Dance with the Devil Read online

  She pointed to the one toward the front window. Once the coffee shop had been a clothing store, long ago when this town had actually had a thriving downtown shopping area. The mannequin in the window wore a vintage dress and hat, gloves, a fur stole. And Kathleen's favorite table was indeed still there, a seat for two. She and Callie sat, and Kathleen drank in the sight of her daughter chattering away about school and her friends. She drowned in that love for a little while, knowing their time was running short.

  "I almost forgot. Here. This is for you." Jeanine brought Kathleen a paper sack spotted with grease.

  Kathleen hesitated. "Oh, you didn't have to. We're stuffed."

  "You can take it home. And it's not from me. It's from your...friend."

  Kathleen had taken the bag automatically when Jeanine handed it to her and peeked inside. Chocolate muffin. But at the other woman's words, she looked up, startled. "My friend?"

  "Yes. The one you used to sit with sometimes." For a moment Jeanine looked guilty, her gaze cutting from side to side, though her mouth quirked on one side. Like she knew a secret. "He said that we were to keep a muffin set aside for you every day, in case you ever came back in. His treat."

  Kathleen's fingers twitched on the paper bag, crumpling it. At Jeanine's curious look, she smiled. "Thanks. I'll have to tell him I said thank you."

  As soon as they got outside, she found a public trash can and dumped the bag. Her skin crawled. Her friend, Jeanine had said. The one she used to sit with, sometimes.

  The coffee shop was where Kathleen had first met the devil.

  9

  "It wasn't me," the devil said placidly when Kathleen confronted him about it.

  "Bullshit." She drew in the smoke from her cigarette, but it didn't taste good and she stubbed it out at once. She paced. "Like I'd eat anything you'd put out for me?"

  Satan looked hurt. "As if I wanted to poison you? Do you think I'd have to do it with a pastry, Kathleen?"

  She whirled on him. There'd been few times when she had called for him. Usually the devil showed up whenever and wherever he chose. Tonight, though, as soon as she'd walked through her front door, she'd shouted for him.

  Lucifer

  Satan

  Morningstar!

  He'd shown at that last one. She thought it was his favorite name. It was the one that fit him the best, she thought as her fists clenched in impotent fury. No matter what form he took, and she'd seen him in many guises, he always shone.

  "It's not enough that you hold my soul in the balance," she said through gritted teeth. "But you won't be satisfied until you've run my name and reputation through the mud, too?"

  Tonight the devil wore the mild expression of someone's bewildered dad, the kind who wore sandals with socks and was as proud of his riding mower as he was of anything he'd ever accomplished. Tiny wisps of white hair clung to his sweating, bald head, while bushy salt and pepper brows knitted over pale blue eyes. He was pudgy, tucked into high-waisted polyester slacks and a misbuttoned dress shirt.

  He didn't answer her accusation.

  "Those people knew me," Kathleen said. "They're proud to have known me. It's like some goddamned badge of honor for them to be able to say I wrote in their coffee shop. But there's more to it than that, you know? When she gave me that muffin, from my "friend." It was like she knew, somehow, that I hadn't earned any of it, really."

  "Kathleen, my dove. You've earned every bit of your success. You work hard."

  She shook her head, still pacing. She'd slipped off her shoes inside the front door as she always did, and the marble tile of her kitchen floor was cold on her bare toes. She shivered violently, teeth chattering until she clenched them tight together.

  "Once you told me that you didn't like being called the Prince of Lies because you don't lie," she said without looking at him. "But you do. All the fucking time."

  Hot breath on the back of her neck did nothing to ease her trembling; the abattoir stink of it forced her to put a hand over her mouth and nose. Her throat closed on a retch. At the touch of serrated talons at the base of her skull, Kathleen closed her eyes.

  "Go ahead and kill me, then," she whispered. "I've done everything you ever asked me to do, and if I died now, that's all you'll get. You won't get what you really want."

  The devil pressed himself against her, pushing her into the counter so that the sharp edge dug deep into her belly. His claws dipped into the skin of her arms, pressing just enough to bring blood but only droplets. He growled into her ear.

  "None of you ever have any fucking idea what I want. Not one of you, in all this time, has ever really known."

  Quick as lightning, he'd turned her to face him. She could not look at him, not straight on. It would drive her to madness if she had to see the devil's true face, that much she'd never had to be told. Her head rocked back as he shook her, and through her half-closed eyelids she caught flashes of the ceiling, the cabinets, and something huge and dark and writhing like a ball of snakes.

  Caught in the devil's grip, she dared not move or twist, even when his claws dug deeper into her skin. Teeth snapped close to her face, and the brush of coarse hair left a trail of hives on her cheek where it touched. Blisters rose at another gust of sour, fetid breath, and the slow trickle of them bursting took the place of the tears she couldn't seem to shed.

  The devil's voice, in contrast, was low and soft and sickly sweet, whipped cream frosting smoothing the surface of a cake ravaged by too-eager fingers. It slid over her skin and embedded itself in her ears, spiraling deep into her brain where it traveled the synapses faster than they could fire.

  Infecting her.

  "You are motivated by greed and fear. You do what I ask because you don't want to lose something you hold precious, which you were willing to risk because you wanted something else. It's all so...tiresome."

  Kathleen trembled.

  The devil drew her closer, moving them both into a slow and careful waltz around her kitchen. She dared not risk even a glance, not with the huff and puff of his wolfish breath still scalding her face and the caress of his razor-tipped touch. She went where he led her, around and round, and when she stumbled, he kept her dancing.

  The devil stopped, but her head still spun. She could not draw a breath, not without inhaling the bitter taste of ashes. She coughed, gagging.

  "You have a place in this world, Kathleen, and you make your choices. You'll blame me for giving you everything you asked for, as though somehow you can take away the responsibility for it, but the truth is, you've earned everything you ever got. And in those dark and stagnant moments of your self-doubt, when you refuse to believe that your talent took you here, that you deserve to reap the rewards of your efforts, when you convince yourself that all of it will come tumbling down around you if you stop stepping to the beat of my drum, I want you to understand one more thing." The devil paused and shook her until her eyes opened and she looked upon him in all his hateful, wicked beauty. He leaned in to kiss her as though he meant to eat her alive. At the swift intake of her breath and the turn of her head, the devil squeezed her ever tighter. He put his mouth to her ear.

  "You understand and remember, Kathleen, that deep beneath everything else, all your anger and greed and fear and despair, all of that grief, all of your loathing...you don't want to believe you feel every sacrifice you've made and every evil deed you've done is worth every single reward you've reaped. You don't want to.

  But you do."

  And then the devil was gone.

  10

  It was quite possibly the best book she'd ever written.

  Kathleen had been asked many times which book was her favorite. She always said it was Walk With Me, because that was the one that had been made into a movie. It had paid for her flat in Manhattan and would pay for Callie to attend any college she wanted. It was the book that had the most sales, but it wasn't really her favorite.

  She would always have the fondest spot in her heart for Ride With the Devil. Her f