Temping is Hell Read online

Nan’s narrowed eyes didn’t give her the benefit of the doubt.

  “Besides, I know this company isn’t the nicest, and they have some really sinister business practices, but Satanism? I just don’t see it.”

  Insanity. Possession. Kate remembered Al saying something like that. But it just seemed like bullshit, just a big, hyperbolic metaphor or something.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Do you believe in the Downbelow?” Nan got into Kate’s face, her bony finger poking Kate’s chest. “When was the last time you thought your soul was truly in danger?”

  “First time I had sex,” Kate said without thinking, then blushed when Prue let out a surprised bark of laughter. Even Nan seemed to soften a little, backing up a step.

  “This is serious. You don’t know how serious,” Nan said, sinking into a chair. “Tell me a little about this company you’re working for. How did you come to find this paper?”

  Slowly, Kate explained about Fiendish and the boys in the basement. Prue looked even more worried.

  “I need to look into this. Talk to some people… old contacts,” Nan muttered, seemingly to herself. Then her gaze bore into Kate. “You need to quit. Now.”

  “I can’t. I need this job.”

  “Even if you don’t value your soul, you should value your life,” Nan pointed out, nudging the paper with her cane. “You already know too much. As soon as you cease being useful, you’re going to be signed on or in the ground.”

  “Nan,” Prue interjected, handing her a cup of tea, “why would he have a bunch of contracts? Is he signing people up?”

  “Probably,” Nan said. “It’s a way to gain power. I never really worked with big signers, but I’ve seen the aftereffects of their plots. They sign on people, offering favors in exchange for a draw of the power of their souls and outright ownership on the signatory’s death. Then, those who sign have the option of signing on their own people, and the master draws power from both his signatory and any that signatory adds on.”

  “So what you’re saying,” Kate said slowly, “is that Hell… is like Amway.”

  Prue smirked. “I have always suspected.”

  Nan stared at them, then looked at the ceiling as if praying for patience. They started to snicker.

  That stopped immediately when she slammed her cane down on the coffee table.

  “You two want to laugh, that’s fine.” Her Louisiana accent became more pronounced; her voice was like sweet tea laced in arsenic, smooth yet deadly. “You want to think I’m some dotty old woman, you do what y’all want. But Prue, I’m not answering to your mama if you end up dead. Your friend is bein’ stupid, that’s her choice. But you, Prue… you know better.”

  Prue immediately went contrite. “I’m sorry, Granmere.”

  Nan grabbed a small incense-burner from one of the store shelves and lit the paper. It didn’t burn immediately, until Nan muttered something. Then it almost exploded, disappearing in a cloud of oily black smoke. “Who else saw that abomination?”

  Kate shook her head. “Nobody.” Then she frowned. “Wait. Tadpole saw it.”

  “Anybody you care about?”

  Kate thought about his behavior when she’d retrieved the flash drive. “Not particularly.”

  “Good. ’Cause he’s probably dead anyway.”

  Kate winced. “What?”

  “He’s been exposed to the symbol. Once you’ve seen it, depending on your personality and your soul strength… well, you start getting crazy. You open the doorway to all sorts of nastiness.” Her eyes narrowed, and she stood in front of Kate, who leaned back against the sofa cushions.

  “Now that I think about it… You seem awfully chipper for someone who’s been around the full contracts,” Nan said, and her knuckles cracked again. “Only two ways someone could be around those contracts and not be affected. That somebody’s possessed… or that somebody’s already signed her soul.”

  “Oh, come on,” Kate muttered.

  Nan closed her eyes, took a deep breath—then opened them, quick, and gave her the sort of glare that was almost a physical poke.

  Kate huffed. “Did I forget to put on deodorant? Because you are the second person to pull a super-glare on me today, and frankly, it’s getting a little old.”

  Nan blinked. “Well, if you’re possessed, you’ve got the best shield I ever did see,” she muttered. “That just leaves signed.”

  “I swear, I did not sign my soul,” Kate growled.

  “She didn’t, Nan Temper,” Prue vouched. “I’d know.”

