The Sexorcist (5 page)

Chapter Seven—Floral Massacre, No Survivors

Brittany was in love. Again. This time it was with the flower market.

Her parents’ landscaper had given her directions to an early morning gathering of florists, growers, and gardening enthusiasts the likes of which she had never seen. It was an explosion of color. The scent was decadence itself—a lush floral tide that hit her as soon as she stepped out of her car. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. Heaven.

Rickety folding cafeteria-style tables were set up in a twisting maze around the small park where the market was held once a week. Flowers of every variety she could imagine spilled over every surface. Buyers and sellers shouted over one another as they bustled down the narrow lanes left between the tables.

If she couldn’t find flowers for Lucy’s wedding here, her mother would probably disown her. No true Hylton-VanDeere would be so inept.

Brittany had spent the entire previous evening making wedding checklists. All the items she had listed were probably taken care of, but she wanted to be well equipped for any disaster. She was beyond ready to take the reigns of the Cartwright-Cox wedding, from flowers to cakes to whatever else needed doing. Brittany was prepared.

She slapped on her brightest smile and dove into the fray.

Fifteen minutes later, Brittany decided that while she was still in love with the flower
market
, she was somewhat less enamored of the flower
sellers
. And she had learned that the very mention of the Cartwright-Cox wedding had florists crossing themselves and backing away in horror. The word
cursed
had been used. More than once.

Her smile was starting to feel a bit tight, but Brittany kept it plastered in place and wound around to the opposite side of the market—where hopefully the growers hadn’t overheard her mentioning the wedding-that-shall-remain-nameless.

A little, old man popped up in front of her, blocking her path and smiling broadly. Brittany took an instinctive step back, startled by the flash of his teeth.

They were stunningly white—probably dentures—but the oddest thing was there seemed to be too many of them. She shook her head, certain she was imagining things. The little man’s teeth were rather small—like the rest of him—and close together, so of course it would
seem
as if he had an abnormal number. But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Teeth came in sets. You didn’t get extras.

“Pretty flowers for the pretty lady?” he asked. His voice sounded oily rather than aged and carried just the slightest trace of an accent.

Brittany ran her hands down her arms, feeling like she had been greased by the sound. “Er, well, yes,” she said slowly, battling down the urge to say no and walk quickly in the other direction.

He was just a little old man. A
perfectly normal
little old man. In a cardigan, for heaven’s sake! So why did she feel like she’d just brushed against a snake? A very poisonous snake. With too many fangs.

He tapped his chest with one finger. “Any flower you want. Trust in Mikos. I’ll take good care of you.”

“Mikos. What an odd name.”

His smile twisted strangely and Brittany kicked herself. Great. She’d just insulted the name of the nice little old man offering her flowers. The
only
flower seller who hadn’t run in the opposite direction as word spread that she was the new wedding planner for
that wedding
. She couldn’t afford to alienate Mikos.

“And how lovely,” she added quickly. “Is it Greek?”

The too-many-teeth smile returned slowly. “Er, yes. Greek. You want flowers?”

Brittany forced her own smile to brighten, ignoring the twitching at the base of her spine that urged her to run back to her car and not look back. “I’m planning an…
event
in three weeks and I will need a variety of arrangements. Centerpieces, decorations for wall sconces, and, er, some, ahem, bouquets. And perhaps a boutonniere or two.”

There really was no getting around it. It was impossible to even describe the flowers she needed without making it painfully obvious that her
event
was a wedding.

But Mikos didn’t even blink. In fact, she didn’t think he’d blinked once since appearing in front of her. Like a snake. Brittany shivered. Did he even have eyelids?

“Whatever you need,” he said, smiling toothily and nodding with steady bobs of his head.

“The, er, guest of honor is particularly fond of lilies.”

“Lilies.” Bob, bob, bob went his head.

Brittany found herself nodding along with Mikos and forced herself to stop, feeling a bit disoriented. His head kept bobbing, the motion oddly hypnotic. She cleared her throat, again feeling the urge to escape scratching its way up her spine. She had to leave. Now.

“Do you have a card?” she asked abruptly. “Can I visit you in your shop?”

“A card?” he repeated, seeming irritated by the question.

