Nightshade (17 tales of Urban Fantasy, Magic, Mayhem, Demons, Fae, Witches, Ghosts, and more) Page 14

  We walked slowly back to civilization. I had been an idiot and left my phone in the living room, so we were S.O.L. Fortunately, the abandoned bike in the front lawn was Miranda’s, so Killian didn’t have to give her a piggyback ride.

  As we left the house, the sailor had stood in the window waving, and then faded from sight.

  “So, I think he’s gone,” I said to Miranda.

  She nodded. “He said so. He said not to come back because now he was going to go to sleep and he won’t hear me if I come.”

  I rested my hand on her shoulder. “Just about anyone would give anything to have another moment with the people they love who have passed on. You’re pretty lucky.”

  “My mom is going to kill me,” she shivered.

  “Yeah, mine, too,” I replied.

  We finally arrived at my parents’ house and I guess the affects of the witches’ brew hadn’t quite worn off yet, because Miranda was fascinated by all of Mom’s guests. Mom’s brain just about exploded when I related everything that had happened. We got the kid into dry clothes and made the appropriate phone calls. Mom kept her busy, talking about the gift of speaking with the dead, and by the time Miranda’s parents arrived, Mom had almost recruited her as a new intern.

  There were tears and relieved yelling, but Pipistrelle’s new batch of unsalted cookies did a lot to smooth things over. Miranda had a good family. When midnight finally rolled around and it was time for The Great Crossing Over, it was nice to have some living, breathing people standing alongside to watch. Not that there’s anything to see, if you can’t see. Even for me, there was just a big, blinding white light. It looked almost like if I had torn a hole through dimensions, if the dimension beyond consisted of a dwarf star. And then that was it. Folks left and there was nothing left but the cleanup.

  Poor little Pipistrelle was fast asleep in the bottom of the pantry, curled up in the potato bin. I got a dishcloth and tucked it up around his chin, then shut the door quietly.

  Killian was leaning against the doorway between the kitchen and the psychic-eye shop watching me. “Quite a Halloween,” he remarked.

  “Quite,” I replied.

  “Very unlike the celebrations of my people.”

  “You could say that.”

  He itched the bridge of his nose. “Next year, what would you say if I brought you to the elfin forest and introduced you to our traditions?”

  Before I could answer, the phone rang. My parents still had one of those old pushbutton, mustard yellow phones hanging on the wall. Ghosts interfere with cordless. I picked up the receiver and tried not to get tangled.

  “MAGGIE! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY TEDDY BEAR!? THAT WAS A COLLECTOR’S ITEM!” Mindy shouted.

  I stared at Pipistrelle’s purple hat, left laying on the table with its now broken plume. The carnage of the holiday strewn throughout the kitchen. The piles of dishes that needed to be washed. The elevated voices of my mom and dad as they fought over why it took so long for him to get back and why he hadn’t even come back with any witches’ brew.

  I covered the speaker and whispered, “Killian? Could we go NOW?”

  Welcome to the seedy otherworld of Maggie MacKay!

  This stand-alone story takes place after Maggie Get Your Gun. If you've never heard of the MacKays before, Maggie for Hire, the first in the series, is available free on all platforms at www.katedanley.com/maggie.html

  Want to be the first to know of special deals and upcoming releases? Sign up for the Kate Danley newsletter at www.katedanley.com/subscribe.html

  Kate Danley began her writing career as an indie author in 2010. Since then, she spent five weeks on the USA Today bestseller list, has been honored with various awards, including the Garcia Award for Best Fiction Book of the Year, and her Maggie MacKay series has been optioned for film and television development. Her plays have been produced in London, New York, Seattle, Baltimore, and Los Angeles. She has over 300+ film, television, and theatre credits to her name, and specializes in sketch, improv, and Shakespeare. She wrote sketch for a weekly show in Hollywood and has performed her original stand-up at various clubs in LA. She learned on-camera puppetry from Mr. Snuffleupagus and played the head of a 20-foot dinosaur on an NBC pilot. She lost on Hollywood Squares.

