My Way to Hell (7 page)

“And on that note, you, Kellen Markham, can shove your speculation on my whereabouts right up your tight, stuffy ass. Believe me when I tell you, there’s nothing I’d have liked more than to have spent the last three months shopping and partying in Rio. But that wasn’t exactly the case, as evidenced by my dress.” Jamming her face in Kellen’s, she rolled her neck on her shoulders in a “take that” gesture.

Delaney gripped the sleeve of Kellen’s sweater. “You don’t look happy. What’s she saying?”

“She said she doesn’t know how she ended up a ghost.” He passed on the rest of the message, omitting the part about his tight ass.

Delaney’s eyes filled with tears just as Marcella had known they would. “Uriel promised me he’d look out for her! I don’t understand how this happened. But I do know it had to be Lucifer who took her earthbound privileges away. That has to be what it is. That fuck! There has to be something we can do.”

If only. And who was Uriel? Never mind. She didn’t want to know. Marcella put a hand to her head to massage her temples only to find that, if she didn’t use a light touch, her hand shot straight through to the other side of her head. Why she couldn’t bring her skills from Plane Drab with her here was just another fun ghost factoid. “Here’s where you’d better pony up, Kellen, and make it convincing because we both know our Tenacious D. Tell her I
like
being a ghost. In fact, I’m so in love with the idea of skating through walls and being invisible, my world is all sunshiny colors and kick-ass rose-tinted glasses. So it doesn’t matter who took what from me. I’m golden. Now hurry. Before she snowballs and we’re in the middle of her glacial path.”

Kellen tightened his grip on Delaney’s hand, his gaze sympathetic and warm. “Marcella said to tell you that she likes being a ghost much better than she ever liked being a demon. It has its sacrifices, but Lucifer isn’t dogging her anymore, and for the first time in a long time, she feels safe. She said she misses you, and she loves you and she wants you to stop worrying.”

Delaney rolled her hazel eyes with a grating snort before crossing her arms over her woolen sweater. “Tell her I said she’s full of so much bullshit. Wait. Never mind. I’ll tell her.” Delaney looked to Kellen. “Point me in the general direction.”

Kellen stabbed a finger in front of him, pointing toward the ceiling while fighting to keep his face emotionless but leaking a smug look of satisfaction for the shit Delaney was winding up to give her.

Delaney looked upward, unaware she’d actually captured Marcella’s green gaze. “You’re full of horse puckey, Marcella Acosta. Don’t you try to snow me. I know you. You’ve been my best friend for a long time and there’s no one who lives louder than you. To be shipped off to some plane that’s dreary and desolate, sans shopping and foot massages, is its own special hell for someone of your ilk. So knock off the brave front and let’s figure out how you can become a demon again because Pier 1’s going to have a sale that’ll blow your mind, and you’ll miss it with all this self-sacrifice bullshit. Not to mention the employees who’ll have to apply for food stamps because their commissions are in the crapper.”

Marcella fought a smile. Delaney was as loyal and as dedicated as ever. Though no way was she giving in. Delaney had better things to do than to try to find a way out of this for her. There were babies to make with her geeky/hot husband. No more mixing it up with the paranormal.

She cocked her head in Kellen’s direction. “Tell her this is one ghost who doesn’t need her to ‘fix’ anything. I don’t need help. There’s nothing she can do anyway. I already know crossing over isn’t an option, but we’ve always known that. That’s what her specialty was, and it isn’t even hers anymore. It’s yours. And you suck at it, if what I heard is right. So tell her I said to go make babies—loads of ’em, so I’ll always have an influx of fresh meat, not jaded by adulthood, to haunt.”

Kellen laughed now, too, but immediately straightened when Delaney asked, “What does she have to say for herself?”

“She said stay out of it and go make babies. Loads of them. She doesn’t want you to fix anything for her.”

Delaney’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I’m not going to fix it. You are, little brother. I mean, I’ll help, but ultimately you’re now the one with the connections.”

“No!” Marcella yelped in Kellen’s direction, reaching out and gripping his arm. “Kellen, you’ve got to keep her from stepping in any more shit than she’s already been in. I don’t want Lucifer chasing after her again and neither do you. Especially now that she doesn’t have the kind of help she once had from the other side. She has Clyde to consider, too. And the children they may have—I’d rather rot in the pit than let Satan touch them. Just tell her to let it be, for the love of Christ. Please. Maybe not as much for her sake as for mine now. I’m tired. I’ve been around a long, long time avoiding Satan.

