She and Me

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One

 

 

My favorite spot used to be on the beach. Not anymore. Not since she came in the mornings and surfed.

Who is she?

What is she?

I’ll tell you. A demon.

All the little imps tell me so. She is the most dangerous demon in the western hemisphere. I can’t say in the world, because I don’t know about the world.

Yeah, demons. They’re everywhere.

I know what you’re thinking.

‘He’s crazy. He’s lost it. I don’t see any demons.’

Well, duh. They’re invisible.

…Now you really think I’m nuts.

That’s ok. Everybody does, until I make something move without touching it. Or when I suddenly end up with your wallet while standing five feet away. Or when I walk through walls or go transparent. Then you believe me.

You also scream, and call for the police and say I’m a demon.

Well, I am. Sorta. Half, really.

My mom was human. Or so I heard. My father was some guy, they said, that she met at a party one Halloween night. He had an awesome costume, she had told them. She got drunk. One thing led to another and well…you know. It was bad.

But she didn’t believe in abortion, which I am grateful for—believe me. But she was delusional, they said. She was a crazy brainwashed evangelical, some other people said. She had initially decided, in fact, to keep me. That was the plan. She was a romantic, they said. Not very practical. In fact, she had all the blue baby clothes picked out, little squishy footballs, and colorful Noah’s ark crib bumpers and baby carriers. But then she gave birth to me. And they saw me for real.

Deformed, they said.

Irregularly shaped skull, they said.

Weird appendages on my back, they said. Possible extra arms, they said. It could be removed with surgery, they said.

And I was possibly blind.

My mother sobbed uncontrollably when she heard this awful news. And when she saw me, she screamed.

I was a child of the devil, she said. Demon spawn. After all, she had been raped that night.

I had orange eyes. Reddish orange fuzz coloring the top of my mostly bare scalp. Olive skin. And those bumps on my head, and those things coming out of my back, were unnatural. Horns and wings, you know.

Well, she was partly right about me. I was demon spawn. Kind of. More like minor-demon spawn. Imp-spawn.

I figured it out ages ago—after she had abandoned me at the hospital. After the hospital tried to set me up for adoption. After I was put into an orphanage since clearly no one wanted to adopt an orange-eyed freak who could see and hear things no one else could and had extra wing-like appendages coming out of his back, and could slip through solid objects.

After some moron named me Rhodes Smith.

What kind of name was that? Really?

I go by Roddy, by the way. Roddy Mayhem.

I chose it myself. It sounded like a rock band somewhere. And I thought it was cool.

Anyway, I’m not schizophrenic, I swear. Highly distracted, but not schizophrenic. The invisible things I hear and see are real. In fact, I figured it out around the time I was kicked out of my fifth foster home for dropping my foster brother’s pirate ship Legos into the toilet while playing Maelstrom (I should have used the bathtub drain with the grate—I see that now. Too late, of course). I was five.

But anyway, around then I found out all those little flying shoulder devils were in fact my relatives on my dad’s side. I never met him, of course. But I had asked all those little invisible dudes all about themselves. And they didn’t just tell me, they demonstrated.

Imps, they explained (with acrobatics and lots of things flying around the room so that people thought I was possessed), loved mischief. Those little invisible devils fed off it. Imps literally did not eat anything else. This is why they constantly shouted tempting things for people to do. If they can get people to do naughty things, they eat. If humans don’t listen to them or ignore them, they starve. I can usually tell a straight-shooting human being from a crooked one pretty easily by how fat or thin the imps that follow them are. Goody-goodies have starving imps. A lot of foster parents had fat imps. And they scared me.

I ran away a lot.

Here is another fascinating fact: imp’s tiny wings (which I inherited and did not get removed in an operation, thank you very much) made them lighter than air—which is why such tiny bat-like wings could carry such short evil cherub-looking things so easily. Their wings also make it so they can be (and usually are) invisible, walk through solid objects, and move wicked fast. I had inherited those traits too.

Another one: Their orange eyes (which I also inherited, and is not a sign of blindness) made it so they can see all sorts of invisible, supernatural things…. Things like elves trying not to be seen, little goblins, redcaps, and even angels of death (which give me the willies and make we want to pee my pants as they are freaky-deaky weird).

I asked them about the horns though. I had them. And they said very few ‘halfs’ like me got them. I was special, they said. Those little nubby horns in my scalp were a blessing, they swore to me. However, they refused to tell me why some imps had huge curling ram-sized horns while others had tiny nubs like me. I later figured it out though. The larger the horns, the older the imp. But also, the more dangerous the imp. Besides, what I really got out of that conversation was that there were other half-imps like me.

Others like me.

When I realized there were others like me—halfs as they liked to call them—I was intrigued. In fact, I started to search for them. I ran away from my last foster home in hopes to find the others like me. After all, someone like me had to be someone I could make friends with, right? Someone who understood my pain.

Right?

So you can expect how I reacted when I met my first half-imp ever and recognized him for what he was. I thought, Hey, maybe we could be friends! Hang out! Buddy up and watch each other’s backs, like family.