“Or you could just tell me the name of your store. I’m sure my car’s GPS can find it. So handy, GPS. What did we do before we had it, eh? Calling information all the time.” She was babbling. She knew it, but the words seemed to fill the air between them like a buffer, a safe-zone, and she just kept throwing more words into that space, trying to make it wider. “I really must be going now,” she said, backing away. “I can’t be late for work. It’s my first day. New job. I need to make a good impression. Begin as you mean to go on, and all that. Thank you for your time. Goodbye!”

She turned and began rushing away. She got about three feet before the dual realizations hit that she
hadn’t
gotten the name of his shop and that she was, in fact, running away from a man who had to be sixty if he was a day and had been nothing but friendly to her. She tried to slow her feet, but they kept on hurrying toward her car—as if they knew better than she did where she ought to be going right now.

Brittany glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see Mikos gazing after her with a rather puzzled expression on his face. She was behaving exceptionally oddly. Even for her.

What she saw instead sent a wash of ice water rocketing through her bloodstream and had her breaking into a run.

He wasn’t watching her walk away.

He was following her.

And he had
far
too many teeth.

Rows of them. Like a shark. Small and pointed and vicious. Some of them looking more like fangs than teeth and... Was that gore? Were there little bloody bits snagged on that snaggletooth?

Brittany ran, her feet beating into the hard-packed earth of the park. She pressed a hand against her chest, the banging of her heart suddenly loud enough to drown out the chatter of the florists.

Upon later reflection, she would acknowledge that, while running down narrow pathways boxed in on either side by unstable tables, one really ought to take her eyes off the creepy man with too many teeth and actually look where she was going.

She didn’t see the first table she slammed into. Nor did she really have any awareness of the fact that it flipped wildly in the air and landed on another table, destroying the contents of both. After she ricocheted off and overturned another table, then wildly flailed into another, she turned and started looking where she was running. But she didn’t stop running.

Mikos was still behind her.

Brittany sprinted down the aisles amid the hysterical shrieks of the flower sellers. She leapt over tables—and, having very little experience leaping tables, managed to topple fully half of those she attempted to leap. She dodged between rows and the outstretched arms of the florists trying to stop her mad progress. She sprinted toward the parking lot, pursued by Mikos and the screams of those whose wares she’d demolished so thoroughly.

The Audi bleeped cheerfully, unlocking as she approached. Brittany threw herself into the driver’s seat.

She would pay for the flowers. She would send a personal apology to every florist, gardener, and greenhouse owner in the state, but right now she needed to
get away
.

Brittany slammed the key into the ignition and started the car, glancing back once at the destruction she’d wrought. A trowel came flying toward her car, thunking off the window next to her face. Thankfully it hadn’t been thrown hard enough to smash the glass, but the angry mob of florists were getting closer now, armed with hoes and nasty little three-pronged hand-rake thingies. What the heck were those things called?

Then Brittany caught sight of Mikos, standing on the edge of the crowd. He was no longer advancing toward her, just watching with a sly, toothy smile. Her heart lurched forcefully and she lost her breath in a rush. She threw the car into reverse and sped out of the parking lot, but not before she took one last look back at the shark-like face of Mikos.

In the morning sunlight, she almost thought she saw a pulse of angry red come from his eyes, but she must have been seeing things. She was too far away to see his eyes—or his teeth—clearly. Wasn’t she?

She was panicking. Being utterly ridiculous. There was nothing wrong with that little man.

Perhaps there
had
been some problem with her medication. She was on a new regimen that was supposed to have fewer side effects, but what if they just didn’t know about all of them yet? Could hallucinations and paranoia be side effects?

The miles flew under the car. Brittany grew calmer the farther she drove away from the market. At least, she grew less frightened. The fear was replaced by bubbling hysteria. She kept her hands steady on the wheel as a string of giggles poured out of her mouth.

She’d just destroyed the flower market. For no reason.

Tears pushed at the back of her eyes, but she swallowed them down, along with the hysterical laughter pressing at the back of her throat.

There was a logical explanation for this. She was not having a side-effect. There was really something wrong with Mikos. She believed in her own sanity. She believed in her instincts—which had been telling her in no uncertain terms to get the heck away from that flower market. She believed there was something really freaking wrong with Mikos.