“Being on this plane I’ve been on has given me the chance to finally stop running. I didn’t realize I wanted that when I was earthbound, but I’ve found peace in not having Hell breathing down my neck for the first time in more years than I care to count. I didn’t realize how exhausting it was until I didn’t have to do it anymore.”

And it had been. Maybe resting up would be just what the doctor ordered. If she could get back, that was. She’d tried all day with no success, and yet again, it wasn’t like she’d paid a lot of attention when they were doling out advice on that hovel they called a plane. But she definitely wasn’t dragging D into anything that even remotely threatened to trigger Satan’s awareness.

Kellen cupped Delaney’s cheek, giving her a sympathetic smile. “Honey, she said she’s tired, that she just wants to rest now. She can do that on the plane she’s been relegated to, and she begged me to tell you not to get involved.”

“
What?
Are you sure this is Marcella?
My
Marcella? Because my Marcella would be spitting fake fingernails and shredding fine linens to get back here to Earth!” Delaney’s eyes danced with fiery determination when she looked into her brother’s.

“I’m positive, D,” Kellen assured his sister with no hint of cracking. “She’s been doing this a long time. Eternal life has to have its drawbacks. I think I get what she’s saying.”

“Oooh, better duck. Rapture’s headed your way,” Marcella quipped, chuckling in his ear. While she was so close to him, she inhaled deeply, breathing in the spicy cologne he wore. Mingled with his own unique blend of man scent, it left her dizzy.

Kellen waved a hand at her. “Look, D. It’s been a long ride for her. She’s, what, a hundred and fifty—”

“Seventy-six—which explains why you teach science and not math.” Marcella swiped at a lock of his dark hair, only giving brief thought to the fact that although she sure as hell wasn’t able to pick up that bottle of Chanel No. 5 she’d lusted for while she floated about in Macy’s earlier, she could actually touch Kellen.

“Right. Seventy-six, a hundred and six. Either way, you’re old. She’s old. Whatever. Point is that’s a long time to run from Satan. And I seriously don’t want you to get involved in anything that has to do with that prick, Delaney—
ever again
.”

Tears filled Delaney’s wide eyes, trickling along her creamy-peach-highlighted cheeks. Instantly, Clyde was up and beside her, rubbing soothing circles along her shoulder blades while their dogs, in various states of one ailment or another, stirred in awareness of their mistress’s upset. “I can’t believe she won’t even try,” Delaney sobbed against Clyde’s shoulder with a dramatic heave.

Tears. Delaney’d never been much for waterworks unless she was backed into a corner and frustrated. Marcella squirmed her discomfort. Fuck. Now what?

When all was said and done, she’d give Kellen this much: there was no denying the bond between him and Delaney. From the look on his face, the tears Delaney noisily sobbed were obviously almost physically painful for him to watch. “D, don’t cry. How about if I promise to try to keep in touch with her? In fact, I have a great idea. Maybe Marcella can help me feel my way around the afterlife. It would definitely help because not only can she
see
the ghosts I’m dealing with, she can communicate with them, too. You can’t anymore, and that only makes it more difficult for you to guide me. We’d sort of be cutting out the middleman and getting straight to the source. She’ll be the guide you can’t be.”

Because really, who didn’t want to be Julie the Cruise Director to all of the afterlife? She would not let him suck her into this. There was no way she could deny Delaney anything, and if Kellen gave his sister hope she’d stick around, she was doomed to help him cross souls indefinitely. “Kellen! Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I can’t figure out how to get back to where I came from, which means I can’t even help myself. How do you suppose I can help you? Man up, you candy-ass. Resist the tears and don’t give in. She’s working you like a breast implant salesman at an Itty-Bitty Titty convention.”

The look he shot her said to can it, but he replaced it with a smile for Delaney’s benefit—sweeter and more angelic than a choirboy. “Marcella said she thinks it’s a good idea, too.”

And he dared her to say otherwise. As if she could even if she wanted to.

As quickly as they’d come, Delaney’s tears passed, leaving Marcella very suspicious of her friend’s motives. “I guess I don’t have a choice, seeing as Marcella’s turned into the mother of all pansies, now do I?”

