03 Before The Devil Knows You're Dead-Speak Of The Devil (7 page)

“You will be,” she said. “We’ll find a way so that you can touch people. I’ll get Harold on it and between all of us we’ll think of something. What about surgical gloves? They should keep a virus out. That’s what they were made for, after all.”

“Maybe.” I nodded my head weakly.

Malachi stood and walked over to me, his eyes a brilliant, flaming red. “I will find a way to fix this, my princess.”

“What if it can’t be fixed?”

“We’ll fix it even if I have to go and hunt down Death itself and make him come back up here to take the job,” Matt said.

“I know where he lives,” Malachi said. “I’ll open a phase portal, you get some rope and a baseball bat, and we can have him back here within the hour.”

“No,” I said before they could continue planning felony kidnapping against an unsuspecting angel. “I’ll go. I can talk to him.”

“You can’t,” Tolliver said. “What if you accidentally touched him? His mortal body would be destroyed before you ever got him back here.”

“That means it’s up to me and Mal,” Matt said and then stood. He started toward the door, his shoulders tense. Mal followed along behind him, his hands clenched into tight fists at his side, as they stalked out of the apartment and Mal slammed the door closed behind them.

“Where do you think he’s going?” Lisa asked as we all sat there, staring at the door.

“If I had to guess?” Dad asked. “The Angel Formerly Known As Death is about to get unexpected visitors in his beachfront home. One of whom may be carrying a baseball bat.”

Chapter Seven

“Come on, you.” Hope leaned over my bed later that afternoon, doing her very best not to touch me, her long, perfectly straight blond hair hanging less than an inch from my nose as she jabbed at my foot with something pointy. “Up and at ’em. Rise and shine and all that good crap.”

“Up and at what?” I flopped over and buried my face in the pillows. Couldn’t she see I was in the middle of an epic sulk? Less than six hours ago, my whole life had gone down the toilet and her response was “Up and at ’em?” Hello? Wasn’t I allowed at least a small hysterical cry?

“We’re going to start finding a way to get you past this.” Hope poked me in the ass with the pointy thing and I briefly considered poking her right back. “Now get up. The pity party is over.”

“It was just getting good.” I burrowed my head farther into the pillows.

“Get up.” I felt a swift jab in my side and my head jolted up. Whatever she had I was going to take it from her and get my first soul as the Angel of Death—by beating my older sister’s skull in with a… A mop? Damn it, there was nothing even remotely stylish to be salvaged from this.

“Or what?”

Hope, holding the mop by its head, tapped me in the ribs with the end again. “Or I’m going to go dunk this in the toilet and come back in here and hit you with the sponge end and, FYI, your dread demon doesn’t always flush.”

“Eww.” I sat up then and swatted at the end of the mop. “Why do you want me to get up so bad?”

“Because we can’t solve this if you’re lying in bed sulking like some sort of angsty damn teenager. Matt and Malachi are off abducting the original Angel of Death. Jesus and Tolliver are questioning everyone they know, and everyone that everyone they know knows, to try to find some way to solve this.”

She poked me again, this time in the kidneys and I rolled over, trying to get further away from her and the pointy mop end of pain.

“Look, Lisa is on the Internet scouring medical journals for ideas to neutralize your killer touch in case the guys can’t find anything. Dad has Mom at home with him so she’s out of our hair while he and the Alpha strategize about how to break their own rules without somehow bending reality in a way that shoves its head up its own ass. We’re all working to fix this, so you need to get up and help us.”

“I’m in quarantine. So I am doing something. Something very important if you think about it.”

“What? Sulking?”

“No.” I shook my head and tears welled up in my eyes. I wanted to claim they were from frustration, but I knew it was because it had just hit me that the only way that my sister and I would ever touch again was when she poked me with a household cleaning object. Hopefully one she hadn’t dunked in a toilet.

“Then what?”

“I’m keeping all of you alive by not accidentally touching you.”

“You can do that in the living room—where the rest of us are actually working.”

“I can’t. I’m too big of a risk. What if I brush up against someone? What if I kill someone without meaning to?”

“You won’t. Now get up. Or else it’s the other end of the mop for you.”

