My Way to Hell (10 page)

Catalina scoffed, giving him her best hard look. “Please. Don’t let me fool you. I’m as amoral as they come.”

“Right. That’s why you paid three thousand dollars for someone to collect bat shit for you in Texas so you can mix potions and save kids who have no idea the can of worms they’ve opened with their Ouija boards. All I’m saying now is I get that not all demons end up demons because they made the choice to be one. If I learned anything from what happened with Clyde, I learned shit goes down and it sometimes has nothing to do with what you intended.” The problem was, he’d realized it much too late where Marcella was concerned. He’d been too blinded by his rage and by the chaos his half brother, Vincent, had created in the name of Satan. His hatred of anything remotely related to Lucifer hadn’t left him with a lot of gray areas where Marcella was concerned. Thus, their relationship had been clouded by his prejudice.

“I heard about what happened to Delaney, how she got the gift of sight and passed it on to you. Can’t say I can hate on you for not buying into the idea that not all demons want Hell to rule.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Her grin was withholding. “You can always ask.”

“How did you end up a demon? I know damned well it wasn’t a choice.”

Catalina’s eyes became evasive, her spine rigid. “Yeah? Says who?”

“Not who. What. I ordered you bat shit. I think that says it all.”

The vague, haunted glint in her eyes came and went, replaced with that cocky gleam she wore more often than not. “It’s a long story, and if honesty’s what we have going on here, it’s personal and painful—even after all these years. But I can tell you this, your Marcella may well have been in over her head when she chose Hell. If what you say is true, she sacrificed her earthbound privileges to save your sister. She can’t be all bad.”

“Or maybe, after experiencing Hell, and the reality that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, she decided to try to win favor with the man upstairs?” He spoke his favorite mantra about Marcella’s six degrees of separation from the devil, but the more he said it out loud, the less he believed it.

“Yeah. Maybe. But here’s the catch. There is no winning favor once you choose Hell.”

“You know that because?”

“Because I’m high-IQ demon. I know just because I know. There’s no going back without some serious divine intervention—
ever
. So whatever she did to get there, I’m going to suppose she did it for a reason if she’s altruistic enough to save your sister’s life.”

“Like you?”

Catalina waved her hands in the air, dismissing him. “You so want me to be a good guy, don’t you? Forget me and focus on the woman you’ve possibly judged unfairly.”

Once more, he had to shove down the uneasy feeling that there was far more to Marcella than she let on. “There’s nothing to focus on. She’s not demonic anymore. She’s a ghost.”

“Now, that’s something I know very little about. If Lucifer shunned her, I don’t know if that works the same way as when the big guy does it. But I can ask around. And don’t bother to tell me you don’t want me to. Then you’d be lying and my resurgence of pathetic hope in the male species would be dashed.”

Kellen didn’t bother to beat around the bush. He wanted to know. No, he wasn’t being honest. He
needed
to know. “Okay. Ask around.”

“Done. I’ll also see if I can get any background on her.”

“You’d do that for me? A knuckle dragger from the barely evolved?”

She pointed to the counter. “You did hook me up with some fine Texas bat shit.”

“That’s just how I roll.”

Catalina chuckled, scooping up the box of bat feces, and gave him a waggle of her fingers before she slid into the shadows of the living room and disappeared.

He stood for a moment in the kitchen, fighting the unwanted anticipation of hope that Marcella wasn’t what she’d pretended to be all these years. Yes, she’d saved Clyde and Delaney, but she’d done it as a demon. But what if she’d become a demon for reasons that were just as selfless?

If she turned out to be one of the good guys, that’d be some error in judgment on his part.

That would mean he was a chump of the worst order. He’d always been able to keep himself from her sultry charms when he thought about what one had to do to become a demon. It never failed to stop him short, no matter how often she popped into his lusty dreams.

If the choice that led her to opt for Hell had loopholes, it would also mean ten years of not allowing himself to give in to his wild attraction to Marcella had been foolish time wasted.

Worse, she was further out of reach as a ghost with no earthbound privileges than she’d ever been before, leaving him feeling a deep hunger.

Like, deep.

