Читать книгу Straight By The Rules - Michelle Scott - Страница 12

Chapter Three

Back when I was fully human, I hadn’t realized how closely the physical, earthly realm connected with the spiritual one. Now that I could see the supernatural doorways, however, I understood that the world I’d been familiar with – the one involving mortgage payments and homework and television reality shows – was completely entangled with the otherworld. There are doorways, both Heaven’s and Hell’s, everywhere. Sometimes, it was impossible not to stare at them, especially when I caught sight of a supernatural creature exiting or entering. While bargaining for vegetables at the busy, downtown farmers’ market a few days before, I’d dropped a carton of eggs because a small, horned demon had surprised me by crawling out from behind a display of watermelons.

No, I didn’t trust those doorways because they gave Helen ready access to me. Weeks before, when Helen had found that I’d tricked her by getting my daughter out of the contract, she’d been furious and sent that berserker demon after me. The beast had turned my nice, suburban home into a pile of rubble. Now, I was wary of living anyplace containing an otherworld doorway. Unfortunately, finding an apartment, let alone a house, without such a gateway was impossible. Every place I looked contained at least one supernatural entrance. Some had as many as five.

I compromised by renting the top floor of a subdivided mansion on the east side of the city. Although I counted six otherworldly doorways in the building, only two opened up inside my flat. The first stood in the middle of the living room wall, and I had barricaded it with the most immense flat-screen television I could buy. The TV wouldn’t stop a rampaging berserker, but it might stop other unwanted pests. The second doorway was in my bedroom. This one I vowed to use only for emergencies since I didn’t want anyone catching me appearing or disappearing into thin air.

After leaving William on the mountaintop, I avoided the convenient doorway in my bedroom. Instead, I used the one that opened up in the cramped, dreary basement next to the washing machine and dryer we shared with our downstairs neighbor.

The dryer finished tumbling the moment I stepped into the human world. I put the still-warm clothes into a basket and headed up the two flights of stairs to my apartment, which, once again, had become very crowded. Although my daughter was out of the country, Tommy, my niece Ariel, and my stepsister Jasmine now lived with me as well.

Tommy, propped up by several pillows, lay on the couch and stared listlessly at the TV. When I walked in, he eyed me warily. It was an unspoken agreement that we were never alone in the flat together. Because I had once seduced him in order to make Helen happy, Tommy had a reason to be cautious. And although I vowed never to do such a thing to him again, I couldn’t say the same for my succubus. To her, seduction was as natural as eating and breathing were to me.

To my relief, Jas walked into the room. When my dad had married Jasmine’s mother, they’d produced a perfectly gorgeous daughter. My stepsister had inherited the best parts from each of her parents: caramel-colored skin, hair like black silk, and exotic eyes from our father, and high cheekbones, long legs, and a perfect figure from her mother. All her life, Jas had acted like a spoiled beauty queen, but since Tommy’s accident, she’d become responsible. In fact, she took such good care of him that I didn’t need to do anything. Which was exactly how she wanted it.

“Time for your walk,” she told Tommy cheerfully.

“Not now,” he said. “I’m exhausted.”

“Dr. Cantor said you should get some exercise every day. It will help you heal.”

“I’m healing as quickly as I can, believe me.”

“I know you are, babe.” She leaned over the couch to kiss him on the lips, but he turned his head so that she got his cheek instead. Jas hid her disappointment by becoming brisk. “Let’s go. You need to get some sun. You look like a ghost. Doesn’t he, Lilith?”

Maybe a tall ghost with a football player’s build, a bald head, a dozen tattoos, and a line of metal studs in his forehead. But Jas was right; Tommy did look thin and pale. Not surprising considering that berserker demon Helen had sent after me had killed him instead. In fact, if I hadn’t rescued him, Tommy would still be in Hell’s waiting room.

“I’ll go for a walk later, Jas. I promise,” Tommy said. Even though he’d returned to the land of the living, his injuries had been severe. In the past three weeks, he’d undergone two surgeries to repair the damage. Most days, he lay on the couch, too sore to do anything but draw tattoo designs in his sketchpad.

“Well, let’s at least change your dressing,” she said.

Tommy sat up carefully, cringing at the pain. “I can do this myself, you know.”

“I don’t mind.”

