Kiss & Hell (8 page)

“Care to swear on a stack of Bibles?” Marcella’s question was followed by her signature throaty laughter.

“I’d be insulted if I didn’t almost get your skepticism. In the three months I’ve been in Hell, I’ve experienced my fair share of liars. But I’m not one of them, and if I had a free hand, I’d be all over your Bibles, lady.” He gave Marcella a “so there, take that” look, letting his mouth turn to a thin line of furious.

Marcella plopped back down on the bed, taking Delaney with her. “Okay. Soooo, ah . . . what’s your name again?”

“Clyde. Clyde Atwell, and I’d shake your hand, but again—there’s this.” He let his square chin drop to his chest, directing his eyes to the duct tape.

“Okay, Clyde, why don’t you tell us why you’re here?”

Delaney clamped a hand over Marcella’s wrist “No! I told you—”

Now Marcella used her finger on Delaney’s lips. “Hush,
mi amiga
. Let’s just hear him out.” She followed that with a conspiratorial wink of her thick lashes.

Clyde cleared his throat while Delaney watched his Adam’s apple bob with far too much fascination for her comfort. “I
was
sent here to torment Delaney—probably, if what goes on down there is accurate—to bamboozle her into a contract with Hell. That much is true. I don’t know why they want her. I’m new to this demon game, and I think Delaney can tell you, I’m definitely not particularly intimidating because I don’t choose to be. I’ve only been in Hell for three months—most of which I’ve spent pondering the whys and wherefores on how exactly I ended up there. Especially because I didn’t believe in it when I was alive.”

Delaney leaned forward toward him, pushing her growing fear as far away as she could and staring him straight in his deep blue eyes. “Isn’t that what everyone says? ‘I just don’t get how I ended up in Hell,’ ” she mocked, using a tauntingly innocent tone and batting her eyelashes. “You chose to go there, you moron. As has been my experience in crossing hundreds of souls to the other side, when reaching your afterlife, you have two choices. Obviously you were swayed by the promise of eternal pairs of epic ta-tas and cash or something equally as nefarious. So save the innocent, wide-eyed fuckwittery for someone who’ll believe you. I’ve been around the supernatural block a time or two and I know you and your kind.” End rant. She sat back on the bed, squishing closer to Marcella in case he had the power to shoot her with his laser beam eyes. She’d totally forgotten to don her protective force field.

Yet Clyde’s posture became more rigid, the tension on his face most evident around his eyes and mouth. “No, I absolutely did not choose to go to Hell. I wasn’t given a choice about anything. One minute I was in my lab, the next I was in Hell.”

Well, well. That admission, as utterly stupid as it was for him to make, explained everything. “You weren’t given a choice because you lived a life that was shitty. People who do shitty things all their lives don’t get a choice about where they end up. You were obviously on the Big Kahuna’s naughty list, my friend. That means you did some freaky-deaky crap while you were alive, thus marking your ass for Hell. Shit I don’t want to know about because to not even be given the opportunity to choose means you broke some serious commandments. And now, I do believe, that ends our discussion.”

She waved a hand at Marcella, using her other to pat her friend’s thigh. “Okay, do your thang, friend.” Delaney rose, making her way out of the bedroom and into the kitchen with Marcella right behind her.

“Um, consultation, please, O Ghost Transmitter.”

“Consult.”

Marcella wiggled her finger at Delaney, summoning her closer so she could bring her lips to Delaney’s ear. “What
thing
?” she hissed in a whisper. “
Aye Chihuahua!
You know I don’t have a thing, D. I suck at things. I’m just the talker in this relationship of ours. You know, the one who shows up when a spirit is waffling and convinces them that all that glitters isn’t necessarily golden down under? I don’t know how to get rid of him any more than you do. His skill level, if he’s telling the truth about only being three months old, is probably on par with mine.”

Delaney leaned into Marcella and snickered. “And you’ve been around forevah. Slacker.”

