But only Daisy walked into the living room.
“Where are the other girls?” Poppy asked.
“Still at Madison’s.”
Poppy glanced at the man, who, even despite his confusion, managed to lounge on the couch like he owned the place. Then she asked Daisy in a hushed voice, “Is everything okay?”
Daisy nodded. “Madison’s mom is just annoyed that she forgot to leave the key for him. And she also got in trouble for texting—”
“Connor Martin,” they said in unison.
Poppy nodded. That sounded like Madison. That girl could be so boy crazy. Once upon a time, Poppy had been boy crazy too. Such a waste of thoughts and energy. Now she knew there were more important things in life than romance.
Things like her little sister and keeping her safe and fed and healthy—both physically and emotionally.
“Well, I’m glad you are more grounded than Madison,” she told her little sister. “No crazy antics to get the attention of a boy.”
Daisy’s eyes flicked toward Killian, then back to Poppy. She smiled. “No, no crazy antics for me.”
“So is Madison coming to get him?”
“No, I said I’d bring him down.”
Poppy frowned. She still didn’t like the idea of this guy alone with her little sister. Not that he’d shown any signs of anything—well, anything but confusion.
“Maybe I should walk with you,” Poppy said.
Daisy shook her head. “Nah. You know what I would like?”
Poppy tilted her head, still debating going along, but her sister must have taken it as a gesture to continue.
“I know it’s late and all, but I’d love some of your famous hot chocolate.”
Poppy didn’t answer.
“Please. We’ll only be ten minutes, and then the girls will all be back. Hot chocolate would be nice.”
The warm, milky beverage might be just the thing to calm everyone down after a wild night.
Poppy glanced at Killian, who still sat there, although now his eyes were closed, his head leaning back against the couch’s overstuffed cushion.
She was beginning to wonder if this poor guy did need medical attention.
“Okay. But only five minutes. Or else I’m coming to find you with the candlestick holder,” she said loud enough for Killian to hear too.
Daisy smiled. “Promise.” She turned to the man on the couch, then paused as if considering something. Then she said, almost tentatively, “Um, Kill—ian?
The man opened his eyes, looking more confused than before, if that were possible.
“I’m going to take you to where you’ll be staying.”
He frowned, but slowly unfolded himself from the couch. It was like watching a giant stand inside a miniature apartment that was decidedly feminine and delicate.
Poppy thought Daisy looked a little hesitant to leave with him now, and she started to say she would go along after all, but Daisy stopped her. She waved and promised five minutes again.
Poppy watched as tall, broad Killian followed petite, skinny Daisy from the room. A weird feeling tightened her chest, but she didn’t think it was dread. Or fear. It was more the sense that something was amiss.
“Five minutes,” she murmured to herself as she went into the kitchen to make cocoa.
Killian followed the girl in front of him, trying to make sense of what had been going on. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t even sure who he was, or how he got here.
Well, he knew his own name. Or at least he thought he did. When the tiny woman with the disheveled hair and baggy sweatshirt and even baggier flannel pants had asked his name, Killian O’Brien had popped into his head.
That could be from anywhere, though.
And he was Swedish? Now that he had no recollection of at all.
“I’m from Sweden?” he asked the girl.
She paused in her determined trek through the hallways of the building.
“Yeah,” she said, sounding no surer than he felt.
“So why am I here?”
The girl started to open her mouth to speak, then hushed voices from around the corner drew their attention in that direction.
Two more teens came into view.
“Did you get it?” asked the one he thought he’d heard … Poppy call Daisy.
A dark-haired girl dangled something in front of her triumphantly. A key.
“Piece of cake.”
All the girls surrounded a door a few feet away.
“This isn’t going to work,” the curly-headed blonde said.
“It will,” the darker one said, her voice filled with exasperation.
“Just open up,” Daisy said. “Poppy said she’d come look for us in five, and knowing her, she’s actually timing it.”
The dark-haired girl unlocked the door and pushed it open. Then they all looked at him expectantly.
