Every Demon Has His Day, page 12
“I’m not scared,” Frank said.
“Well, you better be.” Delilah stared hard at Constance. “So what are you? Saint or prophet?”
“You can’t tell?” Constance asked Lizard Lady.
“You goody-goodies all look the same to me—all with the glowing halo,” she said. “Let me guess—prophet? You look too dumb to be a saint, and prophets don’t have to do anything but have visions. Not exactly brain surgery.”
“Hey,” Constance cried, insulted.
“So you are a prophet. Minor one, I’m guessing, by the looks of you.”
“Delilah,” Frank interrupted. “We need information. You don’t give it to me, I’ll exorcise you.” Frank slipped his paw into his pink sweater and pulled out a small silver cross. Delilah visibly flinched.
“No way am I telling you anything,” she said. “Why don’t you take your little prophet and get the heck out of here? If my boss sees me even talking to you, I’m going straight back to hell—or worse.”
“What’s worse than hell?” Constance asked.
“Mega-Mart,” Delilah replied quickly.
“It’s one of the devil’s outfits,” Frank explained to Constance. “Another training ground for demons, but apparently the pay is worse.”
“Barely even minimum wage,” Lizard Lady said. “And hardly any benefits.”
“Demons need benefits?” Constance asked. Lizard Lady just frowned at her.
“Delilah—we need to know anything you know about Yaman and Shadow,” Frank said, brandishing the little cross with one paw.
“I don’t know anything,” she hissed. “They don’t tell me anything. They tell the Gluttons and the Lust demons everything. We Envy demons always get the short stick around here.”
“You always know more than you let on. We want to know what they plan next.”
Before Delilah could move, Frank flipped the cross against her skin. It landed there with a hiss, and the air suddenly filled with the smell of burnt popcorn.
“Satan in a bathtub!” shouted Delilah, grabbing her hand. “You know that will leave a scar.”
“Tell us what we want to know, or I go for the face next.”
Delilah quickly glanced over her shoulder, making sure no one else was close by.
“I don’t know where Yaman is, but I know they are into something big. My boss and a few others have been talking about a second coming.”
“Jesus Christ?” Constance asked.
“She means second coming of the Antichrist,” Frank said. “He came once before.”
“Let me guess, Hitler?”
“Actually, no, he was half goat,” Delilah said. “Big mess, that one.”
“What else? What does the devil know?” Frank held the cross in a threatening way.
“No, that’s it, I swear. You want more information, why don’t you ask your prophet?” Delilah hissed, lashing her pink tongue in Constance’s direction. “You shouldn’t need informants. What gives? Is the Chosen One having trouble with her powers or something? Can’t get her visions up?” Lizard Lady gave Constance a knowing look and smiled, like she found something funny.
“She can just fine,” Frank said. “I’m just keeping you on your toes, Delilah.”
“Well, you’d better watch it. As soon as I get out of here, I will totally be gunning for you, you mutt. Just wait until I unleash some serious envy on your ass.”
“I can take it,” Frank said. “That is, if you ever get out.” Frank looked up at Constance. “Come on, Constance, let’s go. You’re going to be late for your husband’s funeral.”
In the car, Frank instructed Constance to drop him off near the movie set. Her mind was still a whirl of questions, but Frank was insistent that he had to go.
“But what am I supposed to do without you?” she asked, suddenly feeling like she’d been left alone to fly a spaceship, with no idea how to operate the controls.
“Just try and concentrate on controlling your visions,” Frank told her as she stopped the car down the road from the movie set. “And you need to tell me whenever you get a vision about Dante. I’ll be as close to her as I can most of the time, but I can’t keep an eye on her at all times. So the minute you get a vision, call me on my cell phone. Here’s the number.”
Frank grabbed a scrap of paper from his sweater with one paw and handed it to her.
“You have a cell phone?” Constance asked, amazed. “But—where do you keep it?”
“An iPhone, actually,” Frank said. “Dante is very generous that way. And another thing. You see any demons about, you call me immediately.”
