A Snake in the Grass (4 page)

I think the only reason Mira wasn’t
protesting this Mexico trip more was that she was relieved I was
taking my two “bodyguards” with me. To say things had been
unsettled in the Dawson household was putting it mildly.

And it wasn’t just Mira. I was reminded of
that as Estéban and I came back inside to find my six-year-old
daughter facing down with the potential Ukrainian psychopath.

“You leave my doggy alone! He doesn’t like
you, and I don’t like you either!” My angelic little redhead hid a
fiery temper, and her sense of self-preservation hadn’t kicked in
yet. This much was obvious. She was standing almost nose to nose
with Sveta, who had obligingly crouched down to be more on the
child’s level. Thankfully, neither my child nor her adversary had
any weaponry in evidence.

I looked at Mira and Terrence, who were still
contentedly drinking tea. “Was no one going to put an end to
this?”

“I think Anna has it under control,
actually.” Mira gave me a small smirk, telling me I was on my
own.

Sveta, ignoring the presence of all the
adults in the room, nodded solemnly to my daughter. “It is not
necessary to like everyone all of the time. But sometimes, we must
live with them anyway. Understand?”

Anna’s nose wrinkled up a little as she
pondered that. “Yeah…” It was clear she was mentally looking for
the trap.

“So, I will make a bargain with you. You know
what a bargain is?”

Again, the wary “Yeah.”

“I will not harm your doggy. In return, you
will do your best to keep him from startling me in my sleep. To
keep him safe, you must teach him. It is part of being a
responsible pet owner. Understand?”

Annabelle thought it over for long serious
moments, then spit in her own palm and stuck out her hand for a
shake. “Deal.” I glanced at Mira, who gave me a shrug and a shake
of her head. No idea where our child had learned that.

Sveta spit in return and shook the offered
hand without a trace of amusement or condescension, then stood up.
“And now, we should eat breakfast, I think. After we wash our
hands.”

The war abruptly over, Anna obediently
followed the dangerous woman over to the kitchen sink so they could
both wash their hands together. Within moments, my daughter forgot
her ire, and was chatting away with Sveta about doggies and kitties
and whatever else popped into her curly red head. It boggled the
mind.

“You’re all crazy. I’m gonna go take a
shower.” I left a chorus of chuckles behind me, though I failed to
see the humor.

In our newly expanded, overly chaotic
household, the shower was one of the few places I could get some
time to myself, and that was only because I’d put my foot down
early on and insisted that Sveta was
not
allowed to follow
me in there. Seriously, if a demon was gonna come at me in the
shower, it was just gonna have to happen. A man has limits.

As the hot water sluiced down over my
shoulders, I rested my head against the cool tile wall. I was so
done with all this. This whole demon-slaying, soul-selling,
war-in-Hell circus, you could have it. I was supposed to be
retired
, dammit. Of course, I’d seen enough cop buddy movies
to know what happens when you say you’re going to retire. Might as
well have painted the cross-hairs on my forehead myself.

With my eyes closed, there was nothing to
stop the images from coming back. The most vivid one was a
beautiful blond woman, toppling backwards in slow motion, my
fingertips just barely brushing hers as she fell. It was night, and
the lights of a distant city twinkled behind her as she plummeted
down and down and down. Over and over again, that graceful
pirouette into oblivion.

It hadn’t happened that way. I knew that. The
night Gretchen Keene leapt to her death from the roof of her hotel,
I hadn’t been anywhere near close enough to stop her. And even if I
had, she wouldn’t have been reaching for me. She’d gone willingly
in a last ditch effort to protect her loved ones from the chaos I
was now facing. But regardless of how it had actually gone down, it
haunted me. Somehow, some way, I should have been able to stop
her.

Until recently, my visions of past failures
had been limited to my dreams. Anymore, though, they crept up on me
when I least expected it. I knew the flashbacks were a sign of
PTSD. The nightmares, too. And there was that really nasty
hypervigilance episode a few weeks ago where Sveta and I prowled
the house for hours, looking for the threat I just
knew
was
there.