He frowned in response.
“This is where you are going to stay,” Daisy said, gesturing to the open apartment.
His frown deepened as he stepped closer. The place was dark, except for an old-looking lamp creating a dim pool of light around a hall table. The place smelled. He sniffed again. Like old age. Old books and the menthol of arthritis creams and mustiness and cat.
He looked at the kids.
“I’m staying here?”
They all nodded, wide-eyed.
“You have to,” Daisy said.
Killian thought about it, wanting to say “no, I really don’t have to.” But he found himself nodding and stepping inside the apartment.
“Don’t let anyone know you are here,” Daisy said once he was inside.
He was supposed to be staying here, but no one could know. That didn’t sound right. But again, he found himself nodding.
“We’ll check on you tomorrow.”
He nodded again.
They nodded back as if they were silently closing some secret pact—and maybe they were. Then the girls left, enclosing him in the dim light of this strange place. He listened to their footfalls hurrying away, back to Poppy’s apartment and her famous hot chocolate.
Just leave yourself.
Surely this wasn’t right.
But his feet remained anchored to the spot.
Eventually, he turned and surveyed the fussy, frilly, floral room.
He was stuck
here.
What in hell was going on?
C
HAPTER
3
W
hat the hell?
Killian blinked up at the unfamiliar ceiling—a dingy white ceiling. Not the crisp, new white of his ceiling at home. Nor was he in his own bed. This one was decidedly feminine, covered in a ruffled bedspread plastered with pink and red cabbage roses. Nothing like his black silk sheets.
He glanced to the right to see an antique nightstand. On it, in its full flowered and beaded glory, sat a lamp that looked as if it came from a yard sale circa 1959. An Agatha Christie was opened, facedown on the doily-covered surface. Several medication bottles were lined up beside that.
Great, not only was he in a strange bed, but it appeared to be that of an elderly woman.
He glanced to his left, hoping he’d see something that would make sense to him. He definitely needed an explanation for this predicament—and why he didn’t seem to recall how he got here. But instead of some clue, he found someone staring back at him.
It was the ugliest, mangiest cat he’d ever seen. It stared at him with its one good eye. An eerie yellow eye. The other was stuck together into a crusted black line. The cat’s long, white fur—or at least he thought it was white—had a matted, gray tinge as if it had rolled in ashes. Damp ashes.
Maybe Killian was still in Hell. But he suspected that even demons would throw this thing back.
Keeping his movements slow and subtle, Killian levered himself up onto his elbows, concerned that even the slightest move would set the beast into attack mode.
The cat hissed, its back arching and its tail, once broken or maybe just as naturally ugly as the rest of it, shot up like a tattered flag at half-mast. It hissed again, louder, its lips curling back to reveal a splintered fang and some serious tartar buildup.
Killian braced himself for what appeared to be an inevitable fur-flying assault, but instead the feline monster darted over the chair and disappeared under the bed, surprisingly fast for such a massive creature.
“Great,” he said, peering over the edge. Now he felt like he was stuck in some horror movie where the monster under the bed would lunge out and grab him as soon as he set a foot on the floor.
He fell back against the mattress. The scent of musty pillow, masked only slightly by some kind of stale, powdery perfume, billowed up around him.
Where the hell was he?
He lay there, searching his brain, but nothing came back to him. His last memory was getting off work and going home. But he was clearly no longer in Hell. This place was very definitely the dwelling of a human. Humans had a completely different energy from demons.
Had he gone home with some human woman for a little nocturnal fun? Not his usual behavior, but not unheard of either.
He glanced around the room with its flowered walls and damask curtains. A pink housecoat was draped over a rocking chair in the corner.
He cringed at the sight. Not unless he’d suddenly developed a taste for the geriatric set.
“At least let it have been the hot granddaughter,” he said aloud. The monster under the bed hissed in response. Probably not a good sign.
He remained there for a moment longer, then decided he couldn’t stay trapped in this sea of frills and flowers indefinitely. He had to figure out where he was—and more important, why.