Nope.

That half decked me and then stole the last bit of money I had. Halfs are just like everybody else, only a little more dangerous.

So… let’s fast forward to now. Here I am, fifteen, living on the streets. I learned the hard way that half-imps were the same as humans in their slyness, prejudice, and cruelty. And the ones with the big round horns were darn near evil. I learned to avoid them like I avoid that surfing demon woman who now comes to my beach.

It was just not fair.

The beach had been my only home.

 

My favorite hangout is on the pier not far from the beach where the surfers regularly abandon their boards and little wallets. One, because there is a really awesome hotdog vendor not far at the end of the pier, and two, if I steal a dollar here and there from each of their wallets, they hardly notice they have lost anything, and I can get lunch.

Living on the streets isn’t so bad. Skid row is a bit stinky… but it is what I’ve got.

Well, was what I had.

Ok, I am going to rant about that demon lady again. Just for a bit.

First off, how dare she just fly in with a surfboard, all invisible like and just drop into the water? I mean really, how is it nobody notices?

Ok, I am being dumb. She is flying invisible. But her wings are HUGE. I mean, if anyone could see them, they would just get chills down their spines. And she honestly looks scarier than the local vampires. I’ve seen a few of those, and they are freaky-deaky—but not as freaky as her. Vampires, for starters, aren’t all that cool. They smell funny, can only come out at night, and they avoid me as if they know instinctively that I would be trouble for them.

And angels of death had started watch her.

Angels of death were these big scary winged angel guys. They were bad luck. They always showed up when someone gets killed. They didn’t kill anybody themselves, but they were bad omens. They terrified me—but they also kept out of her sight as if her seeing them would spoil something.

Ok, enough ranting.

The thing is, I have so very little in this life. Just the other day, Jester—a halfer from the Unseelie Gang—came looking for someone to push around, and it was around the time I was getting ready to sleep in a vacant doorway—and this guy, some blonde med student, had just handed me a twenty… which is like unheard of on most days. And Jester snatched up that twenty and said it was back taxes for sleeping on the gang’s streets without joining the membership. I mean, I am used to them taking money from me, though I’ve usually gotten my cash broken down into smaller bills so I could hide the majority of it and give them the pocket change I usually get from people who want to give ‘charity’. But man, that twenty… I had no time to go to a store to split it. And then later I saw that blonde dude hanging out with that little miss demon lady as if he had no clue she was a monster. It was depressing.

I went and looked for a different sleeping spot after that—this time under the pier. And that’s where I woke this morning.

I felt sandy and a little wet from the rising tide. It was a good thing I’m able to float a bit on the air so I could reach the land before the tide really got high and submerged me. But when I got to dry ground, she was already on the beach. She never brings anything when she comes—no bags, no wallets, no nothing. So, I quickly went to gather my own small collection of stuff, which I usually stash in a locker that I had actually broken the lock to so no one could open it. I am able to stick my hand through the solid door and pull out anything I grab. Inside this locker was my collection of Hellboy comic books, a small portion of my money (I have stashes everywhere around the city so it is not like I ‘put all my eggs into one basket’), and a change of clothes. So I kind of freaked out when I felt a paper bag inside my locker that morning.

And it felt warm.

I retracted my hand, fingers shaking.

This was unprecedented. Very few people I knew were able to put something into my locker. They had to have the same skill set as I did—you know, the ability to go through solid objects. And of those that I knew, none of them were aware I had this locker. I had made sure of it.

But, my curiosity got the better of me. I reached into the locker again and pulled out the warm bag. And when I saw it, I stared.

It was a fast food bag. Yellow and red writing on it.

I opened it.

Sure enough, inside was food.

I pulled it out, inspecting the contents of the paper wrapping. There was a warm sausage and egg sandwich with English muffins for bread. It also contained some hash browns. I hadn’t had those in ages. And the weirdest part of all, all the imps around me looked like they were not having any fun.

It sent a shiver through me.

That meant it was legit. Not stolen. Not poisoned or even spiked. No mischief at all. Imps always cackled when a good joke was about to be played. It was just ordinary breakfast.

Some halfer had given me breakfast.

It had to have been a halfer, because who else could have put it into my locker?

I unwrapped all the food and scarfed it down fast. Who knew how long it would stay warm and delicious. But in the bottom of the bag, as I was balling it up for the trash, I found a store gift card—one of those you take to a shopping center with money already on them. This one was worth a hundred bucks—with a sticky note attached to it in feminine handwriting. It said: Stealing is a bad habit. Do you need a job?

In this moment I knew that this was not from one of the halfs that I was acquainted with. When I first grabbed the bag, I thought maybe one of gang had bought it for me. Like a peace offering or bribe. Bait. You know. Or maybe a pity offering, which considering the behavior of the imps around me seemed most likely. Someone like Piranha or that bow-tie fanatic kid Spastic. They’ve secretly slipped me stuff whenever Dervish and Jester aren’t looking. But there was no way they had a hundred bucks to throw away. No way. And there was definitely no way they would have said stealing was a bad habit. They stole all the time. It was how they survived. Someone else was watching me.

