Luck of the Devil (10 page)

“Right.”

“All right,” he said, as we climbed the last couple of stairs to our floor. “I’ll see you in a few minutes?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Okay, then.” He ran his hand down the side of my cheek and my toes curled from the tingle it sent through my body. He pulled away, turning toward his door.

I turned the handle of my front door—Lisa and I never locked the thing—and opened it. I stepped inside and closed it quickly behind me, leaning against it.

The pictures I’d slipped into my hoodie slapped against my stomach. I couldn’t ignore the dread they caused. Someone was stalking me.

Harold had been sure it was some guy from the hospital, which made sense considering where he’d left the pictures. But there was no way some random employee had been able to snap pictures of Lisa killing Harold. Maybe a janitor? They’d have a key to access Harold’s office and the conference room. And no one noticed the janitors. But what did they think they would achieve with blackmail photos showing something most people considered impossible? People would assume the photos were doctored. Unless they were conspiracy nuts who believed in Bigfoot. And this might be a stretch, even for them.

I wouldn’t worry about it right now, though. Right now, I had a date with Matt to get ready for, and I didn’t even have good underwear on. Had I even put on underwear this morning? I grabbed the waistband of my pants and pulled them out—pink and green plaid. I let go of my waistband and did a spot-check down my cami and cringed at the sight of my blue sports bra. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t like I intended for him to see my underwear on a first date, but I still needed something nicer. Just in case. What if we ended up in an accident?

“Problems?” Tolliver asked from my living room, sounding amused, and I looked up to see my entire family sitting there, staring at me.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just have a lunch date that I need to get ready for.”

“And you’re concerned about your underwear?” he asked.

“No, I was just checking them for my own sake. To see if they matched.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, and crossed his arms knowingly. He smirked at our father. “That’s funny. I don’t ever check to make sure my underwear matches before I go out to lunch. What about you?”

“Nope.” Dad looked at me pointedly, and Lisa squirmed in shared embarrassment.

“I really don’t have time for this,” I said, and headed toward my room, my cheeks burning with humiliation. Just what I needed—a group of commentators analyzing my love life. Or lack thereof, until now.

“My date will be here in five minutes so you shouldn’t be.”

Chapter Eleven

“Faith!” my father bellowed.

I shoved the envelope into my underwear drawer and tried to avoid looking in the mirror. I knew I looked like a hot mess. It wasn’t like I’d bothered dressing up to go to work. Hell, I’d barely scraped at my teeth with a toothbrush. Ugh. Thankfully, I hadn’t eaten any garlic.

“Faith!”

Did we really have to do this now? Didn’t he get the idea of a date? It did not involve long discussions with my father when I had better things to do. Like turn myself into someone a man would want to ask on a second date. Hell, at this point I didn’t even need to manage cute. I would be perfectly happy to pull off
Reasonably Presentable
.

“What?” I narrowed my eyes at the door and my horns pushed at the top of my scalp, dying to come out after an entire morning of staying hidden.

“I want to talk to you and your brother and sister in the living room right now,” he said from the other side of the door.

I stuck my tongue out at the closed door. “No.”

“No? No?” The lights flickered.

Shit. Obviously, I had overestimated what I could get away with today.

“I am the Devil, young lady.”

“And this is my house,” I yelled. I pulled the door open and let it recoil off the bedroom wall, my hands on my hips as I gave him my best
Daughter of Ultimate Darkness Stare of Death
.

“Living room,” he said, and raised one eyebrow at me.

“Please.”

“Excuse me?”

“This is my home and it is customary to say please when you make a request of someone. Especially in their own house.”

“Fine, point taken. Living room.”

“Please.”

“Now.” He turned on his heel and stalked down the hall.

“Fine.” I followed him and joined my brother and sister, who sat together on the couch, both with their arms crossed. Hope’s left foot tapped, and she glared at the ceiling. Mom sat on the love seat, wearing her typical goofy expression whenever Dad was around.

“Sit there.” My father pointed to the empty seat next to Hope, and I made a show of flopping down between my siblings on the couch and crossing my arms in juvenile solidarity with them. “We need to have a family meeting.”

“A what?” Tolliver looked at him with wide eyes. “You want to have a what?”

“A family meeting.”

“Oh man,” Malachi said. The tiny demon hovered in front of my kitchen window, tormenting the Pomeranian across the alley. “Satan’s having a family meeting? I’m out of here. If that’s okay with you, Your Excellency?”

“Of course.” My father waved his hand absently, and Malachi bailed like the giant chicken he should have manifested as.

“Well, we’ve got to make it quick. My lunch date is going to be here in”—I peeked at my wristwatch—“four minutes, and I really don’t think we want to explain this whole situation to him. Do you?”

“Fine,” my father said. “We’ll make it quick.”

