The Devil Dances

"A fantastic amalgam of detective novel and contemporary fantasy, with a hefty dose of the supernatural and a side order of Christian theology. Fast, well-written, and intriguing."
~Goodreads Review of
The Devil You Know
(Nick Englebrecht #1)

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“We walk where the devil dances.”
—Firefighter’s Creed

ike a good horror novel, it started with a victim.

I’d thought I’d seen a lot—everything, really—working Vice down in New York. But nothing could have prepared me for this.

There are times when I gotta hand it to the other side for their creativity.

That day, Vivian Summers was sitting on the edge of the display case where Morgana and I keep our more expensive items like rose crystals, wands, and difficult-to-find Wiccan how-to DVDs. She was swinging her legs like a little girl and sucking on a big, round watermelon 
lollipop.

“Something old or something new tonight?” she was asking me, offering a narrow-eyed, cattish smile that made her look both twelve and twenty-two at the same time.

The shop still had customers milling around, even though it was nearly midnight. They were perusing the books on magick and looking over ceremonial robes. It was late October, and we always kept Curiosities open extra-late around Samhain (that’s Halloween to you non-heathens), when many of the local covens and sole practitioners stopped in to clean us out.

I sat behind the counter on a stool, looking over our distributor’s catalog, and said, “Something old. David, maybe.”

I sensed more than saw Vivian rolling her eyes. She waved away the powerful cinnamon incense filling the shop and said, “David’s boring. You always say David.”

“I like David. He’s a med student up at Penn University, responsible, doesn’t do drugs, and has his shit together. Plus, he’s nice.”

Vivian sucked back on her lollipop. I heard it clink against her teeth. “Nice is boring. And you’re acting like some old married man, Nick.”

I chose to ignore her statement. In response, she reached out and snatched away the catalog. “I know. We could drive down to Philly, see what’s going down at the Crocodile Club.”

I sighed and looked up at my main squeeze—her rose red lips and mahogany hair, her milk-white skin—then realized that by thinking of her that way, as my
main squeeze
, I was completely dating myself. I really was like an old married man. Every week we had this conversation, and every week I lost my argument.

When I’d started dating Vivian Summers, she’d warned me that she had special needs. Specifically, she liked to swing. I was a little surprised, but not particularly offended. Thus, we’d made it our ritual to pick up some sweet, horny guy on Friday and share him until Saturday morning—but only so long as I approved of him. I had standards, after all.

Over the past year, we’d made some pretty solid connections in the local swing community, David among them. Yes, this is rural, northeastern Pennsylvania. Yes, we have a swing community. I know. It surprised me too.

I’d hoped the diversity that swinging offered would settle Vivian down. But with Vivian, familiarity bred boredom, and she wasn’t ready to settle on the handful of guys I had carefully screened. No, Vivian wanted greener pastures. Problem was, I wasn’t so sure how green a place like the Crocodile Club was. It was full of tough industrial goths, some with anger management issues and drug addictions. The last thing I needed was waking up in bed with some dude taking a switchblade to our throats. We were daemons, but we weren’t Supermen. Cut us, do we not bleed?

“Compromise,” I suggested, smiling and turning on the charm. It
usually
worked. “I’ll take you to see K’s Choice at the World Cafe, and then we’ll swing by David’s place since he’s close by. How does that sound?”

Vivian kicked her legs, clad in knee-high black pleather boots, in an annoyed way. It made her little black goth dress with its neon pink skulls ride up, which at least afforded me some entertainment. Vivian was short, not too thin, with a lot of natural curves, and that was how I liked her.

“Buzz kill,” she declared and sucked the lollipop back into her mouth with a pop.

I was trying to frame a new argument when Morgana floated out from the back room, dressed in a long, witchy green chiffon gown and said, “Ass off the glass,” in a tone of voice that could have frozen over a small portion of hell.