I hurried away from the beach.

 

But first I stuffed that store card in one of my inside pockets. I had about fifty of them—pockets. Not gift cards. One can never have enough secret pockets.

And I finished my breakfast at a walk.

I decided that maybe it was some do-gooder weirdo who had given me the card and breakfast. But I still had no clue how they had opened my locker. I hadn’t tried to see if someone had actually fixed the lock and had opened it the natural way. Perhaps I should have.

Sand was in my shoes when I marched in toward the boardwalk where all sorts of beach things were on sale and early beach-goers were strolling about. As I walked past, I told one imp to steal me a pair of beach shorts and some flip-flops. I slipped both on when I turned a corner into an alley between buildings, yanking off the tags. And when I marched toward my favorite crab shack where they always tossed out the leftover all-you-can-eat fish for the cats, I snatched a crab leg and couple fish fingers and slipped off toward the parking lot where lots of cars were waiting to be ‘visited’.

Ok, I am not proud of this, but people leave the stupidest things in cars, and I have no need to bust open windows or even set off car alarms to get what I want. I got a really nice cell phone charger from one. I have a pretty cool iPad that was left on a back seat of another. I can always get loose change from the ashtrays, of course—but I can pick up all sorts of things from these empty vehicles, including wallets, shoes, umbrellas, cell phones, and sunglasses. I’ve even picked up canned and boxed stuff from grocery bags—usually picking one when there are multiples in the bags. It is how I get most of my food. I’ve gotten so much bottled water and cigarettes this way. This morning, I reaped one basket of strawberries (they left a whole box in the back seat, so they don’t have the right to complain), a donut from a box of them (never be greedy), this funky Bluetooth earpiece thingy (which was way cool tech) from an expensive hybrid car, and a pair of galoshes (You never know when you will need galoshes).

In fact, I think I just want to say that word.

Galoshes.

Galoshes, galoshes, galoshes.

But anyway, I stuffed them all (except for the strawberries, which I was eating) into an eco-friendly bag I picked up from the back of a truck on my way through, and attempted to head on in toward the city park.

Attempted. Because that was when stupid Mutton and Skunk showed up—one converging on my right and the other on my left. Both of them were nasty halfers which I generally avoided on all days.

“Dervish wants to see you,” Mutton said in his deep meat-head voice.

OK, first off, Mutton is a mutton-head. The dude was seriously older than Dervish, a halfer built like he was nothing but huge hams from his thighs to his biceps. Solid, you know. The kind of guy who can crack walnuts in the crook of his arm, and sometimes did. And he had thick, uneven horns, which in public he kept covered with a stupid fedora. He was basically an evil dude. He kicked cats for fun.

 I tried to slip through, but Skunk latched onto my arm and made sure I could get no farther than a step. The problem with Skunk was that he was such a skunk. He wasn’t only just stinky—from his breath to his body odor—but the dude looked like a skunk who had fallen in a vat of rainbow paints, then in a bin of nails and chains, was blow-dried upside down, hung by his ears. I don’t think there was one part of his body that hadn’t been pierced. He was addict for piercing—among other things. Also his eyes were often dilated and bloodshot. His nose always looked inflamed. If he could snort it, breathe it, or shoot it up, he’d do it. It was a wonder he was still alive.

“Ah, come on, guys,” I moaned, wriggling to get out of their grips. “I’m all paid up. Jester took all I had yesterday.”

But they just laughed.

And they dragged me between them to the basement entrance of the club where they hung out.

Those Punks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two

 

 

OK, I need to tell you all about this club.

It is a two level sort of place. The building was old, or looked it. The façade was brick, but I knew it had been seismically refitted in the nineties so it really wasn’t. The upstairs establishment was this run-of-the mill bar. They don’t serve kids under twenty-one there, and they cater to the crowd that just wants to be mellow, drink and watch sports, or to play pool. Pretty dull, if you ask me. I avoid it. But the underground establishment where Dervish reigns is something else. First off, only members or would-be members of the Unseelie Gang are allowed in the club—not counting those folk Dervish does business with. His bosses, Speed (another halfer jerk in the gang) calls them. Our bosses, Ricotta calls them. And when they dragged me down to the basement, I was dreading it.

You see, I don’t wanna be in the Unseelie Gang. I liked my independence. And though all of them are half-imps like me, their gang was nothing but a bunch of back-stabbers and bullies. Control freaks of the annoying kind—if I was being nice. If I want to be accurate, they were the nastiest pieces of half-imps I had ever met. And that is saying something.

Mutton and Skunk set me in front of the chief back-stabbing bully, Dervish, as soon as we were inside.

Dervish was this dude in his twenties. I don’t know exactly how old, and I really don’t care. The guy’s sneaky, lanky, fast, and freaky. His black hair hardly hid his small thin curling horns, which was why he always wore a hat in public—often a fedora, though he also liked baseball caps worn backwards with holes for his horns, pretending they were additions to the hat rather than part of his head. I never dared tell him his hat was stupid. Currently he was playing air hockey with Thug—another one of those older but brainless halfs with stubby horns.