“Okay,” Constance said as Frank hopped out of her car. “But—wait—what about Jimmy? Since I’ve made contact with you, is he free to go to heaven now?”
“Jimmy’s ghost will go back to heaven after we stop the devil.”
“And if we don’t stop the devil?” Constance asked.
“Then Dead Jimmy is the least of your problems,” Frank said, starting off across the road. “If the devil gets his Antichrist, then it’s the end of the world as we know it.”
FIFTEEN
Jimmy’s funeral was held an hour later at the Dogwood County Baptist Church. Constance noticed right away that the church was nearly empty, which was probably because the movie Devil’s in the Details started shooting that very afternoon. Most anybody who was anybody had headed to the Higgins Ranch, on the opposite side of the county, to try to get a glimpse of the stars. Dead Jimmy, however, was taking it personally.
“Where is everybody?” Dead Jimmy whined, as the two sat in the front pew of the church. “Some movie is more important than me? Are you kidding?”
Constance tried hard not to look in Dead Jimmy’s direction and not to respond. She already found herself carrying on full conversations with him in public, and she’d had enough of the odd stares. She knew she needed to cut it out, or she’d not only be arrested, she’d also be taken to a padded room. Still it was hard to ignore Dead Jimmy. He was loud, and he simply would not shut up.
“I’m going to go haunt some of the people who didn’t show,” Dead Jimmy vowed, his feelings clearly hurt.
“Would you be quiet?” Constance hissed. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
Constance had been trying to recreate a vision since Frank had left her, but she’d had absolutely no success. She closed her eyes and tried again. Still nothing. She was beginning to wonder if she was really a prophet at all. Maybe the first vision had been a fluke. Of course, she had no idea if she was doing it right, either. It was a lot like trying to climb stairs without ever having seen any before.
Seeing the demons at the DMV had been a bit of a wake-up call. Clearly, she was stuck on this roller-coaster ride and had to see it through. She might not have a lot of faith, but she’d seen too many things she simply couldn’t explain in the last couple of days, and she was tired of trying to put a reasonable explanation on it all. For once in her life, she decided, it might just pay to take things on faith.
Of course, now that she knew demons lurked all around her in the most obvious places, she began to wonder where else evil might be hiding. She felt like she’d been a zombie walking through a world filled with monsters and never even knew it. Part of her, deep down, thought that this made sense. It would explain why some people did really horrible things. Maybe they weren’t really people after all. Maybe they were lizard ladies or three-headed monsters. It would explain a lot. But now she had to wonder if the woman sitting down the pew from her was a demon in disguise. She tried staring hard at the woman—one of Dead Jimmy’s great-aunts who was probably in her eighties—but she got nothing. The older woman glanced at Constance strangely, which was because Constance was staring a hole through her trying to figure out if she had animal parts or not. Constance couldn’t see any, but she didn’t know if that was because Dead Jimmy’s great-aunt was just a woman or because she, Constance, wasn’t concentrating hard enough.
Constance looked the other way and tried focusing in on her mother-in-law. If anyone was a demon in disguise, she thought, it might just be her. Doris Plyd had hated her on sight, and had been trying to convince Jimmy for years that Constance was a gold digger. There was no explaining to her that it had been Jimmy who’d spent months and months wearing down Constance’s defenses. Constance never went after Jimmy for his money or anything else. It was Jimmy who did all the courting and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. But Doris felt no woman was good enough for Jimmy. She didn’t see his flaws like other people did. He was her only child, and if you told her Jimmy had a clumsy streak, she’d deny it until she was blue in the face.
She was a likely candidate for being demon possessed. After all, it was Doris who had uninvited Constance to family Christmas celebrations three years in a row because she hadn’t yet produced a Plyd heir.
Constance stared, hard. Doris was wearing her Sunday best—a shell pink Chanel suit and oversized pearl earrings. She had her salt-and-pepper hair up in a kind of French twist, her makeup, as usual, was flawless, and she was sporting a fresh manicure. She was weighed down in her usual set of bling: her oversized emerald ring she bought in Europe a few years back; her diamond tennis bracelet; the three-carat engagement ring and matching five-diamond wedding band and her diamond-encrusted platinum Rolex. At her feet was a Louis Vuitton bag that was big enough to hold three bowling balls.
