Straight To Heaven. Michelle Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ sat alone on a corner table, several beer bottles scattered in front of him. He’d dressed up for the evening, wearing new jeans and a leather vest over his T-shirt. He looked unhappy.

      Or so I thought until the band finished their song. Several dancers broke away from the lines, and two of them came over to his table. One was a tall, broad-shouldered man, and the other was a curvaceous blonde. She sat on my client’s lap, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him. They broke apart just long enough for him to smile and kiss her back.

      I stood and stared like a junior-high kid who had watched her first crush ask out her best friend. Why hadn’t anyone thought to mention that my client already had a girlfriend? Suddenly, my night got a whole lot more complicated.

      The other man at their table drank his beer and tried very hard not to watch my client and his girl making out like a couple of teens in the back row of a movie theater. He glanced wistfully at the single women sitting at the bar, but didn’t approach any of them. He wasn’t bad-looking, but his long face and large teeth made him miss handsome by a long way. He had nice thick hair, though, and a terrific set of biceps that probably came from hard labor rather than working out at a gym. I wasn’t in the market for a man, but if I had been, I could have done worse than my client’s friend.

      Which gave me an idea. If I couldn’t reach my target, I could at least use their third wheel to lever myself inside their cozy circle.

      I walked up to the table and leaned over the friend’s shoulder. “Wannna dance?” My succubus threw off charm like she was Tinkerbell with an armful of pixie dust.

      “Okay…sure!” He grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor.

      I was actually a pretty good dancer, but that night, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t make sense of what was going on. The line would zig right, and I’d zag left. When they backed up, I’d go forward instead. Twice, I staggered off the edge of the parquet floor and bumped into one of the tables. Apparently, my inner demon had no sense of rhythm. Either that, or I wasn’t used to the proportions of my new body.

      Luckily, my client’s friend wasn’t the best dancer himself. His body flopped around like an inflatable tube man on a used car lot. But the grin on his face told me that he was enjoying himself.

      Mercifully, the song ended, and my partner asked if I cared to join him for a drink. I gratefully accepted and was finally able to sit down at my client’s table.

      “Looks like you found someone who’s a worse dancer than you are, J.T.,” the woman sitting in my client’s lap said. She winked at me. “No offense.”

      I smiled sweetly. “None taken.” Bitch.

      J.T. glared at her, obviously not appreciating her comment either. Then, to me, he said, “What can I get you?”

      Since I’d already spent much of the night drinking, I asked him for soda water with lime. He disappeared into the crowd.

      I reached across the table to shake hands. “My name’s Lilith. Nice to meet you.”

      The woman had one of those faces that had aged prematurely, and I bet she was a good fifteen years younger than she looked. Twin lines of blush, much too dark for her complexion, striped her cheeks, and her hair was dark at the roots where her bleach job had grown out. I might have felt sorry for her if not for the comment about my dancing. “I’m Darla,” she said, without bothering to shake my hand. “This is Craig.” My client nodded at me, his expression guarded.

      After our introductions, my client and his girlfriend sat in stony silence. I attempted small talk to break the ice. “So Craig, where do you work?”

      He glared at me. “I don’t.”

      “He got laid off today,” Darla said. “Permanently.”

      That explained his bad mood. “I’m sorry to hear it,” I said. “Where did you work?”

      “Packaging plant,” he said.

      “Did you like it?”

      “Not really.”

      For the next ten minutes, I did my best to draw them into conversation, asking if they came there a lot and if they liked to dance, too. They responded in monosyllables, and eventually stopped answering altogether. An uncomfortable silence settled while I waited for J.T. to return.

      When he finally did, he slid into the spot next to me and set a sweating glass of soda on the table. “You from around here?” He had to shout above the music in order to be heard.

      “No, I’m from Detroit.” The words were out of my mouth before I knew it. I winced inwardly, cursing myself for my mistake. Giving personal information on a job was not a good idea.

      “So what brings you to Orland?” J.T. asked.

      I may work for the Father of Lies, but personally, I suck at it. Plus, I was still a little bleary from all the wine I’d drunk earlier. To give myself a moment to think, I took a long swallow of my soda. Then I noticed that the roadhouse was decorated with an outdoorsy motif. There were old fishing poles and snowshoes mounted on the walls, and a moose head hung behind the bar. “I’m visiting up here because I like to fish,” I finally said. “And hunt.”

      J.T. laughed. “Well, I never would have guessed that.” Luckily for me, he was not only half in the bag, he was also under the allure of my demon. Unfortunately, Craig and his date were not buying my ridiculous lie. “You ever go out to the range?” J.T. asked.

      I had no idea what a range was, but I grinned. “All the time.”

      J.T. was lighting up more and more. He probably felt that he’d met his soul mate. “What do you shoot?”

      A shooting range! Okay, that made sense. At the same time, my spirits plunged. If I had been a pilot on board an airplane, the dashboard would have been covered with blinking lights all warning me that I was about to crash. It had never occurred to me to prepare an alibi because, until now, my assignments had all been short and to the point. However, I was starting to sense that Craig was going to be a much more difficult project. I needed a better story, and I needed it pronto.

      “Well, I’m also a journalist,” I hurriedly added. “I’m writing a piece on sportsmen.” Yes! It had taken a while, but my succubus had finally come to my rescue. “The story’s about how Michigan’s poor economy is taking a toll on tourism.” It was the perfect lie, offered up with an enormous serving of sangfroid. Grateful for my demon’s cunning, I gave her a mental high-five.

      At this news, Craig leaned over the table and grabbed my wrist. Hard. His flinty eyes were those of a convicted felon. “What are you really writing about?”

      “Sportsmen, like I said.” I locked stares with him. “I’m a journalist for The Detroit News doing a piece on hunters and fishermen.”

      “Ease up, man,” J.T. said, but he, too, looked wary.

      I smiled and attempted to send a charge of my demon’s allure at Craig, but my confidence was wavering, and as a result, the succubus’s power was limited.

      Craig gripped my wrist tighter. “If you’re only here to write an article, then why give us the bull crap story about being a hunter?”

СКАЧАТЬ