“Roddy, Roddy, Roddy,” Dervish said, gazing on me as if I had done something naughty and he needed to discipline me. “What have you been doing lately?”

“Nuttin,” I replied, gazing back at him strongly. It never paid to kowtow to Dervish. He saw ingratiation as weakness and he exploited it whenever he could. I had seen a number of poor halfers suffer under his heel to know this.

“Nuttin?” Dervish laughed. He paused in his game, plucking up the game puck in his fingers. “You say ‘nuttin’ when some dude gives you twenty bucks yesterday?”

I rolled my eyes. My shoulders sagged. “I wasn’t beggin’. This college dude just handed me the twenty and said I looked hungry.”

Dervish snorted, so much disdain in his looks as always “A guy willing to hand out twenty dollar bills to messed-up ‘hooligans’ like you has got to have a lot more money to throw away.”

I paled. I could already hear their imps shouting, suggesting we all go to that guy’s house and rob him. The worst part was, Dervish often took advice from those imps.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Bad idea, man. I just glean from the streets, you know.”

“Glean,” Dervish murmured with a laugh, trying to look cool. He glanced to Ricotta, who was this girl in her twenties who looked like she could be my sister. I mean, she and I have the same imp-orange hair and dark skin. But Ricotta dressed like tattered rag doll with frizzy curls and jeans about as ripped as they can get without falling off.

“Are you hearing this guy? Mr. Dictionary. Where do you get words like that?” Dervish laughed more.

“Library,” I muttered, my cheeks feeling hot. “It’s free.”

But Dervish’s laugh continued, almost painful on my ears. The guy was a tyrant. Plain and simple. You did what he said, you laughed at what he thought was funny, and you pretty much gave him everything he wanted. And why not? He was pretty nasty. He would take his (or your) smoldering cigarettes and burn your arm with them. I’ve got plenty of Dervish burn marks. A few cut marks too. He also believed that educating yourself was a waste of time. Pretentious. Halfers like us did not advance in the world among the humans. We were trash, you see. The only way to advance was to ingratiate yourself to the Unseelie Court by messing with as many human lives as possible.

Honestly, I had no clue what this Unseelie Court was. A bigger gang, I had assumed. Dervish talked about joining them all the time. The Unseelie Court this. The Unseelie Court that. They partied all the time in the Unseelie Court, he said. They rode on the winds of Halloween, he said. They were feared on at least two continents was the rumor. And they wanted to expand. Dervish wanted to become an honorary member of the Unseelie Court, just like the infamous halfer Trouble, who was a favorite of the Unseelie Court and all imps. It was Dervish’s ambition in life.

I never met this famous Trouble. He was a halfer was all I knew. But Trouble was Dervish’s idol. He said he had seen him once riding with the Unseelie Court on the Halloween Highway. And the imps bragged about Trouble incessantly. They loved him. They doted on him. Trouble was real fun. He knew the true heart of all imps, they all said. Funny thing was, I had heard Trouble’s real name was something ordinary, like Tom Jones. Kinda’ like Rhodes Smith.

Gads, I really had escaped an awful name.

Anyway, mind on the present, I watched Dervish chuck the puck back to the game table then toss his paddle to Spastic who was standing by to take over the game for him. Spastic—who was only thirteen and didn’t know any better—straightened his pink bowtie and manically hopped over to the game table in his grubby oversized clothes to play. Spastic was everyone’s kicking toy, though I actually think Dervish had a soft spot for the kid. Spastic had no horns, and for some reason, the imps adored him.

“Yeah, but you caught the interest of a guy willing to hand you twenty dollars,” Dervish said, advancing on me. “Why?”

I shrugged. I had no clue. I tried to demonstrate it, hands out, shoulders shrugged and strong facial expressions.

Dervish rolled his eyes at me.

Mutton grabbed the back of my neck. Honestly, that dude would have been able to break it if he wanted. And I jerked away as quickly as possible before he could tighten his grip. I staggered toward Piranha who was watching us.

I liked Piranha. She was this seventeen-year-old goddess who colored her dark hair with this silver-blue hair wax. I’ve seen her always in stilettos with spikes on her leather clothes—but in her core, she was a softie. She kept silent, though. Piranha was afraid of Dervish, and for good reason. She had almost as many cigarette burn marks as I did. She was standing with Wispy, a girl her same age who wore her fair hair loose down her back, barely hiding the short spiky horns on her head. Wispy always looked like something could blow her over in any second. She just seemed half-starved all the time. Anorexic, Piranha often whispered. Wispy hardly ever talked to me, though. Too scared.

We could hear the thump of feet above our heads as the bar continued on with hearty business. It distracted me for a minute as Dervish talked.

“…not like us to draw attention. Are you even listening to me?”

“Not really,” I replied too honestly as usual.

