More Than Fiends (5 page)

“You should have told me anyway,” he said and stalked around the perimeter of the kitchen.

My gaze followed him and so did Sugar. The big dog's nails clicked happily on the floor while she played what she thought was a new game with her new best friend. Me? I stood still and wished he was in Nevada.

“Yeah, that would have gone over well,” I said and walked to the kitchen table to grab a handful of chocolate. “‘Oh, so nice to meet you, Scrunchy. Logan, you're a daddy. When's the wedding?'”

“Misty.”

“Whatever.”

While he paced, I unwrapped a piece of chocolate-covered caramel, thanked whatever genius little candy maker had come up with
that
concept, and stared idly through the back door to the mud porch. Now, my business is cleaning houses, so my house is always clean—almost always—and my windows are always shiny. Usually. Anyway, my point is, while I stared out the upper, glass half of the back door, I noticed something.

Even though the windowpane was clean and nonstreaky, there was a long pattern of
extra
clean right across the middle of the glass. Frowning while Logan continued to fight his way past Sugar to pace, I thought about that for a long minute, and then it dawned on me.

When crazy-lady Jasmine was there earlier, she'd made me shoot Leo in the head with that nasty-looking stuff in the spray bottle. Some of the liquid had missed poor, smoking Leo and splattered on the glass.

Now, that glass wasn't just clean, it was damn near gleaming.

What the hell was in that stuff, anyway?

“So you see my position.”

“Uh-huh.” I popped a kiss into my mouth and studied that sliver of extra clean.

“So you agree.”

“Sure. What? Huh?” I swiveled my head to look at him, and he looked way too pleased for my comfort level. “Agree to what?”

“To me seeing Thea on a regular basis.”

“I didn't agree to that.”

“I could sue you for joint custody.”

“You wouldn't,” I said and hoped I sounded way more confident than I was. He could really make things ugly for me. I mean, I owned my own business, but it wasn't a Fortune 500 company. And he was a cop. Judges liked cops. Plus, I'd sort of hidden his daughter from him for, well, her whole life. That wouldn't look good.

“I want to know my daughter.”

“You just met her. Good start.”

“Cassie…”

“We'll work something out,” I said and forced a smile that felt too tight and grimacelike to be convincing, but he appeared to be okay with it.

“Good. Now, how about dinner?”

“Huh?”

“You and me,” he said and walked across the kitchen, stepping over Sugar, who'd given up on pacing because it was way too much like exercise. He stopped right in front of me, and I have to say, he smelled just as good as he looked.

It had been sixteen years since the last time he touched me, and at the moment, all I could think of was,
I'm a lot hornier now than I was then.
God help me, Logan was even better looking now than he had been then. Which was really saying something, believe me.

Recipe for disaster.

“What do you say?” he asked and reached out to tweak a lock of my hair. “We could go to Tully's. Get a pizza.”

Sure. Tully's on the pier. Just where we spent most of that summer. What? Were we going back in time? Was he trying to rekindle things? Or start a brand-new fire?

And why was I hesitating? The truth was, it had been a long time since I'd had a fire anywhere near me. The way I remembered it, Logan had a real knack for fires.

Plus, we were both grown-ups—well, he was, anyway—and neither one of us was involved and—

“God!” I shrieked, pushed his hand away and slithered to one side, scooting past him closely enough that I could actually feel his Mr. Happy all hard and eager in his jeans. “How do you do that? We're fighting one minute, and the next minute, we're…not.”

His hand fell to his side, and he shrugged and gave me a grin that made my knees feel all slippery. “Worth a shot. You look really good, Cassie. I've missed you.”

“Be honest. Until you moved back to town, you hadn't given me a single thought in sixteen years.”

He shrugged again, and I watched, fascinated, as his chest muscles clenched and released. Man. He was seriously getting to me.

“I thought about you, Cassie.” His gaze moved over me slowly, and I almost believed him. “Then, when things got so bad with Misty, I started thinking about you even more. Remembering how much fun we had together. How
good
we were together.”

“I was a kid,” I managed to squeak.

“Didn't feel like a kid to me,” he said, and now his voice was so soft it was like a caress. “Now I find out you're the mother of my child.”

“And this makes you horny?”

“I'm a guy.” He grinned. “I was born horny.”

“Well, don't I feel special.”

He sighed. “I'm still pissed about you hiding Thea from me—”

“I wasn't hiding her,” I argued. “She's been right here. Living out in the open and going to school and everything.”