When it was happening, it was terrifying,
both for me and for everyone around me. After, I was mostly pissed
off at myself and embarrassed. At worst, I was becoming a danger to
my family. At the very least, it was inconvenient.

And we weren’t even going to mention what I’d
come to think of as “the tunnel dream.” Not a night went by that I
didn’t find myself stepping out of some mysterious tunnel, facing
down a long, empty, dirt field. I was never alone in those dreams,
but I could never quite see the dark, slender figure that waited
for me at the other end, and I was never able to turn around to see
who was taking shelter in the tunnel behind me.

I stood under the shower until the water
started to get cool, then went to get ready for work.

Chapter 3

My real job, when I actually get to spend
time there anymore, involves selling snarky tees, band shirts, and
various clothing items with artfully placed holes in them. I get to
listen to really loud, abrasive music, and give advice on tattoo
and body piercing care to kids who are probably too young to
actually have either. I love my job, and I wear my Old Dude name
badge proudly.

Funny how a tiny little chain retail store
can come to feel like home. From the blacklight painted walls, to
the endless bass thumping through the overhead speakers, to the
rows and rows of goth-clothed mannequins hanging up near the
ceiling. I’d touched pretty much everything in this store at some
point or another in my way-too-long tenure. Walking in felt
comfortable. Normal.

My boss, Kristyn, her hair an obnoxious shade
of fuchsia this week, threw her keys at me as I came in the door.
“I gotta run to the Oak Park store. You’re in charge, Abe will be
in at noon, and Lex will be in at two. I’ll be back before five.”
Poof, she was gone, leaving me alone to open the store. Technically
against the rules, but after so many years working together, we
fudged now and then. And it was only for a couple of hours.

Being alone in the store for a bit meant that
I was free to give the place a good once over. Y’know, mop the
bathroom floor, straighten the cash wrap, scope for demonic
fleas…

The mirror on my keychain looked like any
trinket you could get out of the dollar bin at any discount store.
In fact, I think that may be where we got it. It was the runes
scratched into the back of it that made it something special.

I examined the entire store with that mirror,
checking out the high shadowy corners, crawling under the clothing
racks, even opening the new boxes of shipment, just in case.

I was looking for something I called a Scrap
demon. They looked like greasy black mop heads with four insectile
legs poking out, though most of their body was taking up by a
gargantuan, shark-toothed mouth. They were the parasites of the
demon world, unintelligent but crafty when it came to their own
survival. They usually operated at the behest of a stronger demon.
Attached to a person, they could suck energy, will, even the very
life out of their prey, leaving their host a husk of their former
self. And that’s
if
the host survived.

There’d been one in the store once, and I’d
dispatched it posthaste. There was still a gouge in the tile floor
where I’d skewered the thing with a novelty letter opener. Now,
with so much more on the line, I couldn’t afford for one to sneak
up on me again.

Once I was satisfied that the place was clear
of creepy crawlies, I went to open up. Standing at the door, I
caught the eye of the woman across the street and gave her the
all-clear nod.

My punk co-workers didn’t know about demons,
or slaying, or trapped souls or anything like that. And quite
frankly, Sveta wasn’t going to fit in as a customer or an employee,
so while I puttered around inside It, she took up camp on a bench
across the courtyard where she could see the door. She could cross
that distance in three seconds. I know, because she had me time her
the first few times, just for practice.

Every time I passed near the front window, I
checked on her, but as near as I could tell, she never moved. She
could have been any woman, anywhere, dressed in blue jeans, heavy
work boots, and a thin gray T-shirt. Her brown hair was pulled back
into a utilitarian ponytail, and she wore no makeup at all. At
first glance, she appeared perfectly normal. Young and athletic,
pretty even.

But if you watched long enough, you’d realize
that no one else tried to sit on her bench, ever. Parents pushed
their strollers in a wide arc around her, small children made it a
point to scamper in the opposite direction, and teenagers found
other places to loiter. It was like she exuded the aura of a
predator, and normal people steered clear on pure instinct.