Huffing, Dervish growled. “Roddy! You have to listen! I can’t have your mayhem going on right now while we are in the middle of an important deal the Unseelie Court. Queen Maeve herself is interested in expanding her operation with us. US! It is an honor—and you are going to spoil it if you keep drawing this kind of attention to yourself.”

He sounded tense. It was weird. Dervish usually didn’t get this easily rankled. He was more like a force of his own, tearing things up. But he did kowtow to those from the Unseelie Court.

But I really didn’t care. Who in blazes was Queen Maeve? And why did I have to care? I was an American. She sounded foreign. And some snooty-patooty foreign lady of some Unseelie Court thingy was not going to change the fact that I needed to pay for a bed to sleep in when winter came. I hated sleeping outdoors in the winter. Even Southern California got freezing in the wintertime.

More noise echoed from above.

Thug looked up at it. Then with a glance from Dervish, Mutton thumped his way up the stairs to see what the trouble was. The Unseelie Gang owned the establishment, you see. They lived in the building in the apartments above, though most stayed down below in the club room.

“And you have been acting weird lately, besides,” Dervish said. “Coming in-town more than sticking to your beach.”

I rankled with a shiver. My mind went to my current demon problem.

“Spill,” Dervish ordered.

Moaning, I said, “There’s a new demon frequenting my beach. Ok? I get the heebie-jeebies. I have to avoid her now.”

Dervish stared dryly at me. Shaking his head, he said, “Did you think to invite her to the gang.”

I groaned this time, shoulders hanging. “I am NOT a member of the gang!”

“You are,” Dervish said through his teeth. “You pay gang dues and you are on our turf. Besides, you are a halfer. And we need to report rogue demons to the Unseelie Court. So who is she?”

“I don’t know and I don’t really care,” I said.

“Roddy, Roddy, Roddy,” Dervish moaned, advancing on me. He reached over to grab me.

Another boom from above rattled the ceiling. This one was heavier. We all looked up. And we all listened to imps who were shrieking up above. They were saying things like, “Just stab him through.” and “Set the building on fire.”

Dervish narrowed his eyes. He looked to Speed. “Go up there and make sure Mutton is not entertaining arson. We don’t need one impulsive action to bring this place down in flames.”

Nodding, Speed ran up the stairs.

“Now where was I?” Dervish said, his hard orange eyes swiveling onto me again.

“You were asking about the demon at the beach,” Skunk replied with an up-jerk of his chin.

“Ah.” Dervish then looked at me again. “Right. This demon. What kind is it?”

I shrugged. I avoided the demon because most imps did.

“What does it look like?” Dervish asked.

Oh. That.

Sighing with an eye-roll, I said, “I dunno. Kinda like a vampire, but not a vampire. Big black wings that can expand and shrink. She likes to surf.”

All the gang’s eyes rested dryly on me.

“A surfing demon?” Dervish asked, looking tired.

“Dude, a demon of the waves!” Spastic snickered. So did the imps around him.

Dervish shot him a dirty look to make him shut up. The kid looked stupid with his bow tie jiggling on his throat as he continued to giggle.

But one of the gang drew in a breath. “Oh… I’ve seen her.”

Dervish turned to him. It was Jester. I liked Jester usually—when he wasn’t trying to steal from me. He had a crazy sense of humor, no horns and he dyed his hair all the time to match the nutty patches in his clothes. Jester usually minded his own business, kept quiet, and did what he was told—-all while pulling crazy pranks on everybody not in the gang. He had come into the gang with Wispy a few years back.

“You’ve seen this demon?” Dervish asked.

Shrugging, Jester then nodded. “Yeah. She’s a college student.”

“What?” I stared at him. That was just impossible. A demon going to college?

“No way,” Skunk said, glaring at Jester.

The ceiling rattled and thumped again. There was a clatter of a fallen chair. Then the sound of broken glass. All of us looked up as more imps shouted for someone to set the building on fire—like it would be the best prank ever.

“It wasn’t Mutton thinking it then,” murmured Thug.

I hardly peeked to him. It was probably a bar fight going on upstairs and one of the patrons was acting up.

Dervish gestured for Thug and Ricotta to go upstairs. “Hey, and cheese-face, let me know what is going on up there. Find out what Mutton is doing.”

Ricotta nodded as she and Thug hurried to check out the noise. I always thought it was rude that Dervish called his girlfriend cheese-face. Her obsession with cheese might have been a little silly, but she was a sexy-hot woman.

Turing to Jester again, Dervish asked, “So you’re saying a demon somehow managed to slip into the university and is now going to the beach to surf? Is this demon honing in on our turf?”

Jester shook his head, suppressing a chuckle at the idea. “No. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying, there is a girl whose been going to the university for the past few years, and she is also a demon. Don’t you remember when there was that serial killer on the loose killing chicks around town? The bloody one who was kinda freakin’ you out? She killed him.”

I froze, chills going down my back.

“What?” Dervish did remember. He went pale.