“How do you know? How can you be sure I’m safe enough to be out there with other people? With Lisa? ”

“You can’t kill people. It’s not in you.” Hope set the mop down in the corner, then turned to face me again, her hands on her hips.

“It is very much in me.” I grabbed a pillow and hugged it to my chest. “I’m Death Incarnate now. Remember?”

“I don’t care. We are the Bettincourt sisters. We’ve survived my crazy ex-husband; Matt’s murderous Mom and her sidekick the Insane Jilted Girlfriend; explosions; noncustodial parent visitation with Dad in Hell; Tolliver as a stepbrother; thirty-seven moves before we both made it to college; and our parents’ remarriage—multiple times. The last of those alone is enough to tell you that we can totally kick Death’s ass.”

I took a shaky breath and hugged my pillow tighter, trying my hardest not to cry. “I’m Death, the girl who meets you at the end of a not nearly long enough version of the mortal-coil shuffle.”

“No.” She grabbed her mop and poked me in the shoulder again. “You are Faith Anne Bettincourt. The bravest, most caring demoness I know. You are a nurse. A good nurse.”

“Not anymore.” I sniffed.

“We’ll figure it out. Now get up, get dressed, and meet us in the living room. Otherwise I’m dunking this mop in the toilet and coming back in here for you.”

I sighed. “Fine.”

“Don’t you sigh at me like some loser succubus who’s been sentenced to troll crappy strip clubs near the prison in Des Moines. You are Faith Bettincourt. The Devil’s daughter. A princess of Hell. Defeater of imps. Florence Nightingale with black wings for tiny people. You don’t get to sulk. Now get up. Get dressed.”

“I’m getting up, even though I don’t see the point. It’s not like there’s anything we can do to change things. You heard Dad and the Alpha. No exchanges, no returns.”

“We’ll figure something out.” Hope pulled the door open. “And if we don’t…”

“What?”

“If we don’t find a solution, you don’t want to face the worst moment of your life in nothing but a pair of green-plaid pajama pants and an Ozfest 2006 T-shirt.”

“I don’t know, I think Ozzy might say this is the perfect attire for watching your life go up in flames.”

“Yeah? Well the real Prince of Motherfucking Darkness will see it as a sign of depression and let his wife come over here to help cheer you up.” Instead of waiting for me to answer, she left the room and closed the door behind her.

Damn it, she was right. If Dad thought I was depressed, he’d panic and send Mom over to comfort me, hoping we could do some sort of weird mother-daughter bonding, and that was the last thing I wanted to deal with right now. Knowing my luck she’d want to chant. Or worse, gossip.

I rolled out of bed and made my way over to the closet. I pulled out a pair of worn Levi’s that I’d had so long the side seams were now patched with a bright red, flower-patterned fabric, and the hem was so raveled it looked like the jeans came with fringe. It didn’t matter how ratty these things were—if my life really was over I was going out in a pair of jeans that were comfortable but managed to make my ass look fantastic at the same time. After all, I needed all the miracles I could get. I threw on a black cami and pulled my nest of blond curls back in a low ponytail without bothering to run a brush through it.

I was up. I was dressed. They couldn’t ask too much more from me today. Could they? Instead of waiting around to contemplate that idea, I headed toward the living room, preparing to be disappointed by the lack of progress we were going to make.

“Faith!” Harold popped into view on my black television screen the second I walked into the living room, where my sister and Lisa were sharing the love seat, typing away at the notebook computers in their laps.

Harold hoisted himself out of the television with a grunt and floated in front of me, a smug smile on his spectral face. “I’ve had a revelation.”

“Great. Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John are all listed in my book. I’d recommend trying their cell phones because they suck at e-mail. It’ll take them a week to get back to you and then you’ll get a whole life story before they answer your question.”

“Not Revelations, you moron.” Harold held one of his hands out, palm facing up, and a box of orange surgical gloves appeared with what looked like a pack of cigarettes on top. “A revelation. Lisa said something a few hours ago about if you wore surgical gloves, you’d be able to touch people because it would keep your germs at bay.”

“Uh-huh?”

“That got me thinking about viruses,” Harold said, “and virologists. Those lab guys don’t glove up the way standard medical staff does.”