“You know what I mean,” he said. “Anyway, I want you to know I'm still pissed about that, but damn, Cassie, it's so good to see you again.”

Something inside me did a quick little hop and skip. Hey, so shoot me! I can't help it if it felt good to have Logan giving me that hot and sexy look again.

“There never was anyone like you, you know?”

My mouth went dry, and my brain short-circuited. But I defy any living, breathing female to think when that close to Logan Miller. Back when I was a kid, he'd been able to turn me into a molten puddle of goo, just watching him stride in from the ocean, water sluicing off his tanned, completely cut body.

But I wasn't sixteen anymore. I couldn't just give in to my hormones, no matter how much I wanted to at the moment. There was Thea to think about and how Logan showing up was going to change everything.

“Logan…”

“C'mon, Cassie,” he said and lifted one black eyebrow again. “A pizza at Tully's. For old time's sake.”

Tempting.

If I'm gonna be honest, it was way more than tempting. It was übertempting. But the plain, ugly truth was, the last time I'd been tempted by Logan, I was a kid. I could use brainless and romantic as excuses for having sex under the pier with a guy I
knew
was going to be leaving town to finish college.

Now I'm an adult. Technically. A mom, of a nearly dating-age daughter. So hey, I need to set some standards. Be a good role model.

“You're thinking too much,” he said. “Which means you're going to say no.”

I frowned at him. “Just because you knew me back then doesn't mean you know me now.”

“I'd like to.”

“And I'd like a million bucks,” I quipped and hoped to hell my voice wasn't quavering. “Looks like both of us are doomed to disappointment.”

He walked toward me, and just to be sure I didn't go back on my brand-new “role model” resolution, I backed up until I hit the door behind me.

He ran his hands up my arms, and I swear I could actually
feel
little flames dancing along my skin. Like I said, good with fire. He looked into my eyes, and for a second or two, I saw the boy he'd once been in the man he'd become—and, boy howdy, the combo was really appealing.

He smoothed his thumb across my bottom lip, and it was all I could do not to nibble on it. Oh God, I was so in deep shit.

“I'm not going anywhere, Cassie,” he said and tapped the end of my nose with his index finger. “We've got lots to talk about, and I'm looking forward to getting to know my daughter—and you—better.”

He left right after that, and I sort of slid bonelessly into a kitchen chair. Sugar gave me a disapproving look.

“Hey,” I argued, “easy for you to say. You've been fixed.”

S
o far, my birthday sucked.

Well, semisucked. I still had a shot at the cleaning contract to Magic Nights, unless Devlin Cole called in the next couple of minutes to tell me it was all an ugly joke. My gaze slid to the phone, half expecting it to ring. When it didn't, I grabbed a couple more kisses, because they were handy and why the hell not?

With Logan gone and Thea at Zoe's, no doubt complaining about the hideousness of her life, I had a good hour or more to myself. Plenty of time to figure out just what the hell I was doing to so piss off the karma gods. Or time to just grab a beer and forget about everything else.

“Sounds like a plan to me.” I stood up, went to the fridge and gave the handle a good yank because the stupid door always stuck. Not today. Well, not entirely.

The door stayed shut, but the handle came off in my hand. “What the hell?”

I looked at Sugar, but she was as confused as I was. Just what I needed. More appliance death. I tossed the stupid door handle onto the table and peeled the stupid door open with my bare hands, giving it a lot of
oomph.
Too much, as it turns out, since the damn door popped off and crashed to the floor, spilling out half-empty bottles of ketchup, mustard and salad dressing along with a jar of what looked like fuzzy salsa.

Whoa.

The light in the fridge shone out at me, and I reached in to grab a beer. Twisting off the top, I took a long drink, stared down at the door and asked nobody, “Okay, is it just me, or did things take a seriously weird-ass turn here?”

Sugar whimpered and crawled farther under the table, just in case the stove tried to get her next. I was about a minute away from joining her.

“You are the Demon Duster, with inherent strength that will continue to increase.”

“Yikes!” I spun around on one heel of my boring little green pumps, felt it snap off and staggered a little while I caught my balance by grabbing the back of a kitchen chair with one hand and steadying the beer I really needed with the other. The loony tune was back. Naturally. “Are you
trying
to kill me?”

Jasmine gave me a small smile and widened her nearly black eyes until they seemed to take up most of her face.

I could already see the headlines in the
La Sombra Daily News
:
CRAZY OLD BAT SNEAKS INTO KITCHEN, KILLS KARMICLY DAMNED WOMAN.