So did I. I remembered it. It was a few years back, I was still getting used to the area, and the killings had started before she had shown up. And as I thought about it more, the killings did end just a few days after I had first seen her show up at my beach. I had no idea she had been the end of it.

“I thought the cops had stopped him,” Dervish said in a murmur.

So had I. The cops were all over it. The news said the killer had been shot. Apparently that had been a lie for the public.

But Jester shook his head. “Nope. I was at the police station for snatch-and-grab when they first brought her in under suspicion. I was waiting for a moment when I could sneak off when this supernatural expert from New York was there training them over stuff about us, and they called him over to deal with her. Some kind of psychic. And I later heard from the imps around that area that she had ripped the guy’s heart out with her bare hands—the killer, not the psychic cop.”

“Good reason to avoid a beach,” Piranha murmured, nodding to me meaningfully.

My hands were shaking. I knew that demon had been dangerous. My instincts were that good. But man. Ripped his heard out with her bare hands?

Another thump and a scream came from above. The scream was from Ricotta.

“Seriously, you should just smoke them out!” an imp screamed now.

“That’s it!” Dervish grabbed me by the neck. “Were you followed?”

I shook my head. “Why blame me? I didn’t want to come here! They could have followed Mutton and Skunk as much as me.”

But he dragged me with Skunk to the stairs where he had decided to deal with whatever it was that was causing all the noise upstairs himself.

We came up. It wasn’t just Dervish and Skunk dragging me up the stairs, but also Jester and Piranha came with us. The bar was mostly empty, cleared of most of the usual patrons. No glass was on the floor. All chairs were upright. In one corner sat a pair of young men in their twenties with draft beer and playing cards. At the pool table was this group of guys whom I had never seen there before, but looked ordinary enough. But all their imps were making irregular suggestions. Things like, “Don’t wait. Arrest them now.” Cops. Thing was, the arson shouts were coming from one of the card players.

 Dervish was about to deal with them when this tall, pale guy with platinum blonde hair and sunglasses strolled in through the front doors. Though he came alone, the imps flying about him looked like they were preparing for a party—or they had just been in the middle of one. They were laughing, giving the guy all sorts of crazy ideas, and practically dancing around him. I knew he was a halfer right away.

Dervish drew in a breath. “Trouble.”

I blinked. Then I stared at this new man.

Smirking with the most crooked grin I had ever seen on a halfer, Trouble replied in a bold, dramatic voice meant for the stage, “The name’s Tom Brown. And you are…?”

Frowning, Dervish glanced to Tom’s imps. “Dervish.”

“Dervish?” Tom laughed. His laugh was impishly musical, so full of mockery. It sent my bones a shivering with excitement. “For reals? What is that like, a superhero name? I mean what is your real name?”

I closed my eyes. Dervish hated that question. Like many of us, he didn’t like the name he had been given at birth. I had no clue what his birth name was. For all I know it could have been David or Daniel or Dwayne. Most halfs hated their birth names because they were given to us by those who had rejected us. It was weird that Tom clung to his.

“Are you the one causing trouble up here?” Dervish asked him. His jaw started to clench. “You’re part of the Unseelie Court.”

Tom flinched. Nearly automatic. It was as if he didn’t like that connection in the least. “Unofficial.”

Coloring, Dervish gasped with personal shock, if not insult. “Are you kidding me? Are you dissing that?”

Tom rolled his eyes. We could feel it, watching his eyebrows lift behind his glasses.

“Queen Maeve herself—”

“Oh, please,” Tom moaned, his eyes raking over me and the others with calculating comprehension. “Queen Maeve can go screw a—”

“Don’t you say that!” Dervish pointed a sharp finger into Tom’s pale face.

“I say what I like,” Tom replied, hardly bothered.

I got a good look at this Tom Brown—the infamous halfer the imps all loved—as he pulled off his sunglasses revealing his darkening orange eyes. The guy was in a classy suit with no indication that he had wings on his back. His suit was really nice too. Men in black quality. And it didn’t look stolen. He owned it. He had a peculiar strength around him. Even a calmness that just did not exists in halfers, and—by the way—he had no horns. For all practical purposes, he looked assimilated as a human. How in the blazes did the imps love him? ‘Cause I could see they did.

“You are favored by her!” Dervish shouted, poking Tom in the chest. His eyes were nearly bloodshot. Spit flew from his mouth at this utter betrayal which Dervish clearly took personally. I started to wonder if he had tried to hit on this Maeve lady and if she had snubbed him or something.

Tom gazed down at Dervish’s finger then at Dervish’s face. I knew then that Dervish had made a huge mistake. This Tom was dangerous. I felt it in the ripple of imps in the room. They were chattering with excitement, like people watching a pro-wrestling match—and they already had their favorite.

Tom said. “It’s called a fetish. She can’t get enough of me, which is really annoying.”

“Why are you here?” Skunk asked, jerking up his chin. He has stepped forward a lot like a little brother telling some big kid not to pick on his big brother. If only he knew how pathetic he looked.

