Damned if You Don't, page 51
part #1 of Pure Souls Series
Jerry shifted his weight. “You read minds too? Are you, like, an intern?”
“No, but you are standing square in the middle of a psychic shop now, aren’t you?” Her eyes sparkled. Green. Green enough to put emeralds to shame. “You’re one of them cute, but not too bright types, aren’t you?”
“Not too bright? Listen, sister...”
Dee’s arm whipped across Jerry’s chest, throwing him back about two feet. He’d already learned that few things got under Jerry’s skin–outside of anything relating to Riona, that was. But insulting a gnosis demon’s intelligence? Even if he weren’t still a demon, that was a many-pocketed minefield to go gallivanting about.
“Fifteen pounds for a ten-minute reading if it’s just one of you. Twenty-five if you’re both planning to go in together,” was her only response. “Paid in advance, and we accept cash, cash, or cash.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Dee said. “We’re here to see Madame Zorelli about something personal.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize that. That’s five pounds more, then.”
Jerry clicked his tongue. “Look, we’re in a bit of a rush.”
“Then I suggest you pay up, shut up, or get out,” the woman snapped. Then, speaking along with her typing, she growled out, “Americans.”
Dee and Jerry exchanged looks of annoyance, and not because neither of them considered themselves American.
Jerry reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “I only have greenbacks left. The cabbie drove off with my only pound note. Can you just give me change for a hundred-dollar bill?”
“Nae.”
The tapping of her phone suspended, she held out her hand. The skin on her wrist was so delicate, and so fair, Dee found himself wondering if it would feel like the petals of a flower or a slip of silk against his lips. He shook his head and drove the feeling away. His libido had the fine timing of a utility bill due on Tax Day.
“But I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” she continued. “I’ll take your paper and leave twenty pounds of my own money in the drawer here for the ledger.” Franklin’s image wrinkled in her hand.
“And how much will you give me back?”
Sincerity filled her face as she looked up. “None, of course.” She slid out a stack of multicolored banknotes from her jacket pocket. Pulling one from the pile, she threw it into a shoebox on her side of the counter. “There. One of you can go in now.”
Dee pulled down his shirt, trying to slip in a little self-adjustment without being obvious. “I’ll go. You look like you’re about to grind your teeth to glue.”
“What do you expect? A hundred dollars is a lot of money, and I ain’t exactly rolling in it.” Jerry turned his attitude to the receptionist. “Am I allowed to sit and wait without a charge?”
“We’ll consider it complimentary since you’re such a good tipper.” She tapped her chest as Franklin got to second base when she deposited inside her bra.
“At ease, Jer.” Dee pushed his partner down into W-shaped, metal-framed folding chairs. “This won’t take long.”
THE ROOM INTO WHICH he stepped was even chintzier than the lobby. A cloth of crushed velvet covered a small, round table, topped with a crystal ball likely manufactured in Taiwan. Canned, new age spa music trickled out from hidden speakers, creating a soundtrack for the formulaic event to unfold. A stack of tarot cards on the table provided the finishing touch on the grand charade of invoking wisdom from the great beyond.
Dee sat down at the table and schooled his expression. He’d have to give the oracle this much: she’d finally learned how to set the stage. Last time he was here, she had nothing more than a few moth-eaten armchairs and a vase of plastic flowers.
When a slice of metal-on-metal ripped the air, a small bundle of a middle-aged woman in an outfit termed by the fashion-minded as “thrift store gypsy drag queen” shuffled out from behind a purple pleather curtain. The only thing thicker than the red lipstick “Madame Zorelli” wore was her lousy Romanian accent, although the latter definitely took the prize for tackiness. Dee realized it had been years since he last ventured here. So what if he didn’t recognize her as the same person he consulted previously? Magical creatures didn’t age or endure the way humans did.
“Fear not, for Madame Zorelli sees all!”
Dee folded his hands behind his head. “As dark as you keep it in here, I don’t know how that’s scientifically possible.”
Melting into the chair, the oracle grimaced as if to say, Oh, great! Another asshole.