  Full Moon Mischief

  Debra Dunbar

  Getting summoned on Halloween isn't any demon's idea of fun especially when yanked from a rocking party into a coat closet. But rules are rules when it comes to performing the service demanded by an eight year old mage: Imp Sam must find a way to get rid of a gold-digger hussy then hope the pint-sized mage sends her back before the party is over.

  Halloween is the best when you’re a demon, especially an imp. This year I was dressed as me. Well, what the humans envisioned to be me, which meant I had on a red thong, high-heeled red pleather boots, and a red corset. Equally red horns were clipped in my hair, and a tail swung from the top of my lace undies. You guessed it – red. I got a lot of candy in spite of being over nine hundred years old. Seems human males like to give demons who look like thirty-year old strippers all the good stuff.

  This year I trolled the streets of major housing developments slipping condoms and porno mags into all the little plastic pumpkins of the trick-or-treaters. For those homeowners who left bowls of candy on their porches, I gifted them a generous helping of soft dog poo, compliments of my hellhound, Boomer.

  Great fun – at least until I got summoned. I was at a late-night costume party at City Hall, where all the local movers and shakers were drinking booze and chatting about zoning ordinances. I’d dumped an entire pharmacy worth of Phenazopyridine into the punch and was eagerly awaiting the moment when someone went pee and saw the bright red-orange color of their urine. Good times.

  Well, it would have been good times if I had been there to see it. Instead I was rudely yanked from the party into a small, dark room with a scratchy fabric that smelled of old tobacco and mothballs pressed against my face.

  I heard a click, and light flooded the space. A string with a metal cap on the end danced around a bare lightbulb on the ceiling. I was nose-to-toes with a mess of ancient coats, and leaning against the far wall of what I assumed to be a closet was a boy and a girl. The boy appeared eight-ish in age, skinny arms clutching a book to his chest. The girl was a few years younger. She tilted her head as she watched me, her index finger firmly in her pursed mouth.

  “Fuck!” I swore.

  “Fuck!” the little girl repeated. Yay me. Leading kindergarteners into sin. Score one for the dark side.

  Summoned. Into a closet. By an eight-year-old boy and a girl who probably still wet her bed on occasion. I looked around the floor of the small space. Lots of boots and mittens, but no chalk sigils or salt circle that I could see. I tentatively extended a foot and didn’t encounter any resistance. Summoned, but not contained. Either this third-grader was very confident of his sorcerer skills, or he’d fucked up. I was going for fucked up. This oversight on his part left me free to tear his limbs off, peel the skin from his torso, and pluck the eyeballs from his skull. And his little sister too.

  “Fuck!” she announced cheerfully.

  Okay, maybe not the sister. I was beginning to have an un-demonic fondness for the little foul-mouthed thing.

  “Our dad is in trouble,” the boy whispered. “We need your help.”

  So he called a demon? What kind of insanity were humans teaching their children these days? I’ll admit to a momentary weakness where I considered helping them. It was a fleeting thing. I do have a reputation to maintain, after all.

  “Oh good.” I took what I hoped was a menacing step forward. It was a small step. The closet wasn’t very big. “I’ll torture and kill him once I’m done with the pair of you.”

  “That slut has him and won’t let him go,” the girl announced with a conspiratorial tone. So much for my ‘menacing’ step.

  “Phee!” the boy scolded. “You’re using bad words again.”

  Yes she was. It
made me wonder if she didn’t have a good dose of demon in her parentage. Mommy seduced by a bad-boy incubus leaving ‘Daddy’ a cuckold, perhaps?

  The girl shrugged, suddenly looking older than her round, cherubic face led me to believe. “It’s true. Serena is a bad woman. She’ll kill Daddy if we can’t get him away from her.”

  I’ll admit that I was intrigued. Chances are this was just another case of lonely-single-dad screwing around with the local ‘ho, but it was worth checking out. If this was more interesting than the mayor thinking there was blood in his urine, I’d let the kids go. If not, I’d kill them and Own their souls. Maybe. Okay, probably not. I liked to talk a big story, but actions like that would have one ending – me dead at the hands of an angel. Better just scar these kids for life and be on my merry way.

