Mr. Right Now, page 15
The pastor asked for the silent prayer my grandma had requested, and I bowed my head.
The grief didn’t break through my skin until they put her into the cold, dark earth. Somehow, Jake sensed me crack and gathered me in his arms to hold me together.
Then I heard a whisper. “The earth is our cradle baby, nothing to fear. My body returns to earth, but my spirit flies free.”
I trembled so hard I almost fell. “I heard her,” I said. “I heard my grandma,” I whispered in his ear.
“Maybe that’s your gift. Like your mother, you can hear the spirits.” He held me tight.
I could hear spirits like my mother? My crazy, possessed mother?
No.
Danni, Cat, and I sat in my living room for the last time. The movers were coming to put everything in storage tomorrow.
We ate Chinese, but our former camaraderie was an absent guest. Our lives no longer touched one another.
“Cat, I’ve never properly thanked you,” Danni said.
“For what?” Cat dug through her carton with chopsticks and proudly hoisted her catch, a shrimp, before she popped it in her mouth.
“For Darryl.”
“Honey, you did me a favor. Aren’t I doing much better now? I mean, really?” Cat asked.
I smiled at her and Danni nodded.
“Much better,” Danni said. “So am I. Darryl is just the man I needed.”
“I knew it,” Cat said. “Didn’t I tell you?” she asked me.
“You told me,” I said. “Danni, I have something to ask you.”
“Spit it.”
“I wonder if you and Darryl would be interested in taking Grandma’s house.”
“How much are you asking?” Danni didn’t look up from her Chinese food.
“Actually, I was going to give it to you if you wanted it. I thought I’d put it in your name alone.”
Danni raised her head slowly. “You’re kidding me, aren’t you? You need to put it on the market. That house is in a nice neighborhood and I bet it’ll be snapped up. I know you could use the money, hell, anybody could—”
“Danni, shut up,” I said. “I’m giving you the house and I don’t need the money. What I’m asking in return is that you discard or give away my grandmother’s things. Keep what you like. I—I haven’t been able to face doing it.”
Danni bounded over and hugged me, her eyes moist. “You two have done so much for me, Cat giving me her husband, you giving me a house. It feels like I don’t deserve to have such great friends.”
“You deserve anything good that comes your way,” I said. “All of us do.”
“It isn’t like we’re giving you anything we actually want,” Cat said. “Get a grip.”
“Bitch,” Danni said, mustering up a smile through her tears. She turned to me. “This means everything to me. Darryl’s credit is poor and I don’t know when we’d be able to save up for a down payment.”
When Danni mentioned Darryl’s credit, Cat looked guilty and got mighty interested in her carton of Chinese food. The state of Darryl’s credit probably had more than a little to do with her. Cat was terrible with money.
But I said nothing at all, because I realized that I could see Danni’s aura, shimmering with earth colors. I looked at Cat and saw hers too, fiery in tones of blue, orange and white.
I ached with all I couldn’t share with my friends. The gulf between us was more than distance and new men, it was the entire unseen world.
If I confided in them, the likelihood would be that they would think I’d gone insane, following my mother’s footsteps. If they believed, what could knowledge of a world they couldn’t perceive do, other than scare the bejesus outta them?
“I know who killed my grandma,” I said, and immediately wanted to clap my hand over my mouth.
Both Cat and Danni stared at me. “Have you turned him in?” Danni asked.
“How? Did he threaten you?” Cat asked simultaneously.
“No, to both of you. And it’s a she, Jake’s ex-fiancée. She tried to kill me too. That’s why I took off to Montana with Jake.”
Their jaws dropped to the ground. Their faces sagged, speechless.
“Why did she kill your grandmother?” Danni asked.
“Because she wanted to hurt me.”
“She must be a stalker,” Cat said. “Are you taking precautions? What’s to stop her from trying to get you again?”
“You’re just telling us this now?” Danni asked, incredulous.
