SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (156 page)

“Cassidy, I am on your side,” she said, moving over to perch gingerly on one of the lawn chairs. “I have been a guide to the women in your family for more than a hundred years.”

“But—“

“I’m a demon also.”

“So, you’re a good demon.”

She smiled slightly. No more than a twist of her lips, really. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say
good
, but certainly not evil.”

Well, that had the ring of truth to it, at least. Had to admit, she’d never struck me as the Pollyanna, goody two shoes type. (And what the hell did that saying mean? Goody Two Shoes? What is that? A name? Of course it was good to have two shoes. Why would anyone want only one? AACK. Digressing again.) Anyway, Jasmine was no saintly figure. More like a really determined drill sergeant.

“Okay,” I said, taking the seat opposite her. “That’s honest.”

“Of course it’s honest. I haven’t lied to you.”

She actually had the nerve to look
offended.
Like I’d hurt her little demon feelings by not trusting her. Believing her. For God’s sake, Bizzaro much?

“I don’t see why you get to be the cranky one. You know,
I’m
the one with the list of complaints here, Jasmine.”

“As you insist on reminding me every day of your training.”

Fine. So I whined a little once in a while. I thought I was due. “There’s no reason to get nasty.”

“You’re only upset because this is coming as a surprise to you.”

“You think?” I countered and heard the really annoying shrieky tone to my voice but couldn’t seem to stop it. “So what you’re saying is I shouldn’t be pissed, or rip out your heart because you didn’t
lie
to me. You just didn’t
tell
me stuff!”

I could pretty much feel the top of my head getting ready to fly off so I took a deep breath and tried to calm down, because what good would that do me?

Sugar sneaked (at least, she considered it sneaking, but nobody could miss a dog of that size moving) down the steps and across the lawn to take a seat beside Jasmine. I glared at her. Apparently the dog had forgotten just who was in charge of the kibble around here.

Jasmine though, blew out an irritated breath aimed at me and dropped one hand to the top of Sugar’s head. The traitorous hug addict snuggled up to the old woman/demon and dropped her head in Jasmine’s lap.

“I would have told you eventually,” Jasmine said.

“Gee, that’s great. Thanks,” I said, flopping back in my seat and hitting the back of my head on the top of the Adirondack chair. I winced and straightened, giving her a glare. “That makes it all better. Hell, that’s right up there with Noah treading water and God saying, I was going to tell you about building a boat eventually—and hey, meant to tell you about the flood...”

“You are a trial,” Jasmine muttered, her black eyes narrowing a bit. “Your grandmother was never this much trouble.”

“EXCUUUUUSSSEEE me.”

“There is no need,” she said, as if I’d actually
meant
that sarcastic apology. “It’s not your fault entirely. You were unprepared for your duty. Your grandmother should have prepared you and if your mother had survived—“

“Back off Bertha,” I snapped and got her attention in a flash. “Stop trying to make my mother sound like a deadbeat for dying and ruining your demon killing plans.”

“I didn’t mean to—“

“Yeah, you did,” I said and pushed my hair back out of my eyes. “And it’s not the first time you’ve done it. Maybe Gram should have told me, but the point is, she didn’t. So as soon as you knew I was in the dark,
you
should have told me everything.”

I watched her for a long minute, wondering if she was actually going to try to defend herself, but finally, she nodded. “You’re quite right,” she said and I wondered why in the hell a
demon
sounded like a Sunday school teacher when she talked. “I should have told you everything right from the beginning. I meant only to ease you into your duties.”

“Fine,” I said. Hey, I can be magnanimous in victory. “I’m officially
eased.
So tell me now. And start with, why is a demon helping me to kill demons?”

The storm clouds were rushing in over head. California didn’t really have four actual seasons like most places, but when Fall finally decided to arrive, it could get cool and rainy. Looked like we were going to see a good storm for a change. All around us, the yard seemed to quiet, as though nature were taking a breath before the rain hit. As if maybe even the trees and bedraggled Chrysanthemums in my garden were waiting to hear what Jasmine had to say.

“I do what I do,” she said softly, “because there must be balance.”

I blew out a breath and wished for a beer. “Oh man, are you going to go all Zen-like on me? Cause I don’t think I can handle a Master/Grasshopper talk right now.”