  “I’ll bite. Where’s Daddy?”

  The children stared at me, their eyes huge in the dim light. “We don’t know,” the boy whispered. “He went out.”

  “So you two are here all alone?” I wondered.

  “Yes. Well, except for you and Serena, that is.”

  Ah. Daddy left gold-digger ‘ho to watch the kids. Clearly parent of the year award material. “Why are we in the closet?” And why were we whispering? I wondered. Was that Serena woman hanging around the foyer? Did she have super hearing?

  “Because this is the safe space,” the little girl announced. “When bad things happen, we’re supposed to go here to be safe.”

  Who the fuck was Daddy that his two kids knew to hide in a closet when ‘bad things happen’. And how did they know how to summon a demon?

  “Let me see that book.” I held out a hand and the boy clutched the tome tighter before reluctantly surrendering it.

  Holy shit. It was a spell book, a grimoire. I’d seen these a lot in my nine-hundred odd years, but this wasn’t the usual ancient collection of wisdom handed down through the ages. This was new, with modern ink on ruled pages, bound with leather so fresh it still smelled of cow. I doubted the kid had dug it up in the back yard. I’d bet my right arm that Daddy was involved with magic – and not the rabbit in the hat kind either.

  “So what exactly does Daddy do for a living?” I asked.

  “He’s a wizard. He helps people.” The little girl hopped from foot to foot, curls bouncing against the sleeves of coats on hangers. “Sad people. People who lose things. Sometimes people even get married because of him.”

  Impressive track record for a mage, but forty years of living among humans had made me realize that children often have idealized views of their parents. That plus the uneasy expression on the boy’s face made me doubt just how squeaky-clean this man’s magic truly was.

  “What does your Daddy do for a living?” This time I put an edge to my voice, and I kept my eyes fixed on the little boy.

  “He works at the library.” The boy’s voice was raw with sorrow. “Back when Mommy was here, he used to be a teacher at the college, but he got fired. He and Mommy argued, and we don’t see her anymore.”

  A chill ran through me. Had he killed her? What the fuck was up with Daddy? I was beginning to wonder if it was him that needed rescuing or Serena.

  “She’s a few miles away in Tulsa,” the girl chimed in. “I got ten dollars and finger paints last week. She called us yesterday.”

  So much for the daddy-kills-mommy theory. “What did Daddy teach at the college?”

  “Ancient religion and philosophy,” the boy answered.

  I winced. Not exactly popular subjects in a world of computer professionals and CPAs.

  “He wanted tenner, but those bastards didn’t give it to him.” Did I mention how much I liked this little girl?

  Tenure. The girl must have meant tenure. Okay. So we had a daddy ensnared by some hussy, a mommy either driven off by said hussy or shacking-up with the neighborhood sex demon. It didn’t matter. I needed to get back to my Halloween party at City Hall and the only way to do that was to satisfy the term of my summoning. There was a woman, this Serena evidently, in the house that needed killing. “Can we get out of this closet so I can start stabbing Serena with the kitchen cutlery?”

  The girl went to open the door, but her brother grabbed her hand. “Once you save our father from Serena, we will send you back. You can’t hurt us, or come back to harm us in any way.”

  Not bad for an eight year old, but the boy had a lot to learn about wording the terms and conditions around a demon summoning. And he needed to use a binding circle next time. Lucky for him I was in a good mood in spite of being yanked away from my Halloween activities.

  “I vow it on all the souls I Own,” I promised. Just because the kid didn’t know what the fuck he was doing didn’t mean I shouldn’t dot the ‘I’s’ and cross the ‘t’s’.

  “Be careful,” the girl warned. “She’s good with a knife. Daddy has an amulet so she doesn’t slice him open.”

  Whoa. Wait just a minute. Guys who were entranced by bad girls usually didn’t have the forethought to put together protective jewelry. So the father wasn’t blind to the homicidal tendencies of his woman and had taken precautions. It made me wonder what other precautions the man had taken.

