Straight to Heaven (25 page)

I blinked in surprise. “So maybe he’s picked Heaven? I mean, who wouldn’t?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” Miss Spry leaned back in her chair and folded her hands on the top of her desk. “Death isn’t just moving from one realm to another unburdened. You take your baggage with you. Every bad decision, every injustice, every cruel act you’ve ever committed on Earth gets dragged along. People sin bit by bit during their lives but don’t realize how it accrues until they’re brought face-to-face with the entire mess of it. After that, most of them can’t bear bringing all that garbage to the Guardian of Heaven. So instead, they sentence themselves to Hell.” She smiled at Mr. Clerk. “Am I right about that, Patrick?”

He refused to meet her eyes.

Miss Spry might be right, but I couldn’t believe that Tommy would choose Hell over Heaven. After all, he would forgive himself for his small sins like white lies and unintentional slights. The only thing that would make him pick eternal suffering would be if he’d purposely hurt someone he loved.

Like Jasmine.

That thought rocked me so hard that I had to grab Miss Spry’s desk to remain standing. “Where is he?” I asked desperately.

“Patrick?”

Mr. Clerk took his phone out once more and dragged his finger across the screen. “Right now, he’s deciding between wandering the wastelands for all eternity with nothing but a single canteen of water and a crust of dry bread, or letting himself be buried up to his neck in offal while beetles eat out his eyes over and over again. I believe that he’s considering the wastelands.”

I started to cry. “Seriously? You’re not lying to me?”

Mr. Clerk looked at his phone again. “Yes. Wait, no. Where did he go?” There was a trace of panic in his voice, and he frantically moved his fingers over the face of the phone. “He was here just a second ago. Now, I can’t find him.” Then he sighed, relieved. “Okay, he’s back.” He put away his phone. “Yes, Lilith. I’m sorry to tell you it’s true.”

Once again, I was faced with a terrible choice, one that would either damn my daughter or Tommy.

“What’s wrong?” Miss Spry asked, mocking me. She was enjoying this cruel torture. “I would have thought this choice would be easy for you. After all, aren’t you always telling me that you want to rescue your daughter? What better way to do it than to amend your contract?”

That damnable contract! Even if I saved my daughter this time around, Miss Spry wouldn’t rest until she found a way to put Grace back under her control. After all, the contract was crammed full of loopholes and fine print that she could twist to suit her needs. Wasn’t that what Mr. Clerk had said? Yes, he had said that! In fact, he’d said a few other things as well. All at once, the memory of our conversation resurfaced.

“Let’s get on with it, Lilith,” Miss Spry said. “Time’s running out.”

I backed away from her desk. “No.”

“No?”

“I won’t choose because you breached my contract.”

“I what?” she asked, startled.

I looked her squarely in the eye. “You sent that monster into my house to kill me, didn’t you?”

She drew herself up. “Why in hell would I do that? If I had killed you, I couldn’t have won the bet against Him. And I wanted to win, remember?”

“You wanted to win against
Him
, but you also didn’t want to lose against
me
.” I planted both my hands on her desk. “In fact, I think you were planning this from the minute you and I shook hands.”

She tugged on her pearls and avoided meeting my eyes. “Even if I did send that creature after you, that’s not a breach of the contract.”

“Yes, but putting my daughter in danger
is
.”

Her jaw dropped. It was a wonderful thing to see her backed into a corner for once. “Who told you about that clause?” She turned on Patrick. “You?”

“It doesn’t matter who told me. You breached the contract.” My heart soared. “I’m free!”

“No, you are
not
free!” Her eyes became hot, her nails lengthened into talons, and her horns grew. “A minor contract breach does not nullify the entire thing! You are and will remain my property.”

Loopholes, fine print, and loose interpretation, just like Mr. Clerk had said.

Mr. Clerk cleared his throat. “Helen, Lilith’s daughter
was
injured as a result of your…um, indiscretion.” He nervously wrung his hands. “You don’t have to set Lilith free, of course, but maybe you could consider a little remuneration?”

Miss Spry’s face tightened.

“It’s a small gesture,” Mr. Clerk pleaded. “You need to
reward
the staff, remember? Not punish them.”

