Jozzie & Sugar Belle

  “SUGAR BELLE!” he roared, and then wished he hadn’t. Because a fear-maddened crowd of overperfumed, jewelry-decked meatsacks poured straight past him and out the French door he had so thoughtfully shown them could be penetrated.

  Hellfire flickered, strobing into headache ultraviolet. The noise was incredible, and Jozzie was whapped with elbows, heads, and whatever else among the throng could hit the rock dividing its flow. A few of the humans were in fancy velvet robes, reeking of that nasty deep deathsmell, and Jozzie was only halfway tempted to knock a few of their heads.

  Looked like whoever this apocalypse-wanting fellow was, he’d had a few partners.

  But all that could wait, because he used his height to shameless advantage and scanned the giant living room.

  It was a mess. Couches reduced to matchsticks, a giant sideboard lying in ruins, a dining room off to one side that looked like every possible item of food had exploded at once, and a giant mantlepiece over a fake fireplace. Over the fireplace was also a painting of a poncey-looking bugger with a smirk and piggy little eyes, but on the mantel itself were a few knickknacks—golden statues of winged things, glass plaques and sculptures with inscribed bases, and a block of Lucite about as long as Jozzie’s forearm, glowing under the UV of hellfire.

  Trapped in that very large plastic prism was a very familiar pair of hairy, dangling testicles, the truncated top of the sac festooned with gold wire. Stuttering flickers of orange flame illuminated the small brass label embedded in the base.

  Quentin Wheddon

  BALLSY AWARD

  Jozzie let out a short, disbelieving bark of laughter, and it was then that the heaving, slippery wall of darkness in yet another living room, connected to this one by a high archway full of a wrought-iron chandelier that looked about as antique as a burger wrapper, coalesced.

  It was the heaving hindquarters of a very large, very pissed-off demon, and in the depths of the house behind it, Jozzie very faintly heard a familiar voice lifted in a string of singsong that managed to convey resonant power, giddy terror, and an astonishing facility for using the word fuck as every other part of speech all at once.

  It was Sugar Belle, and there were his nuts.

  Just like bloody Christmas, only there was a demon involved, and reattaching his little soldiers was going to have to wait. Still…

  “Sugar!” he yelled again, and shoved forward through the throng.

  Twenty-Two

  Karma

  * * *

  The demon kept jolting forward and getting its horns stuck, for all the world like a cartoon bull trying to get through a doorway. Mel kept shoving at the swinging door, but Tiger stopped cussing. That meant she’d gotten everyone else out and away.

  Which freed me up a little. Instead of a whole clutch of civilians, I only had two to worry about. On the other hand, they were the only two I cared about, which is pretty much how this bullshit always goes.

  The demon stopped, its blind, weepy little eyes narrowing. It stared at me, and my heaving breath flash-froze and fell in tinkling spatters at my feet. Someone had dropped a whole load of dirty glassware in here, and slivers winked cruelly as more hellfire snaked forward, a whip of malice ribboning along the left-hand wall.

  “Sonofabitch,” I yelled, and made a scooping gesture.

  The broken glass rose obediently, separating into two shining, sparkling clouds. I jabbed my right hand forward, and that group turned into missiles, hurling themselves at the demon’s chicken-clawed face. The curse was still gamely struggling on, sinking its spurs in and pecking frantically, hunting for an eye. The demon tried to shake the thing free, its horns ripping through walls, cracking against load-bearing supports.

  The left-hand group of glass compressed itself, and I made a fist with that hand, fingernails driving cruelly into my palm. Slick heat welled up—because when you need a lot of power really quickly, there’s nothing like blood, and absolutely nothing more powerful than your own—and a good portion of the fury I was feeling flashed into incandescent heat. The glass spun, turning concave and rippling, and the short-term mirror caught streaking hellfire.

  “Sugar!” Mel howled through the door. “What the fuck’s going on?”

  The mirror spun, and I kept cussing. Oh, there’s power in being a witch, sure. But the big thing, the really excellent thing we’re good at?

