Temping is Hell Read online

  “Can’t you feel it?” Prue whispered, looking at Tad’s house.

  Kate stopped. “Feel… what?”

  “Damn. It’s close,” Nan said, setting her shoulders. “But it’s not too late, I don’t think. Now, you girls stay behind me and do exactly what I say, exactly when I say it. Understand?”

  Prue was already nodding. Kate nodded also. “What’s going on?”

  “Shut up. Follow me.”

  Kate shut up, and followed.

  Nan whispered something and then opened the front door.

  “I didn’t know voodoo could help with breaking and entering,” Kate murmured.

  The cane swung out, catching her on the arm.

  “Ow!”

  “You do exactly what I say,” Nan growled. “Or we’ll all get killed.”

  Killed?

  Kate pressed her lips together.

  Nan went past the cluttered, chintz-covered living room, heading unerringly for Tad’s dungeon. The sounds that were coming out sounded like… slavering. Snarling, animal type sounds.

  Kate swallowed hard, nerves jitterbugging in the pit of her stomach. She stepped ahead of Prue, who seemed almost in a trance. They walked, single file, down the pine steps. Lights were flashing, and the sounds only got louder.

  Kate’s eyes went wide as Nan pulled out a small, sinister looking silver dagger. Fear trickled down her spine like sweat.

  Then she looked over.

  Tad was playing a video game. The lights, the sounds—all the game.

  Kate put a hand on Nan’s shoulder, relief hitting her like a fist. “It’s okay,” she said, and stepped in front of Nan. “Tad. Tad!”

  Tad turned, startled. “What?”

  “Listen, I’m sorry to just bust in like this, but…”

  Kate stopped as she got a good look at Tad’s eyes. They were glowing red, like barbecue briquettes.

  His smile was slow. “You okay, Kate? I’m glad you stopped by.”

  “Ah, shit. Here we go.” This from Nan, who sounded disgruntled. Kate sensed both Nan and Prue flanking her, facing Tad.

  “What happened?” Kate whispered, the feeling of horror blanketed by numbness. This can’t be real. This is just not possible.

  “Couldn’t stop looking at that paper. That code thing you gave me,” he explained, and his smile was not exactly seductive—there was no way you could do that on Tad’s face—but more feral, and sort of viciously self-satisfied.

  “Then you started hearing a little voice,” Nan said, stepping forward. Kate hoped Nan didn’t kill Tad, but at this point, she felt frozen into immobility—she couldn’t stop the old woman, even if she wanted to, which she wasn’t sure about. “And it told you stuff you wanted to hear. Like, why couldn’t you have exactly what you wanted, right?”

  Tad stood up, inhumanly fast. The ember-glow of his eyes intensified. “And why shouldn’t I? Do you know one of the things I wanted, Kate? Do you have any idea? You. I wanted you.” His smile was slow and unbelievably creepy. “I wanted to do things to you.”

  “Easy, there,” Nan cautioned, pulling out the knife.

  He turned his gaze on her, and his voice seemed to double… like it was two voices, synthesized. “Old woman, do you really think you can stop me from inhabiting this body? Taking this soul?”

  Nan grinned. “Kid hasn’t signed anything. You’re squatting, demon. And yes, I can evict your sorry ass.”

  She made a gesture with the dagger, started muttering something. Then she sliced her own palm.

  Kate recoiled, taking a step away. “What the hell?”

  The Tad-thing winced… then grinned, taking a step forward. “Cute trick,” he said. “But what makes you think I’m not friends with the loa, as well?”

  “Trust me. They don’t want you in this world, either.”

  “Everything,” the voice promised darkly, “is negotiable.”

  He took another step, his hand reaching out toward Nan. Kate let out a tiny scream.

  Then the thing paused, frowning. He looked like a mime, unable to take another step forward. Snarling, he turned toward her.

  No, not toward her. Past her. Toward Prue.

  Kate looked at her friend. Prue had the look on her face that she usually had during morning tai chi. She was breathing calmly, her hands out.