“I still don’t see why we’re doing it,” Tolliver said. “I mean, we’ve done perfectly well without family meetings before now. What is this, a committee or something? It’s not like we’re children anymore.”

“Roisin thought it would be a good idea, now that we’re going to formalize things, for us to sit down and discuss how we feel about the situation so we can try to work things out as a family. And it will give us a chance to talk about some important changes that are going to take place.”

“Such as?” Hope asked.

“Our changing family dynamic and the responsibilities expected of you.”

I raised my hand and waved it at him. “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“We’re grownups. That means there are no shifting responsibilities. I will take out the trash and do the dishes in my apartment, Hope will do the same in hers, and Tolliver will do whatever it is that he does wherever it is that he resides, or sleeps, or whatever he does.”

“Exactly,” Tolliver said. “Besides, what changing family dynamic? You’ve been chasing Bimbette around for the past thirty-five years, and either shacking up or breaking up for almost all of it.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about.” My mother pointed at Tolliver, her eyes narrowed in accusation. “You need to deal with this, darling. I’ll never have the respect I’m due as your consort if your own son talks about me with such disrespect. We need to allow everyone to get their feelings out in the open and resolve them or this blending just won’t work.”

“Your mother is right,” Dad said.

I stifled the urge to roll my eyes at him. Now we were in for a fight. Tolliver was never going to let that slip of the tongue go, but pissing off Satan was never a good idea.

“Yes,” Tolliver said. “She is. You’re a moron who’s letting a dipshit lead you around by the balls.”

Dad’s mouth fell open in shock. I wasn’t sure why, he had asked for it after all. Tolliver was a traditional child of divorced parents and Mom had never bridged from
Wicked Stepmother
to
Mother
where he was concerned. “Tolliver!”

“See? See?” my mother screeched. The woman sounded like a barn owl when she got worked up. “That demon has poisoned him against me.”

“Actually,” Hope said, and turned to look at my mother. “She’s right.”

“Who?” My father looked between all of us, wide-eyed as an owl himself.

“Tolliver’s mom.”

“Excuse me?” Mom said.

“Mom, with all the respect I can muster, you’re a fucking moron. I mean it. You’re so stupid that I often wonder how you manage to survive on your own. It should be a criminal offense to be as dippy as you are. The police should raid your coven and throw all of you into an institution where they will let you macramé all day so the rest of us aren’t contaminated by your utter inanity.”

Tolliver and I turned to look at each other, stunned. Someone had woken up on a bitchy side of the bed this morning.

“Look, I love you both,” Hope said, “but this blended family bullshit should have been done years ago. It’s been thirty-five years and you’ve just now gotten over yourselves enough to realize that we might have some buy-in to this family? You know what? Fuck you. Fuck both of you.”

I dug my elbow into her ribs. “Hope.”

“No!” Hope stood and pointed her finger at our parents. “Somebody needs to say something, and I’ve officially hit the point where I’ve had enough.

“You,” she said, and turned to our mother, “all you’ve ever bothered to do is play hot and cold with him. You’ve been so self-involved, and you have such a low self-esteem, the only way you feel good about yourself is to make him jealous and keep him trailing after you because you are so threatened by the possibility he may choose another demoness over you. And this Wicca thing you’re into is crap. If you’re related to a bunch of Ancient British Druids, I’m related to Cleopatra. You’re not communing with nature spirits when you dance around naked in the woods, making an ass out of yourself. You’re a bunch of sad, pathetic, middle-aged women whose husbands went on to greener pastures. And that stupid group isn’t about communing with anything but your wounded pride. The only ‘Feminine Power’ you have is to sit around and shove chocolates down your throats whining about the man who did you wrong.”

Mom’s chin trembled and her eyes filled with tears. “That’s not true.”

“Hopewell,” my father said, his voice glacial.

She spun to focus her wrath on him. “And you. Do you know what our lives are like because of you? Do you know how screwed up we are because of you?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Bullshit. The two of you never could get your shit together. You couldn’t be together, you couldn’t be apart, and all you did was fight. None of us has any idea what normal is. Our father, the Devil, was so preoccupied with chasing our mother he couldn’t bother trying to help us make sense of the types of freaks we are. Do you know who had to teach Faith how to control her wings or where to buy tampons? It wasn’t you and Mom, was it? No, it was me. Because you were too busy being wrapped up in the grand epic saga that is Roisin and the Devil.”

“Hope, we really don’t need to discuss my tampon—”

“And do you know who had to teach me, Daddy Dearest? It wasn’t you, was it? No, no, you were too busy chasing away Mom’s newest boyfriend, so Tolliver had to step up.”

My father’s voice faltered. “That’s not true.”

Tolliver shifted nervously. “I wasn’t involved in the tampon thing.”

Dad’s eyes traveled between the three of us, stricken by the realization Hope might be right.

