Читать книгу Straight To Heaven - Michelle Scott - Страница 12

Chapter Four

Back in the house, I immediately picked up the phone to dial 911. Before I could punch the final number, however, I hesitated. Technically, Tanya had done nothing wrong. After all, she’d never signed custody of her daughter over to me. Legally, I wasn’t even a guardian. Not only that, Ariel had willingly gone with her mother. Her sober, in control of her faculties, mother.

Still, I knew Tanya’s history too well to give up that easily. I left the phone for the computer to visit the website for Michigan’s Protective Services Department. I scrolled down the page, looking for any information that would help me, but there wasn’t much I could use. Since Ari was in no immediate danger, there was no emergency – according to protective services. And because it was Friday evening, when I called the local office, I wasn’t too surprised to find it closed.

Discouraged, I decided to talk to my stepdad. Even though Simon was a tax attorney and not a criminal or family lawyer, I hoped that he’d be able to give me some advice.

I dialed my dad’s number but, to my surprise, Jasmine picked up. “Yeah?”

“Jas!” I said, thrilled. My stepsister had stopped speaking to me since she found me in bed with her boyfriend, Tommy. I’d tried everything – voice messages, texts, e-mails – but she refused to reply. When I tried to visit her in person, she locked herself in her room until I left. The only reason she’d answered the phone now was because my dad didn’t have caller ID.

“How are you?” I asked.

She ignored the question. “Dad’s not here.” Her voice was flat, like she was talking to a telemarketer and not her sister. “He and my mom went to the lake.”

I’d forgotten that my dad and his wife were making their annual pilgrimage to the other side of the state. They had rented a cottage, and right now would probably be sitting on the deck watching the sun set over Lake Michigan.

“Do you have a number for him?” I asked. I gave a brief explanation about Tanya and Ariel. “I was hoping Dad could give me some advice.”

“Oh, poor Ari.” Some of the dullness left Jasmine’s voice. “As if that kid hasn’t been through enough.” I heard my stepsister shuffle through some things. “No, I don’t have the number for the cottage.”

My heart fell. Since my dad didn’t own a cell phone, not even for emergencies, I wouldn’t be able to talk to him until he got back from vacation.

I heard a man cough in the background, then a voice that set my teeth on edge. “Hey, Susie Sushi! Hang up and let’s go.”

“Please tell me that isn’t who I think it is,” I said.

“Don’t start with me, Lil,” Jas warned.

“It’s Karl, isn’t it?” I gripped the phone tighter. “What’s he doing there?”

There was a long pause. “We’re back together,” she said.

“Jas, no! You can’t be serious.” Karl had been Jasmine’s boyfriend before Tommy. He was a dozen years older than my stepsister, and owned a successful computer graphics company. At first, my stepdad, Jas’s mother, and I had thought Jasmine had struck gold when she started dating him, but it didn’t take long for us to realize that Karl was a scumbag.

When Jas was around Karl, she drank much more than normal. She also smoked pot and, if her red eyes and dripping nose were any indication, did other drugs as well. Once, after my dad, Evelyn, and I had spent months convincing Jasmine to enroll at the local community college, Karl talked her out of it because he said that the classes would be too hard for her, and she’d end up dropping out anyway. Implying that she wasn’t smart was only one of his many putdowns. Because of Jasmine’s Asian features, Karl called her ‘Susie Sushi’ and his little ‘Jap’ – which he said stood for Japanese-American Princess. I used to lay awake at nights terrified that Karl would get Jasmine pregnant and forever link her destiny to his.

Karl spoke up in the background. “Jasmine! C’mon, chop, chop!”

“I gotta go,” Jasmine said, miserable once more.

I wanted to scream at her and demand to know why she was letting that cancer back into her life, but I knew from experience that if I spoke out against Karl, she’d fly to his defense. Still, I had to say something. “Maybe dating Karl on the rebound isn’t such a good idea,” I said.

“Why, Lil? Are you planning to sleep with him, too?” she asked.

The knife thrust went straight to my heart. Although I worked to maintain my ‘let the past stay in the past’ philosophy, my mistakes always came back to bite me. Hard. “I’m sorry about Tommy, Jas. You have no idea how sorry I am,” I said.

But my apology fell on dead air because she’d already hung up the phone.