She threw her hands over her head. “Fine. Consider Mr. Lefevre reinstated to the living realm.”

Good, but not good enough. “And Grace, too,” I said. “You promised to change the contract if I tempted Craig, and I came through for you.”

She glared at me, but I refused to back down. “Either your promises mean something or they don’t,” I said. “And if they don’t, then maybe my contract isn’t valid, either.”

She gripped her desk so tightly that her talons gouged the wood. “Fine.” Her hot eyes bored into mine. “Don’t for one second think that you’ve bested me, Lilith Straight. The rest of the contract remains in place.”

Oh, I’d bested her all right, but I was smart enough not to gloat over it.

Mr. Clerk handed me the addendum to my contract so that I could sign. “It’s simple, but iron clad. No small print.” He gave Miss Spry a meaningful look.

When I signed, my tears fell on the thick parchment, smearing the ink. “So?”

“It’s done,” Miss Spry said. “Your friend is alive. Your daughter is saved.”

I hurried out of her office.

“You’re welcome,” she called out sourly as I left.

I returned to the human world as the paramedics were loading a sheet-covered gurney into the back of an ambulance.

“Mom, where were you?” Grace ran towards me, but I gently pushed her aside.

“He’s alive,” I said.

The paramedic gave me a deeply sympathetic look. “Ma’am, I’m sorry.”

“No,” I argued. “It’s true!”

The paramedic tried to block my access to the gurney, but I reached around him and snagged the sheet from Tommy’s face. Tommy gasped and blinked.

The paramedic’s eyes widened. “This man’s alive!” Two other paramedics scrambled to join him.

Ariel let out a cry of pure joy. “Thank God,” Jasmine whispered behind me.

“Not really,” I said as I hugged Grace tightly. Although right then, I didn’t care who got the credit.

I used my succubus powers to charm myself through the police interview. It wasn’t difficult. Even as plain Lilith, I would have done all right. After all, no one would have believed that a rogue demon had torn my house apart. They needed a rational explanation and were happy to agree that a blown-out pilot light on the water heater had filled the house with gas and caused an explosion.

The last person to leave the scene was a gray-haired police officer. He pushed back the brim of his hat as he surveyed the wreckage that was once my house. It sagged to the right now, as if melting in the sun. “I’ve only seen an explosion like this once before, and that time, there was nothing left of the house. Not even the basement. Considering everything, I’d say you were pretty lucky.”

Looking over the broken windows and holes in the roof, I didn’t feel lucky. But when Grace came over and wrapped her arms around my waist, I realized I was.

My poor family was still shell shocked. Jasmine sat on the curb across the street, staring at nothing. When I touched her shoulder, her careful mask collapsed, and she began to cry. “Tommy pulled up just as Ariel and I were running out of the house,” she said. “He went inside to save Grace. He didn’t even stop to think about his own safety.”

“He’s a brave man.”

“He almost died.” Her voice hitched, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I thought I’d lost him forever.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. As much as I didn’t want to see her upset, it was good to know that, despite what she’d said before, she still cared deeply about Tommy.

Ari had been stoically silent, but all at once, she began to cry. “Where’s Tea?” At the mention of the cat, Grace too, went into hysterics, begging me to find Drinking Tea.

“Wait here,” I said, and walked down the sidewalk, listening hard until I heard a terrified mew. Poor Tea, frightened but otherwise unhurt, crouched deep inside a neighbor’s bushes. I coaxed him out and brought him to the girls who immediately smothered him with so much affection that he was fighting to get away.

After I’d been to the emergency room to have my injuries tended, I hurried to the tiny visitors’ lounge where the rest of my family was waiting as Tommy underwent surgery. A frumpy woman who wore an old sweatshirt and smelled like cat pee sat in the corner of the room, glaring at us. “Tommy’s mom,” Jas whispered when I asked. The girls sat silently, holding hands. My dad and Evelyn had shown up as well.

“You’re smiling?” my dad said, surprised.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” I told him. I was enveloped in a euphoria that was completely at odds with my bloodied clothing and the bandage on my head. I’d done it! I might still be in Miss Spry’s service, but my daughter was safe, and Tommy was alive.

