Accidentally Demonic (21 page)

Wanda, proving she still held the badass card in her hand, latched onto Hildegard’s ear and whispered low, “Do what she says, or I’ll tear it off and shove it down your throat.”

Now, them was fightin’ words.

Hildegard’s creamy throat worked, the tendons in it bulging when she laughed—all scary and crazy.

That was just before she flicked her wrist—one small shake—tossing Casey into a festively decorated tree.

With lots of twinkle lights.

So many, in fact, they got caught in her hair.

Hair she’d worked on for an entire hour to perfect.

Fuck it all if that didn’t piss her off.

Looking back, the appearance of her flaming fingers sure would have helped
before
Hildegard had thrown her across the street.

But she couldn’t complain.

Because they’d ignited just in the knick of time to launch a real screamer at Hildegard.

Gazing down at her volatile fingers, Casey smiled.

Her aim was damn good.

She’d totally meant to fry Hildegard’s false eyelashes.

CHAPTER 10

“Hildegard!” Clayton roared down the street with a loud snarl in a blur of color and motion.

Somehow, Casey had managed to hop down from the top of the tree like she’d acquired bionics, landing on her feet with a feather-light descent.

In one heel, no less.

Yay, all things demony.

The prickles of rage that had made her fingertips emit a screaming fireball now lit every part of her body as she stormed Hildegard, whose eyelashes no longer burned but sent wafting pencil-thin tendrils of smoke in the air. Hildegard quite casually pulled a hankie from her clutch bag, gave it a lick, and patted at her eyes like she was completely unaffected.

Casey went straight for her, circling her imposing frame, her breath puffing in short, raspy clouds of steam while Hildegard remained clearly undaunted. She’d decided that her words— the ones she always used to solve any kind of discord—were fruitless.

She’d much rather see the giant bitch dead.

“Casey!” Wanda screamed. “Back off, Casey! Back off now.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Wanda. Let her kill the bitch,” Nina said. “Because if she doesn’t, I will.”

“Casey. Listen to my voice—back off. Take a cleansing breath and let go of your anger,” Wanda soothed.

In increments that relaxed each part of her body one muscle at a time, Wanda’s voice penetrated the thick veil of her anger. One minute she was up—the next down and horrified she’d torched Hildegard’s eyelashes. Again, still as bewildered as she was the first time she’d set Nina on fire, Casey looked at her fingers with a dismayed groan. “Egads.”

“Oh, fuck this, Wanda,” Nina hollered. “You’re always trashing all the good shit with your sappy breathing techniques and warm squishy shit. You know, there’s nothing wrong with a good ass-kicking, and if anybody needs one, it’s this fruitcake here. So why can’t you just let well enough alone, knock off all the Hare Krishna, beatin’ your tambourine bullshit and let Casey kick her ass from here to Boise?”

Clay jammed his body between Casey’s and Hildegard’s, his eyes fixed on Hildegard’s face while Casey’s view of her was blocked by his broad back. “Nina! Enough. You know what could happen if you get involved. Stay out of this and go home to Greg. Wanda—take your sister home.
Now
. I’ll deal with this.”

The. Fuck. Casey tapped him on the back.

“Casey—
go
,” he seethed.

How had she come to a point in her life where it seemed everyone was either telling her what to do or saving her from doing something reeealllly bad? No way was she leaving without clearing some of this messiness up. “That’s easy for you to say, pal. It wasn’t you who almost had the ass whooping of a lifetime. I’d really kind of like to work this out so we can all move on. If we just explain to your wife what’s been going on, I’m sure she’ll understand, and everything will be right as rain.” She gave Clay a hard shove with her shoulder, but he didn’t budge. His rock-solid frame was unmovable. As a matter of fact, it was like she hadn’t touched him at all.

Ducking from behind him, Casey positioned herself in front of the two of them, but it was almost as if she wasn’t there.

“Goddamn you, Hildegard. If you touch one hair on her head, I’ll see you in Hell,” Clay threatened, the warning no more than a snarl.

Holy hacked off. Clay wasn’t kidding when he’d said their marriage was one of convenience. He was just short of rabid and drooling. Which gave Casey pause. If theirs was an arrangement born out of circumstance, what the hell was up Hildy’s ass? Like she should care if Clayton was doing a whole harem of women all at once while they rode tricycles and blew “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on their harmonicas?

