Luck of the Devil Page 5

  “And now you have, and all Hell rejoices at your conquest,” I said.

  “Oh, do shut up. The point is, the rest of us had to work for our places. We weren’t rewarded just because we asked for them.”

  “Neither was I,” I shouted.

  “Oh? And what did you do to deserve a luxury apartment building?” Tolliver asked.

  “A luxury apartment building? Just last night you were calling it a dump.” What the Hell? I loved our little apartment, but even with all the work Lisa and I had put into the place, it was still a long way from being luxurious.

  “That was before I knew Dad bought it for you.”

  “Oh, please, he buys you everything you ask for.” How dare he act like he was some deprived little kid? Every time Hope and I had been given something, Tolliver received two. And he’d gotten to see Dad every day. I never could figure out how he managed to get guilt gifts.

  “He’s never bought the building I was living in for me.”

  The coffeepot clicked to warm and I reached for a cup to pour myself some. “You don’t live in apartment buildings.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I could have.”

  “You hate the mortal plane.” I added a heaping spoonful of refined white sugar to my coffee and took a big drink. I’d need all the help I could get dealing with my siblings this morning. And it wasn’t like I had to worry about my waistline, after all.

  “I do not.”

  “You do hate the mortal plane, Tolliver,” Hope said, coming to my defense. Which was odd, since Hope never came to anyone’s defense. Her preferred method of dealing with family fights was to sit back and let us eviscerate each other, then step over our bleeding carcasses to get what she wanted all along.

  “That’s not the point.” A circle of blue-black hellfire flared around his ears. Oh, crap. If he was this far into his sulk, he’d be unbearable soon.

  “And the point would be?”

  “Dad bought you an apartment building for no reason. The rest of us have to work for our rewards. We only get presents when we think up something evil to do.”

  “I did do something evil. In fact, I’d say it was probably some of my most sublime work.”

  Hope’s eyes narrowed. “What? Did you not smile and let the little children snot all over you while you gave them their shots?”

  “No, when I worked for the nursing temp service, before I got on at Rogers.”

  “Back when you were doing the short-term admin work for those nursing homes?” She nodded. “And?”

  “Well, I convinced the owner of the home he could buy a database and then outsource all of his record-keeping and administration to the temp firm’s offshore-services department. I even offered to set up his database.”

  Tolliver scowled, and crossed his arms. “So?”

  “I set the database up so it randomly deletes files, the password changes every third time you enter it, files are routinely rerouted to the junk-mail filter of one of the minor demons working out of Greenland, and if anyone tries to remove the program, it crashes their entire computer system. So now they have no support staff, a temperamental database that only works part of the time, and constant hassles every time they need to access a file because they never know if it’s actually going to be there.”

  “Minor magical mischief.” Hope stood and wandered into the kitchen for her own cup of coffee. “I don’t see why that should get you any special favors.”

  “Then I arranged for them to be audited by the State Commission on Geriatric Health. Fifty-thousand dollars in fines later, the administrator sold us his soul in return for another demon to come in and fix the problem.”

  “And?”

  “Demons never provide tech support. We own his soul and they’re still dealing with the chaos.”

  “Okay,” Tolliver said. He slinked to the armchair to sit with Lisa. “I guess that’s funny and a bit clever, but I still don’t think it was worth an apartment building.”

  “Enough with the apartment building already.”

  “Yeah.” Lisa nodded. “I mean, it’s not nearly as handy as the unlimited, never-needs-to-be-paid, emergency Visa he gave us.”

  I closed my eyes and squeezed my temples, shaking my head. When would she learn the art of not over-sharing? “Lisa?”

  She scooted away from Tolliver, bumping against the arm of the chair when he tried to sling his arm over her shoulder. He scooted closer and wrapped an arm around her. “Yeah?”

  “So very much not helping right now.”

  “Sorry.”

  “How did you score a no-limit Visa?” Hope’s voice was flat. “I got a cult in Idaho and you got an open credit limit to buy shoes?”

