Personal Demon

HOPE: CANDY STORE

I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see hands rising in a knockback spell. I dove. The spell caught me in the hip and spun me off balance, but I kept my grip on the bag and darted out of the way before my assailant launched a second one.

Ten feet away stood a young woman with spiky blond hair and so many piercings it’d take her an hour to prepare for a metal detector.

“My competition, I presume,” I said. “Sorry about your luck.”

“Oh, my luck’s fine.”

She cast again. I dodged the spell easily. Her lips tightened and her fury washed over me in delicious waves.

“Not used to casting against someone who knows what you’re doing?” I said. “Lesson one: don’t flail your hands.”

Another cast. I feinted to the side, but from the look on her face, there’d been no need.

“Run out of juice?” I said. “Lesson two: don’t spend it all in one place.”

I reached into the side compartment of my purse, a little hobo-style handbag, designed for the young urbanite of the twenty-first century, with convenient compartments for sunglasses, cell phone, PDA and a concealed weapon.

The witch stared at the gun as if expecting me to light a cigarette with it.

“Sit down,” I said.

After some prodding, she lowered herself to the ground, muttering about fair play. Among supernaturals, using weapons is considered an act of cowardice. But when your power package doesn’t come with fireballs or superhuman strength, you need to even the playing field.

Once she was seated, I used another weapon-my penknife-to cut the bindings from a nearby stack of recyclable papers.

“It’s called using what works,” I said as I tied her. “You should try it. Starting with learning your own kind of magic. If you’d cast a witch’s binding spell, I’d be the one sitting here, and you’d be the one with the conch shell.”

She fumed and squirmed and glared. I closed my eyes and drank in her rage, then picked up my beach bag and walked away.

I WAS PREPARED for Romeo to give me a hard time about passing the test. He grumbled and glowered, and I got my chaos reward, but he didn’t try to withhold the prize, probably for the same reason he hadn’t let me walk out when I’d threatened to-he was well paid for this middleman job and wouldn’t risk losing it.

He gave me an address and told me I was expected to show up there in two hours.

I HAD THE taxi do a drive-by of the gang’s address before I returned to my apartment, and I was glad I did, because it told me a shopping trip was in order.

The taxi driver recommended Bal Harbour Shops and it was a good call. And a good thing I was using someone else’s credit card.

Normally my frugal side would have kicked in, but I was still riding the high from besting the sorcerer, the witch and the goblin, so I was in the mood to treat myself. Considering that the test hadn’t been the cakewalk Benicio promised, I felt justified using his cash.

ANOTHER CAB TOOK me to my temporary apartment. The driver made me for a tourist from the first word and tried to “treat” me to the scenic route. I might not know the layout of Miami, but I spotted that trick after two blocks and ordered him back on track.

As we neared my apartment, I marveled at a wrecking ball tearing through what looked like perfectly good single-family homes-big houses, luxurious even. But houses nonetheless, on valuable property that could hold a hundred times that many in luxury apartment condos. One glance over the Miami skyline, dotted with cranes and skeletal high-rises, told even the newest visitor that this was a city on the move. Out with the old, in with the new.

My apartment was what I would call new, though by Miami standards, it might be a few scant years from the wrecking ball. It wasn’t to my taste-small, antiseptic and cold, painted in grays, whites and blacks, with spare modern furniture-but was in a trendy South Beach neighborhood and, for a girl like Faith Edmonds, location was everything.

I got back to the apartment just in time to change my clothes and place a few calls.

I phoned my editor first. Benicio had provided me with the details of a werewolf cult in Fort Lauderdale that I was supposedly investigating, possibly linked to the murder. His people would give me more later, so I could write the article. He’d booked a room at a Fort Lauderdale hotel in my name, with the phone forwarded to my cell. He was even having a young female employee drop by the room daily, to establish my alibi.

Normally “I’ve taken off to Florida chasing a story” isn’t something you tell your editor, not without getting permission first, but I had a good relationship with my boss. I liked my job, gave it 100 percent and had no intention of vanishing at the first offer from a more respectable paper. In the world of tabloid journalism, that’s employee-of-the-year material.