“You watch far too much television.”

“Guilty,” I agreed. “But not the point. Now explain what you meant.”

Jasmine’s gaze caught mine. “Balance in all things is necessary. When demons attain too much power, that balance is disrupted and the world suffers.”

This was just too weird. I was sitting in my back yard, (it really needed mowing), watching a storm roll in and listening to an ancient woman talk to me about balance in the demon world.

“I chose this duty,” she was saying in that plain, no nonsense tone she always used, “because some of my kind feel it is important to maintain stable ties with the mortal world.”

“Hah! And I’m stable?”

She smiled again, so briefly if I hadn’t been watching her I never would have noticed it, “You have a good soul, Cassidy. And a heart big enough to accept that not everything in the world is black and white, or good and evil.”

“Oh sure,” I said, calmer now as I admitted that though it was damn weird finding out my ‘guide’ was a demon, I was pretty sure she was still trustworthy. Leaning back in my chair, I kicked my feet out in front of me and added, “You say that now so I can’t get all frosted and rip your heart out without feeling like a jerk.”

She smiled and even her dark eyes glittered with humor and...relief? Maybe she felt good getting her secret out in the open.

“I will be with you for as long as you need me,” she said, “which I must say, I fear will be quite some time...”

“Hey! No insulting the Demon Duster when she’s just forgiven you!”

“And,” she continued, lifting her voice to drown me out, “when it is Thea’s time to inherit her powers I will be there for her as well.”

“God,” I muttered, thinking about that for a second. “Thea.”

“Of course, we’ve talked about this. The Duster legacy is passed along from mother to daughter. Your own mother—“

“I know,” I said, interrupting her because I really didn’t want to think about my mom now and how we’d both been gypped when she died too young. “And I know it’ll be Thea’s turn one day. I already told her, actually, and let me tell you, if you think
I’m
a pain in the ass about this, just wait till Thea’s up at bat.”

Jasmine actually shuddered.

Me, I was worried. I knew Thea would be a Duster one day and it gave me cold chills thinking about her going up against nasty ass demons who wanted her dead. But the real scary part was, she’d never get to be a Duster at all unless I was able to protect her
now.

Jasmine shrugged after a long minute, and scratched Sugar behind her ears, making the dog actually moan in ecstasy. “It may not be Thea, you know. If you have another child and it is a daughter,
she
may be the one to inherit the power.”

“Oh, you can put a lid on that plan,” I said hastily. I mean sure, sometimes, when Thea was being all sweet or we were laughing together, I maybe halfway considered maybe someday at some far off point in the far distant perhaps still foggy and ambiguous future, that I might, maybe consider maybe thinking about another child. But in case you didn’t notice in that paragraph, the chance of that happening was real iffy.

Which meant of course, that Thea would be the one stuck with this ‘duty’ sooner or later. Let’s vote for later, I told myself and put that thought out of my mind for the moment.

“Besides,” I said, with a sigh of great relief, “I’m practicing
realllllllyyyyy
safe sex these days. I mean, interspecies sex has got to be totally safe. Can’t really reproduce if you’re not even in the same gene pool, hell, same gene
ocean,
right?”

Jasmine didn’t say a word.

“Right?” I repeated and heard the shrill, nails on a chalk board sound to my voice. “RIGHT?”

“Our species are not so very different,” she said. “At least, that can be said for a great many of us. There are of course, many different types of demons. Each with their own quirks--”

I snorted. “Quirks? Like claws and fangs and wild red eyes and I don’t know, trying to
kill
me?”

“Some of them are far from human,” Jasmine went on, disregarding both my indelicate snort and my abbreviated rant, “others are very close to human and until they choose to show their demon natures, you would have no way of knowing their true heritage.”

Well, I’d seen that for myself, hadn’t I? Look at Devlin, for Pete’s sake. He looked like a guy. A big, gorgeous guy, but human through and through. And yet... Then I wondered what his ‘demon’ self looked like and wondered again if I really wanted to know. Did I want to see him go all fangy and clawy? (Yes, not words. I know.) And the honest answer was, nope. Didn’t really want to see the ‘real’ him.

Hell, I didn’t even want to know what Jasmine looked like when she was kicked back with a demon crowd.

