3 Straight by the Rules Page 3

  “Lightening the load. That’s all you’re doing,” William said.

  The hiker smiled wickedly. “Tonight, I will burn the trash.” She glanced down the trail. “And I know who I’ll blame for it.”

  Jenny finally trudged into view. Unlike her friends, she struggled under the weight of her backpack, and her legs trembled with exhaustion. She shrugged off her pack with a grunt of relief and collapsed on the ground.

  The first woman crossed her arms over her chest. “We’re behind schedule. Austen already went on ahead.”

  Jenny looked crestfallen. “Was he mad?”

  “He wasn’t thrilled.” The woman smirked. “He thought you’d be able to keep up, but now he thinks we may have to cut our trip short.”

  The little liar! Already, William’s temptation was taking root. If those dark thoughts continued to spread… Well, she might do worse things than blaming Jenny for burning trash.

  When Jenny reached into her pack for a bottle of water, the other woman scolded her, “You don’t have time for that now. Let’s go!”

  With a grunt and a sigh, Jenny stood, resettled her pack on her shoulders and began plodding down the trail once more.

  When the women were gone, William rubbed his hands together. “Delilah is getter better! She had the time and the place spot on. Of course, she couldn’t pinpoint the temptation, but it all worked out in the end.”

  Without a word, I stalked over to where the trash lay, picked it up, and stuffed it into my pockets.

  “That’s unnecessary,” William said. “The damage has been done.”

  “I know, William,” I said.

  “You’re upset.”

  He tried to put his arm around me, but I pulled away. “Of course I’m upset!”

  “Is it because I had to combine work with pleasure?” he asked, worried. “I didn’t want to, but Helen’s been keeping me so busy that I would have had to cancel on you otherwise.”

  “I know.”

  He continued to study me. “You do realize that I wasn’t attracted to the young woman, right?”

  I nodded. He had been completely professional. “Let’s just go,” I said. I headed down the trail.

  “Lil, wait up. Lilith!” He caught up to me and touched my shoulder. “What’s going on inside your head? Talk to me.”

  I was nearly in tears. “It was watching you in action.” I felt the stab of emotion again, but it wasn’t jealousy. “You made the hiker believe that you were her best friend. You tricked her.”

  He reached for me, but I stepped away. “You and I can’t escape who we are,” he said.

  A few tears spilled over. “But you’re so good at what you do. It comes so naturally!” Finally, I identified the emotion. “If you can fool her, then maybe you would fool me, too. How would I know the difference?”

  His face fell. “Oh, Lil. Is that what you think? I would never do such a thing.”

  I certainly wanted to believe him, but at the same time, I didn’t dare. William lied so well and so often it was possible he no longer recognized the truth.

  “How can I make you stop worrying?” he asked.

  I met his eyes. “I want you to swear to me that you’ll always tell me the truth. Always.”

  If he’d answered me right away, I wouldn’t have believed him. But he didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he took my hands. “The truth can be painful, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’d rather be hurt by the truth than a lie,” I said.

  He sighed. “Okay. I promise to always tell you the truth.”

  “And I’ll do the same for you.”

  All this seriousness was too much for him to bear. His eyes twinkled and he lifted a lock of my hair. “So tell me, is this your real color?”

  I shoved him away. “You’re incorrigible.” I couldn’t help but smile, though.

  He checked his watch. “I’d love to stay, but I have another appointment in about ten minutes.”

  I glared at the ground. Helen really was keeping him busy.

  “How are you going to get back in time?” I asked. It had taken nearly two hours to get to the top of the mountain.

  “Follow me.” He led me back up the trail and past the boulder we’d been sitting on. Behind it stood an otherworld doorway.

  I punched his arm. “Why did you make me hike all the way up here when we could have used this door?”

  He rubbed his shoulder. “Because the effort it takes to climb up here makes the view even more spectacular. You wouldn’t have appreciated it nearly as much if you’d cheated to get to the top.”

  I had to admit he was right.

  “Besides, it was the only way I could see how beautiful you look when you’re flushed and sweating.” He grinned, his incubus back in full force. “I love to see a woman glow after a really hard work out.” Before he left, he kissed me. “Keep that bedroom door open tomorrow night.”

  Maybe I would. Not that I’d tell him.

  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 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. At the produce 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.

  After coming face-to-teeth with

  a berserker demon that had turned my large, suburban home into a pile of rubble, I’d grown 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. 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 cheek bones, 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 what he’d been through. A few weeks before, he’d been attacked and killed by the berserker demon Helen had sent after me. 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. In typical Jas fashion, she’d overbought on everything, and most of her purchases made no sense. In addition to gauze and adhesive, she’d gotten cough syrup, several types of allergy medicine, and children’s pain reliever. She’d also caved into Tommy’s insistence that he take herbal supplements and had purchased vitamins with enough letters to make up a Scrabble game. Depending on how you looked at it, Jasmine was either an overzealous nurse or a little girl eager to play doctor with her favorite doll.