“How can Madame Zorelli assist you to communicate with the great beyond? With whom do you wish to speak? A mother? A friend? A lover?”
He bit his lip and pitched forward, placing his palms flat on the table as a dance of memories flitted across his mind’s eye. No, he refused to let memories of Clare sprinkle this cheesy platter.
“Actually, I’m looking for some prognostics, if you catch my drift.” As the crystal ball took on a blue-green glow, Dee could make out her features well enough to notice the wrinkles around the edges of her eyes and the laugh lines crisscrossing her cheek. “The years aren’t treating you kindly, are they?”
“Wisdom knows no age.” Her hands hovered over the ball as she caterwauled and crooned. “Spirits, spirits, guide me! Quickly, give me your hand!” She reached out a paw. “The spirits tell me the answer can be found on your palm.”
“Which spirit? Gin or whiskey?”
“Don’t hesitate. They may leave before we have a chance to ask anything. Give me your hand!”
Before he could argue, his palm was under her inspection.
“You found a great love.” A bony finger ran its way down his lifeline. “But lost her tragically. However, love is not done with you. Another comes.”
He suppressed the urge to say, They always do with me. Several times, in fact.
She continued. “It will be a love as great as that which you knew before. This one will make you complete again.”
Dee snapped his hand back and glared. “Riiiigghttt... Maybe I was unclear; that’s not the kind of prognostics I’m talking about. I need information on my sister. I’d like to make her an offer she can’t refuse, but she might tell me to go fuck myself and I’d lose the one person in my family I still hold an ounce of love for.”
“I cannot discern the will of the gods!” the oracle proclaimed. “But know this: your sister’s fate is not in your hands. It rests with another, and you are powerless to influence it. But about that new love...”
Dee gnashed his jaw. “I don’t care what kind of future you see in your Hasbro crystal ball. You say anything that suggests I’m going to replace Clare, and I’ll make sure the only spell you’ll ever need again is for levitating to the bathroom, because I will break both of your legs.”
Dee winced when the lights shot on, rendering him shocked and temporarily blind. His fingers curled into his eyes, trying to massage them into focus. When the glare dimmed and his pupils readjusted, he barely made out a glint of silver giving him the old eye-to-eye.
The door flew open behind him, but his gaze stayed fixed on the double-barreled threat pointed in his direction. Instinct demanded that he protect the innocent from the crazy lady with a pistol. Only, he didn’t know if his muscles, much less his magic, could move faster than a bullet.
The voice of the annoying woman from the reception desk behind him sent shivers up his spine. “Madame, you... Holy hell, what did you do, you bloody yank?”
“Jesus Christ, lady, stop. First, I’m not American. Second, tell your boss here that I already get plenty of vitamins, and I don’t need an iron supplement.”
The psychic spoke, somehow misplacing her Romanian accent. “This bugger just threatened to break my legs.”
“You’re no oracle,” Jerry sputtered, filing in.
In the fully lit room, Dee realized how right Jerry was. “You’re not Kamaala.”
“Kamaala?” the stand-in repeated, her brow heavy with confusion. “You mean Kami Winters? She moved to Belfast six years ago, and sold me the business.”
Dee heard Jerry kick the wall. “That would have been nice to know before you charged us.”
Options arranged themselves like bullet points in Dee’s brain. Could he out-jump a bullet? No problem if he got a slug; as long as it wasn’t between the eyes, he’d heal in a week or two. It would smart horridly though, and the other two wouldn’t fare as lucky if they caught it instead. A stunning charm of some kind? Their schedule was too tight at the moment to stick around and make sure the witness was sufficiently assuaged to remain quiet.
“I may be a fake psychic, but if you don’t get the hell out, no one will be able to pull anything from your lifeline, savvy?”
With his hands out before him, Dee took meager steps towards the door. He cursed himself for his impatience. “I’m just looking for Kamaala. Do you have a phone number for her? An address? I really need to consult...”
“Can it and book!” the woman shouted, cutting him off.