Marcella sat on a bench in the park, watching the brittle leaves of winter skip over the pavement while she fought more tears of embarrassed outrage. The sun faded with a fell swoop, leaving her in the pinkish dusk of early evening. The dark purple-and-blue-streaked sky settled into a chilly midnight blue as another day came to an end. Letting out a long sigh, she glanced up at the sky.

Like the end of a day made a bit of difference. They rather blended.

Her head fell to her hands, and she noted with mild surprise that she was now able to keep it from going directly through her palms. She was also sitting on the park bench versus falling through it to the cold ground. Little by little, she was apparently acclimating.

“You savin’ thisss ssseat fer some . . . one?” A leathery, weathered hand slapped the place beside her on the wood bench.

The pungent stale scent of hard liquor wafted to her nose, filling her nostrils. Putting the back of her hand over her mouth, she shook her head, cocking her eyebrow with disdain. Somebody’d had a little drinky-poo.

She saw from the corner of her eye, rather than felt, the shift of the bench as the boozer weaved, then settled beside her with an uneven plunk.

“So how’sss it goin’?”

Marcella paused, turning to face him. His navy blue knit cap was almost threadbare in places, and bushy thatches of wiry gray hair spilled from the sides of it. Layers of clothing in various colors lay beneath his dark green coat, moth eaten and heavy with the odor of sweat and urine. He held a bottle of amber liquid openly, not even bothering to disguise it with a brown paper bag. But none of that mattered—he could
see
her.

“You can see me?”

His head bobbed forward then back while he fought to focus. “Not ssso goo-good.”

“But you can see I’m sitting next to you?”

He hacked a deep, crackling cough before he spoke. “Yeahhhh,” he said on a hiccup.

Why was it that boozers and kids could see her but not like a personal shopper? “How is that possible?” she muttered, more to herself than to the homeless man.

His body tilted sideways, his head landing right on her shoulder. He could touch her, too? He smiled up at her with a blackened grin. “Don’t be sssilly. I could always sssee you.”

Marcella fought her gag reflex. Beggars couldn’t be choosers and seeing as she had but two allies, one who hated her, and one who wasn’t old enough to remember to change his own underwear, she figured one more, albeit plastered and stankified, couldn’t hurt. “What do you mean you could always see me? Have we met?”

“Yesss,” he slurred. “But gimme a minute. I can’t”—he shook his head, creating a wave of more noxious air—“remember who I am. Oh, this was cleeearly a mistake. How agre—egr—eegious egregious.”

Marcella’s eyes popped open. She stared down into the goofy grin he gave her. No drunk had a vocabulary like that. “Jesus Christ—Darwin, is that you?”

He bolted upright. “Yesss! Tha’sss who I am. Darwiiin. I know my name. Darrr—wiiin. ’Sa good name. Lubs it. Nice lady give it to me.”

Giving him a hard shove, Marcella knocked him off her lap with a grunt of disgust and surprise. She could touch him, too . . . Then why the fuck couldn’t she touch the cute outfit at Macy’s? “Ugh. Sit up. Good God
.
What the hell were you thinking, possessing a homeless, drunk man? One who smells like a Porta-Potty, to boot. I remember the ‘Possession Is Nine-tenths of the Law’ class, and they distinctly tell you to be very careful about who you possess, you moron.”

Darwin reared upward, then slammed back down on the bench. His head lolled at awkward angles. “My head. It keeps falling.”

Using her palm, she pushed it back upright then snatched her hand away. “That’s because you possessed the body of a goddamned alcoholic. And what are you doing here anyway? Isn’t there some big bowl of Chuck Wagon you should be shoving down your gullet?”

Letting his head fall back on his shoulders, he stared up at the sky with glazed red eyes, one hand clinging to the bench rail, the other precariously holding on to the empty bourbon bottle. “Ugh. The ssspin is parking.”

“I’ll bet the spin is parking, and that’s because the empty is bottle.” She tried to yank the bourbon from his hands unsuccessfully and resorted to pointing to it so he could see it was barren.

He scrunched his red-streaked beady eyes shut, then reopened them with apparently no success in focusing. “I mean the park. It’s spinning like a—a ghastly amusssement park ride. Around and a . . . round . . .”

“What are you doing here, Darwin? Did you come to gloat about what a failure I am because I can’t get back to Chez Gray? Because I can’t, you know. So if you’re not here to help me, go away. I’m not up to another round. I’ve done my time in the ring for today.”