Six months ago, when my stepsister, my daughter, my niece and I were all living in the cramped townhouse, I would have given anything for an hour alone. Even when the girls were in school, Jasmine would be home hounding me for money or whining because there was nothing to eat. Later, when she brought Tommy to live with us, I’d felt even more claustrophobic.

Now however, with both girls gone, Jas not speaking to me, and Tommy out of the country, I was completely alone. The silence of that big, empty house rang loudly in my ears. It was eerie, like visiting a shopping mall after all the stores have closed and everyone has gone home. With all that quiet surrounding me, I had nothing to distract me from my own, dark thoughts.

Deciding that I couldn’t endure another minute of the day sober, I drove to the nearest liquor store and bought a bottle of wine for me and a fifth of bourbon for my demon who begged for it like a little kid begging for candy in the checkout line at the grocery store. When I got home, I muscled down a shot of the bourbon to shut up my succubus, then poured a glass of chardonnay. I brought it over to the computer and went back to researching a way to get Ari away from her mother.

A small, instant-message window popped up on my computer screen. It was from Tommy.

Lil – u there?

My heart nearly stopped. Jasmine wasn’t the only one refusing to talk to me. Since he’d left the country, Tommy had been incommunicado as well. I’d called, texted, and e-mailed, but he never answered back. The silence was terrible. I had no idea where he was, or more importantly, how he was.

As much as I wanted to talk to him, I was afraid. I drained my glass and then took a deep breath before gathering enough nerve to reply. Hi.

I held my breath until, moments later, his response popped up. How r u?

I hesitated, then typed: K – and u?

Hot. Sick of Indian food. Earth-shattering diarrhea.

I smiled. TMI, I told him. Besides, don’t you mean earth-shittering?

He sent back a laughing smiley face.

Where r u? I asked.

Aurangabad to see Ajanta caves.

Before I’d destroyed his belief in God, Tommy had talked endlessly about his pilgrimage, and the Ajanta caves in India had been one of his favorite topics. He had shown me pictures from the Internet of the massive statues and ancient paintings hidden away in that secret place. Knowing he had finally made it there lifted my spirits. If any sacred spot would help him rediscover his faith, certainly it was that one.

I wrote: How r the caves?

To my surprise, he sent an emoticon that had its eyes squeezed shut and its tongue sticking out. Pain in the ass to get there, and the weather sucks. Constant rain.

But the caves themselves r awesome, right? I typed.

They r depressing. Just a wasted effort to impress the Great Nothingness.

My heart clenched. His pilgrimage hadn’t done a thing to restore his faith. The Tommy I’d first met would have been raving about the unity of human spirits and the rapture of touching the divine. He would have crawled over broken glass to get to those caves. Not any more.

Tommy sent another message. How r the girls?

I was tempted to tell him the truth about Ariel moving in with her mother, but I didn’t want to worry him. After all, there wasn’t much he could do from the other side of the world. So I typed, Girls r good.

And Jasmine?

I hesitated. Finally, I typed, Still upset.

She won’t return my calls, he said. I keep dreaming that she’s in trouble. I’m really worried.

So that’s why he was finally speaking to me. Tommy had an uncanny connection to the supernatural world. For one thing, he could read auras. He’d also known that there had been something different about me after I’d become a succubus. It didn’t surprise me that he’d picked up on Jasmine’s psychic distress signals.

For a moment, I thought about keeping Karl a secret. If Jasmine wasn’t speaking to Tommy, there wasn’t much he could do about the bad boyfriend. But it had been a hell of a day. Ariel, Grace, Jas…I was worried about all of them, and I desperately needed to share my burden. I bit my lip and typed: J got back together with Karl.

There was a long, long pause. So long, in fact, that I was sure the Internet had cut out on Tommy’s end. Realizing that my glass was empty, I refilled it, gulping down the chardonnay like a sports drink after a hard workout. Still, no new message appeared on my computer. I swore to myself that, no matter what, I wouldn’t contact Tommy again. I would let him go and live his life in peace, just as he deserved. This time, I really meant it.

Then my phone rang.

Of course, I knew who it was. I picked it up on the second ring. “Tommy!” His name came out more like a sob.

“Tell me what’s going on, Lil.”

I began crying as I gave him the drunken version of my conversation with Jasmine. “Karl was at my dad’s house,” I said. “I tried to talk to Jas about it, but she hung up on me.”

“Karl.” Tommy spoke the name like a curse word. “That bastard!”

“Believe me, I know. I just wish I could make her believe it.”