  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.

  A knock on the front door interrupted my exploring. Corrine, our downstairs neighbor, bounded into the room like an overeager puppy. She ignored Jasmine and beamed at Tommy. “How’s our little patient today?” Corrine, an oncology nurse, was a great resource for Tommy’s post-operative care, but she was also a Miss Lonely-hearts of the worst kind. Although she flirted endlessly, desperation clung to her like a greasy film, and instead of attracting men, she drove them away. “Feeling any better?”

  “I’m tired.” Tommy pulled his t-shirt over his clean dressing and stiffly lay back down on the couch. Jas kissed his forehead and went to throw away the stained bandages.

  “Do you want some coffee?” I offered. Corrine nodded and followed me into the kitchen.

  Ariel sat at the table. When she saw Corrine, my niece glared and fled the room taking along the double-decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich she’d been eating. Whenever they met, Corrine would try to convince Ariel to get a makeover. My neighbor meant well, but she didn’t understand that no amount of pestering would make my eleven-year-old niece exchange her dyed black hair, heavy makeup, and dark clothing for charm bracelets and Hollister hoodies.

  I fixed the coffee and offered Corrine some cookies that I’d picked up at the bakery. She took four, then laughed uncertainly at her excess. “Since I don’t have a boyfriend, I might as well eat whatever I want.”

  I smiled thinly, wondering if now would be a good time to have a talk about finding a hobby other than man hunting. I was pretty sure that once Corrine stopped chasing down every guy she saw, men would stop running away.

  After munching her way through the third cookie, she said, “I’ve got great news!”

  “Do tell,” I said.

  She smiled even wider. “I’m starting a new job!”

  “What happened to the old one?”

  “Nothing. But now I’m also a sales representative for the Naughty Nancy company.”

  I frowned. “You’re a what?”

  “A new sales representative. For Naughty Nancy exotic toys and gifts.”

  Exotic toys and gifts? I blanched. Corrine’s love obsession was worse than I’d thought. “Maybe you should stick to Tupperware,” I told her. “Or Mary Kay.” Picturing the puppyish Corrine selling adult novelties was like imagining Mr. Rogers in black leather and chains.

  “Those markets are already saturated.” A competitive gleam lit up her eyes. “I heard all about it yesterday when my little sister’s bridesmaids threw her a Naughty Nancy party for her bridal shower.” She reached for another cookie. “Because Naughty Nancy is a new company, the customer base is wide open, allowing me to gain a foothold and build my business.”

  I’d never suspected my rosy-cheeked neighbor to be such a cutthroat businesswoman. Well, if I couldn’t talk her out of it, I could at least be happy for her. “That’s just wonderful,” I said. At least she now had something to occupy her time.

  “I know!” She grinned at me. “And I have a terrific opportunity for you, too. I wanted to give you the first chance at…”

  Please don’t ask me to host a party, I begged her mentally. Please, oh please, don’t do that to me.

  “…hosting a party!”

  Shit. For a moment, I considered going into succubus mode. If I threw around enough of the Devil’s shine, I could make Corrine forget about the party nonsense. But the memory of William’s incubus preying on the young hiker haunted me. Although I had thoughtlessly used my demon against humans in the past, the succubus was like a loaded gun. I didn’t want to point it at anyone unless Helen ordered me to.

  Still, that didn’t mean that I had to host a party. “Corrine, I’m not interested.”

  “Don’t worry! It’s very easy. I’ll do most of the work. All you have to do is invite the guests, make the food, clean your house, send out reminder notes, follow up with a few phone calls…”

  “Sorry, but no.”

  “How about an open house instead of a party? That way, people can drop in whenever they want. Six hours on a Saturday afternoon ought to do it.”

  I folded my arms over my chest and shook my head.

  Her shoulders slumped. “Oh, okay. I get it.” Her eyes misted over. Although she wore pink t-shirts with decals of big-eyed kittens, Corrine had the fighting instincts of a ninja. Seeing that I refused to budge, she unleashed her ultimate weapon: the lower lip quiver. Suddenly, I felt like I’d punted a baby like a football.

  Still, I remained strong. After all, I’d already faced down one of the meanest demons in Hell that day, so my downstairs neighbor wasn’t much of a challenge. Lip quiver or no lip quiver. “No.”

  “But it’ll be so much fun...”

  “No!”

  “Fine,” she huffed. Then she perked up again. “Okay, forget the party. How would you like to sell for us instead? Naughty Nancy is always scouting for sales reps!”

  I put my hand to my head. Wasn’t it Dante who had written about the seven circles of Hell? If so, I’d happily add circle number eight – one designed especially for home party sales consultants.

  After Corrine left, the alarm clock on Jasmine’s cell phone rang. “T
ime 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.