Naturally, he chewed me out. Then “get your ass back here” became “fine, but this is on your dime, Adams.” By the end of the call, it had changed to “save your receipts, but if I get a bill for the Hilton, you’re on proofreading duty for a year.”

The next call I made was a dozen times harder. I hate lying to my mother, though it was nothing new. We’d always been close, and still talked for twenty minutes a day and met once or twice a week, but there were days when I felt like an impostor who’d replaced her youngest child. There was just too much I couldn’t share with her.

She didn’t know she had a half-demon for a daughter. She didn’t know such a thing existed. I wasn’t even sure she realized her ex-husband wasn’t my biological father. My parents had separated around the time of my conception and everyone-my dad included-thought I was his. Did my mother have a postbreakup fling and kept it a secret? Or did she temporarily reunite with my dad after that fling and presume he’d fathered me? Or had Lucifer taken my father’s form and returned for one last night together? All I knew was that I’d been raised as the youngest Adams child, treated no differently than my two brothers and sister.

But I had been different. As a child, I’d walk through a museum and stand transfixed before the weapons displays, seeing glorious visions of war and destruction. I’d stare at auto accidents, undoing my seat belt to turn and watch them until they disappeared, then pepper my parents with questions. They chalked it up to a vivid imagination and a taste for the macabre and, since I’d never done anything violent myself, they believed it was just a harmless personality quirk.

By the time I started hearing chaotic thoughts, I was a teenager, and smart enough to know it wasn’t something to tell my parents. But it wasn’t easy. After a breakdown in my senior year, I’d spent weeks in a private facility.

When I’d gone looking for answers, I asked enough questions in the right places for a group of half-demons to find me. I learned what I was and, with that, found some peace. As far as my family knew, though, I’d simply outgrown my problems. There were friends and extended family members who disagreed-I was a tabloid reporter in a family of doctors and lawyers, and after a brief stint in Los Angeles last year, I’d returned to the same small college town outside Philadelphia where I’d grown up, and lived in a condo owned by my mother. Not exactly a “success” by Adams family standards. But to my mother, I was happy and healthy and after the hell I’d gone through, that was all that mattered. And if she was satisfied, then there was no need to burden her with the truth.

So I called, gave her my story, canceled our lunch date and promised to phone again the next day.

DRESSED IN A deep orange cowl-necked top and flouncy tiered miniskirt, I strolled up to an ugly rear service door and rapped, ready to present myself to my new associates.

Getting their attention wasn’t that easy, as it turned out, and my knuckles were raw by the time the door swung open. But it was worth the wait.

I’ve never been one to swoon over hot guys, and I blamed it on elevation sickness from my new three-inch heels, but when that door opened all I could do was stare. He was average height, average weight, average build…and above-average gorgeous, with collar-length black curls, copper skin, deep-set, hooded green eyes and a grin that sucked my rehearsed introduction right out of my head.

I recovered after a split-second of gawking, fast enough to realize he hadn’t noticed my reaction. He was too busy doing his own appraisal, that gorgeous smile making me as giddy as any chaos vibe.

“I hate to say it,” he said, “but the club doesn’t open for another hour, and you’ll need to go in the front entrance.”

“I’m here to see Guy.”

“Oh?” Another notch on the smile. “In that case, come on in.”

He moved back. As I stepped forward, though, he blocked my path, stopping so close I could feel his breath on the top of my head.

“Almost forgot. I’ll need the password.”

I looked up at him. “Password?”

He leaned against the open door. “Or handshake. I’m supposed to get the password, but I’d settle for the secret handshake.”

“Let the girl in, for God’s sake,” said a voice behind him.

A woman appeared. Her tight black jeans and Doc Martens clashed with her Donna Karan blouse. Dyed black hair pulled back in a simple ponytail. Nostril and lip holes with no jewelry in them. Simple makeup, but a heavy hand with the eyeliner. She looked like a Goth trying to play it straight, and failing.

She waved me into the darkness beyond. “Ignore him. He’s practicing for a new career as a comedian, which will come in handy when we kick his ass out of the door.” She turned to him. “Go get Sonny and track down Rodriguez. Guy wants to talk to him.”

His gaze hadn’t left me. “Do I get an introduction first?”