“Okay,” I said, turning my head on the back of the chair to look at her. “But we’re talking about reproduction here. It can’t be possible.”

“Thea’s friend Jett is only half demon,” Jasmine went on, eyes gleaming with—was that
humor
? “His father was human.”

“I didn’t know that.
Half
demon? Oh crap.” So sex with the demon world wasn’t exactly
safe.
The meaning of that sunk in fast and I immediately thought about my wild night with Devlin, but I was safe. For sure. We’d used condoms. Every time. So, unless demons had like Super Sperm or something, I should be covered.

RIGHT?

“You’re enjoying this,” I accused.

“Is that wrong?” she asked, smiling.

Bitch.

Not that I was considering having sex with Devlin again, but when I did, I was going to make sure he was wearing
two
condoms. Hell. Maybe
three.

I just couldn’t take much more.

* * *

For the next couple of days, I carried that demon spray with me
everywhere
. Heck, if Jasmine could be a demon, everybody in town was suspect.

No matter who I ran into, I gave ‘em a squirt.

The paperboy—
no.

The guy at the carwash—
yes.

My favorite teller at the bank—
no.

Joey Paretti’s best mechanic—
yes.
When the little guy with the handlebar mustache started smoking, Joey jumped in front of him, arms wide in protection and shouted, “Don’t kill him! Fabrizio’s the best mechanic I’ve ever had. Besides, he’s a Firenzi demon—they’re car specialists, not evil. He came here all the way from Italy. I paid his way over.”

Car specialist demons?

God, everybody had a specialty these days.

Truth to tell, ol’ Fabrizio didn’t look too dangerous. He was practically quivering. So, being brilliant, and oh yes, financially challenged at the moment, I proposed a deal.

“If I don’t kill him,” I said, liking the thrill of power, “I get free tune-ups and oil changes for a year.”

Joey gritted his teeth. “Fine.”

“
And,
” I was on a roll and kept right on rolling, “I don’t have to pay for the body work you did on my bug.”

“Dammit, Cass!” Joey glared at me, looked over at Fabrizio, who was looking a little worried, then finally caved and said, “Fine. You got a deal. But just so you know? This sucks.”

Not from where I was standing.

Anyway, the Squirt-a-Thon continued.

Carmen—
no.

Her cousin Yolanda—
yes.
(That was an eye opener, but Carmen insisted that Yolanda was only half demon and that she was a really good worker.) And, since phone calls for jobs were still pouring in, how could I dust a good worker?

But the half demon thing was still worrying me—for all I knew Devlin’s sperm had found a way through that thin layer of latex and were already laying siege to my ovaries! That thought creeped me out enough that I gave my hoo-hah a squirt just in case.

Then I took my spray over to the high school and once class was out for the day, squirted all of Thea’s teachers. No point in taking chances.

I was really hoping the principal, Mr. Richards was a demon, because I never had liked that guy. Such a wimp. But no...everyone was clear but Mr. Mondaca, the biology teacher who had flunked me sophomore year. When he lunged at me across his desk...gotta say, it was a real pleasure ripping out that particular heart.

Basically, what I discovered was, La Sombra was so not the quiet little town I’d always believed it to be. There were freaking demons
everywhere.

When I met Rachel for coffee at the Starbucks near Simon’s dental office. I spritzed the barista who told me the perfume had a really cool ‘earth-vibe’ to it. Probably the Oregano. Then, when Rachel came out onto the patio and sat down next to me, I gave her a quick shot.

“What the hell was that for?” she asked, whipping a compact out of her Prada bag. (Rachel has excellent taste in purses.)

“Just a new perfume I’m trying out,” I said.

“Well, it smells like pizza. Not a bad scent, but I think it’s gonna clash with the Beautiful I splashed on this morning.” She blotted her face with a napkin, shooting me do-it-again-and-I-slap-you looks.

“Sorry,” I said, but inside I was sighing in relief. No smoke lifting off of Rachel. Which meant at least one little corner of my world was staying sane. Well, as sane as Rachel could get, anyway.

“So,” she said, putting the compact away and picking up her cup, “Simon says I should get out of the office before Mrs. Eisen comes in for her cleaning, and I thought, Thank you God. That woman makes me want to pick up his drill and see how thick her skull really is.”