  “Oh, really?” Nan turned back to her granddaughter, looked like she was going to say something acidic… then her expression softened. “Oh. I s’pose you would, now. It’s long past when you and I had a little chat, there, Prudence.”

  Prue nodded, looking more Zen, like her father, for a second.

  Kate shot her friend a surprised look. “You’re not bullshitting?” she asked. “Seriously. You can tell if I’ve signed my soul or not?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “Wow. Because I was afraid this conversation couldn’t get any more surreal.” She chuckled, unable to move past the disbelief. “Know any other cool party tricks?”

  Prue shot her a quick grin. “You’ve seen my cherry stem knot.”

  Nan stood up, headed for the door. “I’ve got to go, contact some… people,” she said slowly. “Prue, don’t do anything stupid. You—girl.” She pointed her cane at Kate. “Don’t do anything else stupid.”

  “Wait, Nan Temper,” Prue said. “What about Tadpole?”

  “What about him?” Nan grumped. “He ain’t one of mine.”

  “We really need to make sure he’s okay.” She looked at Kate. “You don’t want him hurt, do you?”

  “No,” Kate admitted. “He might be a butthead, but this is really my fault.”

  Nan looked at the two of them, then huffed out an impatient breath. “Well then, fine. I’ll drive.”

  Prue immediately started shaking her head, looking panicked. “No, Grandmere, we could… Um, Kate, did you bring a car?”

  “Nope,” Kate said. “But I can bring one tomorrow. Can’t it wait till then?”

  “Sure, why not?” Nan Temper said.

  Kate felt a little wave of relief.

  “After all, if we’re lucky,” Nan said, eyes gleaming, “he’ll just be dead.”

  …

  Thomas was at the condo at a decent hour—ten p.m.—and had work spread out on the living room table when Yagi entered the room. He cleared his throat. “I’ve got the report from the P.I. on Kate.”

  “That was quick,” Thomas said, leaning back against the couch. He pushed aside the paperwork on the proposed Fiendish Foods launch so he could focus. “So—do we need to kill her?”

  He was kidding. Sort of. The pang the lame joke sent through him was a little alarming.

  “It’s hard to say at this point.” Yagi popped in a disc and cued up something on the large TV screen. A picture of a child with bright red hair and a gap toothed smile came on—her expression one of mischief, with just a little hint of screw-you to it.

  “That’d be Kate,” Thomas guessed.

  “Born Katherine Anne O’Hara, at San Leandro General Hospital, to Rita and Terrence O’Hara.” Yagi consulted the notes in the accompanying folder. “Father worked on the San Leandro police force until very recently—laid off due to budget cuts.”

  “Kate said she needed the job,” Thomas said, making the connection. “Are they having money troubles?”

  “Looks like. We pulled their financials. Parents gave some money to the father’s brother, Felix—which, strangely enough, Kate did, too. Her parents are in for twenty-five thousand, however, and they took on a second mortgage to do so.”

  “So Kate’s helping them out.” Another twinge of guilt pinched him.

  “That’s exactly the kind of leverage that could allow someone to force her to betray you,” Yagi pointed out.

  Thomas took a deep breath. “We’ll
put a pin in that. Keep going.”

  Yagi nodded, then turned back to the file. “Her mother, Gertrude, is a nurse. And her older brother, Timothy, is a detective for the Oakland P.D. Homicide.”

  “Of course it’s homicide,” Thomas groaned. “So they’re all local. Been here for years, I imagine.”

  “The father’s family is from the area—Kate’s paternal grandmother has a bit of a slumlord enterprise, owns a number of rundown apartment buildings—but the mom’s from Connecticut originally. Kate and family moved to Southern California when she was eight.”

  The slide show clicked forward to an unhappy-looking child in a green-and-black-plaid schoolgirl uniform, complete with a green blazer. She was standing in front of a McMansion-styled house with a large palm tree in the yard. Her red hair was held back with a tie-dyed bandana. That screw-you look was more pronounced, Thomas noticed.

  “At that time, her father moves the family to San Clemente—town about an hour north of San Diego,” he said. “Beach community, very rich. Dad’s job was head of security for a gated housing development. It looks like he got the job because the developer of the community was an old school friend.”