“He’s being investigated by the IRS, did you know that?”

I did, actually.

Tommy, furious, continued, “And one time he convinced her to – ” His voice dropped off.

“Convinced her to what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Tell me,” I insisted.

He sighed. “He convinced her to pose nude for him. I think some of those photos ended up on the Internet.”

Furious, I slammed my hands down on the desk. Jas thought that she was good for one thing only: looking beautiful. Karl, predator that he was, knew exactly how to exploit that.

“This is all my fault,” Tommy said. “God! How could I have been so stupid?” He didn’t get angry very often, but he certainly was now. I pictured him with the phone pressed against his ear, pacing circles in a cheap hotel room. “How could I have hurt her like that?”

Tears stung my eyes. He hated himself when I was the one who had caused the entire mess. “It was me,” I said. “I seduced you.”

He laughed harshly. “I knew what I was doing. You didn’t rape me.” Something fell over with a bang. Then something else shattered.

“Tommy!” I said, alarmed. “Are you okay?”

“No! I’m pissed!” He spoke so loudly that I had to pull the phone from my ear. “I’ve been over it in my mind a thousand times, and it still doesn’t make sense. I loved Jasmine, but then all at once, I was in love with you. How did that happen?”

I couldn’t answer that, of course. Not without explaining that I now housed a demon and worked for the Devil.

“I’m sorry, Lil.” His voice softened. “I can’t blame you when I’m just as guilty.”

“Don’t worry,” I begged him. “I promise to take care of Jasmine and keep Karl away from her. I’ll keep you posted, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

We said goodbye and hung up. If nothing else, it had been good to talk to him. I only hoped it wouldn’t be another six months before we spoke again.

As it turned out, it wasn’t even six minutes.

When the phone rang, I immediately picked it up.

Tommy didn’t even bother with ‘hello’. “I can’t stand it. I’m coming home.”

I didn’t try to talk him out of it. “I’ll pay for your ticket,” I said and gave him my credit card number.

“I’m still in Aurangabad, and I’ll have to hitchhike to get to Mumbai. It might take a while, but I’m on my way.” He paused for a heartbeat. “Tell Jas I’m coming, okay? Tell her I love her.”

“I will.”

“And Lil, would you do me another favor?”

“Anything!”

“It would be best if we didn’t see each other. I don’t know what happened before, but I don’t want it to happen again.”

The thought of not seeing him made my chest ache. “Of course.” I blinked back tears. “I understand.” Not seeing Tommy was a cruel punishment, but one I surely deserved.

After Tommy hung up, my succubus suggested that we do something to cheer me up. “Agreed,” I told her and poured more wine.

Not that, she said.

Shuddering, I took a second shot of bourbon to shut her up.

That wasn’t what she meant, either. She told me I needed to do something fun. Something nice. When I asked her what that something was, she delivered a voiceless, inner scream that sliced my brain in half like a sharp knife cleaving through a ripe cantaloupe.

WILLIAM!!!

My eyes popped wide at her betrayal. “Oh, you evil little bitch!” I cried even as William strolled from the otherworld into my kitchen.

“You called?” The corners of his mouth curled in a suggestive smile, and his eyes burned when they touched mine. Lust, hot and sudden, consumed me.

As if reading my thoughts, he headed towards me. My succubus hopped in mad glee, desperate to be united with his incubus demon. But halfway across the room, he stopped and picked up the nearly empty wine bottle. His eyebrows knitted. “Did you drink all of this tonight?”

I gave a guilty shrug.

His concerned frown deepened. “Is something wrong?”

“It’s been a long day,” I said, not wanting to go into details. Especially not with him.

“That’s no excuse. I’ve had plenty of long days, and I never…”

“…you never let it bother you. Yes, I get it. You’re perfect,” I said sourly. I reached for my wineglass, but he moved it out of reach.

“What I was going to say is that I never drink alone. It’s too dangerous. Drinking lowers your inhibitions and gives your demon more control.”

“I’m in control!” I argued.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Really. So why are you undressing?”

To my horror, I realized my demon had taken over my body and stripped off my shirt. My cheeks flaming, I snatched it from the floor and yanked it over my head.

William poured a shot of whiskey into the glass I’d been using. He knocked it back and smiled. “There. Now you’re not drinking alone.” He took a seat on the couch next to me. “Talk to me, Lil. What made this day so wretched?”

