Straight To Heaven. Michelle Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ manager was smart. It was only a matter of time before he also realized that Ariel had been shoplifting. If I wanted to rescue my niece, I had to put my succubus to work. Quickly.

      I walked over to him, pulverizing bits of cereal under the heels of my sandals. “I am so sorry,” I said.

      He thrust his jaw out. “You’ll have to pay for this, and I don’t want the two of you back in my store, either.”

      My succubus was in overdrive, working out the best way to win this man over. He was young, only a few years out of college, and his look said junior executive wannabe. He wore khaki pants, a white short-sleeved shirt that had been carefully pressed, and a striped tie complete with a University of Michigan tie pin. His hair had been clipped so short that it was practically army regulation.

      My demon self spoke up before I had a chance. “Go Wolverines!” I pointed to the tie pin.

      He was too angry to be taken in by such a simple ruse. My demon had to do better than that. Luckily for me, she had more tricks up her sleeve. “When you were in college, I’ll bet your professors never told you that running a business would be this hard.”

      His jaw tightened. “No,” he admitted.

      I helped him pick up the cereal boxes. “Those professors are so lame. They’d never survive in the real business world. Am I right?”

      He nodded. “Completely.”

      I moved in closer and brushed against his shoulder. The glamour in my touch made him relax. “I’ll bet that you’ve learned more in your first year on the job than they taught you in four years of college.”

      He placed several boxes back on the display. “Definitely.”

      “And those classmates of yours? The ones who graduated and went to Wall Street to work in finance?”

      His eyes hardened. Finally, I’d struck gold. “Losers,” he said bitterly. “A bunch of a-holes who used their parents’ money to go to college, then got jobs in investment firms because their daddies worked there.”

      “They can laugh at you all they want, but what do they know about a real day’s work?” I asked.

      “Nothing!” The manager was furious now, but no longer at me and Ariel. “They don’t have to worry about student loans or finding a real job.” His fists clenched.

      “You’re better than they are,” I assured him.

      “Damn right!” he agreed.

      I would have continued, but Ariel’s wide-eyed stare stopped me. So instead, I patted the manager’s shoulder. “Sorry,” I said again.

      He glared at the wreckage, no doubt seeing the faces of his fellow college graduates. “No problem.” He kicked at a box of cereal, sending it skidding across the floor. “No problem at all.”

      As we wheeled our cart away, I realized that Casey had disappeared like smoke, bless her evil little heart.

      “How’d you do that?” Ari asked.

      I played innocent. “What?”

      “Get the manager to stop being mad at us. He was ready to throw us out.”

      “Yes, he was,” I said, “and for good reason, considering what you did.”

      “Like I said, it was an accident,” she protested.

      “I don’t mean the cereal display,” I said. “I’m talking about the fruit rollups and the candy bars. Or were those accidents, too?”

      She looked away.

      We wheeled the cart into a checkout line. “You’re lucky he didn’t catch you,” I told her, “but since I did, you are in so much trouble.”

      Ari glared at the floor as if her own fate was spelled out there.

      When we got back home, I was ready to dish out my punishment, but Ariel sprinted to her room the moment I opened the front door.

      I set the groceries in the kitchen, went upstairs, and knocked. “Ariel?” When she didn’t answer, I tried to open the door, but she’d jammed it shut. I pounded harder. “Ari! Open up right now.”

      It was times like this that I missed Tommy the most. Now that he was overseas on his spiritual pilgrimage, I realized how much I’d relied on his advice. He was endlessly patient, and always serene. The night before he left, Ariel had grown desperate to keep him home. She’d hidden my car keys and his passport so well that, even after hours of searching, we couldn’t find them. I was ready to strangle her, but Tommy had taken Ariel outside and calmly talked with her. When they’d come back inside nearly half an hour later, one of the large, metal gauges was missing from Tommy’s earlobe, and Ariel was wearing it around her thumb. “It’s my promise to her that I won’t be gone forever,” he told me when I asked about it. I hadn’t thought that the trick would work, but to my amazement, Ariel quietly fetched the missing keys and passport from the inside of the toilet tank lid where she’d secured them with duct tape.

      Now that Tommy was gone, however, I was on my own. And with no otherworld doorways in Ariel’s room, I couldn’t sneak in that way, either. After counting to ten, I said, “Fine. Stay up here if you want to, but you can’t escape your punishment. Sooner or later, you’ll have to come out, and when you do, I’ll be waiting.”

      The door opened. Ari glowered up at me. “Is that a threat?”

      “It’s a promise.”

      “But I didn’t do anything!”

      “You stole half the store,” I argued. Which was a stupid thing to do. Arguing, I mean. Since, like Ted, Ariel knew how to fight.

      Immediately, she turned the accusations back on me. “It’s not like you ever give me anything.”

      “I do give you things,” I argued. “Swimming lessons, a cell phone – ”

      “Yeah, but Grace gets whatever she wants because she’s your daughter, and you love her. Not like me.” She dropped her head.

      “That’s not true!” Her arrow struck right where she knew it would, piercing my heart. I had tried and tried to make Ariel understand that I loved her, but no matter what I did, she refused to believe it.

      “I wish Tommy was here,” she said miserably. “At least he loved me. But then you chased him off, and I’ll probably never see him again.”

      I wanted to argue that she was wrong and that I hadn’t chased him off, but unfortunately, she was right. “Well,” I said. I picked up a dirty T-shirt from the floor. “Well.” Now, I was the one who felt like a heel. How had that happened?

      The doorbell rang. Before I could stop her, Ariel dashed down the stairs to answer it. Thinking it was Vickie or Casey or some other neighbor, I took my time gathering more dirty laundry and composing myself into the happy, suburban housewife I was supposed to be. Halfway down the stairs, I paused, listening to the conversation. It wasn’t a neighbor that Ariel was talking to.

      It СКАЧАТЬ