  Thomas stared at Kate’s unhappy expression. “Guess Kate wasn’t too happy about the switch.”

  “Hard to tell, though she did get expelled from the first Catholic school they’d put her in—but since the same thing had happened in San Leandro, that wasn’t really a surprise.”

  “Expelled?”

  “Let’s see… Ah. In San Leandro, she was expelled for behavior issues. Specifically, she asked too many questions,” he said, and there was definite humor in his eyes. “According to the reports, her mother blames the neighbors who watched her during the day. Communists and aging hippies, apparently.”

  “I see.” Thomas chuckled. “Well, this would be the area for that sort of thing, I’d guess. What happened in San Clemente?”

  Yagi shrugged. “It seems that she just kept asking the wrong questions—variation on a theme. Questions about organized religion, and specifically, why the parish bishop was driving a Lexus. Also she got into a fight with a classmate. She claims she was standing up for another kid who was being bullied, but Kate was the one who got expelled. That’s where I start to get worried.”

  “What, her standing up to a bully?” Thomas asked. “Seems like a good thing to me.”

  “It’s pointing to a pattern. She has a tendency of getting into trouble when standing up for the underdog.” He paused for a beat. “The wrong thing, for the right reasons. Who does that remind me of?”

  “Shut up,” Thomas said absently. “So they were down in San Clemente. What brought them back?”

  “The pattern repeated.” Another click of the remote, and the next picture came up. “Specifically, when Kate was sixteen.”

  Thomas gawked. Then grinned.

  Fast forward to the teen years. Kate was wearing a Weezer T-shirt over shapeless jeans. Her smile was shy, showing the slightest glint of braces. And her red hair was pulled up in the ponytail he had grown so accustomed to. Glasses—round, not square like her current ones—looked like they were slipping down her cute nose.

  She was adorable.

  “She met Simon Millday, and things went steadily downhill.” Yagi clicked to another picture. This one was of a teenage boy, good-looking enough, in a nerdy way. Glasses, too, and straggly long brown hair. He looked… soft, Thomas thought with disdain. “Simon was apparently her boyfriend. They appeared to be very involved, considering she went on the birth control pill at around that time.”

  Thomas blanched. “How the hell do you know that?”

  “The next time you wonder at my P.I.’s bill, you’ll know where the money goes. The man is quite thorough,” Yagi said. “At this time, she’d transferred from the Catholic school where she was expelled to a very exclusive private academy, again thanks to the father’s friend. She seemed to be quite unhappy. Her school attendance was suffering, as were her grades. Simon was from Oceanside, a nearby town with a markedly less affluent population…”

  “I see where this is going,” Thomas muttered. “Star-crossed love, yadda yadda. Parents disapproved?”

  “They did after Simon’s family got busted for their pot-growing ring,” Yagi said, and Thomas’s eyes widened. “Simon’s father went to jail, Simon’s mother moved the rest of the family, and they all blamed Kate. I guess the ‘tip’ came from a boy at her school.”

  “One who was in love with her?” he guessed. She really was cute as all hell, even with braces and glasses. He could see a hormonal teenager going a little crazy over her.

  “One who had a rival pot-growing scheme and who was on the right side of the tracks,” Yagi corrected. “Here’s where her pattern goes one step further. She managed to get herself arrested again… breaking into the kid’s house and calling the cops herself, to guarantee that they’d find the pot and bust the kid. She was willing to fall on the sword to get justice.”

  “Damn.” Thomas had to admire the woman’s gumption. She managed to do all that as a teen. “So what happened?”

  “The kid did get busted, and Kate’s father managed to get her record sealed. But too much damage was done.” He paused a beat. “Guess who the kid’s dad was?”

  Thomas frowned, then he let out a deep breath. “Don’t tell me. Her father’s friend—the one who set him up with the cush job.”

  “It sounds like there was an attempt to bribe her father, to get him to cover it up. Maybe even somehow have Kate take the fall for the kid’s pot growing, admit that she was crazy and had set it all up to frame the boy,” Yagi said with distaste. “A clumsy attempt, at best—although I suspect that she went to her father first, and he didn’t listen to her. At any rate, Kate was expelled, her father lost his job, and the whole family moved back with the paternal grandmother, returning here to the Bay Area.”