  “There weren’t any cults available?” I gave Tolliver a quick wink and he buried his face in Lisa’s hair, shaking with silent laughter.

  “Oh, cry me a river of blood for the bodies of the damned to float down,” Hope snapped. Something wasn’t right about her. I mean, besides the fact she was one of the most inherently evil beings on the planet who used her looks and unholy charms to lure others into doing whatever she asked.

  “Hope?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I came to visit my kid sister.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did. So how’s work?”

  Way to change the subject. “A pain in the ass. Well, except for Lisa eating the head of pediatric surgery yesterday. That was actually kind of funny, now that it’s over. Except he was haunting us for a bit until Dad got his paperwork straightened out. I’m sure it’s handled, though, so no harm, no foul. Now what’s up?”

  “Who said anything was up? You let Lisa eat a doctor? Good job.”

  “Enough of the evasive, innocent, older sister bit. You hate flying, you’re not a morning person, and not once in our lives have you ever suggested we ‘visit’ unless there was something up. Last time it was to hunt for souls so you could take control over your group. What is it this time?”

  “Nothing.” She looked at Boris and shifted slightly. “Boris, you will not hear a word of this conversation until I let you hear it. Got it?”

  His pupils blacked out his brown eyes. “Yes, Hope.”

  The Queen of Haughty sighed with Oscar-worthy drama. “We were ousted, all right?”

  “Ousted?” I tried to come to grips with that. How the Hell did they get ousted from a cult?

  “Yes, ousted. As in, they threw us out and seized all our assets.”

  I blinked. No way. “So how did you get here?”

  Her blonde curls fell over her face when she ducked her head, and if I wasn’t mistaken, her cheeks had turned a lovely shade of crimson. “Mom loaned me the money to fly coach.”

  “Coach? You? You flew coach?” If she was flying on a public airline this was serious, especially if she was flying coach with the common mortals.

  “Let’s not dwell on it. I didn’t have much choice. We’re destitute.”

  “Why haven’t you harvested the souls?” They had lost everything? Absolutely everything? “I mean, you’ve been out there for years. Surely, you’ve got something to show for it.”

  She whispered her next confession: “They’ve been saved.”

  “Saved? As in saved saved?”

  Her eyes met mine, pleading for sympathy. “Don’t ask me how. One day everything is fine, and the next this new follower is moving up the ranks, offering ideas, making suggestions. Before you know it, everything we’ve put in place is gone.”

  “And?”

  “And, before I knew what hit me, this new nutbag was standing at the right ear of the Reverend Leader, and we found ourselves out of a con. They found all of it, every little bit of money we’d managed to fritter away. I would have been surprised, except for the worst part.”

  “What’s the worst part?” Tolliver asked.

  The look she shot her husband could’ve made him wither up and die. “Boris was the one who told them.”


  My attention shifted to Boris, who seemed completely oblivious to the conversation going on around him. “Boris?”

  Tolliver’s jaw dropped, but he quickly regained his composure. “You’re shitting me.”

  Hope smirked, her eyes brightening, daring him to challenge her little bombshell. “He found Jesus.”

  “Excuse me?” She’d told some crazy stories before to get what she wanted, but surely, this was the strangest one yet.

  “Boris went to one of the meetings where this little bastard was sharing his revelations, and he found Jesus.”

  “At a revival meeting? In Idaho? Last I heard Jesus was—”

  “He didn’t find the actual Jesus, idiot. He found religion.”

  “Can he do that?” I asked Tolliver. “I mean, I know Hope and I can because we were born half-human and we have souls and all that good business, but Boris is a full demon.”

  “Well, technically, it is a bit difficult.” Tolliver studied our brother-in-law. “But it is possible.”

  “What’s possible?” Malachi formed behind my brother’s head and floated through him, making Tolliver shiver.

  “Boris found Jesus,” I said. And people wondered why I never bothered to get married. Well, besides the whole Ex-Fiancé Ending Up in a Mental Institution and Crying at the Mention of My Name thing. That ended well.