Once again, his demon had fled, leaving the real William behind. The one I wished would stick around more often. I sighed, deciding to trust him. “I keep thinking of all the people I’ve hurt since becoming part demon. I’ve done so much harm to my family!”

He shook his head. “Stop wallowing in your guilt, Lil. Wallowing is never good for the likes of us.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” I argued. “I can’t just tempt and move on.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to. It’s a matter of survival.”

I looked into his dark, soulful eyes. I was certain I saw pain hidden there. “What about you? Any regrets?”

For a moment, he hesitated, and I thought he’d be honest. But something scared him off, and in a flash, his pompous, egotistical incubus was back. “I regret nothing.” He smiled lasciviously. “Now, let’s get back to the reason you called me here.”

I was about to argue that I wasn’t the one who’d called him, but when he moved closer, the words died in my mouth. He smelled delicious, and my fingertips tingled at the prospect of running them down his chest. What difference did it make if William and I weren’t a couple? I’d had a hell of a night, and if a little fun could take the edge off my sorrows, then who was I to hold back?

“Well?” he asked.

Instead of replying, I kissed him. He immediately drew me into his arms, and kissed me back with an urgency that made my heart race. When I murmured approval, he stood and gently tugged my hand, leading me into the bedroom. We laid down on the bed, and he slid my shirt up over my stomach, feathering kisses along the waistband of my shorts. Groaning, I ran my fingers through his thick hair.

This was a good idea, I told my succubus. Nice job.

William unfastened the button on my shorts with one hand and traced the other up and down the inside of my thigh, making the muscles in my lower belly clench.

“Now, isn’t this better than wallowing?” he murmured.

It certainly was. My back arched when his fingers found the delicious spot between my legs. A night of passion was just what the doctor ordered.

But what about the morning after, my conscience asked.

Stop it, I scolded. Don’t overthink this.

That’s what you said when you seduced Tommy, it reminded me.

At the thought of Tommy, the pleasantly fuzzy feeling from the alcohol sharpened into common sense. I clenched William’s hair in my fists, yanking it tight.

“Ow!” He lifted his head and rubbed his scalp. “What was that for?”

“Sorry.” My mind was spinning, but not because of the alcohol. I did want sex with William. More than anything. Then again, sex would never be a panacea. Not for me at any rate. I needed a deeper kind of intimacy.

“William?”

“Hmm?” He’d gone back to his lovemaking by kissing my lower jaw, the stubble on his chin a pleasant friction.

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Live without regrets.”

He moved away and propped himself up on an elbow. “Do you want to talk or make love?”

“Both.”

“Well then, let’s start with the second and move on to the first.”

I pushed him away. “Just tell me how you do it.”

“I’m the perfect incubus, Lilith. I simply know how to keep myself under control at all times.”

I didn’t believe it. “What about when you first started?” I pressed. “Did you make any mistakes then?”

Again, pain flashed in his dark eyes, but he laughed it off. “I was always a ladies’ man. I was seducing women long before I met Helen.”

I believed it. He worked his job like he was born to it.

He traced my lips with his finger. “Don’t worry, Lilith. You’ll learn eventually. It’s just that the learning curve is more difficult for women than for men.”

I stiffened. “What do you mean by that?”

He sighed. “Don’t let your twenty-first century sensibilities mislead you. It’s a known fact. Men are hardier than women.”

“And by hardier, you mean…?”

He rolled onto his back and ran his fingers through his already deliciously mussed-up hair. “Emotionally stronger, okay? More in control of themselves. Not slaves to their emotions.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You’re on dangerous ground.” Once again, he was arrogant. Arrogant and proud of it!

“Relax. Women have their virtues as well.” He leaned in for another kiss, but I pushed him away.

“And what, pray tell, are a woman’s virtues?”

His face reddened. “Did you call me here in order to argue?”

I was about to tell him that I hadn’t called him at all when an otherworld shimmer of energy brought me up short. When Mr. Clerk called my name from the kitchen, William jumped off me like he’d been burned. I buttoned my shirt and fastened my shorts as footsteps came up the stairs. With a miserable look of disappointment, William disappeared through the otherworld doorway in my bedroom. When Mr. Clerk knocked on my bedroom door, I uttered a cheerful, “Come in.”

That had been far too close for comfort. Not just because Mr. Clerk nearly caught us, but because I’d nearly done something I would have regretted.