  “Does Daddy have a containment barrier around the house?” Not that these kids would probably know what a containment barrier was, but it was worth a shot. It would do me a world of good if I could let loose some of my special demon skills without worrying about showing up on an angel’s radar.

  The boy tilted his head and wrinkled his nose. “There’s a fence with a hedge around it. The dog always escaped, but Phee hates to go through it.”

  “It burns,” the girl confessed. “I run really fast to get through it, but then I cry.”

  Well, that sealed the deal in terms of my cooperation with these two munchkins. The little girl might be able to force her way through a protective circle, but I wouldn’t. If they didn’t send me back, I’d be wandering around this house for a very long time.

  The good news was the barrier made me invisible as far as the angels were concerned. “I’m going to turn into another shape so I can sneak around your house and see what’s going on.”

  The boy narrowed his eyes. “You’re still going to get rid of Serena, right?”

  “Yep. I need to do some reconnaissance first, then I’ll get right to killing.”

  “Good.” The boy nodded and opened the door. “I’m Apollo, and this is my sister Persephone.”

  I blinked in astonishment at the names, then shook my head, transformed into a much smaller, less noticeable shape, and crawled out of the closet.

  The doors opened up into a hallway with a pristine, sterile bedroom to the right and a riotous explosion of flowers and pink in the bedroom to the left. Unless I was grossly misreading the situation, Persephone was all pink and flowers, and her brother was two steps away from a combination of monkhood and military academy. Or she was a Spartan in disguise and he was a closet queen. I was betting on the former.

  The kids tip toed their way out of the closet, watching carefully as to not step on me. I saw them do a silent version of “she’s that way”, then headed off in that direction. Past the bedrooms was a bathroom, then a living room and an eat-in kitchen. It took me forever to get there, and I was beginning to re-think my choice of animal forms as I raced as fast as my six little legs could carry. There wasn’t much in the kitchen beyond some macaroni hardening into a brick on the stove. I climbed down the counters and scurried toward the next room in the house, which happened to be the master bedroom. Hopefully Serena would be there because I was starting to get a bit tired.

  She was. Serena was just as gorgeous as I’d imagined with long, shiny black hair, pale skin, and huge dark eyes. With those big eyes, she looked every bit the innocent beauty, but there was something angry and vicious in their depths.

  Oh shit. If I could see her eyes that meant she was facing me, looking at me. I held my breath, waiting for the inevitable screaming and stomping shoes near my head, but Serena did neithe
r.

  “Figures the stupid pig would have roaches,” she muttered as she turned back to what she was doing – which was tossing the room.

  Clothes were like party streamers across the floor and dangling from bed posts. Pictures hung askew and the bed was a mess of tangled sheets and pillows. Serena grabbed books from a shelf, shaking them upside down then throwing them into a haphazard pile in the corner of the room.

  “Where is it?” She stood with her hands on her hips, scowling as she looked around at the chaos. Whatever she was looking for, she was unlikely to find it in all this clutter.

  With a bang of the front door, the woman’s expression changed dramatically. Gone was the frown and in its place a sultry pout that made all six of my knees weak.

  “Serena?”

  “In here.” She kicked a few articles of clothing under the bed, but there was nothing she could do about the rest of the mess. I held my breath, wondering what the guy would say when he saw this. Any dude who kept an amulet around his neck so his girlfriend didn’t stab him was unlikely to be surprised by her searching the house for. . . whatever.

  The man that entered the room looked more the college professor and less the magic user. He was average height with average brown hair and facial features. The only notable things about him were the carved medallion barely visible in the opening of his shirt and his eyes. Cold and gray they scanned the room. A muscle twitched in his jaw and he put his hands on his hips, mirroring the woman’s earlier stance.

  “You won’t find it, you know.”

  Find what? Jewels? Money? The Ark of the Covenant?

  Serena glided over to him, her hips swaying. Her gaze met his then dropped to linger on his mouth. “Give it back. Please? I won’t leave, I promise.”

  If I had been wearing panties they would have been wet by now. The man obviously felt the same way about her sexy tone because his hands rose to pull her to him and his mouth dropped to hers.