Hildegard’s ice blue eyes glittered. “You’ll see me there eventually, won’t you, my love?”

“Leave, Hildegard. Or I’ll kill you myself.”

Phew. Death. Destruction. Killing. Maiming. Paranormal people had such a hard-on for serious threats. They didn’t just threaten to do a little damage. They went straight for a shot at capital punishment.

Her response was dry and snide. “Oh, darling. No, you won’t. You can’t, remember? Clan law or something, isn’t it?”

Had Clay tried to kill Hildegard before? Jesus Christ. Had a man with a predilection for murder been sleeping in her closet? Hadn’t Wanda said he was trustworthy? He was such a strange concoction of light and dark. She was alternately amused by his wiseass responses and freaked out by this newly seething, exposed half of him.

“But I will. Now get gone, and if you come near Casey again, it’ll be your end.”

Again with the final.

As Casey watched this scene between two married people play out, she found herself unbelievably curious about how they’d ended up together.

“Hey, you two?”

Their heads swiveled in her direction, as though they hadn’t even realized she was still there. “Tell me something?”

Clay sucked in his cheeks. “Go home, Casey. Wanda, help me out here.”

Casey raised a palm in her sister’s direction. “Don’t you dare, Wanda. I just want to ask a question and then I’ll go.”

Hildegard gave her a sly smile, then sent Clay a secretive glance. “Certainly.”

“What is the problem here? Okay, yeah, I get that you had to get married because you vampires and werewolves and lions and tigers and bears have rules. Fine. But what’s the uproar about? I mean, I don’t get the big deal. It’s obvious you’re married in vampire only—or whatever. So even if Clay was, you know . . . and before you get that freak on again, he isn’t—wasn’t—won’t—with me, what’s the crime? He’d only be screwing things up for himself, right? It’d be him that’s shunned or whatever horrible fate you people cook up when someone breaks their marriage vows. It wouldn’t hurt you at all, Hildegard. In fact, it would work in your favor. You’d no longer be strapped to a guy you obviously hate. Then maybe you could find the vampire of your dreams and have baby vampires. So all I’m saying is this—calm down, already. If Clay screws up, you win. Game over.” Even as she said those final words, she cringed. He would die—
die
—if he stomped any other mattress but Hildegard’s, and that troubled her.

Deeply. What troubled her more was she couldn’t just chalk it up to the injustice of it all—or even the sort of compassion one human being feels for another whose fate was so precarious. It wasn’t the kind of “oh, too bad” feeling you had when you saw a tragedy on the news.

It, like, seriously had her stomach in a knot that Clay could lose his immortality and fall off the face of the planet.

Nina flicked Casey’s arm. “Jesus, you’re a twit. Shut up and let’s go. Let the two of them work this out. Alone, without that mouth of yours that babbles like a brook.”

“Oh, Clayton,” Hildegard crooned. “What have you done? She really doesn’t know what she’s gotten into, does she?”

Yanking her arm from Nina’s grip, Casey shrugged her off. “What have I gotten into?” What else was there after being turned into a demon?

Clay gripped Hildegard’s shoulders, his eyes flashing all sorts of mysterious messages at her. “Go
now
, or I’ll see to it you burn in Hell. It’ll be worth my own demise.”

Hildegard’s last glance before she disappeared into thin air held just a hint of fear—something Casey was sure she didn’t want anyone, least of all Clay, to see.

But an explanation was in order. “That was the most cryptic conversation I’ve ever heard. You people are like Stonehenge or crop circles—a bunch of questions and no answers. But after that, I think you owe me an explanation. What exactly have I gotten myself into besides the demon game?”

Nina’s hands jammed into the pockets of her jeans as she rocked back on her heels. “Yeah. You know what? I wanna know what the fuck, too. And there’s something else I wanna know. Dude, she didn’t smell like vampire.” Turning to Wanda, she asked, “Did you smell vamp on her, Wanda?”

“Nope. Though everything happened so quickly, I’m not sure what I smelled.”

Nina clucked her tongue at Wanda’s admission. “As a matter of fact, she smelled like Casey does.”

Wanda sniffed the air. “Oh, yeah. Huh. So what’s that about, Clay?”

Clay stared down at all of them. “That’s because she is like Casey. She’s demon.”

Nina slapped him on the arm with an affectionate hand. “Shut. Up. You’re mated to a demon? How the fuck did that happen? When I found out you had a mate, I just figured she was vampire like us.”