“Don’t they?” I sat down on the couch, by myself, and gave him my full attention. Sure, Harold might be dead, but he was hands down the smartest guy I knew—dead or living.

“No, they don’t. The people who do research on those really nasty diseases use special infection-control procedures. Not like you can blame them. Who wants to take the risk of getting Ebola between their morning staff meeting and their lunch break?”

“We thought the hospital’s meatloaf day was bad,” Lisa said.

“Anyway.” Harold rolled his eyes, then focused his attention back on me. “One of the guys I did my undergraduate with was a germ specialist. We stayed close over the years and we had a golf game two days before mine and Lisa’s little life-ending rendezvous.”

“So?”

“So, he was whining about some new preventative measures they were using in his lab.”

He picked up the smaller box and I saw that it was a pack of something called Contaminant Sensor Paper. “This is what he was complaining about. Virologist always double glove. Then, if they accidentally tear a glove they’re protected but then they developed this stuff and it made things even better.”

“What is it?” Lisa asked as she took the box from him.

“You put on your first pair of gloves.” Harold pulled out a pair of surgical gloves and handed them to me. I slipped them on and he smiled.

“Next, you take one of those sensor papers in each hand and palm them. Once you’ve got them in place, you put on the second pair of gloves. Then, when you’re working, if the sensor paper turns from pink to blue that means you’ve got a leak somewhere between your first and second set of gloves.”

“So when you see the sensor change colors you reglove?” I asked.

“Exactly.” Harold pointed at me while I managed to finagle my hands into the second set of gloves, keeping the sensor paper in each hand.

Hope looked between Harold and me. “Wait, if we’re hypothesizing that your Angel of Deathness is like some form of a virus, brought on by skin-to-skin contact—”

“The gloves should prevent Faith from creating death, destruction, and other general mayhem,” Harold said and then held his hand out. The air in front of him wavered and a small, sorry-looking, potted plant faded into existence.

“Well.” I took a deep breath in and tried to screw up my courage. “Here goes nothing.”

I ran my finger along the tip of one of the leaves and the instant my glove made contact with the plant the leaf withered, turned black, and the entire thing collapsed into a pile of ash.

“Damn it,” Harold said. “That should have worked.”

“Any other ideas?” My heart plummeted into my stomach and tried to come up with a reason not to go back to bed and cry.

“Not yet.” Harold put his fingers under my chin, and if he would have had a physical body, those fingers would be pressing my face up to look him in the eye. “Don’t give up hope, though. We’ll come up with something. Meanwhile, J has already written you a doctor’s note for work. A severe skin allergy that has resulted in a rash. He’s faxed it over and everything already so no worries there.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “No worries.”

“We’ll find something else. There’s got to be a way to fix this. All we have to do is find it,” Hope said, trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.

“We’ll figure this out,” Lisa said. “Maybe a thicker weight glove? Or possibly a skin shield for the thing you’re touching as well? It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is that will protect you, we’ll find it, and if we can’t, Matt and Malachi will find Death and make him come back here and take the powers back.”

“Do you think so?” I tried to pretend I wasn’t about two seconds from bursting into tears.

“These are our boys.” Harold nudged my shoulder. “I’m surprised they aren’t back with the guy bound and gagged between them already. Either way, we will get this fixed. I promise.”

“I’m holding you to that. Otherwise, I might have to reach out and touch someone and it could be you.”

“Oooh big words there. What are you going to do? Turn me into the specter of a ghost? A ghostly image? Wait, wait, I know. You’ll turn me into a zombie ghost. Right? A ghost with the insatiable hunger for poltergeist brains.”

“Dream on,” I said. “Ghosts don’t have any brains.”

“No brains, huh? I’ll have you know I’m constantly outsmarting Tolliver.”

“That’s not hard,” my sister-in-law said, and laughter bubbled up in the pit of my stomach.

Hope giggled and my shoulders shook as Lisa let out her own chuckle. Before I knew it, we were all three laughing like loons, the two of them rolling around on the floor, clutching their stomachs in hysterical laughter while I stayed on the couch and made sure not to touch either of them. After all, nothing quite ruins a joke like accidentally murdering the people you love.

