How to Lose a Demon in 10 Days (8 page)

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Authors: Saranna DeWylde

BOOK: How to Lose a Demon in 10 Days
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So, Sasha had lied? Grace didn’t know why and wasn’t sure it mattered. Nikoli was real. She’d seen him. More memories came flooding back: late nights with Nikoli in her arms, his sweet baby scent, those quiet times with his mouth on her breast taking nourishment from her body. Such peace she’d felt in those moments. And now Michael was using the boy as a weapon.
She suddenly couldn’t breathe. Her chest was tight and she felt her face spasm with sorrow. She hated that people were so ugly when they cried. No one ever did the couple-of-lone-wolf-teardrops-meandering-elegantly-down-the- alabaster-cheek thing that you saw in the movies; that was such bullshit. If sorrow was real, it meant full-on twisted features, mascara racooning around the peepers to stream in ugly, toxic-looking stains down red cheeks. That was why men hated to see women cry, she figured—because, damn, it made them ugly.
Grace made a couple of swipes at her face with the back of her hand, took a shaky breath, and turned down an alley. Sasha and Petru were there, trying to shove a plastic-wrapped something into a Dumpster.
Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t plastic wrap but a clear garbage bag. A woman’s face was staring out from it, peeking up behind Petru’s shoulder. The eyes were wide and empty, dead. The mouth was open. And if Petru and Sasha were disposing of the corpse, it was Michael who’d murdered her.
A cold feeling slid over Grace like a shroud. This was how she was going to end up: a nameless face wrapped in a garbage bag, dropped in a Dumpster like trash. Like she’d never had breath, never had a voice, never had people to love her. Grace knew what lay at the end of Michael’s scheming. Sasha was right about that, at least.
No. Things weren’t going to happen that way. She’d get Nikoli away. Somehow.
“Grace,” Petru huffed in acknowledgment, still holding the body.
“Why did you lie to me, Sasha? I saw Nikoli,” Grace growled, getting straight to the point.
Sasha’s mouth was set in a grim line. “I’ve never lied to you, Grace. Never. Not when you were first sitting in that bar making calf-eyes at Grigorovich, and not now.”
“Then how did I see my son? How did he hold his arms out to me, his mother, if he’s not real?”
Sasha let go of his burden. He’d been holding the dead woman’s legs so Petru could do some maneuvering, but they weren’t making much headway. “Grace, do you remember his birth? You said I was there. You said I took Nikoli from your arms.”
“It’s vague but it’s there. The doctor sedated me.”
Sasha shook his head. “Did he sedate me, too? Why don’t
I
remember it? And, why would I lie to you, Grace? Don’t you remember your first date with Michael? When I took you home, do you remember what I said?”
“You told me I was getting in deep water. Over my head.”
“Was that a lie?”
Grace grabbed the lapels of his Dior trench, curling her fists around the fabric. “No. So, why are you lying to me about Nikoli?”
“I’m not!” Sasha’s large hands engulfed her wrists, and he extracted himself from her grasp. “Why don’t you just summon your grandmother and have done? She could end this nonsense right now. Why do you engage Grigorovich in these games? Do you still love him? Is that possible? Are you—?”
“No!” She fought off nausea. “But my grandmother is dead. Your quaint little bits of folklore are nothing. Nothing! I can call my granny all night long, but she’s not going to miraculously get her ass here because, as I mentioned before, she’s
fucking dead
.”
“Grace, no. Shh.” Petru held fingers to his lips, looking terrified. “Granddaughter or no, she’s the Baba Yaga.”
“Petru!” She spun on her heel, ready to give the moronic mobster a full dose of verbal venom. Unfortunately, the dumb innocence in his eyes was enough to curb her tongue. Just barely. She took a deep breath. “The adults are talking.”
He turned back to his task, the dead prostitute hoisted over his massive shoulder, his hand firmly on her rump like he was carrying a keg of beer rather than a woman. His face showed no comprehension of that at all. His sausage fingers were having trouble pulling open the cover meant to keep Dumpster divers and animals out of Michael’s personal waste. Many a body had been transported to Garbage Island this way, never to be found again.
“He believes. I do, too,” Sasha said quietly.
Grace sneered. “Why do
you
buy into all this superstitious nonsense?”
“How is the Baba Yaga superstitious nonsense but a demon conjured from Hell is not?”
Grace opened her mouth, but there was nothing there waiting to come out. She had no answer other than the fact that it just wasn’t possible. Her granny was dead and gone, and no amount of wishing would bring her back.