  “Well, I see where her trouble making and people-saving tendencies come from,” Thomas said. “She’s sort of a terror, with good intentions. But I’m not seeing how that makes her the demons’ best friend. I’m also not seeing why we have to kill her.”

  “I still can’t quite figure out what her connection with the demons is,” Yagi admitted, his tone a bit surly at the fact. “Right now, I just know that she’s got a talent for acting righteously and creating disaster. And I’d strongly recommend that we get rid of her.”

  “Are you sure we can just get rid of such a dangerous, force-of-nature-type employee like Kate?” Thomas said, half joking.

  “I can make it look like an accident,” Yagi replied. “If it’s a concern, I assure you she won’t feel a thing.”

  “Knock it off. You know how I feel about that.” His tone was sharper than usual, mostly because he really couldn’t tell if Yagi was joking. “I’m not having you kill anyone. Especially not Kate O’Hara.”

  Yagi’s eyebrow went up. Thomas realized he’d sounded a touch too vehement.

  “Unless she’s working for Cyril,” Thomas added. “Then all bets are off.”

  He clicked back to her sixteen-year-old picture. The shy smile.

  She’s still got that smile. Just the thought of it warmed him.

  “Anything else you want to tell me about her?”

  “We’re still working on it,” Yagi said. “She moved to the Bay Area, attended Skyline High, went to Berkeley for college… majored in Sociology.”

  “Of course she did.” It fit with her anti-corporate, “save the world” attitude.

  “Then switched to English, with a minor in Women’s Studies.”

  Thomas rolled his eyes. “Much more practical.”

  “We’re still doing the research, but it seems like she’s mostly just been a temp, repeating her pattern of finding something to rescue, creating some sort of havoc, and then getting kicked out or walking away,” Yagi said. “Her overall report suggests she doesn’t conform and has issues with authority figures.”

  “Now that,” Thomas said, �
��I can absolutely believe.”

  “Thomas, this is serious.” Yagi’s expression was stern. “She’s an unknown quantity, and when I say she’s trouble—I mean she’s going to be trouble for you—and the cause you’re paying me to pursue.”

  For the first time, Thomas was shaken. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “That’s the thing. In her case, you really are taking chances,” Yagi said somberly, then he turned and left the room.

  Thomas frowned at Yagi’s retreating figure. Maybe he was too attracted to Kate; maybe he liked being around her a little too much. And yes, she had a streak of do-gooding that was sort of powerful. She might annoy him within an inch of his life, drive him crazy on a number of levels. But pose a threat to getting his soul back?

  He ignored the tingle of unease that skittered across his spine.

  Nope, he consoled himself. No way in hell.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I’m sure Tadpole is fine,” Kate said, holding onto the side of the car door as Nan Temper drove her ancient “Oldsmobuick Land Yacht” like a cross between a Formula One racecar and the Flying Dutchman. “And if he isn’t, a few more minutes isn’t going to kill him.”

  Although a few more minutes on the 880 might kill us, she thought, nauseated.

  “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Nan said, screeching around a Camaro, which honked viciously in return. She held up a gnarled middle finger and didn’t miss a beat.

  “You really think he might be dead?” Kate repeated, as if repetition might make it seem any more real.

  “He might be worse.”

  “Worse?” Kate echoed. “What’s worse than dead?”

  Nan looked over her shoulder, glaring at Kate balefully. “Pray you don’t find out, child.”

  “Um, truck?”

  Nan looked back at the road, then swerved to narrowly avoid the pickup whose lane they were invading. Kate glanced at Prue, reflected in the side mirror. Prue had her eyes closed and seemed to be chanting something. Praying, maybe.

  Kate couldn’t blame her.

  After a painful but, thankfully, short time, they arrived at Tad’s house. His mother didn’t appear to be home, so they were able to pull into the driveway. Kate resisted the urge to kiss the ground as she got out of the car. “And you said my driving was…” Kate started to tease Prue, but stopped short when she noticed the expression on Prue’s face. “What?”