She lifted his T-shirt, exposing his belly. When she tried to lift it higher, he clamped the material tightly against his chest. Since he’d last lived with us, Tommy had become very modest. Carefully, Jas removed the stained dressing, revealing a badly mangled tattoo and healing sutures. A little something to remember the berserker by.

I set down the laundry basket and began clearing Jasmine’s latest drugstore purchases from the cluttered coffee table. When I picked up a bag of cotton balls that had fallen to the floor, I noticed a strange bubble of energy beside the couch. Like the doorways leading into Hell, the energy had an otherworldly shine. Curious, I poked a finger into it, feeling the same, subtle shift that I did whenever I crossed Hell’s threshold. This thing was a micro-door. Something so small that only a mouse-sized demon could have crawled through. Wondering if I could plug it, I shoved several cotton balls inside, but they disappeared as if the little door was a mouth, eager for whatever I fed it.

“What are you doing?” Jas asked, interrupting my exploring.

“Nothing.” I got to my feet and dusted my knees. I’d keep my eye on that hole. Even a doorway that small worried me.

I went into the kitchen to throw away the trash, and Jas followed me to pour Tommy a glass of water. My eleven-year-old niece, Ariel, sat the table creating a triple-decker, peanut butter sandwich. She offered a smile that contrasted with her dyed black hair and ghoulish makeup. Now that it was summer, I’d tried to get her to wear something other than her black T-shirt and jeans, but she refused. She clung to her Gothic persona the way other kids clung to their teddy bears.

“I have a favor to ask you,” I said to Jasmine. “I’d like the apartment to myself tomorrow night.”

“Why?”

I had to broach this carefully. I didn’t want Jas jumping to conclusions. “I’ve invited someone over for dinner.”

“It’s not Corrine from downstairs is it?” Ariel asked. “Because I don’t like her. She wears too much perfume and is always trying to get me to wear pink.” She took an enormous bite of her sandwich.

“No, it’s not Corrine. His name is William.”

Jasmine’s eyes lit up. “Lilith! Are you serious? You actually have a date?!” She and Ariel high-fived one another. “What’s he like? Where does he work? Is he cute? How long have you been seeing him?”

I cringed under Jasmine’s rapid-fire questions. This was exactly what I’d wanted to avoid. “We’re not exactly seeing each other,” I said. “It’s more like we’re good friends.”

“Friends with benefits?” my niece asked around a mouthful of sandwich.

“Ari!” I said, shocked. “No, definitely not. We’re just friends.” Although, that wasn’t quite the right term for a man who made my stomach flutter pleasantly every time I thought of him. “We want to take things slow.” Or, rather, I did. If only to prove to myself that William cared enough about me to wait.

“Well, I’m glad for you,” Jasmine said. “You deserve to be happy.”

She was right; I did deserve it. After I’d walked into my bathroom and found the model/actress who my ex-husband was banging taking a bath in my bathtub, my life had fallen apart. It was about time that I had a little happiness. And William certainly made me happy.

The alarm clock on Jasmine’s cell phone rang. She went back into the living room. “Time for your meds,” she told Tommy brightly. Now that Jas had made it her mission to take care of him, she lived by her alarm clock. In fact, his meals, appointments, and medications were so strictly scheduled it sometimes seemed like he was in prison. “Then after your meds, we’ll go on a walk.”

“Not today, Jas,” Tommy pleaded. “I’m not up for it.”

“He looks exhausted,” I said. “Let him take a nap.”

Ariel wandered in, a book under her arm. “I wanted to read to him.” Although she was eleven, Ari read at a third-grade level. Over the summer, Tommy had challenged her to improve, and to please him, she’d been painfully working her way through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It could take her almost an hour to finish three pages, yet somehow, Tommy always listened to her without becoming impatient or falling asleep.

“You can read to him later.” Jasmine sat on the arm of the couch and kneaded his shoulders. “And he doesn’t need another nap. He needs exercise. Dr. Cantor said…”

I groaned. “Enough with Dr. Cantor, already!”

“You aren’t the boss of him.” Jasmine glared at me. “I said I’d take care of him, and I’m doing that.”

“He’s a grown man and not a little kid,” I said. “Let the poor guy rest if he’s tired.”

“I’ll read him to sleep,” Ari offered.

Jasmine marched over to me. “Listen! I’m only doing what the doctor told me to do, and you’re not helping. You’ve even been giving him coffee, haven’t you? Coffee, Lil? Really?”