  Karma. Otherwise known as consequence, or, in the immortal words of that one boyfriend I had who was really into aikido, helpfully directing your opponent into a brick wall.

  Take their force, turn it around, and loose it on them. It has a certain elegance, and when my breath ran out the mirror would crack.

  “Sugar!” Someone else yelled my name, but from the wrong direction.

  From behind the demon.

  The thing howled, and hellfire plus real orange fire streaked back along the much-abused wall, glowing in rebar since the adobe was very fake and just a thin veneer over good old-fashioned concrete. The iron only made the demon more angry, and the combined flames smacked the demon right in the mouth as the thing screeched. The chicken-curse howled too, spurs sinking deep into a gelatinous eyeball.

  I was running out of breath and power. Shitshitshit, need my bag, need my bag, if I can just hold this a little bit longer…

  Twenty-Three

  Bob's Yer Uncle

  * * *

  He only caught a glimpse of her past the slippery, heaving bulk of obsidian pangolin-plates and bad attitude. Sugar, her black hair pulled tightly back and her blue eyes snapping, was bruised, her left eye swelling shut and her hands fisted in front of her. Blood dripped from her left hand, and that slight personal breeze she walked around in caressed flyaway strands of hair and carried her scent past the nasty thing with its horns tangled in the wall. Magic writhed around her, and on her left side, a glowing concavity caught and channeled hellfire, holding it in a feedback loop that splashed down the hallway and right into the demon’s face. Something furry or fuzzy and squawking was clawing at the demon too, and had just taken out an eye, popping it like a grape.

  The demon howled and thrashed, and Jozzie was thinking of his old Ganpa Baz, who always reeked of dry fur and menthols, not to mention the piss-swill Fosters he drank just to get a rise out of everyone.

  If y’ever find yourself looking at a big old fuckwit from hell, Jozz, remember, the eyes are where the power’s at.

  He flung himself forward, the change failing him but it didn’t matter, and leapt on the demon’s back, clawing his way up. If he could just get his hands around, he could give the old bugger a nice poke in the other eye, and bob’s yer uncle.

  That, at least, was the plan.

  Twenty-Four

  Fight Em All

  * * *

  Oh, for FUCK’S sake.

  Now I knew who’d been yelling my name. It was Jozzie, clinging to the back of the beast and scrabbling to get at its face. Which meant I had to risk frying him with hellfire, or I had to think quick.

  Fortunately, the chicken-curse, croaking out its last few squawks as its impetus waned, craned its flexible dirty-feathered neck and snaked its beak forward. There was a pop and a high, screeching, drilling howl that blew icy stink down the hallway, washing over and almost freezing me in my sensible catering shoes. It did, in fact, knock me back through the splintering swinging door and into Mel’s arms, and we both went over backward, landing on Tiger, who had just skidded to a stop with my messenger bag clutched in a white-knuckled fist. She’d had to break open the locker with a frying pan, and had the said frying pan too, determined to lay waste to whatever-the-fuck just as soon as she could get through the door.

  Mel had chosen the biggest butcher knife in the kitchen, and I was really grateful it didn’t end up in anyone.

  I lay there, stunned and shivering for a few moments, and blinked up at Mel. Blood slid down her face—flying glass had gotten her on the scalp, looked like.

  Shit.

  “Get off me, you fatass motherfuckers!??
? Tiger raged, trying to surge up and having little luck. I was deadweight, and Mel gulped, looking up at the ruins of the door. “Imma kill em! Imma fight em all!”

  Skylee’s response to anything is research, Dina’s is stabbing, Mel’s is organizing, and Tiger’s is brawling. They’d make a helluva superhero team.

  There was a scraping and a scrabbling. I was pretty sure the demon was gone, or laying about blindly, which was almost as good. If I could just get up I could find out which.

  I was interrupted in my attempt to do so by a familiar face peeking through the hole where the swinging door used to be into the dark—but mostly undamaged—kitchen.