“We just figured it out recently,” I said.
“She’s on the run? Is it a federal case since it’s across state lines? Is the FBI on it?” Cat asked, her questions rapid fire.
I cast about for plausible answers that didn’t involve magic, demons or the like. “Yeah, she’s on the run.”
“Jake’s ex-girlfriend tried to kill you, actually killed your grandmother and you’re sitting here all nonchalant. What’s the matter with you?”
One of the best things about being a woman is that your buddies generally won’t give you weird looks when you unleash a storm of emotion.
My tears were angry ones. The futility of my having to sit around and do nothing while rage stormed inside me was killing me. Jake said his family was binding Alyssa’s powers, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted her blood to run like she made my grandmother’s blood spill. I wanted her to scream in agony. The binding seemed to be no punishment for her crime.
I sniffed. It smelled like tobacco smoke. A misty trail of smoke emanated from a dark corner of my living room. The lizard demon that had attacked me, sat in the darkest corner of the living room, propped up by pillows. “No, don’t scream. We don’t want to scare your friends, would we? They might think you’re, you know—” He twirled a finger at his temple. “Crazy.”
CHAPTER 21
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth ...
—Song of Songs, 1:2
I’d never heard the demon speak before. I’d only seen him. His voice was raspy, nonhuman.
“We need to get out of here now,” I said, panicked.
“What’s wrong?”
“I smell smoke! Get your purses, c’mon.” I grabbed their hands and urged them toward the door.
My panic must have been contagious, because I ran down the stairs, two at a time, with Cat and Danni on my heels, feet flying to Jake’s apartment.
His door was unlocked, thank God. He was at the computer.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked.
“The lizard thingie. It was in my apartment.”
“The fire department wants to know the location of the fire,” Cat said. Damn, she’d already called the fire department?
“What fire?” said Jake, worried.
“What lizard thingie?” Danni asked.
Oh shit. “Cat, tell them there’s no fire,” I said.
“Then, why did you say that there was a fire?” Cat asked.
“There was a fire-colored lizard thingie and I panicked,” I said.
“You had us run like the demons of hell were after us because of a little lizard?” Danni asked. She’d got it exactly right with the demons of hell simile.
“It wasn’t little. It was huge,” I said. Somehow, confessing to seeing a demon in my living room to my friends was harder than I thought.
Cat was looking at me, eyes narrowed. “You say there was a huge fire-colored lizard in your living room?” She turned to Jake. “What’s this about your fiancée killing Luby’s grandmother and almost killing her?”
He looked taken aback. “Luby almost died, yes,” while casting an incredulous look in my direction. “By the way, Luby, my mother gave me the means to make my home secure against ... lizards.”
“What about when I go outside? What about them?”
“Lizards aren’t going to hurt you,” Danni told me, looking puzzled.
“Giant lizards, murderous ex-fiancées. You’ve been under a lot of stress,” Cat said.
“You have,” Danni said. “You’ve suffered a tremendous loss. Maybe you should get some rest, and then if you don’t feel better, see your doctor. You might need a prescription.”
Great, Danni thinks I’m crazy, too.
The gulf between me and my friends inched wider.
“I better get back home and see what Allen is up to with Darryl,” Cat said.
“I’ve got some errands, too.” Cat gave me a quick hug and drew back, studying my features. “You take care of her, you hear?” she said to Jake. “She’s a special one.”
“I know,” he said.
After the door closed behind my friends, I leaned into Jake, absorbing his strength. It wasn’t his looks that I loved most about him, although even thinking about the way he made love made me crazy-hot. I loved his sweetness and stability. There was a stable core inside of him, solid and strong, that was as real and tangible as his skin.
I’ve always known I was blessed. I’ve never felt unloved. My grandmother loved me well. And now Jake did. For a moment I imagined how it would feel to lose his love. I don’t know if I could survive it, but I wouldn’t run around killing folks, all crazy and jealous.