“He asked for it so I made him a cup.”

“You shouldn’t have given in. This is for his own good!”

“Stop smothering him!”

“I’m not smothering him!”

“Ladies!” Tommy had gotten to his feet and stood next to the couch, leaning on it for support. We all fell silent. “Look, I can’t take all of this attention anymore. I’m starting to feel like your pet boy.”

I wanted to argue that he wasn’t our pet, but thinking about how we fed and watered and coddled Drinking Tea, my cat, made me realize we’d been treating Tommy exactly the same way.

Jasmine, chagrined, carefully put her arms around his waist. “I only want you to get better.”

“I know. And you’ve been doing a really good job of taking care of me, but I need some space. That’s why I’m moving in with Neil for a while. He’s picking me up tonight.”

I’d met Tommy’s best friend Neil a few times at the hospital. He owned a tattoo and piercing parlor called Midtown Ink.

“You can’t stay there!” Jasmine protested. “Where are you going to sleep?”

Neil was married and had three kids. His family lived in a tiny, two-bedroom house near Midtown.

“There’s a couch in Neil’s office. I can crash there,” Tommy said.

“You’ve only been out of the hospital for a few weeks,” Jasmine argued.

“Yes, but I’m going crazy here. No offense, but all of this sacral energy is getting on my nerves. I need some time to rebalance my chakras.”

I didn’t understand the spiritual gibberish, but the bottom line was clear. He was suffering from estrogen overload.

“You hate us,” Ariel said. Tears shimmered in her eyes.

He touched her shoulder. “Of course I don’t.”

Jasmine crossed her arms over her chest. “If you live at Midtown, you’ll be tempted to get another tattoo. I just know it.”

He avoided her eyes. “I won’t.”

“You will! You’ve been drawing in your sketchpad again, and I know what you’re thinking. But you heard what Dr. Cantor said: no more tattoos or piercings until you’re fully healed.” She touched his arm. “Please, you need to get well first.”

“She’s right,” I said. “Let your body heal one thing at a time.”

He held up his hand Boy Scout-style. “I swear to you I won’t get another tattoo until I’m fully healed.”

I wanted to believe him, but even when he crossed his heart with his index finger, his eyes wandered to his sketchpad.

That afternoon, while Tommy napped, and Jasmine and Ariel watched an old horror movie on TV, I retreated into my bedroom. From my nightstand, I took out a small notebook that Grace had given to me at Christmas. On the cover was a picture of a tiny kitten meowing in the face of an immense German shepherd. Written below were the words: “Don’t Let Nobody Stand in Your Way!” An appropriate message since I was using the notebook to map my way out of Hell.

On the first page, I’d written:

My Goals

– Keep Grace safe

– Get out of the damned contract

– Destroy Helen Spry

I had crossed out the first item weeks ago when I’d finally rescued my daughter from Helen’s clutches. However, accomplishing my next two objectives was proving problematic.

Obviously, the third one was ridiculous. Destroy Helen Spry? That was absurd. I barely had enough courage to call the demon-bitch by her first name let alone attack her. She was older than I was. Stronger than I was. More wickedly clever than I ever could be. Plus, she had all the resources of Hell at her fingertips.

As I chewed on my pen, I briefly considered using Helen’s trick and hiring an assassin to take her out. Almost immediately, however, I rejected the idea. In order to find demon assassins, I’d have to confess who the target was, and I couldn’t trust a demon to keep his mouth shut about it. If word spread that I was plotting to have Helen killed, she’d incinerate me where I stood. Sighing, I crossed out ‘Destroy Helen Spry.’

Now, I was left with only one goal, but it was no less outlandish. How on earth could I get out of the contract? The thing was larger than a Detroit metropolitan telephone book, and as far as I could tell, completely ironclad. Although I’d gotten it amended once, I didn’t think I would get a second opportunity to change it.

Defeated once again, I closed the book. I swore to myself that I would not give up until I found a way out. I would free myself and make sure that not another one of Sarah Goodswain’s progeny ended up in Helen’s clutches.

The otherworld doorway next to my bed shivered, and I shoved the little notebook under my pillow. If Helen caught me plotting to destroy her, she’d destroy me. I prayed that whoever was about to come into my room wouldn’t find out what I’d been doing.