  “You need to leave,” Prue said, serene as a yoga instructor.

  Whatever was speaking through Tad snarled, Tad’s body wrestling against itself. It flung itself away from Nan, toward Prue.

  Prue’s face set. Her hands moved, and Tad stopped like he’d hit a wall. He fell to the ground, clawing at the orange shag carpet, frothing.

  He grabbed Kate’s ankle. “You,” he said. “Your soul will be mine, little bitch. You will spend eternity flailing in agony.”

  Kate looked at his—its—eyes.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  It looked stunned, like a dog who had just gotten hit on the nose by a newspaper.

  “Seriously. Shut up.” Kate felt anger push aside the fear, and she kicked away Tad’s hand. “And get out of here.”

  Prue made a motion with her hands. Nan let some blood splash on Tad’s face.

  With a deafening scream, Tad’s body bowed backward like a circus contortionist… then his eyes closed, and he fell to the floor with a thump.

  Kate, Prue, and Nan stared at the still body. “Is he… dead?” Kate asked.

  Nan ignored the question, staring instead at her granddaughter. “You’re able to exorcise, too? Can you speak their tongue, as well? Do you have the magics?”

  Prue sighed heavily, then nodded.

  “Hello?” Kate waved her hands around. “Is he dead?”

  “Prue, you and I are definitely gonna have a little talk,” Nan grumped, then went over to Tad’s prone body. She prodded him with her toe. “Hey! White boy! Wake up!”

  Slowly, Tad’s eyes opened, and they were his normal eyes—brown, beady, and this time, dazed and scared.

  “Wha… what happened?” He looked around. “Kate? What are you doing here?”

  “You all right?”

  He groaned. “I feel like somebody beat me up.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Kate said. “I never should’ve given you that piece of paper. I just… I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.”

  Nan grabbed a Sharpie pen off of Tad’s desk, then grabbed his hand, ignoring his startled yelp. She drew symbols all the way up his arm to his elbow.

  “Keep these on,” she said. “If you start thinking anything stupid—anything grandiose—trace over them with the marker. The others should leave you alone, but this will make sure they know there’s no vacancy.”

  “What others? What are you talking about?”

  But Nan was done with him. Grunting, she shuffled back to the stairs, then motioned for Kate and Prue to follow her.

  Kate was silent all the way to the car.

  “How’re you doing, chica?” Prue asked.

  Kate swallowed hard. “So… you’re, um… able to exorcise people?”

  “More or less,” Prue said. “I knew the theory, anyway.”

  “And you”—Kate shifted her gaze to Nan—“you can cast out spirits with, what, voodoo?”

  “Yes.”

  “And my boss is collecting people’s souls and possessing them, probably for evil purposes,” Kate clarified.

  “Looks that way.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Kate nodded for a second. “Hold on just a minute.”

  Then she walked over to the side of the house and threw up.

  …

  “Mom, Dad, it’s Kate. I’m spending the night over at Prue’s. I’ll stop by early to get my clothes… and since I know you’re thinking it, no, I’m not drunk, we just want to hang out and movie marathon. Love you.” Kate hung up and shut off her cell phone, grateful that they weren’t home and that her voice sounded normal as she left the message.

  After the Tad debacle, Nan had dropped them off at Prue’s loft in Wes
t Berkeley, an unassuming building sandwiched between a found object art studio and a software developer. The loft was just one large, spacious room, with Prue’s bed on a suspended floor in one corner, but otherwise everything—kitchen, living room/dining room/meditation corner—was just out there in the open. The loft was perfectly Prue—minimalist, with clean lines, lots of natural wood and stone, and accented with sensual touches of fun, funky charm.

  Prue rolled out the futon, dropping the sheets and bedding on top of it. “You okay, chica?”

  Kate let out a deep, shaky breath. “I don’t know,” she answered, as she started making up the bed. “I kind of can’t believe I saw any of that. Part of me wants to pretend that it was just some horror movie I caught on crappy late night cable, you know?”

  Prue nodded sympathetically, sitting cross-legged in a hanging-basket chair. “I know.”

