1 Straight to Hell (17 page)

“No.”  I whispered back.  “I think he ran away.”

His eyes opened wider.  “How did you make him do that?”

“I got lucky, I guess.”

The office door opened and the secretary called out, “DuShawn?”

My little companion got off the bench.  “I wish I’d get lucky like you,” he said.  “My demon won’t go away.  He keeps me up all night.”  As he walked into Alan’s office, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and hung his head like he’d already given up.

Once again, I was waiting for the girls when they came home from school.

“What now,” Ariel said when she saw me.  That morning, I’d noticed that my glamour’s hold on Ari was fading.  But now I saw that it had worn off completely.  Ari was back to being my little hell cat.

“Fight club,” I said.

“Ah, hell.”  She slung her backpack onto the table.  “It was a
joke
, Auntie Lilly.  Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” I said.

Grace raced past us, looking as worried as Drinking Tea did when he heard the vacuum cleaner start up.

“Ari, I’m worried about you.  Mrs. Wallace is worried, too.”

Ari dug in the cupboard for a box of cereal.  “Okay, no more fight club.  I promise.  Feel better now?”

“Not really, no.  Why were you doing it?”

“Because.”  She’d already shut me out, and I knew from experience that I’d get nothing from her by talking or threatening or even crying.  Ari was the champion of stonewalling.  Even the psychiatrist I’d sent her to hadn’t been able to get a thing out of her.  Yesterday’s stunt with calling the school had worked, but I couldn’t count on it to work again.

So, with no other recourse, I turned to my demon.  “You’re right, Ari.  I worry about you too much.  You’ve got things under control, don’t you?”  I spoke softly, like I was trying to hypnotize her.  “Now why don’t you tell me what this fight club thing is all about.”

Not only did Ariel not succumb to the effects of my demon, she flipped me off and ran upstairs, slamming the bedroom door behind her.  Maybe it was because I was exhausted, or maybe it was as William had said – that seducing people who’d been having second thoughts was very difficult – but my succubus was completely ineffective.

Before I could chase after Ari, the phone rang.  I would have ignored it, but at the sound of her dad’s voice on the machine, Grace raced down the stairs to answer.  “Hi, Dad!”  I hated how cheerful she sounded whenever she talked to him.  “Yeah, she’s right here.”

Without bothering to say ‘hello’, Ted said, “I’m not buying a French horn.  Adelaide and I discussed it, and we both think Grace is far too young for such an expensive instrument.”

I was about to tell him to explain that to Grace himself, but he hung up.

“So did he say when it’s coming,” Grace asked, her eyes alight.  Unfortunately, I’d already told her that her father was buying her the horn.  Stupid, stupid mistake! I should have known that even a seductress couldn’t compete with an embittered mother-in-law.

“Sorry, Love.  There won’t be a French horn.  Not for a while.  But you can have piano lessons.”

It’s like I’d tripped a wire on an explosive.  “I don’t want stupid piano lessons!  I want a French horn.  You promised me I could get one!”  Grace burst off the couch.  “You never do anything you promise!  You promised Dad that you’d marry him and love him forever, and you didn’t do that, either.  You’re a liar!”

I let her run upstairs, afraid that if I kept her in the room, I’d slap her.

And then, right on cue, Jasmine walked in through the front door.  “I don’t know why the
hell
you thought I wanted to work at a friggin’ bagel shop, Lil, but thanks for making me waste my day.”  She flung her purse on the couch.  “Now, I even
smell
like bagels.”  She wrinkled her nose as she took off her coat.

“Wait?  You got the job?”  At last, some good news.

“Yeah, but I’m not going back.  They wanted me at work at
six
tomorrow.  Six in the
morning! 
So I told them I quit.”  She glared at me.  “From now on, if you want someone to get a job, then you get one!  You don’t do anything but lay around all day anyhow.”

And that’s when I came apart.  Literally.

I don’t remember much about those next few moments except for feeling like my ribs were cracking open and my heart was exploding and the deep, dark thing that had taken up residence inside my body was breaking free.  My vision became a hazy red, and a steady roar filled my ears.  Once more, I’d become angry without meaning to, but this was much, much worse than what had gone on in Alan’s office.  I’m pretty sure that I birthed a monster that afternoon.

I don’t know what would have happened if Tommy hadn’t walked in the door just then, but thank gods he did.  Distantly, I heard him ask, “What the hell is going on in here?”

His voice drew me back from whatever vicious place I’d been in, and I regained my senses to see that he stood in the doorway, two bags of spilled bagels at his feet.  Then I realized that I was looming over Jas who was cringing by the kitchen door.  She wasn’t crying, but her face was pale as bone, and her eyes were huge.  Her lips trembled.  “I’m sorry Lilith,” she said, her voice small and meek.

I gaped at her, then turned helplessly to Tommy who was staring at me in open-mouthed amazement.  “I don’t know what happened,” I said.  Which, of course, wasn’t true.  I knew exactly what had happened: I’d allowed the demon inside me to take over, and, for a moment, I’d become Miss Spry.  Sick with shame, I meekly began picking up the spilled bagels and returning them to their sacks.  “I’ve been under a lot of pressure, what with my mom and Ted and all.”