Marcella gasped. Hovering above Kellen, she gave him a glimpse of her hard eyes. “A pansy? Moi? A pansy? Oh, she’d better be glad I don’t have the gift of fireballs anymore or I’d set her whole stash of wheat germ on fire! You tell her—”

Kellen grinned wide, then bobbed his head, obviously pretending to be pleased with her answer for his sister’s sake. “Marcella says she understands you’re just upset and it’s going to take a while for you to come to terms with her decision. Until then, she said for you, she’d be honored to help me. In fact, she said she’d rather help me than have her hair and nails done.” He rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek and jammed his hands under his armpits.

Honored schmonored. God damn it. If she still had the ability to lob a fireball, she’d flame his forked tongue.

Delaney curled her lower lip in skepticism, letting her head fall back on her neck when she gazed up at her brother. “Are you sure you have the right Marcella? Maybe she’s just someone who looks like Marcella. The Marcella I know would rather have her head shaved bald than do anything for you, Kellen Markham.”

Marcella nodded her agreement, cooling off a bit. Yeah.
True dat.
Yay for having your BFF’s back.

Kellen shrugged his shoulders and sighed with a mockingly forlorn breath of air. “Maybe this ghost thing’s given her a new outlook on her eternity. There are no parties to go to where she is, no places to shop, and it’s obvious there’s no place to get her nails done. Doing something productive with her time, especially because it’s for you, her
best friend in the whole world
, is something I think you’d support . . .” The way he let his sentence trail off in superior satisfaction, the sheer glee he was taking at taunting her, made Marcella’s fingers itch to lodge right in his esophagus.

Clyde, his dark blue eyes rooted firmly to Delaney, cupped her chin. “Maybe Kellen’s right. Marcella does have an edge you don’t, sweetheart. It’s been nothing but frustrating for you to try to help Kellen.”

Delaney gave a wistful sigh as though she were considering giving in. “Maybe you’re right. I mean, if Kellen can work with Marcella, her being
the most difficult, hot-tempered, infuriating ex-demon, pain in the ass ever
”—she paused, looking upward with a devilish glint in her eyes—“then there’s hope he’ll be able to help the more difficult lost souls.” She nodded her head with a firm shake. “So, yeah. I say this could be a good thing.”

Kellen smiled indulgently at his sister, saving his look of relief for when she reached up to pat Clyde on the cheek. “You feel better now?”

Delaney nodded at her brother, using the edge of her sleeve to wipe away her crocodile tears.

Oh, if she could ever pick up, say, a heavy piece of wood again, she was going to make the back of her BFF’s head one with it. “You are the biggest suck-ass ever, Kellen Markham!” Marcella thundered. “You played right into her hands!” Throwing the back of her hand over her forehead, she sighed dramatically. “Oh, Kellen. Boo to the hoo. All I have to do is let my big, innocent eyes get all watery and I can wrap you right around my widdle finger.”

This time Kellen looked directly through her, ignoring her taunts and rising to give Delaney a hug and a kiss on top of her head. He made a big deal of looking around the room. “I think she’s gone now. So I’m gonna hit the bathroom before I hit the road.” Strolling out of the kitchen, a smug smile on his close-to-perfect face, he made a hard right for the guest bathroom, with Marcella right behind him.

She stopped just short of smacking into Kellen’s wide back as she fell through the door of Delaney’s mosaic-tiled bathroom. “Hey!” she called out with a sharp snap that bounced with the acoustics of the bathroom walls.

He cringed before pivoting on his heel, his expression playful. “Is privacy too much to ask?”

“Like you have anything that impressive to see,” she taunted. Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared her down, his expression thundercloudish.

“Pay attention, noob. You and me? We’re not doing anything together.” And not just because it would make her yearn for all the things she couldn’t have all over again. While she’d restlessly roamed today, she’d realized the distance between herself and her mad crush had been good for her. There were no more earthbound nights spent wondering what if she’d been just some human girl who was friends with Delaney and not a sullied demon? Would Kellen have been as attracted to her as she was to him?

On Chez Dreary, though she’d thought of him often, she’d been able to let some of it go due to the fact that if she couldn’t have pursued him before, she definitely couldn’t now. There was a comfort to finding that kind of peace. And now he’d gone and fucked it all up by promising something to Delaney he had no right to promise.