Marcella’s accent grew thicker as her temperature rose. “Aye,
mi amiga
. It means fair fight. Which means I could break a nail, or worse, ruin my dress. Which isn’t from Target. So do not even start this with me, ju—ju—”

“Oh, look. The chick from Hell’s still here.” Kellen interrupted them with his dry remark from around the corner of her kitchen. Her dogs skittered over the linoleum floor, skipped giving Marcella the stink eye because she never let them jump on her cute dresses, ignored Delaney altogether, and headed straight to her bedroom to the corner Clyde was still in.

Marcella rested a hand on the countertop, sucking in her cheeks before facing Kellen. “Oh, look, it’s the crankiest man in the world, and you’re not even wearing plaid pants and scheduling colonos copies yet. You’re like an old man with hemorrhoids, Kellen Markham. Cranky, cranky, cranky. And pissy. Definitely pissy.”

Delaney instantly stepped between them, placing a hand on the wall of Kellen’s chest. They bickered from time to time, and on most days it was pretty frickin’ funny. Very transparent, but still very funny. Today, it just added to the chaos. “Not now, you two. Don’t give me more shit to deal with. We have bigger fish to fry. Like Clyde here.” She thumbed a finger over her shoulder. “Save the witty potshots at one another for some other time, and help me figure this out.”

Kellen planted a hand on her shoulder, gripping it with light pressure. “He’s here?”

Delaney clucked her tongue. “Yep. Tied up in the bedroom. Courtesy of the chick from Hell. So knock it off or the next visit you pay me might be while flames lick your keister.”

“And he claims he’s here to torment Delaney,” Marcella added, her gaze scanning Delaney’s face. “I didn’t say anything in front of him, but care to explain a statement like that? Lowly demon or not, he was sent here for you, missy. We’ve run into a demon or two in our time, but never one with the express intent of making you his target. Your thoughts, O Wise One?”

Kellen and Delaney exchanged glances before Delaney shrugged her shoulders. “Nope. Not a clue. Which is all the more reason he has to go.”

Kellen’s face grew stiff, his grip tightening on her shoulder. “I guess it does me no good to tell you I’ll kick his ass if you want, seeing as he can flambé me with fireballs, huh?”

Marcella popped her glossed lips. “Better watch out. I just might help him.”

Kellen didn’t even give Marcella a glance over his shoulder. He always talked about her in third person, knowing full well it left Marcella feeling dismissed. “Does she really have to be here?”

Marcella came to stand behind Delaney, letting her chin rest on her shoulder and looking directly at Kellen. “She does.”

Delaney could hear the chuckle in her friend’s tone, the taunting clarity of the joy she took in sparring. She loved to bait Kellen. Lived for it. Might one day find herself with the unlife choked out of her for it.

Kellen hitched his clamped jaw at her. “I don’t see why. I mean, what good are you to Delaney when all you do is set shit on fire and float into walls?”

The smile never left Marcella’s face. But Delaney knew without even looking at her—the instant tension in her body told her—that Kellen was pushing all of her friend’s touchy buttons. “If you keep it up, I’ll set
your
shit on fire.” Marcella wiggled a finger in the general direction of Kellen’s groin.

The dogs began to bark, whining that high-pitched yap of distress, ending the threat of someone’s junk going up in flames.

Delaney skirted around Kellen and made a beeline for the bedroom to find that Clyde was gone—in all his duct-taped fabulous-ness. Her sigh was ragged.

“Holy frijoles. He can disappear already?” Marcela skidded to a halt at the spot where Clyde had been attached to her radiator. “Very, very nice. I still have trouble with that—even when I squeeze really hard.”

Delaney rustled the dogs up, scratching heads and hindquarters. “Well, he’s gone for now.”

Marcella gnawed the tip of her fingernail with a sheepish look at Delaney. “Maybe one roll of duct tape wasn’t enough?”

Kellen barked a laugh, gruff and cynical. “You used
duct tape
to capture a demon?”

Delaney held a hand up, palm facing Kellen. “Shut it. Not another word, Kellen. It’s not like you have a better solution, now, do you?”

Kellen was immediately silenced.