  “Did you see the way his body went all Gumby like that?” Kate shuddered. “I don’t know how his bones are still intact.”

  “Possession’s a gnarly one,” Prue said. “He’s lucky; the demon didn’t have him all that long.”

  Kate grimaced, stretching out on the futon. She was swimming in one of Prue’s T-shirts—the girl was almost a foot taller than she was, and curvy where Kate was linear—and the futon wasn’t all that comfortable, but she didn’t care. Prue was her best friend and the one person she could talk to about all of this. There was no way she was going home and trying to act normal after tonight’s shenanigans. “That brings up a point. How long have you known about this whole demon thing?”

  Prue went to the kitchen, started futzing around with a teapot and teabags. “Um. Most of my life.”

  “And you’re just now telling me?” Kate didn’t know what was worse—that demons existed, or that her best friend had kept such a massive secret for so long. “You totally could have said something!”

  “It’s not something I talk about.” Prue set the water boiling, leaned against the counter. “Hell, would you?”

  “I told you about my criminal record,” Kate pointed out.

  Prue looked sad. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just something my family… deals with.”

  “Your parents know, too?” Now Kate was scandalized.

  “And it’s not something they talk about, either,” Prue quickly added. She filled the teapot, put it out on her low coffee table with the cups. Kate found herself accepting a cup absently. “Listen, I would have told you, but honestly, it wasn’t anything I wanted to think about, myself.” She took a deep breath, like someone about to jump off a diving board. “I’m an onimyoji.”

  Kate blew on the tea. “You’re a what?”

  “Onimyoji,” Prue repeated patiently. “It’s… think of it as a demon wrangler.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I know, right?” Prue smirked. “Anyway, it used to be really important in Japan—I mean, they even had a government job classification for it and everything. And my dad’s family was the best. They’ve been onimyoji since back in the day.”

  “So it’s like the family business,” Kate surmised, taking a sip. Cherry blossom green tea, she realized… her favorite go-to tea for calming the hell down.

  This was why Prue was her best friend. She always knew what the situation called for.

  “It’s not the family business as far as I’m concerned,” Prue said firmly. “That’s part of why I don’t want to think about it. Why I don’t talk about it.”

  “But it wasn’t that you were afraid I couldn’t keep a secret, or that I’d judge you, or anything?”

  Prue’s expression softened. “Of course not. You’re like my sister. I trust you with anything. It’s just… it’s this really weird thing that I was born with, that I don’t generally know what to do about.”

  “Oh.” Kate thought about it. “Like a third nipple?”

  Prue laughed. “Exactly like a third nipple.”

  “Okay. Well, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Kate said, sorry that she’d made her friend so unhappy. It was going to take a while to wrap her head around the whole “demons are real and my friend is a metaphysical badass” thing anyway… they didn’t have to hash it all out tonight. “Besides, with any luck it will never come up and I will never, ever see anything related to any of that again. Ignorance is bliss, and I like to follow my bliss. At least, I will right to the unemployment office.”

  Prue cleared her throat. “About that…”

  “About what?” Kate snuggled under the cover, patting the futon. “Jeez, this thing’s like a rock. How did I spend four years of college on your floor?”

  “About the job,” Prue said. “I think you should stay.”

  “I mean it, I might need to get you one of those inflatable… Wait, what?” Kate stopped. “You think I should stay? You think I should work for the evil guy?”

  “I think that he’s up to something, yeah,” Prue said. “And if he’s got soul contracts, he’s up to something seriously bad.”

  “And I want to march right back into that why?” Kate asked, flabbergasted.

  “It’s nearly impossible to evict a demon if it’s moved over here with someone’s free will. Are you going to sleep easy, letting demons run rampant, going on killing sprees as they take those newly signed bodies out for a spin?” Prue’s voice was calm but relentless.

  Kate swallowed hard. “Murders happen all the time,” she tried, even as her stomach lurched and guilt gave her a good hard squeeze. “Besides, I’m just a civilian. I don’t have cool mystic powers like you. I don’t even have a gun. What can I do about it?”