  It was Jozzie, deathly pale, his hair full of plaster dust and other crap, stinking demon blood all over him, clutching a block of Lucite that also dripped with demonic ichor. He must have clocked the demon with it once or twice.

  It was a Ballsy Award.

  Twenty-Five

  Ballsy Award

  * * *

  She was limping, and her face was puffing up something fierce. Still, the witch was alive, and so were two meatsack girls who had stayed behind, one with a butcher knife and the other with a frying pan. “Good thing he paid up front,” the one with the butcher knife said, and gave a pale laugh before bending over to retch onto a patch of begonias.

  The garden here was never going to be the same. At least they were out of the house. The night was cool and full of a dry, sparkling wind that rubbed Joz’s fur the wrong way.

  He clamped down on the irritation and steadied Sugar, his arm around her shoulders. “Er, so, who was that?”

  “Quentin Wheddon.” Sugar sounded tired. She’d just killed a demon, of course she was bloody tired. She rubbed at her cheek delicately, fingertips massaging swelling, purpling skin. “Or he used to be.”

  “No way. The Quentin? That made that movie with the—”

  “Yeah, that one. I guess he sold his skin for fame.” Sugar coughed, a dry racking sound.

  The girl with the frying pan was eyeing both of them distrustfully while holding her friend’s waist as the latter finished retching. “He was a demon?” She tucked the pan under her arm and hitched her own purse—a tattered once-was-designer number—higher on her shoulder. “Figures. Totally figures. Of course. I don’t know why I’d be surprised.”

  “This is why they pay up front.” The girl with the knife straightened. “That’s like the time Dina got the job at that guy’s shop—”

  “Polidori,” Pan Girl said. “Yeah. She had to stab him when he tried to bite her throat. Y’all need Jesus,” she quoted, mimicking a strange American accent, and all three women giggled briefly. It was exhausted laughter, in Sugar’s case, but it sounded…soothing.

  Jozzie had the Lucite block stuffed under his arm, and all but carried Sugar along with the other.

  “You find what you were looking for?” the witch asked, staring at the ground.

  “Yeh.” He tried to keep the block hidden, but it squirted free, greased with stinking demon blood, and landed on the crushed-gravel path. Sirens began to wail in the distance. “Shit.”

  “What’s that?” Knife Girl peered at it. “Dude. You stole his Ballsy.”

  Jozzie’s chin thrust out. “It ent his, it’s mine.”

  “What?” Sugar stopped dead, and all three women clustered the plastic block despite Jozzie’s paltry attempt to hold the witch back and the obvious need to get out of here before the cops arrived. “You…what is that?”

  “It’s a kangaroo scrotum.” Pan Girl shrugged when both other women looked at her. “What? I’m a film major.”

  “A…scrotum?” Sugar’s eyebrows drew together. She glanced at Jozzie. “You don’t mean they use real ones?”

  “Of course they do. There’s a whole import business.” Pan Girl nodded, her braids slightly askew. “They send a lot of them to China for medicines, too. They cut ’em off and they use ’em for tourist stuff. Keychains, bottle openers, back scratchers—”

  “Back scratchers?” Jozzie shook his head. He’d heard of everything else. People couldn’t get enough of ’roo parts; it was an area of business his family didn’t go into for obvious reasons despite the money. You didn’t sell your cousin’s body parts, and no poachers were welcome on Shale land. If he’d just parked nearer home, he could have avoided all this. “Really?”

  Realization worked its way across Sugar’s face. She hunched, and Joz hurried to grab her shoulders, thinking she was in pain.

  No, she wasn’t. The witch was, instead, unsuccessfully trying to hold back laughter. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

  “Come on.” Knife Girl was the practical sort, pushing back her sleek auburn hair with her free hand. “We really don’t want to be here when the cops show up. Pick up the nuts and let’s go.”

  That did it. Pan Girl began to choke with laughter too, and Jozzie blushed so furiously he was sure his cheeks were steaming. He managed to get them all moving again, but now it was Sugar who carried the Lucite block, cradling it like a joey, and every few steps she made a funny strained noise, trying to swallow chuckles.