“Later. If you’re lucky. Now move.” She led me through a curtain into a lit storeroom. “Speaking of introductions, you are…?”

I thought she’d know, but presumed she was testing me. “Faith. Faith Edmonds.”

“The Expisco? Thank God. Guy almost had a fit when he learned we had a shot at an Expisco and might get a witch instead. But rules are rules, and the girl was the niece of a contact, so we had to give her a shot.” She extended her hand. “Bianca, Guy’s second-in-command.”

She opened a door and we stepped into the club.

I know horror films always take place in dilapidated old mansions with creaky stairs and hidden passages, but for spooky places, I’d nominate a dance club before the doors open at night.

When the music’s playing, clubs have an energy that’s undeniable-the heat of strangers crowding together, the pulsing beat interrupted by the occasional squeal of drunken delight, the sometimes sickening blend of perfume and sweet drinks and hastily wiped up vomit. If you’re not in the mood, it can seem like the ninth pit of Hell, but you still can’t deny the life of it. Walking through this club now was like creeping through a cemetery.

My footsteps and voice didn’t echo through the cavernous emptiness, but were swallowed by top-notch acoustics. Emergency lighting was the only illumination, too dim to even cast shadows. The overamped air-conditioning raised goose bumps on my arms and legs. The smell of cleaning chemicals barely covered the mildew from drinks spilled on the carpeted upper level. The only sound was the slow thump-thump-thump of music in a distant room, thudding like a dying heart.

Bianca was saying something ahead of me.

“Sorry. I missed that.”

“I said crew members don’t officially work in the club, but you could be called on to serve drinks or help behind the bar if we’re short-staffed. Everyone’s expected to do their part. Is that okay with you?”

I could tell by Bianca’s tone-friendly but firm-that this wasn’t open to negotiation.

“Can’t say I’ve ever waited tables, but there’s a first time for everything.”

“Good. Rodriguez is our tech guy and he’ll set you up with an untraceable cell phone. You’re expected to carry it at all times. If Guy wants you here, he wants you here now, whether it’s 2 a.m. or lunchtime.”

“Got it.”

“You’re expected to check in every day at five. He might not have anything for you, but he wants to see every face. So if you meet some hot Miami millionaire who asks you to join him for a three-day yacht trip to the Bahamas, the answer is no. Don’t even ask Guy. It’ll just piss him off.”

“Got it.”

“Speaking of hot millionaires, you’ll be expected to hang out at the club and make them feel welcome. And, no, that doesn’t include sleeping with them. Sometimes we pick a mark, ask you to get some information. Other times you’ll just be hanging out, dancing, having fun and convincing people that this club is the place to be.”

“Got it.”

She motioned me to a booth under an emergency light. “A few final things before we meet Guy, and these are the ones you really need to pay attention to, so let’s take a seat.”

She waved at the room. “You’re probably thinking that despite all these rules and responsibilities, this is a pretty sweet setup. But I’m warning you now, Faith, that if you’re into the club scene, this is like being in a candy store with no money. I said we don’t expect you to sleep with the patrons. Change that to ‘you aren’t allowed to.’ No sleeping with them, no dating them, no giving them your number. You’re limited to one drink a night, just so your breath will smell like booze. After that, you’ll still order drinks but you’ll be served soda and virgin cocktails. While you are here in the club, you’ll be the model patron. If Guy so much as catches you smoking in the bathroom, your ass is on the line. If you do drugs, stop now. I don’t just mean while you’re here either. Guy expects you to be ready to roll at any moment.”

“Harsh.” None of it mattered to me-I wasn’t about to get loaded and sleep with strangers-but I suspected Faith wouldn’t be as straitlaced.

“That’s the way Guy runs things. We have to stay under the radar. You can’t get cozy with the marks. You can’t get us investigated for breaking smoking bylaws. You can’t get wasted and blow a job. We run this place squeaky clean on the outside. It keeps people from looking too closely.” She smiled. “I tell Guy he should have been a drill sergeant, but the guy’s a goddamn genius at this. He’ll make you work your ass off, but if you stick it out, the rewards are pure honey.”

From the way Bianca’s eyes glittered every time she said Guy’s name, I could tell she was no impartial judge.

“So, are you ready to meet your new boss?”