  “Finding Jesus isn’t hard.” Malachi twitched, so it appeared as if he was shrugging. He floated to the coffeepot and hovered over it, absorbing almost the entire pot. “He teaches special education at a public school near Charleston. Why? Were you looking for him? I’ve got his phone number and address.”

  “No, I mean he’s found religion,” I corrected. “Why do you have Jesus’s address?”

  He finished off the coffee. “I send him a birthday card every year. It seemed a little cruel, seeing how everyone else sends each other cards for his birthday, and he doesn’t ever get one that says, ‘Hey big guy, looking good after another year. Happy birthday!’”

  “Oh, for the love of all Evil,” Hope said, her eyes blazing like little red blowtorches. “Do you think this is funny?”

  “It’s a bit funny.” Malachi floated toward me and hovered over my shoulder.

  “The thing is,” Lisa said, “can a born demon find religion?”

  “To answer your rather intelligent question,” Malachi said, “yes, Boris could, in fact, fall up. It’s pretty rare, and exceedingly difficult, but it can be done.”

  “But Boris?” Tolliver looked between the hulking demon on our couch and the tiny one floating next to me. “Falling up? I mean, he isn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box, is he?”

  “He is not dumb!” Hope’s head smoldered with a halo of hellfire. “He just prefers things a little simpler than most. What am I saying? He is an idiot. And no, I have no idea how exactly he fell up. One minute he’s perfectly fine, going out for a quick smoke, and two hours later he’s back and all… glowy.”

  “Glowy?” I asked. “He doesn’t seem very ‘glowy’ right now.”

  “Watch this. Boris, you may hear us now.”

  He blinked a couple of times, and his eyes came into focus. “Yes, dear.”

  Her eye twitched. “Tell Faith about what you learned from Brother Ev.”

  “It was so good,” Boris said, turning to face the rest of us, his whole being starting to glow with a white light. “There were cookies, and love, so very much love. Everyone should be nice to each other and strive for love. And cookies, the warm cookies make everything better. If you only had warm cookies, Hope said things would have been so much better for all of us.”

  Tolliver whistled. “Damn.”

  She compelled Boris to watch the cartoons playing on my TV. “See?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “he’s all kinds of fucked up. So what do we do?”

  “I thought we could stay with you. There’s an apartment across the hall.”

  “No there isn’t,” Lisa said. “Matt lives there.”

  “Well, move him out.”

  How dare she mess with Matt? The bitch was evil. I feigned nonchalance, tried to relax, and gave her a sweet smile. “I can’t. He signed a lease.”

  “So? Break it.”

  “He’s a lawyer. He’d sue and then he’d keep the apartment and someone might notice the free cable. But there is an apartment two floors up.” Thank Evil he’d taken the apartment across the hall. Now I wouldn’t be forced to live so close to Hope. There might be worse things than having my sister as a neighbor, but I wasn’t really sure what.

  “Two floors up? You want me to live in a sixth floor walk-up?”

  “It is a nice one bedroom, though. Utilities paid.”

  “One bedroom? You want me to live in a one-bedroom apartment on the sixth floor of a building with no elevator?”

  “If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears. Otherwise, it’s time to call that walk-up Home Sweet Home.”

  “But where’s your mom going to sleep?” Tolliver asked. “I mean, you don’t have room here, and if Hope’s only got a one-bedroom she doesn’t have room, either. Roisin can’t exactly sleep on someone’s couch. Dad does not do couch sex.”

  “Mom? Why would Mom be coming here? And what does Dad have to do with anything? They aren’t having sex anymore.”

  Was there something they weren’t telling me?

  “I may have invited her to come and visit,” Hope said, taking a long sip from her mug at the same time Tolliver said, “Yes they are.”

  He might as well have ripped my heart out. “What?”

  “Which one of us are you speaking to?” Tolliver asked.

  “Both of you. Hope, go first.”