Doris liked people to think the Plyd Family trust fund was endless, but Constance knew the truth. The Plyds weren’t wealthy beyond limits. In private, Doris reused paper plates and tinfoil and often turned off the air-conditioning—even in the middle of July—to cut down on costs. She counted every penny, and wanted to make sure that Constance never saw any of them. The fact that she’d lived off Plyd money for the time she and Jimmy were married and hadn’t even had the decency to provide her an heir was something her mother-in-law could never forgive.
Constance stared hard at Doris, half expecting to see a vampire or werewolf beneath the Chanel suit. After all, it was her only son’s funeral and her eyes were dry and her expression distant. Doris had never cried that Constance had ever seen, or shown much emotion ever. Constance concentrated and stared hard at her mother-in-law but she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Doris was simply Doris. Constance felt a little disappointed. Doris frowned at Constance, and she looked away.
“What are you staring at Mom for? She got something in her teeth?” Dead Jimmy asked. When Constance didn’t answer, he added, “Say, if I forgot to mention it before, you look mighty fine.”
Constance was wearing a black, V-neck, sleeveless dress, which hit just above the knee, and she had on her nicest pair of shoes: black heels. This was Constance’s only nice black dress, and not exactly used very often, since Jimmy’s idea of a night out was a spin around the Dairy Queen drive-through. Still, the dress wasn’t Chanel or anything close, and Constance could feel Doris’s judgment. Doris always put Constance in a catch-22: her run-of-the-mill mall clothes weren’t good enough for the Plyds, but if she ever bought anything designer, Doris would say it was too expensive. Constance could never win.
“Thanks,” Constance said. Dead Jimmy might not have been the best husband, but he was never stingy with the compliments. Unfortunately, he just never knew when to stop.
“I mean it, you totally look hot,” said Dead Jimmy, giving her a wink. “You are one smoking widow. H-o-t.”
“Shush now,” she muttered, pretending to pick a piece of lint off her skirt. She looked away from him and focused on the flower arrangements on either side of the coffin. There were lots of flowers. Constance didn’t realize Jimmy was so well liked in the county. Or maybe it was just a sign of guilt since nobody showed. Everyone sent flowers and then headed off to try to get Dante London’s autograph.
“Like whoo-wee, hot,” Dead Jimmy went on.
Constance sighed. It was a sad commentary on her life that the only man who thought she was attractive at the moment was her dead husband. Her dead almost-ex husband, she mentally corrected. It was just sad.
“Shush,” Constance said, causing a couple of other people in the pew to turn to look to her, including Doris Plyd, who gave her a look that could cut glass.
Constance ignored her, just as she ignored Doris when she accidentally overheard her telling her neighbor, Maureen Davis, that she suspected Constance had something to do with Jimmy’s death. Rachel had told Constance before the funeral that her mother-in-law had been spreading the same story pretty much through town.
Still, Constance knew, Doris wasn’t alone in her suspicions. Nathan already thought she was Public Enemy Number One.
Constance didn’t know what was worse, the fact that she was a suspect or that even Constance had a hard time believing her own alibi and she’d been there. Constance glanced around the church and saw Rachel, who was trying to stop Cassidy from tugging on the hair of an old woman in the pew ahead of theirs. Rachel didn’t look up.
Constance continued her sweep of the church, looking for another friendly face, but instead found herself eye to eye with Nathan Garrett, as he slid into a seat in the back of the church. Constance whipped back around in her seat without thinking, and knew for certain that he was there for her. Was he planning to arrest her? she couldn’t help but wonder.
“Boy, Nathan has his eye on you,” Dead Jimmy said, echoing her own thoughts. “And not in a good way.”
“I wish you came with a mute button,” Constance whispered through clenched teeth to Dead Jimmy, who only shrugged.