Chapter Eight

“So.” Lisa said from her spot on the love seat a few hours later, her voice purposely nonchalant enough to make it obvious that what she was going to ask was anything but casual. “What day is a good one for me to make a midwife’s appointment?”

“I don’t know. What day are you off work?” I looked over at Hope sitting beside her, and my sister shrugged. Obviously she didn’t know what was going on either.

“I’m off tomorrow and Saturday of this coming week and Sunday and Friday of the week after that. Since I don’t want to ruin the midwife’s weekend, that gives us tomorrow and then next Friday. Which day is better for you?”

“Better for me?” I asked. “Why do you care which day is better for me? You’re the pregnant demon. Not me.”

“Yeah, but you’re my birth coach so I need you there for my first meeting with the midwife. She wants to discuss birth plans and all that stuff, so I’m going to need you there to help with the decision making. Duh.”

“Uh, duh, Angel of Death?” My stomach knotted in on itself as I stared at the tiny bump that was my best friend’s first baby. The baby I was supposed to help deliver. My first niece or nephew. The one whose cord I was going to cut. The baby I was supposed to be the very first person to hold.

“I don’t care.” Lisa glared at me and my eyes started to burn from the tears building up in them.

“You know I want to be there,” I said. “But I’m probably not the best person to be your labor coach. Especially if touching me, I don’t know, banishes you to Hell permanently or takes you apart at the atomic level or something like that. It’s not that I don’t want to Lisa but—”

“You’re the only person I trust to be my labor coach.” She stood up and stood in front of me, her arms crossed over her chest. Her tail quivered where it peeked out of the left leg of her sweatpants and curled around her ankles.

“What about Lilith?”

“There’s no way I’m inviting my mother-in-law into the delivery room with me. Let’s be serious. The last thing I need is the Archdemoness of Lust in the delivery room looking all thin and perfect while I’m lying there like a beached whale giving birth to her first grandchild.”

“You won’t look like a beached whale,” I said.

“No, I’ll look like two beached whales crammed onto one bed. She makes me feel frumpy on my best days and I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be up there in the top-ten hair-and-makeup days for me.”

“You have a point.” I thought about how glamorous Dad’s ex was. She made me feel short and chubby, and I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be pregnant around her. Not like that was going to be a problem for me anymore, since I was pretty sure sex was out of the question, even though I now had a completely willing partner to debauch again. Or at least I did until the death with a single touch thing manifested.

I felt a small jab of pain in my chest and tried not to grimace. Now was the time to be talking my sister-in-law out of her newest bout of insanity, not the time to be worrying about myself and my newfound celibacy or the ticking biological clock it had brought with it.

“Don’t look at me,” Hope said, her lip curled up in disgust. “Labor and delivery is so not my thing.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see. There’s blood.” My sister stuck her right hand up in a fist in front of her face, and up went her pointer finger. “There’s a large, squirming infant coming out of an area that I’d prefer things going into rather than coming out of. Male parts, if we’re being specific.” Middle finger. “Pain. I’m not a medical professional, but I’m pretty sure that all those stories about pain aren’t exaggerated.” Ring finger. “Stretch marks. Last I checked—those still aren’t sexy.” Her pinkie finger wiggled at us.

“Oh yeah,” she added and lifted her thumb. “The idea of some weirdo in a face mask sitting in between my spread legs going ‘push, push, push, breathe,’ is about the unsexiest way I can think of to spend my Friday night. Besides, before Dad stripped my powers I was a sex demon. I inspired lust. And the last thing on Earth that inspires lust is a woman giving birth.”

Lisa stared down at me and her lips twitching upward in a smile at the corners. “Okay. That cuts Hope off the potential replacement list, so you don’t have a choice. You have to be my Lamaze coach.”

“What about Tolliver?” I asked. “He is your husband, after all. You know, the guy who did this to you? Don’t you think he should be there?”

“Please, he’s the last person who should be there.”

“I—”

“So think about what day is best for you.” Lisa grabbed her laptop off the side table and tucked it under her arm. “Let me know, and I’ll call the midwife to see what times she has available.”