“Stop thinking,” he whispered in my ear. “Your beautiful face is all frowned up. I can almost hear your brain ticking. Everything is going to be all right. I talked to my mother right before you and your friends came over and she said Alyssa’s binding is almost done.”
He kissed me, savoring me slow and easy. “I want to make love to you.” His voice roughened. “I want to fuck you now.”
I let my body answer. We hit the floor in a tumble, passion blazing up like a flash fire. He reached into my jeans and rubbed the crack between my legs through my panties. “Your panties are dripping wet.”
“You do it to me, baby.”
Then he did it to me some more. His fingers delved into me, explored, and probed, his fingers split in a V-shape and rubbing each side of my clit, but not touching it. My hips rotated with his fingers’ steady rhythm inside my moist cleft.
I wanted to see him, taste him. I unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out. I wrapped my fingers around his dick and cradled his tight balls with my other hand.
Closing my eyes, I licked my tongue around his tip. Jake moaned and ground his hips forward to push his hard cock in my mouth. I let my tongue swirl around the veins of his dick until I reached the head. I pressed my tongue against the slit, tasting his salty juices.
As I stroked his dick with one hand, and gently held him cupped in my hand with the other, my tongue worked the head of his cock until I felt him trembling.
Unexpectedly, he withdrew and turned me around. He pulled my jeans and panties down in a swift motion, and slid the engorged head of his cock from my dripping clit all the way to my pussy.
He eased inside me, and I shuddered with the goodness of it. My pussy clutched at him and tried to pull him in but he held me still. I was frantic to feel his big dick pounding inside me.
Jake slammed his full length inside of me, and then slid almost all the way out, leaving only the head inside of me. Then he slid his cock deep again. “Ah, shit baby,” he said.
He reached around and his fingers played with my clit, while his slick dick pumped in and out, working my pussy. The sweet friction was driving me wild. I contracted around him, milking it, wanting to feel him shoot his life essence into me.
I felt the storm gather and when it hit, I broke apart and shattered. I whimpered as he thrust to his completion.
We subsided, our gasping breaths easing into each other.
“We didn’t make it to the bed,” Jake said.
We were heaped together, covered with sweat and sticky fluids. “Race you to the shower,” I said.
A few minutes later, the steamy water cascaded over us, arousing us again as our skin rubbed soap-slick against each other.
My nipples tingled as he rubbed the bar of soap across them, transforming them into hard pebbles. “I’m never going to get enough of you,” he said.
I gasped as he trailed the soap over the hollow of my stomach and then to my pussy.
I braced myself against the tiled walls as his large hands slowly stirred the soapy lather all over my hot and throbbing body.
I reached for him and wrapped my legs around his waist. I wanted him inside me again. My pussy was empty without that big dick thrusting in and out of it.
He grinned and reached for the showerhead.
Ahhh. My back arced over his strong arm as he directed the strong stream of water to my pussy and took me from cruising to shaking orgasm in thirty seconds.
“That was the appetizer, baby,” he said, his voice husky and he lifted me against the tiled shower wall and impaled me on his hard dick.
“I’m going to take you there and back again. You like my cock, sweetheart?” he growled against my throat.
I was beyond words, so I let my pussy answer that question.
Jake and I were getting out the ingredients to cook dinner together. He promised that I’d be a gourmet chef when he got through with me. I wondered if he knew that edible was generally the pinnacle of my culinary efforts.
There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” I said. It was probably Cat or Danni, wanting to tell me something.
I opened the door to a tall, very slim blond woman, with enormous breasts that looked like two cantaloupes stuck on her chest. She was dressed as if she was a Stepford wife or a prom queen, with a sleeveless, pink, calf-length cocktail dress covered with fussy tulle.
“Can I help you?” I asked politely.
“I doubt it. I need to speak to Jake. It’s urgent.” And she swept past me into his apartment.