“What the hell are you doing back here?” I asked when I was pretty sure my heart was back in my chest where it belonged.

“I never left.”

“What?” She'd been lying in wait for me? And nobody noticed? Not Thea, not Logan? Not
Sugar
?

I took another long drink of my beer, hoping to cool myself off a little, but it didn't do much good.

“Some watchdog you are,” I muttered and glared at the dog, who actually had the nerve to give me a “Who, me?” look.

“I cannot leave until I have convinced you of your duty.”

“Duty again. Right.” Okay, no more Ms. Nice Guy. This old lady was about to get a one-way ride to the Happy House. As soon as I figured out a way to put the refrigerator door back where it belonged. Just why the hell had my life chosen today to take a turn for the crappy?

“I've been waiting for you to return,” she said and set her ugly vinyl purse down onto the kitchen table. She opened it and pulled out yet another bottle of that spray stuff she'd had on her earlier. “The day of your destiny has arrived, and I'm here to help you accept it.”

“Look lady, I don't want to be rude….” Actually, that wasn't completely true. By then, I didn't really care if I was rude or not. You know, I'm usually a pretty patient person—well, I try. But as I mentioned earlier, my birthday was really sucking, and at the moment, what I really wanted to do was throw myself a pity party. “I've got a refrigerator to fix, a beer to drink, an ex-boyfriend to kill, a daughter to soothe and, hey, what's left of my birthday to survive. I don't want you here, and if you don't leave, I'm going to—”

What? Call a cop? Yeah, because that wouldn't be too embarrassing.
Help, a hundred-and-fifty-year-old woman broke into my house and is holding me at spray-bottle point.
Great idea. Besides, call a cop and it would be just my luck for Logan to show up.

Fine. I didn't have a threat handy. But I
could
forcibly walk her bony ass out the back door and into my car, where I would strap her in—she should be used to
that
feeling—and take her back to Mixed Nuts Central. I walked around the end of the table and made a grab for her, and the old woman jumped five feet in the air.

Straight up.

I kid you not.

Impressed into momentary speechlessness, I could only look at her as she landed in a crouch, then stood up again, smoothing one gnarled hand down the front of her dress. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it.

“Does the Olympic committee know about you?”

She blew out an exasperated breath. “I'm here to explain your duties. To give you the recipe for the demon elixir. To guide you as you rid the world of—”

“—demons. Right.”

“You don't believe.”

I did an eye roll. “Duh.”

She sighed again, like I should be riding the short bus to school. Waving one hand at the refrigerator door lying on the floor, she pointed out, “You see your strength is increasing.”

“Bad hinge.”

“Why do you refuse to listen?”

“To what? Stories about demons and secret potions? Are you crazy?” I shouted, then stopped, listened to myself for a second and said, “Never mind. Of course you're crazy. I'll just call the Hotel Screw-loose and see if they've got your room ready.”

She muttered something that sounded like “I'm too old for this shit.” But old ladies with blue/gray hair didn't cuss, did they? Still, no point in pushing her over the edge. Because frankly, if she was this bad
on
the edge, I didn't want to have to deal with her once she went over.

“You seem like a nice crazy person.” That's me. Ever tactful. “But I don't believe what you're saying. Who the hell would? Even if I did, I still wouldn't be interested. I'm too busy for a destiny. I've got a life, and let me tell you, it's already pretty crowded.” Not that I actually had a life, but certainly not the point at the moment. “I've got enough responsibilities, thanks. I don't have time to save the world. Besides, I don't even know
how
to fight.”

There. Calm. Reasonable. Even the crazy old lady was bound to understand now.

I headed for the phone to call the mental ward, but before I got there, Jasmine charged me. She had neat, sprayed-down, blue/gray hair, enough saggy skin to make two old ladies, no boobs to speak of and orthopedic shoes. But she snarled and raced at me as if there were a Metamucil sale and the last bottle was right behind me.

I, of course, being a legendary (hah!) Demon Duster, destined to save humanity, shrieked like a big girl. Cut me a break, okay? It's not like I was attacked regularly by crazed senior citizens—or anyone, for that matter. Then, something happened. I can't explain it. But all of a sudden, I
knew
what to do.

Which is strange all in itself—as anybody who knows me can tell you, I don't make fast decisions. I've been known to stand in the cleaning-products aisle at the grocery store for a half hour trying to choose between Comet and Ajax. And don't
ever
offer me a choice between white or chocolate fudge-covered Oreos.