Brittany took a deep, cleansing breath. She believed in herself. And so would Karma. Karma would know what to do. Brittany took another breath and then took stock of her surroundings. She was already halfway to Karmic Consultants. She was going to be five minutes early for her first day of work.

If she hadn’t already ransacked a flower market this morning, that might be a good sign.

Then Brittany groaned. “Oh, fudge. I’ll never get flowers for Lucy’s wedding now.”

Chapter Eight—Fear the Wrath of Mrrgack!

Fifteen minutes later, Brittany stood in Karma’s office and kept her head held high as her new boss studied her with an inscrutable expression. “I may have burned some bridges with the local florists, but it might not have been entirely my fault. I think it was a demon.”

Karma arched one eyebrow and nodded her toward a chair. “Perhaps you’d like to elaborate on that statement,” she said in her smooth, smoky voice.

Brittany perched on the edge of the chair, resisting the urge to bounce excitedly. Karma hadn’t dismissed her! She looked interested. As if Brittany might have crucial insights into the situation. A little shiver of delight wriggled in Brittany’s stomach, but she managed not to squirm with it.

“A man with shark teeth and red eyes chased me through the flower market this morning. I knocked over, erm, a few flower tables, so the florists started coming after me with those three-pronged thingies.” Brittany crooked three fingers in an approximation of the little rake things. “I think I’m probably banned from the flower market, but don’t worry. I’ll find a way to get flowers for Lucy’s wedding.”

Karma blinked slowly. “Red eyes.”

“And shark teeth.” The happy wriggle in her stomach twisted and curdled. Karma’s face hadn’t instantly lit with enthusiasm. She looked pensive, but Brittany was afraid it was my-secretary-is-a-hallucinating-nincompoop pensive rather than my-secretary-has-brilliant-demon-identifying-skills pensive.

“I see.” Karma reached for the phone on her desk and quickly dialed.

Brittany held her breath. Who was she calling? The flower people? A loony bin? Why hadn’t she said anything? What did
I see
mean, anyway? What did she see? Why did people even say that when they clearly weren’t
seeing
things? Why didn’t they say
I understand
or
I comprehend
or something like that? Why not
I hear
or
I smell
? Seeing seemed so arbitrary.

“Rodriguez?” Karma’s voice interrupted Brittany’s internal babble. “We have need of your expertise.”

The happy wriggle was back, amplified a thousand times. She felt like she was bursting with happy wriggles and this time Brittany couldn’t resist giving a little squirm of joy in her chair. Her boss
believed
her. And she was going to get to see Rodriguez again.

She was beginning to have very fond feelings for that shark-toothed demon who had incited her to do a one-woman-wrecking-crew act on the flower market.

“Are you fucking kidding me? She thinks a demon chased her through the flower market? Just how nuts is she?”

Karma glared at her favorite exorcist. The supposedly crazy secretary was waiting in the lobby while Karma briefed Rodriguez, who was proving more reluctant to lend his demonological expertise than she had anticipated.

It was true Karma had herself entertained some doubts about Brittany yesterday, but after she’d volunteered to help with the wedding—and submitted to a thorough background check—she had decided that young Miss Hylton-VanDeere was on the up-and-up. And it was about damn time Rodriguez got onboard. Willing wedding planners weren’t exactly thick on the ground at this point.

“She isn’t crazy. She’s just a little…different. And she seems quite convinced she saw a demon.” Karma steepled her fingers and looked at Rodriguez over her manicure. “I’d like you to talk to her. Ascertain whether she did, in fact, have a demonic encounter.”

He snorted. “I don’t have to talk to her. I’ll ascertain it right now. She didn’t.”

Karma narrowed her eyes. Rodriguez was rarely difficult and never without cause. She was missing a piece of the puzzle. “Is there a reason you are so reluctant to talk to her?”

“I exorcised a demon from her car yesterday afternoon.” He pulled a rosary out of his pocket and began absently thumbing the beads as they talked. “Now ask me how a demon got into her car. I’ve got twenty bucks that say Ms. Oh-So-Innocent summoned it to her very own fifty-thousand-dollar ride, just so I could pull it back out again.”

Karma found that theory distinctly unlikely, but she gamely asked, “Why would she do that?”

“So she could run into me—literally—flirt with me, and get ahead of the other bored socialites who are in on the bang-the-Mexican-exorcist wager.”

