“And I guess I should do my job,” she said with a schoolgirl giggle that belied her age. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Bacon!” Rune shouted in Quentin’s head. Dude loved bacon.
Quentin pointed to a green chile and bacon breakfast burrito in the display case and said softly, “Burrito?”
She beamed at him. “Our specialty.”
Quentin chose to ignore the fact that what she actually signed was closer to: We give blowjobs.
“Besides the coffee, of course,” she added.
He gave her a thumbs-up and said, “Great.”
“Will that be it?” When he nodded, she rang it up, took his money, and handed back his change. “Here you go, honey,” she said, actually signing the word for honey. “How about you take a seat? I’ll warm this up and bring it out to you.”
He flashed her a grin, and she lingered a moment too long, the gaze transfixed on his mouth betraying her interest.
After a long moment, she nodded and said, “One Americana, coming up,” before pirouetting away. She had pretty hazel eyes, but he preferred blue like the ocean on a summer day.
“You should hit that.”
Quentin grabbed a seat at the high-top and refocused on the cops across the street. It had taken a long time for him to learn English. He was still learning, especially slang like hit that. But he was getting there.
Unfortunately, Rune refused to learn ASL. Probably for the best, though. It wasn’t like Quentin could see him. He could hear and feel him, and sometimes, he thought he could even smell him—like smoke with a hint of brimstone—but he’d only seen Rune for that brief second in the basement years earlier.
Later, he’d asked Rune exactly what’d happened. How he’d ended up unconscious and in the hospital. Rune feigned ignorance. Quentin would get it out of him someday. But the longer they were together, the more fused they became. Quentin no longer knew where he ended and Rune began.
Sarah delivered the coffee in a mug that proclaimed Bad Coffee Sucks and set a plate down with the warm burrito while tugging at her apron again.
He gave her a grateful smile when Rune said, “They’re leaving.”
Quentin hadn’t even been looking at the police cars as they headed out. That was another cool thing about Rune. He could see all around them and, just like with the hearing, so could Quentin. It was like having a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view with video surveillance cameras.
The two of them drank some of the best coffee they’d ever had, scarfed down the burrito, left a tip, and walked back to the truck. The demon was nearby, but they couldn’t tell if it was in the house Dora Rodriguez had died in or somewhere else close by. Of course, the fact that a woman snuck under the police tape, glanced around furtively, then walked around the back of the house just like Quentin planned to do did not bode well. If a demon was in the house, it would not take kindly to intruders. Even ones that looked like…like elfin queens.
Quentin stood by his truck in shock as he watched his ex. The same ex who was breaking and entering, two departed in tow, into the very shop he’d been surveilling.
Chapter Three
Here’s a question for the mind readers out there.
—T-shirt
“There’s a key under the pot.”
After yet another furtive glance over her shoulder, Amber turned back to her newest client, Dora Rodriguez. The town of Madrid was tiny, and the residents kept an eye out for each other, but something strange was happening. Dora was the third person to die in as many days, and if the description of her attacker was any indication, a demon had caused her death.
Demons were jerks. No doubt about that. But they didn’t usually go around killing humans. They liked to feed off them. Off their energy. Especially fear. Killing them served no purpose. Then, depending on the type of demon, the human would either go insane or die. Some demons, however, jumped from body to body, eventually leaving their host to live out their life with only vague memories of what had happened to them. Then there were the ones that used humans to cross into this realm, but that was a whole other story.
If this was a demon as Amber feared, then the entire town could be in trouble. More people could die, and the authorities would have no idea what was going on—or how to stop it.
Amber lifted a terra-cotta pot and found the key hidden beneath it. With shaking hands, she unlocked the aging back door. After a bit of shoving, she got it open.
“Yeah, sorry. It sticks.”
“No worries,” Amber said, trying to disguise the quivering in her voice. She did not relish the idea of facing a demon. She had a small arsenal of protective paraphernalia, but she did not have the capability to actually kill a demon. In fact, upon quick inventory of the usual suspects she had in her bag—salt, holy water, a cross—she realized that she was pretty much only capable of pissing a demon off. Great.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Dora said. She was a lovely woman in her fifties, shorter than Amber with lots of curves and a kind face. She’d given Amber the lowdown in her office that morning.
“I was working late, cleaning up the shop, when I heard something upstairs. I use the top floor for storage. It’s more like a finished attic than an actual second story.” She sniffed into a handkerchief and, once again, Amber wondered how it had made it into the afterworld with her.
Kyle stood off to the side, clipboard in hand. He patted Mrs. Rodriguez’s shoulder, encouraging her to continue.
“Was it an intruder?” Amber asked the woman.
She shook her head. “I’m… I’m not really sure.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Rodriguez. Go ahead. What did you hear?”
“No need to be so formal, sweetheart. Call me Dora, please.”
“Dora. I interrupted. Please, continue. What did you hear?”
“It sounded like… I don’t know how to describe it really. Like a scratching?”
Pins prickled across Amber’s skin.
“Slow and steady, like someone was digging out from under the floorboards.” The woman clutched her fists to her chest, clearly overcome with the memory. “I got to the top of the stairs and turned on the light. That’s when I saw it.”
Amber fought to keep her hands from clenching. The last time something had come out of the ground and grabbed her, she’d died for two hours. If she hadn’t had a surrogate aunt named Charley Davidson, who just happened to be a god, she would still be in the afterworld. A place that was kind of wonderful. She’d felt safe and warm and loved. It was the getting there that was the hard part. The attack had been violent. Brutal beyond belief. The man had been so desperate to escape hell, he’d pulled Amber down with him. Ripping at her hair. Clawing at her skin. Beating her when she wouldn’t help him until her life slipped through the cracks in her psyche and left the earthly plane.
She shook out of the nauseating memory and refocused on her client. “What did you see?”
“At first, just a blur. It barely registered. But when I turned toward it… Its face. It…” She made the sign of the cross and pressed her fingers to her mouth. “It wasn’t human. Madre de Dios. It was a demon. I knew it the moment I saw it. Its face was contorted. Beastly. Gray and white and shiny. Like the flesh of a lizard. And the teeth.” She shuddered.