“No, I have to talllkkk to youuu.” He held up a hand covered in a glove with no fingers and shook it back and forth, pausing for a moment as the motion mesmerized him.

She swatted at him. “Knock it off and focus, Darwin. Talk to me about what? I can’t think of any other reason you’d be here other than to snark me.”

“Nooo. Tha’sss not why I’m here. Ssswear it. I’m here to—to—tell you someting. Yesss. Tha’sss what I haf to do.”

For a moment, even though the body he’d possessed was distasteful, it was Darwin. As ridiculous as that was, feeling as alone as she did, he was like comfort food. Granted, it was comfort food that was bad for your glutes, but it still comforted. “What do you have to tell me that’s so important you had to possess Jack Daniel’s?”

“I dooon’t knooow,” he whined. “Can’t think ssstraight, an’ I have fery few teef to work wif.”

She was just too tired. Marcella gave him a consoling pat on the knee accompanied by a long sigh. “It’s all right. You probably just missed razzing me. Everything’s always exaggerated when you booze it up. Your emotions get all out of whack. Believe me, I know. I’m a crier when I’m snockered.”

He shook his rolling head with a dizzying nod. “No. No. No. ’S important. I know it. Gimme a sec to tink.”

“Okay, you tink,
chico.
Mind if I destress while you do?”

“I can’t tink if you yak.”

Twirling a lock of her hair, Marcella ignored Darwin’s fight to keep his head erect and his indirect protest for silence. She had to get this off her chest. “So I can’t get back, Darwin. I don’t know why, but I can’t get back. I tried, because God knows I don’t want to stay here after what I just saw, but I can’t do it. What happens to me if I can’t get back? Do I just drift here forever? Shit. I never thought I’d say this, but I want to go back. At least on Plane Dreary there’s peace.” And no women named Catalina who swished their round, pert asses while they made even a plain old T-shirt look like an advertisement for Big Breasty Babes.

“Oh!” Darwin hollered. “I ’member. Uh, re—mem—ber,” he enunciated. “You haf a problem.”

She frowned, grabbing him by his bearded, shaggy chin. “What problem?”

“I can’t reeemember.”

“Bah. Let me tell you about problems, pal. First, Delaney. I made contact and she knows I’m okay, but she twisted that horndog of a brother around her little finger and convinced him it would be a good idea for me to help him with his ghost whispering while I’m stuck here. Which leads me to the problem with Kellen and his mistress of malevolence. Can you even believe when I tell you that two-faced, self-righteous shit is hot for a demon? Yeah. I saw her today. Right there in Delaney’s shop, just like she’d been there before. Verrry comfortable, I tell you. All rubbing up against him like some cat on a kitty condo laced with catnip. It was vile. Disgusting. Shameful.”

His giggle, high and sharp, echoed in the empty, open space of the park.

“How’s that funny?”

“Do you haf a twin?”

“What?”

“A twin. She sssounds jusss like you.”

Marcella bristled, knocking her shoulder with his. “Oh, shut up. I was never so blatant.”

Darwin let go of a gurgling snort. “Blatant should be your sssurname. But tha’sss not why I come, er came. I haf to tell you sometink. So shhh.”

With a roll of her eyes, Marcella leaned back, crossing her ankles and arms.

“Okay, I tink I got it. I heared, damn—
heard
sometink.”

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. “About?”

“Aboutchuuu.”

“Big deal. Like everyone on that godforsaken plane hasn’t talked about me at one time or another. I’m not winning any popularity contests because they think I’m unsociable.”

“No. No. No. Was about sssomebody you know.”

“I know lots of people, Darwin.”

“Thisss one is bad. So, so, sooo bad.”

Goose bumps crawled along her arms. Maybe he was just exaggerating because he was drunk.

“Calvin! Yesss.” The wrinkles in Darwin’s forehead deepened. “Wait. No. Not Cal . . .” His knit-capped head dropped to his reed-thin chest, his lips blew out puffs of air, and he began to snore.

She gave him a jolting shove. “Wake up! Who is Calvin, Darwin?”

His groan was long. “’S not Calvin.”

She squinted. “Sounds like . . . ?”