Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (3 page)

I punched a button without bothering to check ID. “Max, if Granny doesn’t set your ass on fire, I will. You had—”

“She’s already tried,” Max/Dane said with weariness. “My condo went up in flames about three this morning. Don’t you ever listen to the news?”

“Oh crap.” I picked up my pace. “I work, remember? Listening to the news is for retired people. What happened? Are you all right?”

I didn’t much care if his ultra-wealthy neighbors lost their Guccis and Rolexes, but I still cared about Max. Learning how to retrieve him from a hellish dimension had been an education I’ll never forget.

“I had my gas turned off, but the lines burst next door. We have good fire walls and smoke detectors and everyone escaped, but flames went through the roof and both units are total losses. If Gloria is causing trouble in the Zone, too, then she’s on a rampage.”

“We have no proof,” I offered tentatively. “It could be coincidence. Mercury retrograde maybe. We just got flaming wreaths and steaming manholes down here.”

He almost chuckled. “Dump steaming shit down them and see what happens.”

“Love to, but now we have inspectors crawling all over the place and dumping shit on them probably won’t improve their humor. And your damned Do-Gooders are in danger of going to hell with the rest of us. Call them off, Max. They don’t deserve this.”

I shoved my key in the front door lock and yelled a greeting to Mrs. Bodine, my landlady, to let her know it was just me before tramping up the boarding house stairs.

“No one deserves this. We have to stop whatever’s happening in the Zone, Justy,” Max said, back to weariness again.

Max was the only one who got to call me Justy.

“Now that Paddy has some control over Acme,” he continued, “we have to clean up the environmental disaster the plant’s created.”

Paddy is Dane’s father, Max’s uncle, and theoretically a stockholder in Acme. He either plays his hand close or he’s missing a lot of marbles, take your choice. Sadly, a mad scientist might be our only link to sanity and responsibility at Acme.

“You can’t clean up the Zone by frying the innocent,” I warned, unlocking both locks on my door. Caution-is-me. “I’ll deal with Granny and Acme, if I have to, but not Do-Gooders going up in flame.”

“I’ll call the agency and tell them to pull back until we’ve determined if the area is safe,” he agreed. “But I don’t guarantee the Zone will ever be safe. If Granny Gloria can still rampage after she’s dead, you need to go somewhere she can’t find you, like Alaska.”

“I’m freezing my buns off in bloody Baltimore!” I cried, wiggling out of my jacket as I hit the warmth of my rooms. “No way. This is my home now, and I’m not running from Dane’s grandmother.” Having spent most of my childhood traveling with my wayfaring mother, I had home issues. I wanted roots.

Putting down roots in polluted soil made no sense to normal people. It apparently did for me. I blamed it on my contaminated gene pool. “Gloria is going down, and I’m taking her there. Where are you now?”

“I have a driver running me over to Hell’s Mansion. I’d rather Granny burned it down than my neighbors,” he said dryly.

Ah, that explained his weariness. Max had hated his cousin Dane and Dane’s grandmother Gloria when they’d been alive. He had reason to hate their mansion, the one Acme had built on blood money, where Gloria had died so spectacularly. Despite his distaste, it belonged to Dane/Max now. Max’s soul lived a life of irony these days.

And Granny’s house was sitting on wide open land well above the rest of the neighbors. It could go boom and Baltimore would simply admire the fireworks.

“Ruxton is a pretty far hike from D.C.,” I argued. “Find a fancy hotel and forget the mansion.”

“I have to decide what to do with it sometime. Congress is closed for winter break, so I might as well look around now.”

“Merry Christmas,” I muttered, sitting on the floor and taking Milo in my lap. Milo was a tailless, tufted Manx who looked like a baby bobcat. In the Zone, it was hard to say what he really was, but he never hurt anyone unless they tried to hurt me. His purrs soothed my troubled soul. “Did Papa MacNeill invite you for a fun family dinner over the holiday or are you on your own?”

The MacNeills were Max’s real family. They thought he was dead and didn’t know his soul had moved into his cousin’s body after Dane had abandoned it—probably in embarrassment at getting caught trying to kill me. Middle class families were merely dysfunctional. Max’s family was rich and powerful and had thus acquired a higher degree of impairment.

“I could invite myself, if I was interested.” Max didn’t sound interested. “What are you doing for the holiday?”