Vivian, who knew better than to lock horns with my business partner, hopped off the counter and came around the side so she could sit in my lap instead. Two weeks ago, Vivian hadn’t listened, and Morgana had literally stolen her voice for a day. Just pulled it right out, leaving her with a frog in her throat. She couldn’t speak at all. Since that day, Vivian had learned the error of her ways, and now endeavored to behave when Morgana was around. Mostly.

Morgana noticed our compromised position as she was helping out a customer purchasing a tincture from the back room. As if to add insult to injury, Vivian made a point of running her hand up the back of my neck while Morgana watched. When she was done ringing the customer up, Morgana floated over to us and gave me a sharp look with her pale, icy blue eyes. “I would appreciate it, Nick, if you wouldn’t discuss your sex life in our place of business.”

I tipped my head in acknowledgment. “Won’t happen again.”

Vivian turned on me. “Are you actually going to put up with her talking to you like that?”

Morgana crossed her arms under her pert breasts. “You can talk to me, Vivian. You don’t need to go through Nick like some kind of interpreter.”

“Fine,” Vivian said, turning back to Morgana. “Interpret this: you
really
need to get laid, old lady, you know that?”

Morgana narrowed her steely eyes, and I felt the air prickle around me, the way it does during a particularly bad electrical storm in the mountains. It actually lifted the long, platinum locks of Morgana’s hair a few inches. I decided then that it was time I intervened. I rubbed Vivian’s shoulders to calm her and said, “Why don’t you go down the street and pick us up something from Sonic? We’re about to close up anyway. Then I’ll take you to Philly.”

Vivian thought about that. She, too, must have felt the charge in the air, because she rubbed at her shoulders before springing to her feet. “Gladly,” she said and gave me back my lollipop before she exited the store, angrily slamming the door on her way out.

I sucked it into my mouth, enjoying the peachy taste of Vivian’s lipstick mixing with the taste of watermelon while Morgana continued to glare at me over the counter. I gestured at her with the stick of my lollipop. “I got rid of her. What else do you want from me?”

The anger had drained out of Morgana’s face, making her look older and slightly more haggard, though not nearly as old as she really was. Like Stevie Nicks, Morgana never seemed to age, though I suspected she was well into her fifties—if not older.

“She has problems, Nick,” she told me in a low, somber voice. “Problems that go beyond just being a daemon. And you’re not helping her much.”

“We all have problems.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No,” I told her, getting angry now. “I don’t. I do exactly what you ask me to do. I don’t let her go upstairs. I don’t even let her in the backroom, though God knows she’d actually learn something if she went back there. So she’s in the shop. It’s a public place. You can’t throw her out of a public place of business, Morgana.” I flipped our distributor’s catalog at her, marked with all the items we needed to restock in the next few days.

Morgana caught it but just shook her head. “She’s you, ten years ago, Nick. And, let’s face it, you weren’t exactly an angel back then.”

I smirked at that, couldn’t help myself. I was both more—and less—than an angel. Like Vivian, I was a daemon, a half-creature. But unlike Vivian, I actually knew what demon had sired me, not that I was ever likely to buy
him
a Father’s Day gift. The thought made me grateful that Morgana was my friend—even if she did drive me crazy sometimes. I hadn’t had many friends in the course of my life.

“You’re right, as usual. I was just like her, until someone came along and turned me around.” I took her hand and kissed it to make amends. The thing about us is we often got mad at each other, but we never stayed mad for long. “I wouldn’t be much without my Yoda, you know that.”

Morgana smiled a little, accepting my roundabout apology. “I worry about her. And you. She’s so young, so full of anger.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” I glanced around to make certain the last remaining customers were out of earshot. “She was systematically abused almost from the time she was a young girl. Sexually assaulted, neglected by her parents …”

“So how do you know she isn’t acting out with all these men you two pick up?”

“Because I know how to handle her. I know what she needs.”

“You’re enabling her, you mean.”

“Oh, please. Next, you’ll tell me I’ve corrupted her.”

She smiled at that. “Nick,” she said then in a serious tone of voice, “are you still teaching her?”