Now Playing On The Jukebox In Hell Part 25

"Tosh," Vanessa said from the back seat.

The BMW skidded a few hundred feet before Ca.s.sie recovered. I kept both hands braced on the dash, just in case. "What do you mean, 'tosh'? She's got a point," I snapped. "It probably was you."

"Of course it was me. But I didn't have to throw fireb.a.l.l.s. Really, Devlin. Did you read too many comic books when you were little?"

Ca.s.sie, who had pulled the car over the second Vanessa confessed, slammed it into park. "You burned her house down?"

Monica appeared at the other end of the back seat, looking bored. "She had a theory."

"A theory?" Ca.s.sie asked dangerously.

"She thought it would finally get Devlin to move in with you." She smirked at Vanessa. "Wrong again."

"It's not over till it's over, broadzilla," Vanessa shot back.

That started hissing and hair-pulling between them. Not in the mood for it, I reached over to honk the horn -- and held it down until they quit. Then I caught Ca.s.sie's eye. "I don't know about you," I told her, "but I think we got Teenage Mutant Ninja Demons instead of the real thing. There was nothing about hair-pulling in The Exorcist."

She studied me critically for a second. "You're being awfully calm about this. Vanessa just said she burned down your condo, and you're making jokes?"

"What should I do instead? Call the police? Sue her? Bite her?"

"Empty threat. You wouldn't even bite me," Monica sulked.

Ca.s.sie murdered her with a look, which she chose to ignore.

"She's a demon, Ca.s.s," I continued. "I can't do much about her. If she wants to burn my place down every day of the week, she can. The only option I know of is going back to men..."

"Only if you want to die," she warned.

"...so I'm going to have to live with this till I figure something else out. And so are you."

"She is being calm," Vanessa fretted. "I don't like it."

Monica frowned. "Neither do I. She should have blamed you. And then Ca.s.sandra."

"Me?" Ca.s.sie asked, infuriated.

"You're the one who's been bothering her about moving in together. She might have thought you put Vanessa up to this."

"She wouldn't ever have thought anything if you'd kept your big mouth shut," Vanessa snapped at her.

"Don't blame me, you toad. Any competent demon would know how to do this. You should have burned Ca.s.sandra's house down."

Vanessa, who had started to argue back, suddenly fell silent.

"Then moving in together would have been Devlin's idea," Monica added. "She's a sucker that way. But giving her no choice..."

"What would she do with choice?" Vanessa replied hotly. "If you'd given her a choice, she'd still be l.u.s.ting in her heart after actresses. They were all prettier than you, by the way."

Ca.s.sie winced and reached for the door handle, to save time in case we had to run for it.

"This isn't about me," Monica insisted. "This is about you. You should never have gotten above junior apprentice tempter, with your powers of logic."

Vanessa sneered at her. "Oh, go kiss a Baptist."

This time, I reached for the door handle.

"Sticks and stones. You burned down the wrong house, girlie."

Vanessa's eyes blazed bright red. "Well, I can fix that, can't I?"

"NO!" I shouted, trying to dive over the back seat and kill her, in complete disregard for what I'd said minutes before. But Vanessa had already aimed her index finger, and just before I grabbed her, she fired.

Ca.s.sie jumped as though she'd been stuck with a pin. For a second, nothing happened.

Then we saw the orange glow in the distance.

(c) 2000, K. Simpson To Part 21 The Devil's Workshop (c) 2000, M.C. Sak Disclaimers, Credits, & E-Mail: See Part 1.

Chapter Notes:.

Extra credit to Rocky for some nifty suggestions -- including the links at the end of the chapter, which let you revisit some of Dev's worst nightmares.

CHAPTER 21.

Ca.s.sie's house didn't burn down that night after all. Her demon was a nimrod; Vanessa missed and burned down a neighbor's storage shed instead. (By general consensus, it was no great loss; it had been one of those little-red-barn-in-a-kit jobs, with a white plastic picket fence and plastic cows grazing around it.) But the situation led to some hard talk between us.

In fact, we stayed up all night talking about it. Well, arguing.

"You'd move in with me if you loved me," she finally said, exasperated.

That made two of us. "If you loved me, you wouldn't keep saying, 'If you loved me....'"

"Oh, yes, I would. Because it drives you crazy."

Blindsided by the admission, I glared at her. "Why do you have to drive me crazy?"

"Because it's such a short trip!"

Silence.

"I didn't mean that quite like it sounded," she said, looking a little sheepish.

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't. Really. What I meant to say...what I meant was..."

More silence.

"Fine," I said sharply, getting up. "I'll be at the guest house, if you ever decide what you meant."

Surprised, she grabbed my sleeve. "You can't go now. It's 3 in the morning."

"It'll be 3 in the morning there, too. But at least it'll be quiet." Frowning, I searched the dresser again. "Where are the keys?"

"I'll tell you if you answer one question."

"What question?"

"Why won't you move in with me?"

Annoyed, I started to repeat all the reasons I'd given her, over and over, for weeks. (1) We were both used to living alone. (2) We hadn't been together that way very long. (3) We had no idea whether this kind of relations.h.i.+p could last. And (4) I didn't want to wake up in a peach-and-white bedroom every morning. But none of those reasons was the whole truth. The whole truth was...

"I don't want to."

Ca.s.sie looked stunned.

"It's not that I don't love you. I do. But I also love that we're both independent."

She gave me her very worst Bad Look. "I'm not asking to put a leash on you."

"Too kinky."

She didn't even smile.

"All right, let me put it another way. I don't think we'd last very long if we moved in together. You know what women say when their husbands retire? 'I married you for better or worse, not for lunch.' You're not with me for lunch, Ca.s.s."

"That's not for you to decide."

"Maybe not. But how do you know it would be any different with us?"

"Because I love you." She glowered at me. "Well, sometimes I love you. When you're not being impossible."

"Forget that for a second. I know you. You're not good at the long-term thing. And I don't have a clue about relations.h.i.+ps anymore. What if we moved in together and then decided we hate each other?"

"We already do," she snapped. "What's your point?"

Wearily, I rubbed the bridge of my nose. This could go for on for a few more hours -- or the rest of our lives. "Tell you what. Let's try to make a deal. Interested?"

"Depends," she said suspiciously. "What deal?"

"Let's try it this way. We keep our own places for now. I'll rent another condo or something, and we leave things the way they are. Then..."

"That doesn't sound like a deal to me."

"I'm not done yet. Then, if we're still together after a year, we'll talk about moving in. OK?"

She thought it over. "That's your best offer?"

"My best offer," I confirmed, "and my absolute final answer. What do you say?"

Ca.s.sie thought a little more. "All right, fine. Have it your way. But we make the year retroactive to Halloween."

"What? Why would we want to do that?"

"That was when all this started. I would say it's our anniversary, but you hate that."

"I hate it," I agreed.

"Anyway, I gave; now you have to give. One year from Halloween. Deal?"

That was two months less than I'd bargained for, and I wasn't sure I wanted to give them up. So I told her to give me a minute and then started to pace. How many things had I already done that I didn't want to do?

I'd admitted to our relations.h.i.+p in public.

I'd admitted to it on TV.

I'd admitted to it in front of her parents and -- much worse -- my mother.

I'd gone home with her for Thanksgiving.

I'd taken her home for Christmas.

I'd bought her a ring. Well, not that kind of ring, but...

"Am I taking you out New Year's Eve?" I asked.

She smiled. "Stupid question."

That was that, then. I was done for. Not just because I'd done those things, but also because, given the choice, I'd have done them all over again.

"Deal," I finally said, and spat in my hand. "Shake."