predicament.

“Don’t tell me you’re not thinking about having sex for days,” Gus said, dreamy-eyed.

“Of course I am,” I said, frustrated. “The Devil is every vice rolled into one convenient package. But you can’t get sucked into that, or you’ll be subjugated by him. Try focusing above his neck.”

Gus peered out from behind the statue. The Devil’s face wasn’t remotely human. More like a cross between a human and a bull, with fierce looking horns

“Holy fuck. Look at those awesome horns. And the wings. Is it wrong that I want him even more?”

“Seriously? He’s got the calves of an oversized goat!” I threw my hands up, frustrated. “Why do women even bother shaving? We should swap razors for strap-ons.”

The Devil laughed again, the sound reverberating in his chest. “You two are a hoot. It’ll be a shame if I have to kill you for your unbearable rudeness. No one’s amused me this much in aeons.”

“Let’s not be hasty.” I said, as we hurriedly emerged from behind the statue. “We have a lot of funny left.”

“And I’m looking forward to every minute.” The Devil turned to Gus. “I have a special place in my heart for you. You are my poster child for the seven deadly sins. Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride. I can’t wait to see what new and exciting thing you come up with next,” he said, his fiery red eyes glowing. “All you have to do is hand over the toad bone. I will return you to your world, and we can continue making memories together.”

Gus’s eyes narrowed and his grip on my shoulder tightened. “Wait just one toad-pickin’ minute, Mister. I don’t care how disturbingly hot you are, that bone is mine. My toad. My bone. I didn’t go through hell just to hand it over to the Devil.”

“Personally, I think the bone belongs to Grundleshanks,” I muttered.

Grundleshanks, who was chilling out by a tombstone, croaked his agreement.

The Devil narrowed his eyes. “My demon, my bone. Get yourself another toad.”

“Grundleshanks isn’t a demon,” I protested.

Both of them turned and looked at me, like I was an idiot. “What?” I asked, looking from one human face to one inhuman one.

“Lucien?” Gus reminded me.

“Oh. Of course.” Back when Paul and I had been possessed, we had to get Lucien out of Paul’s body, and we used Grundleshanks to do it. Obviously, the fact that Lucien and Grundleshanks had shared the same bones for a fraction of a moment must mean something.

While Gus and the Devil faced off, I heard a voice in my head.

Of course, it means something, you stupid girl. I told you to stop him.

Aunt Tillie!
I thought, overjoyed.

Hush! Have you learned nothing?

I quickly stilled my thoughts, before they caught the Devil’s attention. But just that little interaction with her made me feel a lot better.

“You and I have been flirting for quite awhile,” the Devil said to Gus. “I particularly enjoyed how you went all out, and courted the wrath of the Winter Queen, to flip the seasons. I haven’t laughed so hard in centuries. I could use a talent like yours on my side. And I can make it worth your while.”

The Devil snapped his fingers and turned from a massive archetypal being into a hot rock-and-roll guy with flowing blond hair, dimples and muscles for days. I could practically feel Gus’s eyes pop out.

“So, what’ll it be?” asked the Devil. “Do you keep the bone and come work for me, in the Underworld? Or do you stay in your realm and make a trade for the bone? You can have whatever your heart desires. This is your chance to drastically change your life. Do you want to be a movie star? I can make that happen. All you have to do, is give me the bone.”

What’s going on?
I asked Aunt Tillie.
Why doesn’t he just take the bone?

Even the Devil has to play by the rules,
Aunt Tillie responded.
His game is persuasion, seduction, exploiting existing weaknesses to create new ones.

“Tillie!” The Devil roared. “Shut the hell up, before I roast you on a spit.”

Aunt Tillie immediately vanished.
Crap
. I hoped her spirit was safely in the Summerlands and out of reach of the Devil.

“So, handsome, what do you want, in your heart of hearts?” the Devil purred. “Fame? Fortune? Immortality? Unending pleasures of the flesh?”

“With you? The Devil’s gay?” I asked. “That’s not very P.C.”

He roared with laughter. “I’m the Devil. I am the original pansexual being. Men, women, transgenders, intergenders. Don’t try to pigeon-hole me, or limit my enjoyment of your species with your puny restrictions,” the Devil said. “Now, about this bone…”

“No…” Gus shook his head, his face wearing that stubborn look I knew all too well. “I appreciate your offer, but the bone’s mine.”

“Isn’t that adorable? You think you actually have a choice.”