  Shrugging, she smoothed her skirt over her thighs. “I invited Mom to visit. She should be in on the afternoon flight.”

  “Great. Just great.” This was exactly what I needed right now. First Hope, and now my mother. I would need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation once this was all over.

  “It could be,” Tolliver said. “Dad gets so cheerful after he and your mom have hot, steamy, demon sex.”

  “Don’t say it,” I said. I’d rather jump off the building’s roof than ponder the thought of my parents having sex. “Don’t even think about it. I can’t afford the kind of therapy those images bring up. Besides, I thought they weren’t doing that anymore. Not since she’d found Earl, the paranormal counselor.”

  “They broke up,” Hope said.

  “Why?”

  “Dad turned him into a goat.”

  “Controlling his jealousy nicely, I see.” I pressed my head against the countertop and closed my eyes. Buh-bye, chances of having a nice, relaxing vacation.

  “You know Dad,” Tolliver said. “Alpha male all the way. Now, where are we going to put him and your mom? Because I’ve got to tell you, if I never again walk in on Satan doing the horizontal monkey dance with his bare ass showing, it will still be too soon.”

  “What is wrong with you, Tolliver?” I covered my ears. “They’ll have to either sleep on a couch somewhere or go stay at a hotel. Jesus!”

  “Is not going to be visiting us with all these demons around,” Malachi pointed out. “He does have a guest room, though. But it’s a bit out of the way.”

  “Who has a guest room?” Harold materialized in the kitchen, wearing his golf clothes, a bag of clubs slung over his left shoulder. “Do you think they’ll let me borrow it?”

  “Who are you?” Hope asked, sitting up straight.

  “That’s Harold,” I said. “The doctor Lisa killed last night. He’s hanging around for a bit while they clear up his paperwork. Since the death was untimely and all.”

  “Untimely is the word for it,” Harold agreed.

  Lisa’s face screwed into a sad little grimace. “I’m sorry, Harold.”

  “What can you do?” He peered past Hope and focused on Boris, floating closer. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

  “No,” my brother-in-law said, zoned out o
n Cartoon Network. “I don’t consort with ghosts.”

  Harold snapped his fingers and pointed to him. “Sure I do. You were hanging around with that creepy guy I was trying to tell Faith—”

  He poofed out of sight.

  Everybody’s attention focused on Boris. He shrugged and turned back to the cartoons he’d been watching. “Guess they finally handled his paperwork.”

  Chapter Five

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I said two hours later as I pulled my Civic into the parking garage at the Pittsburgh airport. “First Tolliver, then Hope and Boris. Now Mom and Dad?”

  Shoving the parking stub into my purse, I opened the door and stepped out before hitting my key chain’s car-alarm button. Pittsburgh was a safe city, but only an idiot left her car unlocked in an airport parking lot. I made my way across the sky bridge and into the bustling airport, searching for my unwelcome guest.

  If I were the former—and now apparently current—mistress of Satan, where would I head first after I got off the plane? If I found her right away, maybe it would prevent her from displaying too much of her crazy to the people around us. Airport security filtered everyone through one terminal on arrival so I could snag her there. And lo and behold! There was a coffee shop next to it.

  I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes before she showed up. Time for at least one cup of coffee in peace today. Maybe, if I was lucky.

  “Black coffee and a blueberry muffin,” I told the heavily tattooed young man at the counter. If Mom was here, Dad wouldn’t be far behind. He wasn’t going to let us get together without him, especially if they were an item again.

  Once I had my snack, I found a table near the entrance of the cafe so I could see my mother when she came out of security. I sipped my coffee. They better be getting along still, because otherwise he’d pull something crazy and I’d have to move again. For the third time since I’d graduated college.

  While enjoying my coffee—and the last bits of solitude before this impromptu family reunion went to Hell—I spotted a guy across the shop staring at me. Smiling, I tried my best ‘come hither’ eyes on him and was rewarded with a smirk. His pointer finger moved to his cheek and wiped at the side of his mouth, exaggerating the movement.