It could also be the scars. Being a champion
demon slayer wasn’t exactly a safety-conscious occupation, and like
any of us, Sveta’s arms were peppered with scars varying from tiny
blemishes to one that wrapped completely her left biceps and told
the story of how she’d nearly lost the arm. There were more,
concealed by her clothing. Down her legs, across her ribs.
Reminders of battles won. We’d had one very PG-13 game of “compare
the scar” when she came to live with us. While Terrence won by
default – no one wanted him taking off his clothes, I mean really –
I think Sveta probably topped even my spectacular marks.

She never wore long sleeves, though, never
tried to hide them. Most likely, she never even thought about them
anymore. I know I didn’t think about my own, until I caught the
sidelong glances, the whispered conversations as some stranger
caught a glimpse. I think it was worse for Sveta. People don’t like
to see scars on pretty women. It violates the natural order of the
world or something.

Both her elbows hung over the back of the
bench, her hands dangling near her sides where I was certain some
type of weapon was hidden just out of reach. Her pale blue eyes
moved constantly, scanning the crowd. I wasn’t exactly sure what
would happen if she thought she saw a potential threat, but so far,
we hadn’t had any incidents.

Of course, I had one frequent visitor to the
store that would have tripped every alarm bell she had, if she’d
ever recognized him. I’d been forced to tell Ivan about Axel, my
personal demon, and I was certain that he’d informed Sveta and
Terrence. Luckily, neither of them knew what Axel looked like, and
so he continued to slip under their radar. (Quite frankly, if they
failed to recognize the most powerful demon I’d ever been around, I
wasn’t sure this gave me a lot of confidence in their ability to
protect my body. Just sayin’.)

And speaking of the devil, Axel showed up a
few hours into my shift, as expected. His visits to my home had
been curtailed by Terrence’s over-zealous wards, and with my two
guardians providing constant watch, having conversations had become
difficult. We’d had to resort to more clandestine methods.

I spotted him across the courtyard, his blond
mohawk and excessive facial piercings kinda standing out in a
crowd. Nonchalantly, he sauntered right past Sveta’s bench,
dragging his fingers across the back within inches of her shoulder,
smirking to himself when she didn’t even look twice. I shouldn’t
have been surprised at his audacity. He was a demon after all, he
just couldn’t help pushing the envelope.

The minute he cleared the door, I made a
beeline to get ahead of my coworkers. “Welcome to It! What can I
help you find today? Our band tees are all buy one, get one half
off.”

The man-demon gave me a small smirk as I
ushered him over to the tween girl section. “You do this on
purpose.”

“Every time.” Once I was sure our words would
be drowned out by the thumping bass overhead, I gave up the
pretense. “So, what’s the word?”

Axel sighed at me. “Always right to business
with you. No ‘how was your day?’ or ‘my, did you lose weight?’” He
clicked his tongue piercing against his teeth in disapproval.

“How’s about I whistle real loud and
introduce you to a lovely single Ukrainian I know?” Not that I
would. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed Axel too much right
now to sic Sveta on him. And truth be told, I was pretty sure she
wouldn’t win.

Axel swiveled around to glance out the plate
glass window. “Little Svetlana… My, how she’s grown.” For a
heartbeat, his eyes flared red, until I elbowed him in the ribs.
“Ow.”

“Dude, either talk or buy something.” I
grabbed a shirt and shoved it into his hands, belatedly realizing
it was pink. That made me grin.

The demon rolled his eyes, thankfully
returned to their normal color, and tossed the shirt on the floor.
“It’s pretty much the same. They know the souls are in the wind,
but no one can seem to track where they went.” He smirked. “You’re
welcome.”

A few months ago, shortly after my return
from L.A., it had become very clear that keeping my little
extra-souls problem a secret was going to be next to impossible
when I glowed like a fifty-thousand watt bulb to anyone who could
see magic. That included any demon who came within fifty yards of
me.

So Axel, in all his magnanimous (read:
self-serving) glory, had performed some of that voodoo that he do
so well, and cloaked me from demonic prying eyes. Now, so long as
the souls were calm, and I didn’t have a demon sitting right on my
head, I was relatively safe, for some loose definition of the
word.