Leaning back, Tom replied frankly, “Well, I’ll tell you, Stinky. While I was in China, I learned that the Unseelie Court isn’t just minding their own business anymore. And after talking it over with the Monkey King, I realized that I was in a unique position to deal with that problem.”

A thousand of things rattled through my brain at once. He was in China? How and why was he in China? And now I really wanted to know what this Unseelie Court was. Who were they? What business were they not minding? What was their regular business?

Dervish snorted with huge whopping skepticism, “Monkey King…. Look. What are you planning to do? Overthrow the Unseelie Court all by yourself?”

Tom shook his head. “No. Don’t be silly. That’s end of the world stuff, and won’t happen until then. Ragnarok you know?”

“The movie?” Jester asked, confused.

Tom laughed, pointing to him. “No. But I’m glad you know the reference.” He then looked to Dervish. “I’m here because I hear some folk from the Unseelie Court come by this place on occasion, and I need to give Maeve a message.”

“Queen Maeve,” Dervish bit out. He looked like he wanted to bite Tom, actually. Then he looked to the undercover cops. “What do you plan to do? Arrest them?”

Laughing more, Tom shook his head. “Nah. They need supernatural power for that. And though I know a guy working on a training program for that sort of thing, I’m gonna have to resort to old fashioned tactics.”

“Get out,” Dervish said. I could tell he had had enough. “This is my establishment. You are not welcome here.”

Chuckling, Tom looked unlikely to budge. He opened his mouth to say so.

“Say Tom…” In walked a nicely-dressed young man in a business suit with rust-brown hair and unusual gray eyes who gave off the bizarre impression of a wolf. “Did you find my…?” He halted. His eyes widened as he took in the room and all of us. He nodded to himself and thumbed back to the door. “Is this a bad time? Should I leave?”

“You can find a corner and stay in it,” Tom said without even looking back at the new arrival.

But the wolfish man whose imps were shouting for him to bite Tom for his remark, set his eyes on the card players and waved. “How about this corner?”

The card players rose, nodding to him.

“Hey ya, Rick. Want us to deal you in?” the tallish thin one with the short goatee asked. His imps were still shouting for him to torch the place, but he was ignoring them with hardly a flinch. Thing was, those imps looked well-fed. That meant he had probably torched a lot of places before.

“Sure…” Rick the fancy wolf-like man said, drawing up a chair. However, he sat so that his back was to the wall and his gray eyes could take in the entire room. I knew that stance. I used that stance. This man was like me, constantly on his guard—and not the fancy weakling as I had first assumed.

Dervish shoved me to the side. I staggered to keep my footing, yet I was glad I was no longer the center of his wrath. The pattern was clear. This Tom Brown may have been the imps’ favorite—but Tom had spoken true about the side he was on. He was not an ally of the Unseelie Court.

“You’re a traitor to your kind,” Dervish snarled.

Tom snorted, hands on hips. “My kind? What do you mean? A halfer like you? Or imp kind? ‘Cause you know, I kinda like my human side. It’s got privileges no Unseelie-folk can brag of.”

I stared. How could he say that? And those words just came out of me: “How can you say that? Humans hate us halfers. Are you a masochist?”

His eyes drifted toward me. There was a heap of pity in his gaze. He pointed at me, about to respond.

“We’re the castaways,” Dervish agreed, nodding to me. So did the other halfers. “Nobody wants us.”

Tom shrugged, lowering his finger. “So?”

We all stared. This was the halfer all imps loved? This? This selfish, apathetic, white boy?

“Why is it you don’t get it?” Dervish growled at him. “Why are you such a traitor?”

Moaning, Tom rolled his eyes. “To be honest, you guys are the first other half-imps I’ve ever met.”

That hit me hard. I was shocked.

So was everyone else. He had admitted to going to China for pity’s sake. The ‘world traveler’. He had never met another halfer in his life? Ever?

“And though I think it is cool that you found each other,” Tom continued as if he were having a light conversation. He shook his head. “But making a gang and living a life of crime isn’t the way to go.”

We all rolled our eyes. How did he not understand?

“Your mother kept you, didn’t she?” Dervish ground out, eying him.

Tom nodded, grinning cheerfully. “Yep!” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, rocking on his heels.

I was immediately jealous.

“You’re kidding,” Piranha said, breathless, not believing it.

“Nope,” Tom replied. He smiled rather happily. Then he eyed us all. “I know you are all seeking family with the Unseelie Court. Everybody innately wants one, whether they want to admit to it nor not.”

I was about to object—but with a peek to Piranha, I realized I was wrong. Of course I wanted something like that. Everybody wanted to be accepted and validated at some point or another. It was why I never entirely left the area. I could have walked up the beach away from this place. But I had friends in Piranha and I felt sorry for Spastic. I wanted to do something. Escape with them. I had plans, you know. I just never mentioned it to them in case word got back to Dervish.

But my thoughts were interrupted by Dervish’s words. “Where is Mutton, Speed, Ricotta, and Thug?”