“We do,” I said. “It’s called Free Will.”

“No, darlin’,” the Devil chuckled, returning to his original form. “Free will is an illusion.”

I frowned. “No, it isn’t.”

“Not only do we have free will, we are witches. We can change the hands of Fate and bend the future to our Will.” Gus said.

The Devil laughed. “Your will isn’t as free as you think. If it was, it wouldn’t be so easy to bend it in my direction.”

“I control my own destiny,” Gus said. “You may be able to toy with mere mortals, but I am Witch—hear me roar!”

The Devil chuckled and expanded out to his original size, which was scary as hell. “By the time I’m done with you, you’ll be begging me to take the bone, and you’ll get nothing in return but the mercy of death,” the Devil said. “The opportunity for you to make a trade is over.”

He snapped his fingers and zapped us with some kind of explosion that flung us, screaming, out into space and through a swirling portal.

Chapter 45

W
hen I came to, I was in a field of toadstool mushrooms. I turned to Gus and shook him, until he sat up.

He looked around. “I love this place. Just being in proximity to the mushrooms, sent me flying. I had the best hallucination of all time.”

 “Did it involve a weirdly sexy Devil, a large dog and a toadstool cottage?”

“How’d you know?”

“It wasn’t a hallucination. I was there too.” I showed him the bruise on my arm, from where he had smacked me with his walking stick. “I think we just did our first sabbatic ritual together.”

Sabbatic rituals were usually done in dreamscape. It was something Gus had been wanting us to try for awhile.

Gus whooped. “How freaking cool is that! It just goes to show you that what you do in the sabbatic landscape has consequences in this one.”

“That’s what makes me nervous.” I said and shivered, afraid of what potential consequences we had just let ourselves in for.

He unzipped the thigh pocket of his shorty wetsuit and pulled out a small bone. “Ha! I still have it. We went into the sabbatic landscape and bested the Devil.”

“Good for you,” I said. “We should start heading back to the house.”

“You don’t have to ask me twice. I’m freezing my garbanzo beans off out here. How about you?”

I nodded. It was cold—dang cold. And it was getting colder by the minute.

All of a sudden, I realized what was going on. “Gus! Winter’s returning! You did it. You completed the combined rituals.”

He grinned. “We did it together! How cool is that? So much for your Aunt Tillie’s ridiculous warnings. Dire fate my ass. Let’s go home and celebrate. I have a bottle of sparkling cider in the fridge.”

We had to walk slow, since Gus was still limping from his knee getting bashed around. As we neared the old cemetery, the wind picked up, clouds covered the moon, and in the dead of night, it started hailing. But it wasn’t hard, glowing white snowballs. It was more like big, wet, dark, squishy blobs that bounced off us and onto the ground.

Even after the weird hailstorm stopped, the footing was getting increasingly more treacherous. The ground was slippery with mud and weirdly squishy. With the moon obscured, it was difficult to see anything. I tried to pick my way through more solid spots, but the ground kept shifting on me.

When Gus slipped and landed facedown in a mud-puddle, we were finally able to see why. It wasn’t hail we were being bombarded with. It was toads. There were hundreds of toads throughout the cemetery, obscuring the ground.

I braced myself on tombstones and tiptoed over graves, trying not to squish any of the dazed amphibians. My dad would be flipping out—he believed that you never step on anyone’s grave. And here I was, trampling all over my ancestors, like they weren’t even here, so I wouldn’t squish random toads.

I expected Gus to make some kind of gleeful wisecrack or start pocketing toads, but instead, he grabbed my arm and sat down on a rounded tombstone, taking shallow, rapid breaths.

“Are you okay?”

He shook his head. “I can’t breathe.”

“What do you mean, you can’t breathe? Is it an asthma attack?”

“I don’t know,” Gus looked at me, helpless. “It’s like my mid-section is swollen and I can’t get air into the bottom of my lungs.”

“So you can still breathe, you just can’t breathe well?”

“I’m not turning blue and keeling over, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Could it be a panic attack?”

“I don’t know.” Gus said, aggravated. “I’ve never felt like this before. It’s freaking me out.”

“Can you stand up?” As I helped him to his feet, a swirling portal opened in the sky above us, and a murder of crows descended into our world.

One of the crows spotted a hopping toad. It dove down, piercing the amphibian hide with its beak, and emerged with a brown glob that it quickly swallowed. The toad puffed up and exploded, spraying its organs out into the sky.