“Updating case files, filing petitions, the usual thing.” Hunting for my invisible and possibly dead grandmother Themis, looking for other Daughters of Saturn, and gunning for Gloria’s evil soul, but I’d rather sound busy than nuts.

“I have tickets to a D.C. gala this weekend. Go with me,” he said impulsively.

That was my old Harley-riding rebel Max speaking. I scratched Milo behind the ears and shook my head. “Not happening, babe,” I said regretfully. “You’re everything I oppose these days. Bad bad karma.”

“You’ll look gorgeous, no one will know who you are, and we can both get bombed on pricey drinks we don’t have to pay for. It’s a holiday, celebrate!”

I’d never looked gorgeous. Thanks to my weird ancestry, I have a naturally tan middle-eastern complexion, and thanks to Saturn Daddy granting my wishes, I now have good hair and straight teeth, but the bus stops there. “You’re sounding a little desperate, Maxie. Take one of Dane’s dollies to the party and boff her silly after. You’ll be fine.” I hated saying that, but the truth was, as lovely as Dane’s body was, I wasn’t attracted to it.

I wasn’t even certain I’d loved Max while he was alive. I’d learned he was a lying shit just like most men. I might occasionally be desperate but never stupid enough to make the same mistake twice.

But dressing up and getting plastered had its appeal. And it had been a damned long time since I’d had sex. I had to admit to temptation.

“Maybe I will. Anything is better than staying in this place,” he said gloomily. “The car just reached the gate. I’ll buzz the DGs and call off the kids. Stay safe, Justy.”

I don’t know how he did it. I wanted to rip him a new one for bringing the nutwings down on us, but I ended up feeling sorry for him. Hanging up, I cuddled Milo. “It’s you and me, babe. Simpler that way.”

I called up Fat Chick in Canada’s blog, another Saturn’s Daughter. She’s not really fat but Viking goddess beautiful. We’d been e-mailing occasionally, enough for me to learn that she’d been crippled when she’d gone looking for a car thief to execute because she wanted to ask Saturn Daddy for a new car.
Really
bad karma. Thieves are redeemable, especially the young ones, and killing them isn’t justified. So Saturn put her in a set of wheels of his choice.

Our super-abilities came with a rough downside if we didn’t carry out justice correctly.

Does anyone know anything about evil and hell’s dimensions?
I typed under her public comments, not knowing what else to ask. I mean, how do you phrase conundrums like that? No wonder we had communication problems. I kept hoping there was a Saturn’s Daughter out there who could at least intelligently discuss my questions, but Fat Chick knew about as much as I did.

“You could give your daughters an instruction book!” I told Saturn while fixing my sandwich. As usual, he didn’t answer. Not that I knew if he was an actual entity or just a genetic flaw. No instruction book, remember. All I had was the name. My own family couldn’t tell me more. I liked the astrology aspect of Saturn better than the astronomy one though. I was pretty sure I hadn’t been born on the planet Saturn, but I was a December baby. I’m actually a Sagittarius, but Capricorn/Saturn
might
be considered part of my astrological identity. Maybe my mother lied about my birth date.

To pacify my shopping urge and keep the holiday mood before returning to monster hunting, I cruised some on-line sites and ordered a few presents. I still didn’t have a credit card, but I had sufficient cash now to fund a Paypal account.

It was easy to order for my more human friends, but what did one buy for a former thug and frog turned gay assistant? Or amoral Andre, who had everything except a soul, apparently.

Not expecting any immediate replies from Fat Chick—we hadn’t exchanged real names and exchanging phone numbers with a murderous Amazon gave even me a creepy feeling—I hugged Milo and ordered him to be my guard cat. I still had normal work to do. As long as the Zone was simply shut down by normal utility workers and not in danger of blowing up, hunting Gloria and blue blobs had to come under after-hours tasks.

I dashed across the street to my office. The snow was falling harder. Brushing off my discontent with the snowflakes, I took some satisfaction from entering my very own law office. Being a lawyer with my own space gave me a warm tingle of accomplishment that was almost as good as sex. Almost.

The Do-Gooder, Rob Hanks, and Ned looked up at my entrance. Uh-oh. I dragged my fingers through my uncut mane to remove ice particles and narrowed my eyes at them.

