Kiss the Stars (Devon Slaughter Book 1) (17 page)

AT THE door,
Sarah opened her arms. I thought: When was the last time I hugged anyone? Over
the top of her head, I caught movement in the window. A blue eye appeared,
searching through a gap in the curtains.

Ruby
? What the hell?

I disengaged
from Sarah.

“Remember,” she
said. “Friday. And you have to take care of—”

“Right,” I cut
her off. “Don’t worry.”

I leaped off the
stoop and loped around back. I saw Ruby under the starlight, running crookedly,
up the hill. A leather bag flapped at her side.

I watched her
and remembered the night we met, how questions about her came one after
another. I thought she was clueless but she’d found me lurking in the shadows.
She’d stirred the last embers of my dying humanity.

She glanced over
her shoulder and stumbled and dropped to her knees. She scrambled up, to run
again. All the way out here, across the expanse of sagebrush, I felt her
despair and it charged me.

How I wished she
was safe in bed.

I went after
her.

Her ragged
breath urged me on, faster. When I took her down, she screamed. Her shoulders
heaved.

She struck at my
face. The bag was between us. I ripped it from her. A silver knife fell out.

I grabbed her
hand as she came in for another blow. “
Stop
it.”

“Get off me. Get
off
me…” she shook her head back and forth. “I
hate
you…”

My gaze slid to
the knife. I suppressed a moan. She was going mad. And it was my fault.

“HER MOTHER,
Ruby,” he said. “Come on. It was just a hug.”

“Why would you
be there?
Hugging
her mother?”

“I’ll tell you…”

He had taken my
hand as we walked back to the car and I let him. It was an uncharacteristic
thing for him to do, and I was touched. I didn’t care about Scarlet anymore. I
believed him, even if I shouldn’t.

When we drove
over the bridge, I leaned out the window to look up at the sky that was purple
and bruised. I watched the stars fade one by one.

Now, we were in
my bedroom. “Do you believe me?” he said.

I didn’t answer.
I pulled my sweater off over my head and unzipped my skirt. It made a swishing
sound when it fell on the floor. I peeled off my stockings and crawled into bed
wearing just my black bra and white slip.

He got behind
me, still dressed. “It’s the truth, Ruby. I haven’t lied to you.” His breath
was warm on the back of my neck.

“Why should I
believe you?”

“I have no
reason to lie.”

I closed my
eyes. I longed to sleep. “People don’t need a reason to lie,” I said.

“People lie to
get what they want. I take whatever I want. People lie to avoid pain. I don’t
feel pain. I don’t feel anything. I’m not a person…”

“Are you a
hungry ghost?”

His laugh
tickled my ear. “You mean those pathetic creatures with huge stomachs and tiny
mouths?”

I turned over.
He rested his hand on the curve of my waist. I touched his lips. “Your mouth
isn’t tiny,” I put my hand under his shirt to feel his muscles. “You don’t have
a big belly either.”

He caressed my
cheek. “Tell me something. What’s with the knife in your bag?”

My face burned. “Nothing.
It was dumb.” I averted my gaze. “I wouldn’t hurt anyone…”

But I thought of
how I’d shoved Georgie and grabbed her ear. Worse, I’d told her she was a
terrible teacher. I’d wanted to hurt her, like she had hurt me.

He stroked my
hair. “You have to take care of yourself, Ruby. I mean it. Take your medication.
Okay?”

Why did everyone
know my personal business? I felt like I had ‘crazy’ stamped on my forehead.

“Promise me,”
Devon said.

“I promise.
Devon?”

“Yeah?”

“Why were you
were hugging Scarlet’s mother?”

“She’s going to
help me.”

“Help you what?”
The air suddenly felt heavy, like the night I learned my mother had died.

“Help me get
back.”

“Back to where?”
I felt a tremor behind my eyelids.

“To where I
belong.”

“That makes no
sense,” my voice started to rise. “What—are you like…stupid ET? You have to
phone home?”

“Please don’t
cry.”

“I’m not crying.
Listen to me. You
can’t
. Why do you want to leave?”

“It might not
work, Ruby.”

“You’re lying,”
I said. “You claim you don’t lie because you can’t feel anything but you
do
feel and you
lie
about it.”

He wiped my tears
with his thumb. “It’s true. You make me feel things.”

“Then why? Why
can’t we be happy together? I’m so tired of being alone. I can’t bear it
anymore. Devon. Please. Please don’t leave me.
Please
…” I reached for
him. Begging had never been beneath me.

His lips were on
my neck.

“Take me with
you,” I whispered.

EARLIER,
BEFORE
,
I had caught Sarah at the bookstore as she was leaving. She stood on the
sidewalk, struggling to adjust a satchel over her shoulder, while not letting
go of a bag with short handles that looked like it would topple if left to its
own devices.

I relieved her
of the larger bag. It was canvas with a picture of a dolphin on it.

When I tried to
give her manuscript back, she said, “Keep it. Don’t you want the reference?”

“Nope. It’s all
up here,” I tapped my temple. “I have perfect recall. One of my special gifts.”

“How
interesting
,”
she’d said, in the same way she’d effused over my name. She seemed to view me
as an exciting discovery.

She had stuffed
the manuscript in her bag then. I held it open.

“What’s the best
part of your book?” I said.

She appraised
me. “Let’s go to my place. I have some other books you should see. You can scan
them and put the information in your computer,” she tapped her head, like I had
done. “And I’ll tell you about the best part of my book.”

We got in a
rusty old VW bug with no back seat. As she drove, Sarah told me she dabbled in
witchcraft too. “Nothing fancy,” she said. The potions she concocted for people
paid the bills with enough left over for her daughter’s college fund.