“The point is, we’re fucked up because of you. Do you know I married a moron because I thought he was what I deserved? Or that I really thought I could manipulate him into loving me? I clung to him so hard, trying to make him love me, that he can’t stand to even be around me. He fell up just to get away from my neediness. And maybe if you hadn’t been so self-involved you would have realized that before my marriage imploded under the weight of your epic saga. Or before Tolliver had to make himself a girlfriend. And you’re worried about us making your relationship easier? Well here’s a news flash: it’s not all about you.”

“I didn’t make myself a girlfriend. We’re just more open to the possibility of things between us now that Lisa’s no longer mortal.”

“And Faith wouldn’t be so afraid of being hurt and rejected that she doesn’t let anyone into her life. Do you know this is the first date she’s had since the breakup with Dan?”

“Dan? Who’s Dan?” My father studied me. “I don’t think I ever met a Dan. When did you date a guy named Dan?”

In the name of all Evil. This had to come up now?

“Yeah.” Hope laughed. “What’s that tell you?”

“Hope,” I said, my voice so low it was almost a whisper. “This really isn’t the time. You’re upset and saying things you don’t mean.”

“Whatever, Faith. It’s time they know.” Her eyes flickered red when she pinned her fury back on my parents. “She doesn’t want you to know she dated Dan for five years in Chicago. Five
years
. They were engaged. Did you know that? You wouldn’t know because she was terrified of introducing him to the rest of us. The only reason I knew was that I went to Chicago on a business trip and found them together. She was so ashamed of what we are, she told him she was an orphan.”

My father gawked, pain evident in his face. “Faith, is this true?”

“It’s compli—”

“It’s not complicated,” Hope yelled. She threw her hands up and groaned. “Forget it. There’s no point even trying with the two of you. I’m out of here.”

“Hope!” Dad grabbed for her and she brushed him off before storming out the front door.

The sound of her shoes pounding against the stairs reverberated through the room. I winced. Maybe we should have gotten them carpeted? Not that it would have changed the shotgun sound of the door slamming on her apartment.

My father sank heavily into the easy chair and rested his head in his hands, shaking his head. “What just happened?”

Mom sat on the love seat, gaping like a large, overly made-up trout. “I just can’t understand the nerve of that girl! Blaming us for her problems.”

“Mom,” I said, my voice weary. My fingertips massaged my forehead. “Shut up. Just, for once in your life, shut up already. While you’re somewhat ahead.”

“But—”

“Roisin?” my father said, his voice full of defeat. “Shut up.”

Tolliver motioned toward the door. “I’m going, too.”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Dad?”

“Uh-huh? You got something you need to add? Some other way I screwed up your life and destroyed your happiness I didn’t know about before? Any other boyfriends I may have accidentally outed you in front of? Any other times you’ve had to start over and rebuild your entire life because of me?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, and squeezed his shoulder.

“For what? Wanting to have a normal life? Needing your mother and I to have some sort of clue? Needing us to take some sort of fucking interest?”

“That’s not fair.”

“Your sister’s right. She may not be fair, but she’s right,” he said. “I’m sorry I screwed up your life so bad. Go get ready for your date. He’ll be here any minute.”

“I can cancel.”

“No, you’ve given up enough of your life for your mother and me. You should go to lunch. I’ll even stop time outside the apartment so you’ve got a few extra minutes to wash your face.”

“Thanks.” I pressed a quick kiss to his cheek and hurried out of the living room, leaving my mother sulking. At least I had somewhere to go. I didn’t think I could bear to make him go back to his hotel room while he was this upset, but the tension was stifling.

What had possessed Hope? Yeah, I understood what she was saying. It wasn’t like I didn’t resent my parents for what had happened with Dan. There’s no easy way to deal with the fact the man you’re supposed to marry in less than a month is huddling in a corner and weeping at the sight of you, begging you not to kill him.

I never realized that era in my life had affected Hope so much, though. She’d never mentioned it before. But then again, neither had I.

I washed my face and hurried into the bedroom to change into a nicer outfit. After scanning my pathetically boring wardrobe, I found a black wrap dress that complemented my figure. A quick glance down confirmed that my legs were shaved. Rifling through my underwear drawer uncovered a bra and panties that somewhat matched. Especially since, at this point, I was almost willing to go home with someone—anyone—just so I didn’t have to deal with the fallout from Hope’s outburst later tonight.

The subtle shift of time starting back up crackled as I was ran a hairbrush through my mess of frizzy blonde curls. I set down the brush and opened my contact case, retrieving the left one and peeling back my eyelid. I knew I should have taken five extra minutes to get ready this morning. But stupid me thought it would just be a day to hang out around the house in my clunky, black-framed glasses. Just as the contact slipped into place, there was a knock on the front door and I jerked, poking myself in the eye.

I wiped my eye with a square of toilet paper and slid in the other contact. “One min—”