Yeah. How. The. Fuck? Casey had just assumed Hildegard was a vampire, too. She looked to Clay, waiting.

His gaze was weary, his jaw tight. “It’s a long story, Nina—long and
personal
. Now, I think tonight’s been enough for Casey, and we really should get her home.” He took hold of her arm, guiding her toward the parking lot behind the club, but Casey wasn’t ready to go home yet. Casey wanted answers.

Digging her recovered high heels into the pavement, she shook Clay off. “Casey’s right here, and she’s tired of everyone speaking for her, or telling her she’s tired, or talking her off a ledge that, had you been compassionate people, you’d have just let her jump from after her behavior tonight. Now, something’s going on, and I want to know what it is, Clay. What else, besides this demon gig, have I gotten myself into? I’m not budging until I have an answer.” So, yeah, no more pushing her around.

“Then I’ll budge you myself,” Clayton said before grabbing her by the waist and stalking off to his pickup as if he was carrying a suitcase, with Wanda and Nina in tow.

Her shoes fell one by one as Clay stomped along the rutted pavement while her legs dangled and her ribs crashed against his tapered waist. “Put me down! I have a right to know what your wife was talking about!”

When they reached his parking space, he dropped her to her feet. His hands went to his waist when he glowered down at her. “Hildegard loves to create chaos. She spews bullshit for the sake of spewing bullshit, and that’s all I have to say on the matter. From now on, she’s off limits. So let’s get one thing straight in this mess. I’m not discussing her. I’m not answering questions about her because it’s none of your business. My mating is my problem. I’m here to look out for you until you get the hang of this—to protect you from any harm because this is my responsibility. But that’s as far as it goes. My personal life is mine and yours is yours.” Clay bent his head toward her, roaring his final word. “Clear?”

As mud. Pulling her arms behind her back, Casey wiggled her toes, toes that were relieved to be out of cramped shoes that were as unfamiliar as her pole dancing. “Boy, you are a cranky one today. And I guess I’d be cranky, too, if I was married to someone I didn’t want to be married to. I’d also be cranky if I was turned into a demon by some guy who was carrying around demon blood like he was toting bottled water! And I’d be super cranky if the guy who did it to me acted all offended by some silly little questions I wouldn’t be asking if not for his crazy-ass, fire-breathing wife. So if my wanting answers about the utter lunacy your Gigantor wife spews upsets your sense of personal space—I. Don’t. Care! Got that, crabby?”

“Niiiiice,” Nina admired, holding her fist up—
way up
.

For the love of. She was like a hovercraft.

Nina flicked the bottom of Casey’s short skirt and grinned up at her. “C’mon. Knuck it up, Princess. Well said.”

Casey growled in frustration. She ran a hand up and down the length of her body, shooting Clay a scathing look. “And you have the cubes to yell at me because I want answers. Look at me. I’m levitating. Doesn’t that deserve some answers?”

Clay’s return glance was unruffled. “Your levitation has nothing to do with my marriage to Hildegard. Now give me your hand.”

Turning her nose up at him, Casey scoffed. “I’d rather float home.”

“So help me, Casey, I’ll tether you to my antenna. Now give me your hand.”

“When you give me my answers.”

“Okay—enough,” Wanda ordered, running a hand over her eyes. “Casey, give him your hand—now, because he seems to be the only one who can get you pavement bound. When I’m less frazzled, I think I’d like to know why Clay’s the only person who can keep you grounded. For now, I want to go home. I want to go to bed. I want to forget I ever met a boy named Ice Cube.”

“Cherry-Ice,” Nina corrected with an affable smile.

Wanda threw her head back with a roll of her eyes and a snort. “Cherry-Ice, Ice Cube, Shaved- Ice, I don’t care anymore. I want to go home. This instant. I’m tired. I’m cranky. I miss Heath. Now give him your hand, Case, or I’m going to pitch a hissy fit and shift right here in this parking lot for everyone to see. It’s not pretty. Ask Nina. I’m hairy, and sometimes I drool.”

Casey immediately regretted her behavior. Wanda and Nina had chased her around all night while she’d behaved just as badly as the twins ever had—minus the removal of her clothing. It was unfair to drag them into her argument with Clay. She’d just wait until they’d gone to bed; then she’d have at him, because she wasn’t giving up on what she was sure was a detail Mr. Put Upon had purposely omitted.