When we crossed
the bridge, the car groaned and shuddered. I gritted my teeth. My seat (pushed
as far back as it would go but not nearly far enough) had broken springs.

We drove past
the city limits, slowing when we neared the place I recognized as Coffeen
Sanitarium. The courtyard was lit up like a Christmas tree. The fountain
cascaded the colors of the rainbow.

Sarah pulled to
the side of the road. “That’s the best part,” she said.

“A psychiatric
hospital?” I said.

“The tunnels
under
it,” she said. “There’s a portal down there. To the demon realm. I can’t prove
it. I’m not going to try it out myself,” she cast a meaningful glance at me. “But
I know it’s there.”

My heart thumped
faster.

“I came across
my first demon,” she said. “Years ago, through one of my customers. He wanted
to ward off a woman who was stalking him. I suspected she was a demon. I
started studying demonology which led me to the demon realm. There are only
seven known portals in the whole world,” she turned to face me.

“A portal for
each continent?” I guessed.

“Wrong,” she
said. “There are two in Asia. None in Antarctica and none in South America. Two
on this continent. Coffeen sits right on top of portal number seven. Can you
believe it?”

“Where’s the
other one?” I said, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

“Nicaragua,” she
said.

When we had
driven past the city limits and the sky opened and the desert stretched out, I
got a funny feeling.

As soon as I saw
the trailers, I remembered tracking Ruby’s cat and I thought of the gawky but
pretty girl on the stoop. Ruby’s jealous accusations slid into place, like a
piece of a puzzle. I figured the girl must be Sarah’s daughter. I wondered
though, how Ruby got the idea I’d taken advantage of her?

I carried Sarah’s
bag inside. The trailer was crammed with worn but expensive furniture and
Victorian antiques that must have once graced an elegant home. Like Ruby’s
house, books were everywhere.

Sarah puttered
around, making tea and grumbling about her daughter leaving all the lights on.
She ignored me for a while, compiling ornately decorated tomes on the Formica
table.

I leaned against
the counter. My head touched the ceiling. When she finally turned to me, I
raised an eyebrow. “You want me to memorize all those books tonight? I’m not a
speed reader, you know.”

She laughed. “I
thought you possessed supernatural powers.”

The books had a
lot of pictures, which was a relief. We looked at the portals around the world.
Their entries were marked with drawings of deities, each with their own
mythology. Sarah asked about my friend who had disappeared and I told her what
had happened in Nicaragua, which led to a new batch of books.

The night wore
on and I couldn’t steal any energy from Sarah. I got achy for Ruby. And of
course, Sarah knew. She sucked in her breath. “You have a girlfriend,” she
said, like she had just discovered I robbed banks for a living.

I shrugged her
off. “Don’t worry. I got the part about how I could kill her and all that. I’ll
be careful.”

“No.
Nooo
.
You can’t just be careful. You have to sever all ties with her.”

We locked eyes.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so…she’s the best thing to happen to me in a
long time.” I realized it was true and I got the strangest feeling in the pit
of my stomach, like sorrow.

Sarah’s chair
scraped across the beat up linoleum. I watched her open a cupboard and push
aside bottles filled with colorful liquids. Plastic baggies of dried herbs fell
out onto the floor.

“Excuse me a
moment,” she disappeared.

I listened to
her footsteps hurrying into the back of the trailer. I thought of making a
break for it. But I needed Sarah. After what seemed a long time, I heard her
chanting in a strange language. The hairs on my neck prickled.

She came back
and presented me with what looked like an aspirin.

“Are you a drug
dealer too?” I said.

“It will erase
her memory of you,” she said.

“Are you
kidding? What if this got into the wrong hands and someone lost an eye or their
frontal lobe? Jesus, I don’t want it. Here,” I thrust it at her. “Take it back.”

She refused.

I put the pill
in my pocket, since Sarah was the only one who could get me into the portal.
According to the books, the entry was strewn with the bones of those who had
been denied access.

“The pill won’t
have any effect unless it’s administered by you,” she said. “It also won’t
work, if you don’t want it to.”

“Perfect,” I
said. “Anything else?”

“Devon, you must
remember. She’s your victim. You have to set her free. If you don’t, she’ll go
insane.”

She was
already half way there when I found her
.

“You don’t
understand,” I said.

“Oh, but I do,”
Sarah said. “It’s your natural instinct to prey on the weak.”

* * *

Ruby slept in my
arms. She didn’t wake when I got up.

I felt for the
pill in my pocket. Did I have to use it? Wasn’t there another way? Gazing down
at her, I noticed the bruise on her neck that I had given her. Sarah was right.
I would only keep hurting Ruby.

But she was my
sweet beautiful tragedy. I understood her pain. It was her vice of virtue. She
felt too much. More than anything, I wanted to stay with her, so she wouldn’t
ever have to be alone again.

According to
Sarah, the portal couldn’t be opened until the new moon on Friday the
thirteenth at the stroke of midnight, Pacific Standard Time. Ruby’s alarm clock
said it was 5:01 a.m., Wednesday, the eleventh.

There’s still
time
.

I stripped off
my jeans and shirt and crawled in beside Ruby. She murmured and pressed against
me.

Through the
partially opened curtains, I saw the gray dawn outside. I felt like sleeping
for a long time and when I woke, I would feel like having sex, and I thought it
would be nice to go on like that, for a few more nights.

I closed my
eyes.

Ruby’s breathing
was slow and even but I couldn’t relax. The numerals on the clock were too
bright. I reached down and unplugged it. Then I got up and closed the curtains
so the room went black.

That’s more like
it, I thought, as I got back into bed.