  It was nice that she was trying to save his feelings, he decided. But still.

  Twenty-Six

  Chivalry

  * * *

  The night ended with Jozzie hunched almost double behind the wheel, muttering about wrong side of the road and bloody demons. The Ballsy award in my lap glowed with streetlamp shine, and I tried not to look at it. The gold wire wrapped around the top of the, er, the body part inside looked uncomfortably tight.

  When he finally coaxed the wheezing Rabbit into my usual parking space and cut the engine, we both sat for a few moments, the car ticking as it cooled and the wind making a slow lonely dusty sound against the shredded passenger side.

  I was, for once, at a loss for words. None of the catering staff was harmed, they’d all texted Mel with varying versions of what the fuck was that and do we still get paid?

  You see a lot of weird shit doing kitchen duty in LA, and any service worker will tell you to just roll with it. And to hightail when the lights go out and the boss tells you to run.

  Tiger couldn’t stop laughing and texting me and Mel dick pics. It was probably best just to let that storm expend itself.

  “So, uh,” Jozzie finally said. “Yeh. That’s what I was after. Me, uh, me bits.”

  “I see.” My stomach quivered, but I manfully repressed a wild spate of laughter. At least I didn’t have demon blood spattered all over me. “I, uh…how are you planning to, um…well, reattach them?”

  “I figured…I dunno. Got to get them out of the plastic, first.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I put my forehead on the scarred dash over the glove box and laughed until I thought I’d choke. After a few moments, Jozzie started to laugh too, and both of us were sitting there cackling like lunatics for what felt like a long, long time. In the middle of it, I realized I really liked him.

  After all, he’d tried to hit the demon on the head with a Ballsy. That implied a certain amount of chivalry. And a man who could laugh at his own discomfort this way was worth knowing.

  When I could, I straightened, wiping at my eyes. My face hurt, my back hurt, my ass hurt where someone had hit me in the mad scramble for the kitchen, and I was exhausted, again. “All right. Let’s get inside and take a look at it. If I can find something to dissolve the plastic, we can probably fix you up good as new.”

  “Really?” He wiped at his own glistening cheeks, smearing thick, black, drying demon blood. He had a nice laugh. “That’s bloody good of you, Miss Sugar. I mean, you dinna have to help me an all, what with me going off and leaving you with the demon all by your lonesome, but—”

  Oh, he was sweet. “Are you kidding? You should have been here last month when we had the Lovecraft Festival. Squid and chthonic horrors everywhere, Dina stabbed something that looked like a carrot with tentacles and Skylee got dipped in slime. She’s probably still scrubbing.” I slid a leg out of the passenger-s
ide hole—I needed a new set of catering clothes. Jozzie hurried to undo his seatbelt, and further ran around the car to steady me as I finished extricating myself. Those edges were sharp. “I’m pretty tapped out tonight, though. It’s gonna have to be in the morning.”

  “That’s no problem,” he said, holding my elbow gingerly. “If y’don’t mind me sleepin’ on yer couch.”

  That was disappointing, but I was in no mood for extracurricular activities. “You’re welcome to,” I told him, and staggered for my front door carrying a kangaroo nutsack encased in plastic, my bag bumping my hip and Jozzie, covered in demon goo, hopping along each few steps like he expected me to fall on my face. “I get first dibs on the shower, though.”

  Twenty-Seven

  Sauce

  * * *

  Her kitchen was just as cheerfully yellow, even if it stank to high heaven the following morning. “You sure this’ll work?”

  “Hm?” Sugar’s face looked a lot better in the morning, swelling gone and the bruising faint ghosts instead of glaring neon. She set her cell phone down and regarded Jozzie, blue eyes deep and thoughtful. “Pretty much. Why?” Her hair was tied back, and she was in that rosy silk wrapper again.

  Which meant her legs were bare, and powerfully distracting. The plants in the window stretched under hazy sunshine—there were wildfires in the hills, and the smoke made his eyes itch.