  “Nothing you can do,” Prue agreed, taking a sip of her own tea as she sat cross-legged on the floor.

  “Exactly.”

  “You don’t want to get involved.”

  Kate squirmed. “It’s just…”

  “A lot of people said that,” Prue murmured. “You know. In Nazi Germany.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Whatever he’s doing, there’s no chance in hell—no pun intended—that I can stop it,” Kate said. “I know it’s not my usual M.O., but I think that I should just consider this a bullet dodged, for a change, and get out while I can.”

  Prue put her tea aside, and suddenly Kate saw the raw fear that Prue had been trying to hide. “That’s the thing, though. Are you so sure he’s going to just let you go?”

  “Why wouldn’t he?”

  “He’s offering you a crazy amount of money,” Prue pointed out. “Way more than the job calls for. That means he needs you really, really badly.”

  “True.” Kate nibbled at her lower lip as the gears in her head got going.

  “And he’s signing people’s souls. Those co-workers of yours? Probably already signed over.”

  “Uh…”

  “Anybody moving that amount of contracts has some serious power—and serious connections with the demons,” Prue continued. “That tells me he’s not really all that ethical. You’re a loose end. You’ve been exposed to the contracts. So… when the job’s over, what do you think happens?”

  “He congratulates me on a job well done, gives me a bonus, and lets me walk out?” Kate tried to laugh at her own joke, but it sounded rusty. “Shit. If he’s working with demons, he’s probably going to kill me or something, isn’t he? Even if I don’t understand what’s going on?”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, yeah.” Prue’s dark brown eyes were somber.

  Kate’s mind started to race. “Running is going to be a problem, too, isn’t it?”

  “There are spells that could track you,” Prue said. “And even if there weren’t, the guy’s richer than Bill Gates. All he’d have to do is hire some private investigators. He’d find you.”

  “Oh.” Kate’s heart plummeted. “I’m basically fucked, then?”

  “I’ll talk to Moms and Dad,” Prue said, referring to her own parents. “And Nan. I’ll bet Nan could do something to hide you. But I think your best bet is to keep playing along. Don
’t let him know you’re onto his tricks. Then, see what he really wants—get some leverage. At the very least, find out what he’s up to and try getting ahead of him.”

  Kate hugged her knees to her chest. “Prue,” she admitted, “I’m scared.”

  Prue scooted over, giving her a tight squeeze. “I know, chica, I know,” she murmured. “You’re my best friend. I don’t want you to be in danger, either. But I think this is the best way. Go in, find out what you can. Then we’ll move from there.”

  “Okay. I’ll do it.” Kate grimaced. “All it means is being quiet, keeping my head down, and playing along, right? I can totally do that.”

  Prue tensed. Then Kate felt her shaking with laughter.

  “What?”

  “Sorry, Kate,” Prue said, around a nervous chuckle. “But when have you ever just ‘played along’?”

  “Huh?” Kate blinked, thinking it over. “Oh. Crap.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Thomas pressed his fingers to his temples for a second. He had all the hassles—and consequent headaches—of managing several multi-million dollar companies, as well as the stress of directing the investigation that would lead to finding the thirteen people he’d need to kill. Personally kill, not delegate.

  He needed to take serious action. And make some changes. Now.

  Yagi and Maggie stepped into his office, eyeing each other suspiciously. “You wanted to see us?” Yagi said, his surprise obvious. The two barely tolerated each other.

  Maggie went straight to his desk, half sitting on the desktop and crossing her legs. “Did you need something?” she asked suggestively.

  “I need you to sit down,” he said quickly, then gestured to the chairs across from him. “Both of you. I wanted to discuss something.”

  They took their seats, shooting each other one last irritated glance before settling in. “Is there a problem?” Yagi asked.

  “No—well, not exactly.” He took a deep breath. “It’s about Kate O’Hara.”

  Maggie bared her teeth in a snarl before catching herself. “What about her?” she asked instead, even though her tone could have bitten through steel.