“If Seraphim Stregaria ever had a maxim in her whole life, it was this: want in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first. No, there’s no point in hoping. If my granny were still around, she’d have let me know.”
“Sasha?” Petru called.
They both turned to see the dead prostitute’s legs sticking out of the Dumpster. Petru was unable to push them down any farther.
“Can you see it from the street?” Sasha asked.
“Probably,” Grace announced cheerfully. Then she pushed past them to continue home. She would make a stop at a pay phone. The Dumpster would probably be gone by the time the police got there, and if it wasn’t, Michael had a lot of the guys on his payroll for just such occasions, but she would make the effort anyway.
Caspian could have made the situation unbearable for Michael. She wished she didn’t have to send the demon packing, but with Nikoli’s life at risk, she had no other choice. Goddess above. He was delicious. He’d been nothing but good to her, and she chuckled as she imagined the demonic crabs Michael was suffering from. She also wondered what the gift of demonic healing encompassed. Would it stay once Caspian was gone? If it did, maybe she’d have a chance against Michael, after all.
C
HAPTER
N
INE
Opinions Are Like Arseholes
C
aspian didn’t like Michael Grigorovich. The feeling was something he’d pondered at length.
Generally, his likes and dislikes were irrelevant. He’d always been rather passive in his assessment of humans. Some were pretty, some were ugly. Some made him laugh, some didn’t. Some were good and some were bad. Then there were those that were
really
bad.
This last variety bothered him a bit. They didn’t really get the point. The whole reason for evil was to test Man, not to inspire him to further acts of depravity. But that’s what seemed to be going on here, what seemed to be happening with Michael and all his deal brokering. Why in the name of Mephistopheles would a mortal choose to be a demon? There was a hierarchy to follow down below, just like there was above with the Really Big Boss. Sure, everybody got to be “a unique and special snowflake,” but there were orders everyone had to follow, rules that went with the magick. Most of the time, those aspiring to demonhood just didn’t understand. They thought it was all about the power and the pain; they didn’t understand being a demon meant providing a public service. Caspian knew for damn sure that Michael Grigorovich didn’t get it.
Of course, all this reflection was relatively new. Caspian had once been content as he was, and he didn’t really care for this new introspection that seemed to coincide with his recent chest pain. It was damned uncomfortable all around. But, this disliking business, he really couldn’t give it up. He
did not like
Michael Grigorovich.
Caspian wondered how Ethelred could stand the mortal’s stench. The Russian mobster smelled funny, like goat cheese, old socks, and vodka—not a good mix. Even his borscht-snorkeling crony Petru didn’t smell as bad. Caspian knew that scents played a strong role in human sexuality, so he had yet to see how the Russian ever got any tail that he didn’t take violently or pay for. What had Grace ever seen in him? He’d
touched
her. Every time Caspian thought of Grigorovich laying hands on her, it made something prickle on the back of his neck.
He didn’t like that, either.
Yes, there was quite a bit about Grace that Caspian didn’t like, but he knew that it all stemmed from what he did.
Caspian, Crown Prince of Hell, was jealous.
Admitting that was like kicking himself in the balls with soccer cleats. He was a demon. He had nothing to be jealous of. Grace didn’t even like Ass-o-vich.
Caspian’s prowess was legendary, he reminded himself. He’d pleasured thousands of women, been pleasured by many more. He was no stranger to the carnal arts, and he’d never left an unsatisfied customer. Hell, he’d always left his lovers enraptured. But his Gracie seemed unmoved. Maybe she didn’t like him, either. Sure, she’d enjoyed their time together, but he hadn’t heard from her since their encounter in the Avenue dressing room. He’d expected a summoning, a mention, a muttered curse under her breath . . . Nothing. This made her different—a
challenge
. Add to that the fact that she’d been fixated on a douche bag like Michael Grigorovich, and Caspian’s disgruntlement only grew.
He chose to ignore the hollow feeling at the base of his spine. When taken as a part of the big picture, it didn’t really matter. Caspian was a Crown Prince of Hell, and Grace was just a witch venting her fury at a man who’d done her and many other women wrong. Very, very wrong. Caspian was only here to do a job. Grace was that job.
Caspian’s mouth curved in a smile as he followed his own logic. He was here to do a job, and if Grace was that job . . . well, then, he was here to do her. It was time to get back to work.
If guilt had been an emotion he could feel, Caspian might have felt bad about his circular reasoning. He’d been contracted to make Michael’s existence a living hell, but while that was all fun and good, he liked playing with Grace more. He could have done this job, been in, out, spells in place to torment Michael until Cerberus wore pink ballerina slippers and himself back drinking shots of Flaming Nipples in his fireside condo by the very first evening. But he was drawing this out. He was going to make it last, all while doing lots of customer service. Caspian liked the “hands-on” approach to customer service. Especially with Grace.