About three hours into our vigil, I noticed that Ariel was missing. I tracked her to the women’s restroom. The stress of the day must have finally caught up with her because she was throwing up in one of the stalls.

When she came out, I wetted a paper towel and wiped her flushed face.

“I was so scared,” she said. “I thought Aldo was in the house, and that he was going to hurt Grace, so I got the gun.” She looked at her stricken face in the mirror. “But when I went into the den, I saw this
thing
. It was like some kind of tiger dragon, and it was shooting these flames from its hands.”

“It was the gas from the water heater,” I said. “It was making you hallucinate.”

“Bullshit!” Her eyes were hard. “I
saw
that thing! And I
know
I heard you when I was in my mom’s apartment. You heard me, too! That’s why you came that time I fell down off the chair. And you got Tommy’s spacer like it was magic.”

My poor, broken niece looked up at me with an expression that was both angry and hopeful. She’d been lied to her entire life, and if anyone deserved the truth, it was she. I knelt down on the floor so that I could look her in the eyes. “I can’t tell you everything,” I said, “but would you believe me if I said I wasn’t entirely human?”

Her eyes lit up. “I
knew
it! Are you a fairy or something?”

“Or something,” I said. I wasn’t about to tell her
that
much of the truth. “But listen, you
cannot
tell anyone about it, okay? No one.”

She nodded her head vigorously. “I swear it.” I believed her. If anyone could keep a secret, it was Ariel.

I hugged her. “You were so brave, Ari. If you hadn’t attacked that thing, I never would have been able to get rid of it. You’re a hero.”

She looked so pleased that her entire body seemed to glow with pleasure.

“But you must listen to me.” I gripped her shoulders tightly. “First off, you are
never ever
to use a gun like that again!”

She instantly sobered up. “I won’t. I swear I won’t.” She made an X over her heart.

“Good. And the second thing is that if something dangerous like that happens again, you’ve got to run away from it. Not into it.”

“I wanted to save Grace.”

I hugged her again. “I know, but that’s
my
job, understand?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

Evelyn opened the door to the ladies’ room and looked in. “Tommy’s out of surgery.”

“And?”

She smiled. “They say he was very lucky. He’ll need a lot of time to recover, but he’ll make it.”

Ariel whimpered and fell against me. I squeezed her tightly. The police officer had been right. I was very lucky indeed.

The girls and I spent the night at my dad’s house. I slept on an air mattress in my stepsister’s room, and woke up around midnight to hear Jasmine arguing over the phone. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back this morning, but like I said, I nearly
died
today!” She twisted her hair through her fingers. “No, I’m
not
being overly dramatic.” There was a pause. “Because I was at the hospital all day, that’s why!”

Another pause. This one much longer. “Tommy was having surgery, and I needed to be there for him…I don’t care if you don’t like it. He’s my friend…He rescued my niece!…Don’t you
dare
call him that!...No,
you
go to hell!” She snapped her phone shut and threw it across the room.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Go back to sleep, Lil.” Her voice was thick with tears.

I drifted on the edge of consciousness and almost missed it when she said, “The wedding’s off. Karl and I are through.”

The next morning, I returned to the hospital just as visiting hours started. I went into Tommy’s room and took a seat by his bed. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly open. I held his hand, carefully avoiding the IV.

They’d removed the metal studs from his face and ears, and because his alopecia made him hairless, he seemed naked without the jewelry. He was also much thinner than he had been. Maybe it was because he was stuck full of tubes and wires and lying in a hospital bed, or maybe his trip overseas had been harder on him than he had admitted, but he looked small and vulnerable.

The doctor had assured us that the danger was past, but even so, the sight of Tommy drove me to tears.
I
was the reason he was lying in the bed surrounded by beeping monitors. It was because of
me
that he’d suffered so much.

I’d been giddy with relief over my new contract, but now guilt threatened to bury me. Even though I had won this round, Miss Spry had won all of the previous ones.

Tommy’s eyelids fluttered. When he saw me, he managed a weak smile. “Hey.”

I smiled back. “Hey.”

His gaze was unfocused. “I finally saw God.”

My heart jumped into my throat. So that’s where Tommy had gone for those few seconds when Mr. Clerk couldn’t find him! He’d visited Heaven after all. “And?”