He sat up, steeling himself for his next move. Then in one swift action, he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and gave himself a hard push against the mattress, vaulting a good three feet across the floor.
The dust ruffle quivered, then a paw with claws unsheathed shot out and smacked around, hoping to connect and maim. Finding nothing, it snapped back under the bed’s depths. The bed skirt fluttered, then fell still.
“Ha,” he called out to the animal, feeling smug. Then he just felt silly. He was a demon who’d managed to outsmart a cat. Yeah, that was something to get cocky over. Especially since he was a demon who had somehow managed to forget where the hell he was.
He stepped out of the bedroom into a small hallway. Directly in front of him was a bathroom that revealed more flowers on the shower curtain and on the matching towels hanging on a brass rack. Even the toilet seat cover had a big rose on it.
To his right was another bedroom. A dresser, a nightstand and a brass bed—and, of course, more flowers.
He frowned. Would he really hook up with a human who was this obsessed with floral prints—very
bold
floral prints? He didn’t think so, but anything seemed possible at this point.
He wandered to a living room with swag draperies and ancient-looking velvet furniture. BenGay, hand lotion, Aleve, a crystal bowl filled with mints and a box of tissues were arranged on another doily-covered table beside a tatty-looking recliner. A crocheted afghan was draped over the back.
“Let there be a granddaughter … let there be a granddaughter,” he muttered, even though he’d seen not a single sign of youth so far.
He crossed the room to a fireplace, looking at the framed photos crowded along the mantel. Only one woman kept reappearing in the pictures and she didn’t look to be a day younger than eighty. But he didn’t recognize her. In fact, none of the people in the pictures jogged his memory.
“Maybe I don’t want to remember,” he said, grimacing down at a picture of a group of elderly women on what appeared to be adult-sized tricycles beside some beach.
Then his own shirtsleeve caught his attention—or more accurately his cuff link, deep red garnets set in a charm of a ferry boat: the symbol of his position and job in Hell.
He set down the picture and inspected himself. He was still dressed in his standard work uniform, a white shirt with a tab collar, a black vest and black trousers. He’d taken off his greatcoat sometime during the evening, but he was relieved to see that the rest of his clothing was intact.
A good sign nothing untoward had happened, but it still didn’t give him any hint as to where he was or how he got here.
“Just get out of here,” he told himself. He could just as easily contemplate this bizarre situation in the luxury of his own place.
He closed his eyes, picturing his ultramodern dwelling with its clean lines and stark colors. Not a single flower to be found anywhere. He visualized the living room with its black leather furniture. The bedroom with its king-size bed and dark red walls. He especially visualized his black granite bar and the bottle of Glenfiddich sitting on it.
A nice glass or two of fifty-year-old scotch and a little Xbox 360 on his big-screen television seemed exactly like what he needed after all this strangeness. There was nothing like expensive liquor and Modern Warfare 2 to get him calmed down. Then maybe he’d recall his lost evening.
Let there be a hot granddaughter, he added again.
Then with his creature comforts affixed in his mind, he willed himself away from this odd apartment and back to his own world….
Except nothing happened.
No whirring sound, no sense of whisking through space and time. No—nothing.
He opened his eyes to find himself still surrounded by flowers and the scent of old age.
Pulling in a deep breath, he closed his eyes again and really focused. But this time he noticed something he hadn’t the first time. It was a sort of weighted feeling as if leg irons were around his ankles, keeping him in this dimension.
He released the breath he didn’t even realize he was holding pent up in his lungs. What was going on? Why shouldn’t he be able to dematerialize out of the human realm?
But then he realized
shouldn’t
wasn’t the right word. He felt like he
couldn’t.
No, that wasn’t exactly the right word either.
For the first time since he woke up in this place, a sensation akin to panic constricted his chest. He forced himself to ignore the feeling, chanting over and over in his head that there was a reasonable explanation for all of this.
“Just go to a bar here,” he muttered to himself. “Have a stiff drink—and relax.”