To Dee’s horror, Jerry managed to skirt around the receptionist, placing himself between the demigod and the gun. He should remind his fellow Pure Soul that his newly reissued human body wouldn’t stand up too well to a point-blank injection of lead.
“We don’t have time for this,” Jerry continued. “My wife is a drop dead gorgeous woman amidst a collection of the biggest players since The Rat Pack did Vegas. For some reason, my partner here thinks seeing this Kamaala woman is critical, so how about you just tell us where she is and we’ll leave you alone?”
“Like I’m going to tell you, you stalking buggers!”
If Annie Oakley really were psychic, she would have foreseen the hex the ex-demon was whispering under his breath. Something must have triggered her, though. The moment Jerry pushed his hands up to throw a freeze charm over her, she fired.
Instinct set Dee in motion. He spun, throwing himself towards the door, ready to cover the receptionist’s body with his own when he saw her. The mousy annoyance of a woman stood with her hands before her, a trickle of light flying from her fingertips. When Dee looked back over his shoulder, he saw the gun floating in the air, contradicting the laws of physics. The bullet was barely three inches from the barrel and only one inch from Jerry’s chest. The air around it bent, an echo of disturbance trailing behind it, but remained stationary.
“What the bloody hell?” The psychic’s chest heaved as she fell backward. Wide-eyed, she scrambled to her feet and lashed an accusatory finger. “What the hell are you?”
“A former employee now, I’m guessing,” the woman snapped. “I’m sorry, Sinead. But in my defense, you can’t just go around shooting people, okay? It’s not good for business. Plus, it will bring in cops, and neither one of us wants to be on radar, right?”
“Sinead?” Dee turned to the old woman with her back pressed against the wall. “Is that the Irish adaptation of Zorelli?”
The gasping woman shook her head reverently, her eyes still fixed on the bullet levitating in the air. “How the hell...?”
“You got a witch of a receptionist, that’s how,” Jerry growled.
The raven-haired lass barked a laugh. “You ought to know better than that when you see the likes of me. Especially you, Fabio Dark.”
Dee’s eyes narrowed. Calling on his power, his third eye surveyed the spiritual borders of the woman in front of him. The green-blue twinkle of her aura was weak, but managed to give her away.
“Your mother or your father?”
The curl in a corner of her mouth, which became a grimace, told him he hit the mark on the head.
“Grandfather.”
“Olympian?”
Goddess in grief, please don’t let her be of my mountain, Dee thought. That radically upped the chances he was related to her. While some of his family considered cousins fair game, he wasn’t amongst them.
Later, he’d wonder why that thought crossed his mind.
“Meso-american actually, but my tootich has gone into the sunset.”
“My condolences.”
“Unnecessary.” She jerked her head. “You?”
“My dad. Zeus.”
With her hands on her hips, she flexed her fingers. “My, aren’t we from a lofty pedigree? Tell me, what possible future would concern a Prince of Olympus so much to make a pit stop to see an East London psychic?”
“An oracle used to run this place, and the rest is my own concern.”
They should have gone. By the look on Jerry’s face, he thought the exit point was about five minutes earlier. Consulting an oracle wasn’t going to happen. Still, Dee hesitated, although if it were because of caution or hope, he couldn’t say. How did one cross paths with another demigod and make sure the news of his appearance wasn’t contained? Demons were known to buddy up with certain partial nephilim, stroking their egos for information.
He leaned into the woman as Jerry wisely put the fake psychic into a light sleep. “Is there somewhere we can talk, Miss...?”
Her gaze slanted. “Yates,” she supplied. “Anwen. What have we to discuss?”
“Nothing.” Hopefully something. “Just a kindness. To make up for all this.” Dee flicked his hand in the direction of the sleeping Goofy. “I’m Dee, by the way, and the overly-oiled charmer there is Jerry.”
Anwen rolled her eyes, as if to say that was fine and good, but why did she need any more details about them?
“There’s a pub a few blocks down. I suppose the least a man can do when he manages to cost an innocent woman her position is treat her to a pint.”
He could have given her another position. He could have given her several, really good positions.