Marcella stuck her tongue out at him before asking, “So now what, D?”

Her teeth felt gritty, and she needed some tea and a shower. “I have no idea. He’s gone for now and that’s all that matters. How he got gone is a mystery. All I know is, it’s Saturday, and if I hope to rope some customers in, I have to shower and get dressed. I lost eight hundred bucks because of that asshole last night. I can’t afford to whittle away another day worrying about something that hasn’t happened. I have rent to pay, and you know how slow the fall and winter are for me.”

Marcella’s face was sympathetic, her blue eyes warm. “You know it doesn’t have to be like that. I can lend you the cash.”

Delaney frowned, though her friend’s concern never failed to touch her. She reached for the clip she held her hair up with, wrapping a fist around the thick width of it and securing it behind her head. “Oh, no, sistah. I’m not borrowing money I might have to pay back well into the afterlife. But thank you. Now go. Both of you.” She waved her hands at them, shooing them from her room. “Go beat each other down with your snark.”

Marcella blew her a kiss. “Oh, I’ll go, but while I’m gone, I’m going to do some digging to see what I can find about this particular demon.”

Fear assaulted Delaney again, fresh and pungent. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow Marcella to become tangled up in this. Yet she kept her tone nonchalant to keep Marcella’s alarm bells from ringing. “Don’t bother, Marcella. Just stay out of it and do what you do best—buy things.” Delaney smiled, giving them each a quick hug, watching as they left, the silent tension between them as thick as it always was. But no matter how much Kellen claimed he couldn’t stand Marcella, it didn’t stop him from eyeballing her stupendous ass on his way out.

And if Delaney were a man, she would, too. ’Cause Marcella was ass-tastic.

And she’d hate her for it, but she didn’t have time for one of the seven deadly sins today. She had a business to run.

A shower and two cups of green tea later, she was ready to do the day. Penning the dogs in her living room with their assorted toys, she drifted to the front of the store, grabbing her feather duster as she went so she could wipe down the shelves lined with herbs.

A rustle of paper made her ears prick with curiosity; a tingle along her spine alerted her to a supernatural presence.

For fuck’s sake.

This was turning into some kind of supernatural Grand Central. No sooner did she ditch one, than another spirit cropped up. She glanced around the empty store, rolling up the sleeves of her oversized sweater. The warmth in her chest, the shiver along her arms meant she had someone’s full attention. “Whoever you are, I’d really, really love you into the next lifetime if you popped back onto this plane, like,
later
. I promise, whatever the problem is, I’ll help, just not now. I can’t afford to shoot the shit and Sherlock Holmes my way into your mystery at the moment. So cut a medium some slack, and let me have just a couple hours of peace. There’s squat on TV tonight, so come back then. We’ll conversate. Promise.” She held up her hand in the symbol of a Girl Scout’s honor.

The air hummed with the slightest of vibrations, then stilled.

Thank. You.

But the flutter of paper caught the corner of her eye.

Green paper. On the old antique desk that held her cash register.

Green, cashlike paper.

Her fingers reached out and grabbed it, flicking through it, then she flipped through it again for good measure.

Well, if she was counting right, the pieces of green paper added up to a nice number. The number eight hundred.

Word.

four

Delaney held up the thick wad of one-hundred-dollar bills, waving it around her empty store with an angry fist. “I cannot be bought, demon! Take your money, ill-gotten, I’m sure, and hit the highway to Hell.” She plunked it down with a flat hand, shaking the cash register, her breathing choppy with rage. The fuck she’d take money he’d probably stolen from some little old lady.

Clyde appeared with the blink of an eye. He sat casually—on the top of an old armoire that held books on herbal remedies located in the corner of the store.

Naked.

With a patch or ten of hair missing from his arms, legs, and chest.

The sticky residue of duct tape glue covered him from his ankles to his breathtaking chest. His hawklike gaze behind his square frames turned on her as he looked down to the spot where she stood. “I’m only trying to undo what you’ve obsessively declared over and over I’ve done. Robbed you. Blind.”