“I thought you’d be gone by now,” I said rudely. Rob reminded me of myself in college, when I’d egged the provost’s office in protest against his fraudulent practices. At the time, I probably should have been locked up for my own safety. Rob had that same look of determined idealism.

“They’re forcing the homeless off the harbor,” he said indignantly, all fiery-eyed and waving the invisible flag of justice.

Damn, I wondered if Saturn had sons.

“The harbor isn’t healthy,” I countered.

“Where else can they go?” Rob argued. “The shelters are full or won’t take addicts. At the harbor, they’ve got tents and barrels for fire and they look out for each other. Where in heck does the city expect them to live?”

Heck.
The guy actually said
heck.
I’d pray for him if I believed in prayer. “And I suppose you want me to sue the city to stop them?”

He got all steely-eyed and resolute. “Yes.”

“And I suppose you want me to do it for nothing?”

More fiery idealism. “Yes. Lawyers do
pro bono.
”

“Established lawyers. With real clients and lots of money,” I reminded him. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to heat this place?” I gestured at the twenty-foot pressed-tin ceiling.

He looked a little more desperate. “They’re
old
people. Army vets. They deserve better.”

He almost had me there. I’d once feared my psychic grandmother was living in the camp. Still wasn’t sure that she wasn’t. Of course, I wasn’t even sure she was alive. And Max and his friends were vets. I wasn’t immune to idealism. I’d just had to learn practicality.

“The harbor is polluted. It’s
dangerous
,” I repeated. And could be sitting on Granny and fire-making blobs. “Find them a city park, an empty building, and I’ll do what I can, but fighting to let them kill themselves with chemical beds is not on my agenda.”

His eyes lit with new enthusiasm. “This area is crammed with empty buildings! They’d be better off inside for the winter. Will you help us hold off the cops if we trespass?”

I knew this wouldn’t end well, but I sympathized with his cause. The homeless at the harbor were mostly homeless because they couldn’t take care of themselves within the strictures of a so-called
civilized
society. If we found them a building, one of them would eventually burn it down or stab someone for a better corner or another bottle of whiskey.

In my jaded mind, those animal survival techniques weren’t a whole lot different from white-collar workers using more socially acceptable tactics to rob and steal each other blind. And it wasn’t as if our guys would ruin the neighborhood by moving in.

And every once in a while, I knew, someone could be saved with a helping hand—and that’s where my bleeding heart kicked in.

“I’ll do what I can,” I agreed with a sigh of resignation. “But Andre probably owns most of the buildings on Edgewater, and he doesn’t always recognize the law.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Rob said gallantly. “He can’t hope to rent out those wrecks.”

Well, yeah, he could and he had, but Rob was heading out the door and there was no point in hindering his progress.

Ned leaned back in the massive sixties’ orange desk chair we’d dug out of the rubble of the warehouse next door. “Lawyers don’t encourage crime,” he said disapprovingly.

“Define crime,” I said. “Leaving those old guys out in the snow is a crime in my book.”

Which was kind of where I got myself into trouble. Law books existed for a reason, but I had this really bad habit of wanting actual
justice.

Justice would be making Acme pay for the damage they’d done. Justice would be allowing the denizens of the Zone control over their destinies. And their electricity. And when I got feeling irritable about the lack of justice around me, people ended up in hell.

Four

It was still snowing when I left the office after dark. Intent on avoiding confrontation with Gloria and hell before dinner, I sloshed through several inches of wet stuff on my way to Chesty’s. And then the walk turned dry.

Amazed that anyone had bothered shoveling sidewalks, I checked the building I was passing to see who this energetic person might be. The boarded-up windows looked like every other empty storefront on the street as far as I could tell. Odd.

I reached the first intersection—and the road had been plowed. The city
never
plowed down here.

The reason for the clear intersection became apparent as I crossed—the street was
hot.

Swearing, I hurried to the other side. I could feel the heat even through my heavy-duty Uggs. Hot streets, that was just plain scary given my fear of Gloria and hell’s dimensions.

I pressed onward, keeping an eye open for any more dangerous anomalies. That didn’t take long. A red-hatted garden gnome statue relaxed and splashed his little feet in a gutter of gushing melted snow that steamed like a hot bath. Shit, this couldn’t be good.