“You think Brittany wants to sleep with you to win a bet?” Karma mentally ran through the brief time she had seen Brittany and Rodriguez together the previous day.

Brittany had certainly seemed intrigued by the exorcist—she’d looked like she wanted to crawl all over him and breed a dozen little half-Mexican babies off him, actually—but Karma had a feeling the attraction had nothing to do with winning a wager. And her hunches in those matters tended to be reliable. One of her less-advertised skills was a sort of matchmaking radar, and it was definitely humming now. But if Rodriguez was reluctant…

“If you fear for your virtue, I’ll ensure Brittany understands you are not to be a notch in her bedpost—I’ll even lie and tell her office dating is against company policy if you like—but you still have to speak with her. And if there is any possibility her demon was in fact a demon, I will need you to keep an eye on her. At least until the wedding.” Karma was beginning to have a very bad feeling about the wedding plans.

He shoved the rosary back in his pocket. “Fine. I’ll talk to her. I’ll even watch her, if it comes to that. But that’s it. She’d better keep her damn hands to herself.”

Karma smiled. Rodriguez took the smile as agreement. He didn’t know her well enough to see the “We’ll see about that” lurking around the corners of her lips.

Rodriguez looked back and forth between his boss and the smiling brunette who was quickly becoming the bane of his existence. He’d been called in to consult on stranger cases in the past, but,
Madre de Dios
, how much crazy could a man be expected to swallow? “Shark teeth?”

“And red eyes,” Brittany supplied cheerfully, bouncing on the edge of the chair where she perched. Karma had called her to join them in her office and it had been a nonstop train to the ridiculous ever since.

“And you
saw
this,” he repeated for the third time, doubt lacing his tone.

“I did.” Brittany didn’t seem to have caught on to the fact that he didn’t entirely believe her story. She gazed at him with absolute conviction pouring out of her big brown eyes.

If eyes were the window to the soul, Brittany Hylton-VanDeere didn’t believe in drapes. Or shudders. Or blinds. Every thought was right there on display. Her soul was a goddamn exhibitionist.

It was
possible
she had seen exactly what she thought she’d seen. Demons in corporeal form often had the physical anomalies she described. But the average person rarely saw them. And when they did, it was almost always described as a kind of mirage, like they’d caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of their eye, but once they looked at the demon straight on, they saw someone completely innocuous, though oddly unnerving.

Human intuition often registered the peculiar
other
ness of demons, but for Brittany to have been chased through a market by a man with shark teeth and glowing red eyes? It stretched credibility a little far.

It was much more likely Brittany had just made up the demon story to get him back here. He still hadn’t ruled out the possibility she’d summoned a demon to possess her car just to meet him. She probably played tennis with Katrina Sullivan.

“A cultivator!”

Brittany’s pale skin flushed pink as he and Karma both turned to stare at her.

“The three-pronged-rake thingie. That’s what it’s called. Don’t you just hate it when you can’t remember a word?”

And just when he was convinced she was a manipulative viper, she came out with something like that.

Rodriguez’s lips twitched, but he didn’t let himself smile.

His brain kept telling him she was a con artist. Probably. The jury was still out. His gut kept arguing that she was the real deal. Something about her triggered every protective instinct he had, which was confusing the hell out of him since he was three-quarters convinced she was playing him.

It had to be the Bambi eyes. He wasn’t usually such a sucker.

“Rodriguez?” Karma prodded. “Could it have been a demon?”

He dropped onto the chair next to Brittany’s. Time to burst her bubble. “Brittany, I don’t think you saw what you thought you saw.”

Her open easy smile morphed into a glower that was just as effective at telegraphing her irritation as her smile was at broadcasting her joy. “Why not? Because I’m not an exorcist?”

“Exactly. If just anyone could see through a demon’s glamour, they’d be spotted on every street corner.”

Her doe eyes flared wide. “
Every
street corner?”

Rodriguez groaned internally. He was just making it worse. Now she’d be seeing them on every corner. He’d be called in here twelve times a day to deal with her hallucinations. “You aren’t tuned to their energy. Did you see the demon in the car yesterday?”

Brittany wrinkled her nose. “Well, no. But I used to see other things.”

He winced. Great. She had a history of delusions.