Jake was out of the kitchen and in front of me before I could open my mouth to reply. I lifted my eyebrows.
Jake moved in front of me. “Alyssa,” he said.
“Jake,” she said, wringing her hands.
This was the woman who killed my grandmother? My stomach clenched and I edged to the kitchen. I moved toward the knives with deadly intent.
“They’ve made me a mundane. I might as well be dead!”
Did she expect us to disagree with her? “I’m going to the kitchen to get the butcher knife to put this bitch out of her misery,” I said to Jake, wheeling. “Twenty-seven times,” I said over my shoulder, starting to burn with rage as I remembered how Grandma died.
Jake put his hand on my arm. “She’s been punished. Look at her. She’s pathetic.”
“How has she been punished? Stripped of magic? I know plenty of people without an iota of magic who’re happy as fucking larks. This murderous, psycho bitch needs to be in prison.”
“How am I supposed to live like this, Jacob?” Alyssa asked. “I beg of you, please tell your family to have mercy and restore me! Please, I’m begging you.”
I got in her face. “Did my grandmother say please when she begged you not to kill her?”
She raised her head and focused on me for the first time. “Oh, I thought it was you, actually. You weren’t at your apartment and my demon couldn’t find you, so I assumed you’d be there. That old woman’s aura almost reflected yours exactly. It was uncanny. Sorry about that. A little mistake.”
Sorry about that? A little mistake? I heard a growl rise in my throat as I launched myself at her.
Jake plucked me out of mid-air and held me tight as I struggled, cursed, howled and tried to get to that goddamned bitch. I wanted to stick my nails in her eyes, to kick her in the stomach, and to plunge a knife in her scrawny gut twenty-seven times.
“Calm down, ” Jake was saying. “Please, Luby, calm down.”
“Put the nigger out,” Alyssa said, her voice all deep and gravelly.
Jake and I froze and stared at each other. “Okay, now can I kill her? Lemme at her,” I pleaded.
Then my breath caught as I saw her eyes flash into the snake-eye slits like my mother’s eyes had. Alyssa was possessed by demons too.
I reached out and reached into her eyes with some part of me that I wasn’t even sure I had, I grabbed the demon.
Alyssa screamed and fell to her knees.
“What’s wrong?” Jake asked.
I knew that I could rip the demon out of her with a mere flick of my will.
But why should I? She deserved to suffer, she deserved to die. My enhanced sight saw past the demon to the fire that burned within her. I could rip that out too. So easy, far easier and cleaner than the bloody effort and mess a knife would take.
Jake swung me around. “What are you doing to her? What can you do?”
Alyssa sank to the floor, indulging in a keening whimper. I wanted to give the bitch something to whimper about.
“She has a demon, maybe more than one,” I said. “I can pull it out.”
His eyebrow arched. “Since you heard no more spirits, I doubted that was your talent. Getting demons out of people seems to be more useful anyway.”
“It will be more useful.” My eyes narrowed as I stared at the bitch on the floor that killed my grandmother. “Because I can pull her spirit out also, and cast it to the winds.”
I reached out and Jake spun me around. “No,” he said.
Fury filled me. “Why do you care about this worthless bitch? She’s a murderer! It was only luck that I’m not dead, and she killed my grandmother. The universe handed me a way to get rid of her without consequences and I’m damn sure going to do it.”
“You don’t understand,” Jake said. “When you take a life, any life, there are serious consequences.”
“What were her consequences for her killing my grandmother? She’s not looking at prison time. She’s not paying a damned thing.”
“Yes, she is. The karma from her action could span lifetimes,”
I rolled my eyes. “Please.”
“And it would affect you too if you killed.” He took my hand looking utterly serious. “It would affect us.”
“Kill me,” Alyssa said. I stared at the demons roiling within her. There were three.
“Kill me, nigger. Go ahead and kill me. What are you waiting for?”
She clearly wanted to die. Then I looked again. No, the demons wanted her to die.