Constance thought she could feel Nathan’s eyes burning into the back of her head. Casually, she turned, as if to look for someone she knew, and found herself again locking eyes with Nathan Garrett. She sent him an evil eye, and he just shook his head and grinned, as if getting evil stares was twice as amusing as reading the Sunday funnies. This just made Constance angrier, and she glared all the harder.
If anyone around here was a demon, she thought, it would be a Garrett. But the more she stared, the more he just looked like his usual charming self. No extra heads appeared on his shoulders, and he didn’t morph into a snake or bat or anything demonlike. Nathan was just Nathan, nothing ugly about him. Another disappointment. She whipped her head around and exhaled a frustrated sigh.
“Smooth move,” said Dead Jimmy.
“If you really want to help me, why don’t you march back there and tell him I didn’t kill you?” Constance whispered, trying not to look at Dead Jimmy. “In fact, why don’t you just tell everyone?”
“I wish I could, Connie. But no one can see or hear me but you and Frank.” Dead Jimmy’s eyes dropped down to her neckline. “Say, did I mention you are hot? You wearing a new bra under there?”
“Argh. Just shut up,” Constance hissed at him. Next to her, her mother-in-law gasped.
“Excuse me?” Her penciled brows furrowed and her overly lined lips drew into a thin line.
“N-n-nothing,” Constance stammered quickly. “I…” But by then the funeral’s music started, drowning her out.
After laying Jimmy’s body in the ground, Constance did her best to avoid Nathan Garrett. He’d been watching her like she was a piece of fried chicken ever since the start of the funeral. Dead Jimmy was buzzing in her ear, and she was having a hard time pretending to be normal and not a person who saw dead people and demons. She just didn’t feel like she could deal with Nathan Garrett now. But as a condolence line started to form in the vestibule and Nathan lined up front and center, the fourth person in line, she realized there would be no avoiding him. Not unless she bolted. Now.
“Excuse me,” she said to Doris, who stood next to her, as she covered her face with her hand and half walked, half ran toward the nearest exit, not caring who was staring at her. She just couldn’t take Nathan Garrett. Not with his big shoulders and Hungry-Man dinner arms and decidedly not demonic smile.
She slammed open the door and breathed in the warmer-than-usual October air.
“What the hell are you doing? My funeral is still going on,” Dead Jimmy said, drifting after her, bringing with him a cool breeze of air.
“No it’s not. It’s over,” Constance said, fumbling in her purse for her keys, heading straight to her gold Camry. “I’m going home.”
“But, Connie. Mom sprung for Bud in bottles. It’s a serious affair,” Dead Jimmy wailed. “And I want a longneck.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of beer? Good Lord, the last thing in the world you need is to add to your beer belly.”
“Are you saying I’m fat?” came a voice that definitely wasn’t Dead Jimmy’s. Constance whipped her head up in time to see she was two steps away from colliding with Nathan Garrett. He was leaning against the side of her car, all six feet two inches of him, looking relaxed and comfortable, like he was in his living room. But then, Nathan always looked comfortable. He was flashing those Garrett dimples at her, and she had to admit they worked on her more than she liked.
“I didn’t see you there,” Constance said, thinking that if she had, she would’ve run in the other direction. And just how did he beat her out to the parking lot, anyway? Could he fly, too? Maybe it was a new Garrett brothers power—in addition to making her life miserable, they could now defy the laws of physics.
“Constance, I’m beginning to get the impression that you’re avoiding me,” he said, crossing his arms across his broad chest and giving her a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“But we had such a nice, long talk the other day when you called me a murderer,” Constance said, finding her voice and her resolve after being temporarily shaken by his presence. She had enough to worry about what with being haunted by her dead almost-ex husband and potentially being the target of some serious evil forces. She wasn’t going to let a local sheriff push her around, even if he was a Garrett, with a smile that ought to be in a Crest Whitestrips commercial. “You going to insult me again?”
“Well, I was going to ask you what you planned to do with the money,” he said. “Pay off the debt on the Magnolia Café? Or were you just going to run off and open up a new restaurant in Mexico?”