“Lisa—”

“Now, I’m heading downstairs to find the chocolate muffins I know Tolliver has stashed behind the whole grain oatmeal and the canned spinach, and then after I gorge myself on all six of them to punish him for trying to hide food from me, I’m going to take a nap. See you later.”

“I’m the Angel of Death,” I said as she started toward the door, trying one last time to make her see reason. “I can’t be your labor-and-delivery coach. What if something happens? What if I accidentally touch you? Or even worse, what if I accidentally touch AC?”

“Lisa spun around to glare at me and black power crackled along the length of her body. “First off, we are not naming my baby Anti-Christ. It’s Evangeline for a girl and Everson for a boy. Not the Anti-Christ. Evangeline and Everson.”

“Everson?” Hope asked. “Really? The second coming of the Anti-Christ may be named Everson?”

“I like it,” Lisa said, “so that’s what it’s going to be. Now, second off, you are not going to kill either one of us. You’re too good of a person to kill someone, so I don’t believe you’ll go homicidal until I see it with my own eyes.”

“Or until I accidentally—”

“Shush!” Lisa stuck her hand out, pointing at me, and gave me a solid little jolt of power. Nothing major, the jolt didn’t cause me any pain, but I had definitely felt the power behind it—sort of like sticking your tongue to a battery when you were a kid.

“Now third.” She kept her finger on me and dark power grew around her wrist in preparation for another zap. “We are going to find a way to handle this Angel of Death thing, either with you or without you so you’ll shut up and deal with the fact that we are going to find a way out of this mess. So that means you are going to be my labor-and-delivery coach. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am?” I asked, sort of in awe at my best friend’s new kick-ass attitude. Okay, in awe and terrified at the same time, but in awe nonetheless.

“Don’t think that I’m going to cut you any slack, either,” she said, her voice trembling now.

“Slack?” I asked.

“You can’t go becoming some sort of head of a legion of serial killers to get out of being in that room when this baby is born. So don’t even get that into your head, young lady, because it’s not going to work,” Lisa said.

Instead of waiting for me to answer, she spun on her heel and stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind her.

“Well she told you,” Hope said.

“Yeah.” I nodded, stunned at my best friend’s sudden exit.

“So I’m going to go,” Hope said, her eyes fixed on the door. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one shocked by the changes in personality that Lisa’s pregnancy had brought on. “You need some time to yourself and I’ve got a date tonight with the general council for a corrupt hedge-fund firm. They’ve been bilking retired teachers out of their pensions, so I figure he’ll probably make a good soul for collection.”

“Why would you care about soul collection?” I asked. My sister was restricted from collecting souls for another ninety-nine years and a handful of months after her whole losing an apocalyptic cult because her husband had turned good incident from a few months earlier. “They won’t let you do the deed or get the power boost.”

“That’s true,” Hope said, “but Dros is paying me a bounty for anyone I find that he can collect on.”

“Dros? Wait, you mean David? The demon who’s working for the SEC? You’ve partnered up with him? Why?”

“Let’s just say that he has amazing stamina.” Hope wiggled her eyebrows at me and then smiled.

“Oh yuck.” I shook my head and tried not to think about my sister and the ferret-faced demon who worked for the SEC doing anything that required him to have stamina. I could almost imagine that little, pointy nose of his twitching while they—Ugh, nope, no I wasn’t going to let my mind go there. Not today.

“Says you.” She hopped up from my love seat and started for the door.

“Says anyone with taste,” I said as she hurried out, slamming the door behind her.

“I have to agree,” a voice said behind me and Michael stepped into the room.

“What do you want?” I stood, facing him, and started to back toward the door, instinctively trying to flee from him even though I knew that given my new powers he couldn’t hurt me.

“What do you think I want?” he asked, cracking his knuckles like some old-school villain. “I want the powers that you stole from me.”

“I didn’t steal anything from you. Valentin forced his powers on me. I didn’t ask for them. In fact, I don’t want them.”

“Then give them to me.” Michael stalked slowly toward me, his eyes glowing a brilliant gold. “Let me have Valentin’s powers.”

“Why should I?” I asked, instantly wary of anyone who actually wanted this job and was willing to put on a power display to prove it.