Dee chided himself as he pulled back his libido and Jerry, in turn, pulled the lapels of his jacket.
“I don’t care if her daddy is Big Boss and her mom’s Liz Taylor,” he said. “That woman took me for a hundred dollars cash. You better be damn sure she’s treating.”
Chapter 7
“And this is your en-suite. Nothing impressive, I know. But, assuming you don’t have any special angel body parts, it should do.”
She could take on Persephone in an Oxford-styled debate over their different understandings of “impressive.” She had never seen a bathroom built perfect for entertaining, but a cocktail party wouldn’t have been hard to pull off. The tub alone could have seated six comfortably.
“There’re towels in the closet, and a robe on the back of the door. I guess you won’t need me to supply you with any clothes.” Putting a finger on her chin, Persephone gave Riona’s outfit a keen inspection. “You just poofed up that ensemble out of nowhere. Funny.”
Sliding her jacket off her arms, Riona tried not to sound insulted. “My clothes are funny?”
“No, what’s funny is that you were able to do magic,” Persephone clarified. “Dee’s magic peters out here. He can’t so much as float a pencil. Clare couldn’t either. Maybe it’s different for you because you’re a keystone and they were both pillars?”
If there was one thing Riona didn’t want to discuss right now, it was theories on Pure Soul, realm-specific abilities. “Maybe. Can I ask you something, Steph? How is all this here?”
Persephone’s face screwed up. “What? The bathroom? I know, in the original design, I had it on the other side of the...”
“No, not that. I mean, everything. The paved roads, and marble toilet, the coffee shop down in the village... How did all this come to be in Olympus?”
“The old-fashioned way: built, bought or bartered.”
Riona kicked off her shoes. “I didn’t see a Mt. Olympus IKEA or Valhalla Hardware on our way in. No trucks or cars, either.”
“We have ways. There are actually some nephilim artisans still, but every decade there’re less of them around. More and more choosing to go into the sunset, it seems.”
Persephone must have been able to see from Riona’s expression that she wasn’t tracking.
“It means dying,” she continued. “Because that’s when disembodied souls transcend to their next realm. Seems silly for us, as we don’t have souls, but it’s just a phrase that’s stuck through the years. As to building materials: the smaller stuff we bring in by hand. You know how angels can port, right?”
The corner of Riona’s mouth rose. “Intimately.”
“Nephilim can’t pop up wherever and in whatever realm we want like angels, but we can flash back and forth into the mortal realm. So if we need, say, a chainsaw or some grout, we just buzz out and carry it back in. There’re also a few fixed portals, accessible by anyone who knows where they’re located. We do bring trucks in on occasion, but Dad restricts them. He doesn’t like the pollution.”
“But you said there’re other villages in this realm. I’m guessing you don’t have planes either.”
“No, but we do have frequent flyer miles. If we need to go big distances like that, we just port back to the mortal world and catch a flight. Oh, and we can also shift back to our native village from anywhere in the mortal realm. I know that doesn’t really make sense, but it’s an exchange we were given to counterbalance all the checks the angels insisted on.” Persephone’s expression became unreadable, and Riona could tell she was working up to something. “I’m going to say something, and I want you to promise to take it seriously, okay?”
“Not like I’ve been dealing too much with the frivolous over the last few days. Shoot.”
“I’m delighted you’re here. Really. I consider you a friend, and I don’t make friends easily. Mi casa es su casa, as some of your people say. But nephilim men, they’re very... driven. And you, you’re very...” Persephone’s gaze drifted down to Riona’s chest. “...that. You’re a big girl, I’m not going to tell you not to. I’m just giving you a head’s up; this is a different culture. As we can no longer reproduce—”
“Can’t reproduce?” Riona didn’t need all her mystical knowledge of statistics to do the basic math. “Then how did Dee come to be?”
“Oh, we can still conceive with mortals, just not each other. But that’s not the point. The point is, sex is all about recreation here. If that’s what you’re after, fine. But when they start to come on to you—and they will—just remember: don’t pick up your racquet unless you’re ready to swing.”