Jas ran to Tommy and put her head against his chest.  Tommy remained perfectly calm, but he eyed me mistrustfully.  “I understand.  But for my own peace of mind, I need to know: do you have a gun in the house.”

His question shocked me.  “No!  Of course not.”

“Good.”  He put his arms around the quivering Jasmine.  “Be sure you keep it that way.”

I was deeply wounded, knowing that he didn’t trust me to not hurt my family. But at the same time, I realized that he was right.  I’d become dangerous.

That night, Tommy moved in.

He never said he was moving in; he said he was crashing for a few days.  He also never said he was there to protect Jas, Grace, and Ari, but it was pretty clear from the way he eyeballed me any time we were together that he thought it was only a matter of time before I went postal again.  And while I’m sure he had no idea who or what I was, it was clear that he knew something was up.

Although Tommy’s constant prattle about spirituality and the Great Universal Power wore on my nerves, even I had to admit that he was in touch with something that most people couldn’t recognize.  He had an uncanny knack for seeing into people and knowing what was really going on inside their heads.  Even Ariel’s. 
Especially
Ariel’s. 

Tommy was the only person I’d met who was able to reach into Ari and find the places where she was still a normal kid.  For example, one day, he got her to make Valentine’s cards.  Not cards with bloody hearts or ironic messages like ‘I love you like I love hemorrhoids’ (which is what I’d seen her do before), but real honest-to-goodness cards with pictures of dogs and monkeys and shooting stars.  She was flushed with pride when I hung one on the front of the refrigerator.

But as much as I liked Tommy, adding another person into our already overcrowded townhouse sent my stress level through the roof.  Because once he’d made the living room his domain by sleeping on the couch, there were precious few places the rest of us could go.  Plus, the brand-new washing machine was
always
running, and the fridge was
always
empty and the bathroom…  Well, I’d rather not go there, and neither would you had you lived with us.

So, knowing Tommy wouldn’t leave unless he was convinced I wouldn’t hurt my loved ones, I did my best to show him that I could play nicely with everyone.  Although Grace, of course, was no trouble, Jas and Ari pushed me to the limit.  But even though I gritted my teeth so hard that I could have compacted coal into diamonds, I didn’t lose my cool.

That is, not until Ariel walked into the kitchen holding Drinking Tea by his tail.

The cat was yowling and fighting like a banshee, Ari was crying and, once again, I lost it.  I was out of my chair in a second.  “Put that cat down right now!”  She dropped the cat, Tea streaked away, and I grabbed her shoulder and shook it.  “What were you thinking?”

A thousand bits of advice swarmed my mind like gnats.  Count to ten.  Take a deep breath.  Leave the house if you have to.  But instead of doing something rational, I kept a vise-like grip on my niece’s shoulder.

“Ari, you shouldn’t have done that,” Tommy said.  He and I had been having coffee together while he told me for the hundredth time about his trip.  The only reason I let him continue to talk about it was because I loved how the idea made his eyes shine. 

 “Why would you want to hurt Tea like that?” Tommy asked.

Like me, Ariel was an ugly crier.  Her face, normally pale, had grown blotchy.  “I didn’t know it would hurt him.”

“How could you not know!”  I wasn’t quite at Miss Spry level, but I could feel the pressure building.  If I’d had a gauge on my forehead, my needle would have been in the red.

Ari cried harder.  “I swear I didn’t know.  A kid in my class says he does it all the time.”

Ever-so-gently, Tommy put his hand on mine.  My fingers relaxed.  Carefully, he drew me away so that he could come between me and my niece.  Then he knelt down so that the two of them were face to face.  “You really hurt Tea, you know that?  It would be like someone picking you up by your hair.”

She pressed her face in her hands.  “I’m so sorry.”

Tommy’s quiet expression didn’t change.  “How do you think Drinking Tea feels now?”

Ariel shrugged.

“How would you feel if someone picked you up that way?”

“Scared?”

“Of what?”

“Of me.”  She’d stopped crying, but her lower lip still trembled.  “Like I might do it again.”

Tommy nodded somberly.  “Do you think he’ll want to curl up on your bed when you’re sleeping?”

She looked away and shook her head.  “He hates me!”

“He’s afraid of you,” Tommy corrected.  “He thinks you aren’t safe.  But you might be able to fix that by convincing him you’ll never hurt him again.  It’s going to take a lot of time before he trusts you, but I’m sure you can make it happen.  Animals can be incredibly forgiving.”

“I’ll never do it again!  I swear I won’t!”  Ari flung her arms around Tommy who hugged her tightly.  At times like this, I wondered if Tommy housed his own seducing demon because I’d never seen Ariel take to a human in this way before.

Ari hesitantly touched my arm.  “Sorry, Aunt Lilly.  Do you hate me?”

“Of course not!”  I didn’t understand her, of course, but I couldn’t hate her.  I hugged her.  “Go find Tea, and give him a kitty treat.  That might be a good way to start making up.”

“I can’t imagine what gets into that child’s head,” I said when she’d left.  “‘I didn’t know I was hurting the cat’.  Really!”  I refilled our coffee mugs and sat back at the table.  “Where on earth did you get all your patience from,” I asked him.

Tommy looked into the depths of his coffee and shrugged.