“I’m the most qualified person to take the job over. I’ve been working in the Double D since the plagues of Egypt. I was the head reaper in charge of collecting the souls of the oldest sons. I deserve this promotion.”

“It’s not a promotion; it’s a prison sentence. One hundred years at the helm of death. It’s like being a pirate in Hell or something.”

“Oh quit whining. You have the most powerful job in the Celestial kingdom—even more powerful than your father and your uncle. You control life and death. You set the policy of mortality. The people you hate sentenced to an early, painful death. The people you love—”

“I won’t kill people simply because I don’t like them. Life and death aren’t a game. This is people’s lives.”

“Yet you control them.” Michael came closer and perched on the other end of the couch, his arms crossed over his chest. “You, Faith Bettincourt, have the power of life and death at your fingertips. You could be a god in your own right. All-powerful. The world would tremble at your feet.”

I backed farther away from him. I’d been around long enough to know that if someone was offering to hand you the one thing you need in life that there was always going to be a catch. And considering Michael was one of my uncle’s less stable archangels I figured that catch was going to be particularly nasty. “I don’t want it. I don’t want to control anything. I didn’t ask for this job.”

“No,” Michael said, his fists clenched so hard that all of his knuckles were white. “I asked for it, and Valentin refused. He didn’t want the administrative paperwork of training a second-term angel of death from his own team. He was afraid of being accused of favoritism but you’re a demon and that means the next reincarnation of Death has to be an angel and look, here I am.”

“So I should…what? Go step in front of a speeding car so you can have your dream job? I don’t think so. I like the mortal realm. I have a life here. People I love. I’m not going to destroy my mortal body just to further your ambitions.”

“What if I said there was a way to transfer power without killing your mortal body?” He raised one eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest. “What if I told you that I was there when the original Death handed over his powers and I know how it was done? I can take your powers as Death and leave you alive.”

“I’d say you’re a liar and, even if you’re not, I’m not giving you my powers.” I stood up and moved away from him, careful not to turn my back on the angel.

It wasn’t that Michael had threatened me, but there was something not right about what he was proposing. I didn’t know why but it made my skin crawl to think about him as Death. The look in his eyes last night when he’d come for Hannah. The bitter way he’d talked about the soul that Lisa managed to save. The whole world trembling at your feet thing.

If Michael were to become the Angel of Death, he would seek out mortals with the same relentless passion as he had last night. He would have even less pity than Death had for mortals before. If I let him take my place, he’d destroy the world and everyone in it.

“What?”

“No,” I said, my resolve strengthening. I didn’t want this job but that didn’t mean I was going to doom the rest of the world to hell on Earth just to get out of it. “I won’t give you my powers. I’m staying the Angel of Death.”

“What about all those people you love? That family you care so much about? The nephilim? You can never have a normal life with him in this job. If you don’t hand over your powers, there is no future for the two of you.”

“We’ll work something out.” I walked over to my door, trying to hide the growing sense of unease trickling down the length of my spine. “Now I think you should leave.”

“You’re making a mistake.” Michael said as he stalked over to the open doorway. “You’ll never be able to work this out on your own.”

“I’ll manage.”

“I doubt it.” He leaned close enough that we were only a hairsbreadth apart. “I can’t wait to see you try, though. Because guess what, Princess? Daddy’s position won’t stop the fact that this time you’ll actually have to do your job. No slacking off while someone else does the work for you.”

“I’ve always pulled my own weight.” I clenched my teeth together.

“Yeah?” Michael gave me a mocking smile. “Well I can’t wait to see you in the office tomorrow morning Your Majesty—and one piece of advice from me to you. Keep up on the paperwork you’d hate to get behind—those files can be murder.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” I slammed the door in his face the moment he’d stalked through it.

Looking around my empty apartment, I realized it was too quiet. I was awake and had no idea what to do with myself.

“Might as well check out my new office,” I said to myself as I opened a phase portal into Death’s office, a place I knew even though I’d never been there before. Only the Death Department could manage to look like the county health department and smell like a mix between a flower shop and a hospital. And feet. For some reason the place had a definite aura of dirty feet about it.