But in that one split second, I was no longer Cassidy Burke, house cleaner extraordinaire…. I was Catwoman/Batman/Spiderman and a bunch of other cool superheroes all rolled into one.

Instinctively, I spun around, kicked my right leg out and caught the gray marauder dead in the stomach. The air whooshed out of her lungs as she flew back and slammed into the kitchen table. This was all too much for Sugar. The dog jolted out of her terrified stupor, leaped to her feet, turned the table over in her wild scramble toward the back door, and what was left of the Hershey's Kisses plopped onto Jasmine's head and shoulders like brass-colored raindrops.

Holy crap.

I just beat up an old lady. Catwoman never did stuff like that. Hell, even Buffy never beat up old ladies. Well, she staked one or two, but that was her job.

Good thing I was raised Catholic so I could call up my guilt at a moment's notice. Nobody does guilt better than a Catholic. We
excel
at guilt. My friend Rachel Cohen—Zoe's mom—and I go over this whole Catholic/Jewish guilt thing all the time, but I always win. See, Rachel was born and raised Catholic, then converted to Judaism when she married Simon, so even
she
doesn't believe that anybody could beat Catholics when it came to the Guilt Games. Like I told her. Doesn't matter if the Jews have been persecuted for centuries.

None of them had to deal with nuns as teachers. And the Jews don't have Hell.
We
have Hell. How can you feel guilty if there are no eternal flames waiting for you? Fear of a bad reincarnation? Forget it. Come back as a cockroach? Who cares? Cockroaches live forever.

Nope. Catholics win the guilt crown every time. Nobody can compete with us. We grew up learning the sign of the cross as the Father, the Son, and the It's All My Fault, otherwise known as the Mea Culpa.

But I digress.

I'm standing there wondering how in the hell I'd just done that—I haven't exercised since the day I taught Thea how to ride her bike. I had held on to the seat and steadied her for about twenty steps, then I was wiped and she took off, leaving me in the dust. So I had to wonder, how did I come up with that completely cool, kick-ass move?

Could you learn kung fu shit from watching
Angel
and
Buffy
DVDs?

I stepped out of my shoes because—with the one heel missing—I was a little lopsided, and then I took a step closer to the old lady smiling at me from the mess on the floor.

She was grinning at me like…well, like a loon.

“What the hell do you have to be smiling about?” I demanded. But, hey, on second thought, this could work to my advantage. She's happy. Maybe she has Alzheimer's and doesn't even remember me kicking her. We tell the nice men in charge of rubber rooms and Prozac that she sneaked into my house and fell down—nobody's any wiser. Sure, I'd feel guilty. But I'm comfortable with that.

“Well done,” she said and pushed herself clumsily to her feet.

“Well done? I just kicked you across the room—” I shut up fast. If she wanted to compliment me instead of suing me, who was I to argue?

The phone rang and I jumped, startled. Jeez. I swear, if I survived the rest of this day, it was going to be a miracle.

“There are many things for us to discuss,” Jasmine was saying.

You betcha. Like why the hell the nutball catchers weren't scouring the streets for her.

“Right. Hold that thought,” I said and scanned the rubble of my kitchen, trying to find the phone. I finally spotted the damn thing on the counter, half-hidden behind the bag of groceries. I kicked the mustard bottle out of the way and grabbed the phone on the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Mom,” Thea said, “I'm just calling to tell you I'm not speaking to you.”

Normally when Thea was mad at me, she would spend hours explaining in painful detail exactly how long it would be before she spoke to me again. Right this minute, I didn't have the time to hear it.

“Okay,” I said and watched as Jasmine picked up the refrigerator door. My eyeballs popped. She set it back into place, then handily went about steadying the hinges. Man. She could be making a fortune doing exercise videos for old folks. Didn't look like she weighed eighty pounds, yet she was really spry for a woman who had to be…oh, a hundred years old at least.

“Mom? Are you listening? Zoe and I talked it over, and she totally agrees that I should not speak to you.”

I nodded. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”

Sugar scooted back into the kitchen on her belly—apparently being terrified alone was worse than being terrified with company. She kept one eye on Jasmine and settled on top of my feet.

“I think you should know that this has seriously affected the whole mother/daughter trust thing,” Thea continued, “which is why I think the only way to handle this is to not talk to you anymore.”

My darling daughter's voice was nothing more than a persistent buzz in my ear. How the hell could I concentrate on Thea torturing me while I had this weird-ass woman in my kitchen who was busily rehanging the fridge door as if it weighed nothing? Besides, I'd just discovered I was a superhero. Hell. Maybe I could even fly.