It was definitely time for some customer service.
Materializing at her place, he found Grace naked in her kitchen. Her deliciously round rump was calling to him as she leaned over a little island to drop a bit of this and a pinch of that into her cauldron. He knew that she was working some kind of spell, but it looked for all the world like she was cooking.
What man or demon could resist naked hausfrau-ery? Certainly not Caspian. His favorite decades were the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The women were all so shapely then; they’d worn stockings, which were a bitch to get off but looked divine. Silk hose were his favorite. He’d loved the hairstyles of the period; even when hair was short, it was always coiffed. And the makeup! Caspian loved painted women in high heels. Just watching Greta Garbo movies and Donna Reed reruns made him hard. Not to mention the work of that goddess Marilyn Monroe.
Caspian licked his lips, envisioning scenarios as he watched Grace. Greta and Grace would have been lovely to see together. Not that he could have kept his hands to himself long enough to just watch. And, Greta had told him that when women chose to love one another it wasn’t for his enjoyment. Caspian didn’t see why not.
Everything
about women was for his enjoyment. Especially everything about Grace.
She raised her hands to the sky and called out an invocation, slowly lowering her hands and arms and charging her brew with power. It was beautiful to watch: her sheer elegance, the way her body moved. The way her arms were shaped, the way they curved into that secret place beneath her shoulder, the gentle yet generous profile of her breast. The curve of her hips, and those long, long legs—they most certainly went all the way up.
Caspian suddenly realized that the Donna Reed reruns playing in his head now all starred Grace. The Marilyn and Greta movies showcased Grace, too. Rather than spend any time worrying about that, however, he considered asking her to put on an apron and heels while she double, double, toil, and troubled. Or maybe a cone of power. She’d be hot as hell wearing just a little witch hat. She would—
His thoughts were interrupted. Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Ozymandias, what in the name of all that was unholy had the woman put in her cauldron? It was worse than sour lamb and olive turds filling a Greek outhouse in high summer after a garlic festival. Maybe he didn’t want her to cook for him, after all. They could just order takeout, and she could dance around the kitchen naked with a wooden spoon in her hand that he could spank her with and . . .
He took another look at that inviting arse. Even though it sang songs of frolicking and debauchery, he was going to have to ask either what was wrong with her or whom she was trying to banish. She could banish just about anything with this olfactory assault.
“Son of a . . . Why do these things happen to me?” Leaning farther over her wicked-witch workstation, Grace suddenly glanced skyward, as if she really thought she was going to get an answer. Caspian saw that she’d mistakenly dunked one of her sweater cows into the mixture, which dripped down onto the plane of her belly as she turned to the side to grab a hand towel.
“Great! I hope my boob doesn’t disappear,” she grumbled.
“Whatcha doin’ there, sweet cheeks?” Caspian inquired.
Grace screamed six kinds of murder and, if it were possible, would have literally jumped out of her skin. Her expression reminded Caspian of a cat stuck to the ceiling, claws embedded in the plaster like some startling new kind of chandelier. He thought this was funny until her flailing arms sent her bowl flying through the air like a mortar shell of Hell-stench. Of course, that wasn’t the worst. It landed upside down on top of his head, a proper bowler hat but for the sludge dripping down through his supernaturally perfect hair.
Caspian froze as a particularly nasty yellowish glob raced down between his eyes and off the end of his nose like a ski jump. He thanked whoever happened to be listening that his mouth wasn’t open. If it had been, he would have been reenacting Linda Blair and her pea-soup scene all over Grace’s kitchen.
The corner of her mouth turned up, and she raised an eyebrow.
“Think that’s funny, do you?” he asked, wiping his face on the back of his sleeve.
“It’s no less than you deserve for popping in without an invitation.”
Caspian narrowed his eyes. “Really?”
For some people,
really
just means . . . well, really. For others it’s more of a challenge. It’s rhetorical. It’s a warning. Caspian was one such as this. His
really,
though in the form of a question, was a genial and polite way of snorting, like a bull that had been stuck in the hindquarters by sharp objects.
Grace obviously wasn’t aware of any such nuances of interaction. She gave her own little snort and said, “Yeah, really.” Then she turned around, dismissing him as if she couldn’t possibly conceive of anything he could do about it.
This was the equivalent of waving a red flag at that same bull. Caspian charged.

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