Tom automatically laughed, clearly amused by their names. He then pointed to Piranha—“What’s your name, hot stuff?”

Piranha bristled, coloring. He had to have been at least ten years older than her.

“Where are they?” Dervish demanded, his face growing darker. His horns seemed to curl.

Tom shrugged. “I dunno.” He then looked back to his card-playing friends—as clearly they were friends of his. The wolf guy, Mr. Arsonist and the other one who for some reason gave the imps nothing to work with except to encourage him to drink more beer, stared back. “Do you guys know?”

Mr. Arsonist lifted a finger. “Later. We’ll talk about it later.”

His imps were shouting for him to make a fireball in his hands to scare Dervish. I stared at him, as that would have been a sight to see. I mean, who can make a fireball in his hands? What kind of human was he?

“Holy cow, they can all hear what’s going on in your head, Swift,” his buddy said.

Mr. Wolf-guy rolled his eyes and whispered rather loudly, “You’re not thinking about fire again, are you?”

“I am not an arsonist,” Mr. Arsonist protested.

Dervish stared at him. “Oh no?”

The man rose. “I can’t be blamed for what I am tempted to do. I didn’t actually set this place on fire, did I?”

It was an interesting, yet useless point. Imps only repeatedly tempted you on things that you would be likely to do.

“Oh yeah?” Dervish headed towards him. Tom followed Dervish, though I was not sure whom he was guarding. I got the feeling that Mr. Arsonist was extremely dangerous.

And sure enough, fire licked up in the palm of that man, almost automatically. The imps didn’t even tell him to. But fire also formed in the hand of the other guy as well.

That’s when I realized that I needed to get out of that place fast. I inched toward a wall.

Skunk grabbed my arm. “Not so fast. Our conversation isn’t over.”

“Dude,” I said, my heart racing as I moaned, “Don’t you think you have more pressing matters now? I mean, Trouble is here right when you are conveniently supposed to be meeting with folk from the Unseelie Court—and he brought along three weirdoes as well as a couple of cops. We all should just scatter, man.”

That seemed to hit Skunk hard.

“I mean, where are Mutton and the rest?” I added, as my own mind was calculating their disappearance as no coincidence. They were taken out—the question was, out of the room or out of this world.

Skunk’s eyes shot to the Arsonist’s table. In the dark corner, where we could hardly see for some reason, was the shadow outline of Mutton’s stupid hat and Ricotta’s frizzy hair. They didn’t seem to be moving.

I shuddered.

“Dervish! Over there! In that corner!” Skunk drew a knife from his pocket and swung out his blade toward Tom.

In a flash instant, with the fastest hands I ever saw from any halfer— Tom received the knife and twisted the weapon out from Skunk’s fingers like an adult would take a toy from a naughty child. He then tossed the knife to Mr. Arsonist who easily caught it and tucked it into his belt. Then he threw Skunk to his pals with a flip—Skunk flipping, not Tom.

Dervish let out a yowl, drawing his gun.

As the pals in the corner seized Skunk, wrangling for his wings with a heavy wrestling thump to the ground to pin him, Tom kicked Dervish in the gut then somersaulted so that he was now standing on the ceiling, running upside down on it. He grabbed Dervish by the horns and flipped him.

A shot went off from the gun.

“Dag nab it, Tom!” the wolf guy shouted out. “I thought you unloaded every gun you came across!” The guy was ducking behind something for shelter.

“My bad!” Tom called out with a cackle as if it were nothing.

And the imps were cheering.

Tom immediately ordered them about, telling them to throw things around in the room.

He ordered them!

I mean, Ok, I’ve done that. I’ve told imps to steal stuff for me—but he ordered imps to make a mess of Dervish’s bar. And they obeyed like little gleeful minions, partying as they scampered all over everything with a heave-ho. Did imps have no loyalty at all? I never thought I’d see one go after one of us.

“What are you doing?” Dervish shouted at them, clearly not believing it either.

“Having fun!” they screamed, laughing.

“Pull his shorts over his head!” Tom called out to them.

“No!” Dervish screamed, just as his shorts got yanked over his head.

It blew my mind, watching it.

They loved it.

Loved it.

But then Dervish shouted out, “Throw all the furniture at him!”

And the imps obeyed, cackling with joy.

Two could play at that game apparently.

However, Tom, laughing as if he was having the time of his life, dodged, flipped, and then slapped Dervish on the head, calling out, “Tag! You’re it!”

And all the other imps tagged him too, like a game.

That’s when I realized why the imps loved Tom Brown and had called him Trouble. He was one of them. The guy naturally generated chaos and adored it—and he wasn’t mean-spirited about it. He just made pure mischief. Imps were not malicious demons after all. Just troublemakers. And watching the chaos he made, his own friends had to duck from the flying debris, fully aware Tom made a mess in his wake.

As the chaos continued, Dervish battling Tom Brown for supremacy over the imps, I ducked once more to a corner to slip out through a wall.

“Where are

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 11.07.2018
ISBN: 978-3-7554-7902-4

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