She must have seen the wince. A surprisingly fierce expression flashed across her face. “Why do you have such a hard time believing I could have seen a demon? Don’t you see them all the time? Why is it so impossible to believe I might have a little bit of magic in me too? I’m very disappointed in you, Mr. Rodriguez. I expected more of a man who ought to have green eyes.”

He frowned, irrationally offended that she didn’t like his eyes. She didn’t give him a chance to defend his eye color, plowing on.

“I saw a man with shark teeth and red eyes.” She planted a hand on her hip and leaned forward in her chair. She’d worn her hair loose today and the brown curls fell forward around her face. She shoved them back irritably. “He might not have had them the first time I looked at him or the entire time I was talking to him, but he made me feel all ookie, so I ran away. And when I looked back he had
shark teeth
. He chased me all through the market to my car and when I got there he watched me drive away with
red eyes
. I am not imagining things! You people are supposed to believe in this stuff!” Her voice shook on the last word.

If she was conning them, she was one hell of an actress. If she
wasn’t
, he was a prize ass.

There was a chance she’d really seen a corporeal demon, and that was enough to shake anyone up. And here he was giving her shit and treating her like she was nuts.

Real sensitive, dipshit.

“Brittany…”

“Why is it so hard for you to believe me?” she demanded.

He cut her off before she could work herself up again. “I believe you.”

“You do?” The quaver in her voice hit him right in the gut.

When she blinked those damn Bambi eyes at him, Rodriguez had to squelch a powerful urge to wrap her in his arms and croon that everything was going to be okay now that he was here. She made him feel like he should wrap her in cotton and keep her safe from the big, bad world, but that wouldn’t do either of them any good.

“I believe you,” he repeated. “You were right. It was a demon.”
Possibly
. He still wasn’t entirely sure she’d seen a demon, but he certainly believed she thought she had.

“It was?” Brittany murmured softly, as if all of her conviction had drained right out of her the second he agreed with her.

If she had seen a demon, it would have to be one mother of a powerful one. Only badass corporeal demons would have the teeth and eyes she described. And if that was what she’d run into, she had bigger problems than a few spilled flowers. “I need you to think carefully and tell us
everything
he said to you. Every word.”

Brittany nodded, her brow wrinkling in concentration. “He told me I was pretty and offered me flowers. Introduced himself and, um, said he could get me whatever I needed for the wedding. I remember that very clearly.”

Rodriguez leaned toward her so suddenly he nearly fell off his chair. “He introduced himself? You mean he gave you his name?”

Demon names had power. Power over them, in the hands of an exorcist. But that same power could also be flipped and used against humans in the hands of a strong-enough demon. They were never careless about giving out their names. If he had given it to Brittany…

“Mm-hm. He said his name was mrrgle—” Brittany choked and broke off in a fit of coughing.

A sour taste rose in the back of Rodriguez’s throat. He had a really bad feeling about this.

“Excuse me,” Brittany said, recovering. “He was called mrrgack—” This time she doubled over with the coughs racking her body.

“Shit.” Rodriguez hadn’t even realized he sworn aloud until Brittany looked up at him, still hacking away, with a reprimand in her watering eyes.

Karma rose quickly, coming around her desk to Brittany’s side. “What’s happening?”

“He gave her his name,” Rodriguez replied, dragging his hand across his face.
Damn it
. The intensity of the dread that spiked through him was startling.

Brittany had stopped coughing, and held one hand at her throat. Her big Bambi eyes were filled with confusion. He wanted to reassure her, but he wasn’t going to lie. This was bad news.

“He gave her his name,” he repeated, still speaking to Karma, though his eyes were locked on Brittany’s. “But he didn’t give her permission to use it. She can’t give it to you or me. And if she’s the only human holding it, then he will always know where she is. A demon will always follow his name.”

Brittany’s face drained of color when he mentioned the demon’s ability to track her, her pale skin growing nearly translucent. “I don’t want his name. How do I give it back?”

“You can’t. He has to give it away to someone else. Or someone like me has to take it from him.”

“So do that,” she told him, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to chase away the goose bumps there. “Take it from him.”

He shook his head. He hated to disappoint the look of hero-worshipping faith in her eyes, but there was no helping it. “I can’t. Not without performing a banishment.”