Personal Demon (6 page)

His lips tightened and I cursed under my breath. Benicio had screwed up. Or, at least, misjudged. Maybe most gangs were rebellious, undisciplined kids looking for easy money and a good time, but Guy took his job seriously, and expected his crew to do the same. A spoiled socialite looking for “kicks” wasn’t welcome.

I tried to make up for lost ground. “I know how to use picks, torque wrenches, snap guns and shims. With the right tools, I can do impressions, but I’m still learning that. I can use a Slim Jim and hotwire a car. I know the basics of safe drilling, but I’ve never opened one myself. I’ve disarmed simple security systems. What I’ve had the most practice at, though, is simple stealth skills—moving quietly, avoiding security cameras, foiling attack dogs, that sort of thing.”

A grudging nod.

A rap at the door. Again Guy didn’t answer, but the door opened after a few seconds. In walked a stocky young man, who looked no older than twenty.

“Rodriguez, this is Faith, the new recruit. She’ll need a phone and pager, but that’s not why I called you in.

I want to talk about this next job.”

Bianca stood and waved me to follow her. She made it two steps, then Guy said, “Bee? I need you here.”

He yelled something that sounded like “Jack,” and the guy who’d let me into the club appeared. “You and Sonny take Faith to dinner. Make her feel welcome. Think you can handle that?”

The young man grinned. “I believe I can manage.”

“Just don’t talk her ear off. I want you both back by nine. You’re on floor duty tonight. Oh, introductions.

Faith, Jasper. Jasper, Faith.”

The young man shot Guy the finger. Guy only smiled and shooed us out.

“Jaz, please,” he said to me. “
No one
calls me Jasper. Not even my mother. The moment she recovered from her temporary insanity, it became Jaz on everything but official documents, and I plan to change those too, as soon as I can be bothered filling out the paperwork. Now to collect Sonny, wherever the hell he’s hiding—”

“Right behind you,” said a deep voice.

Behind us stood a young man, Jaz’s size, but with straight dark blond hair to his shoulders, a deep tan and an angular face that wasn’t ugly, but would never make it onto a billboard.

Jaz slapped him on the back. “Hey, bro. Guy just gave us another tough assignment. Gotta take Faith here out to dinner and chat her up. Faith, this is Sonny. Met him in preschool. Our first joint effort was putting worms in the sandbox and we’ve been together ever since.” A wink my way. “Though the pranks are a little more serious these days.”

He kept up a near steady patter all the way out of the club and down the street. He asked about my test, then told me about his and about Sonny’s. Jaz had been with Guy’s crew for a year now, with Sonny following him the next time a spot opened—they hadn’t wanted to compete against each other. Jaz paused for breath only long enough to ask what kind of food I liked.

Normally, such nonstop chatter would have put me off, but in Jaz it didn’t seem to be nerves or ego. It seemed like…energy. Endless energy, needing an outlet, and I could feel it, like low-level chaos rippling from him.

Over dinner, Jaz tried to let me do some of the talking, but considering that my life story was a fake, I was just as happy to let him continue.

He told me a bit about himself and Sonny. Nothing overly personal, just enough to be friendly. First, supernatural type. I hadn’t been able to pick up vibes from either, and soon understood why. Both were the same minor type, magicians—a watered-down version of a sorcerer.

That they’d met in preschool was no coincidence. Their parents had worked in the St. Cloud Cabal satellite office in Indianapolis where they’d attended a school selected by the Cabal. An otherwise ordinary school. There was no risk in that—supernatural kids didn’t come into their powers until their teens. They’d be encouraged to befriend those classmates whose parents worked with theirs—kids they’d see at Christmas parties and picnics and on the company’s Little League team. Then, when they grew older, they’d already have someone who could share their supernatural coming-of-age experience, someone they could talk to and commiserate with. Watching Jaz and Sonny, seeing that easy camaraderie I’d lost with my human friends, I felt a pang of envy so sharp it was hard to eat.

They were younger than me, both twenty-three. They’d left home as teens and drifted about ever since.

That wasn’t surprising. I knew what it felt like, suddenly being different, with secrets to keep, powers to understand, searching for your moorings, for your identity, your place in this new world.

Jaz and Sonny seemed to have found an anchor in the gang. Neither had any complaints and that seemed genuine, not a put-on for the new girl. Jaz gave me a rundown of all the members: their races, positions and personalities. He certainly made my job of intelligence gathering much easier.

As dinner stretched well past the hour mark, I relaxed enough to take a closer, more critical look at Jaz. If I had a type, he wasn’t it. The mop of curls to his jawline was longer than I liked. His eyes were too big, too soft. His mouth was too wide, too sensual. His build was slender, almost graceful. The overall picture was…I hate to say feminine, because there was nothing girlie about him, but there was a pretty-boy quality that was a far cry from—

I stopped myself. Karl wasn’t my type either—too suave, too polished, too old.

But as for the puzzle that was Jaz, I solved it over dessert. When he twisted in his chair, the angle was just right to ignite a memory and I knew what he reminded me of: the angel Gabriel at my grandmother’s church.

I’m sure there’s something sacrilegious about having a crush on an angel, but I’d only been six or seven at the time. Gran was a proper society lady, one who had expected her son to grow up and marry a debutante. When he brought home an Indian girl from college, she hadn’t been disappointed or angry, but simply, I think, confused. Like most women of her class and generation, this just wasn’t a possibility she’d considered. But he was obviously in love, and the girl was as bright and beautiful as any debutante, so Gran gave her blessing.

She loved us as much as she did any of her grandchildren. Even after the divorce that didn’t change. If there was any problem with Gran, it was only her need to make us feel we belonged. Hence the angel Gabriel.

When we visited, I always went to church with her because I knew it pleased her and it pleased my mother.

Above the pulpit was this enormous painting of flaxen-haired, pale-skinned angels, and the artist had decided to single Gabriel out by making him dark-haired and brown-skinned.

To my grandmother, Gabriel served as proof for me that I was just as welcome in God’s house as anyone, so she never failed to rhapsodize over how beautiful he was, and how being different from the others made him all the more special. A heavy-handed lesson, but her heart was in the right place. I spent many hours in that church staring at Gabriel with his soulful eyes and dark ringlets.

So the mystery of Jaz’s attractiveness was solved. But it didn’t make my heart patter any less when he turned
his
soulful eyes my way. The face of an angel covering a mind more inclined to devilry. Under the circumstances, it might be just what I needed.

AS WE LEFT
the restaurant, Jaz said, “So you’re an Exustio? Or is it Aspicio?”

“Expisco,” I said.

“Exustio is fire,” Sonny said. “Aspicio is vision.”

“Damn half-demon names. All sound like Latin to me.”

“Could that be because they
are
Latin?”

“Smart ass. Even Guy didn’t know what an Exp—Expisco was. Had to get Bianca to look it up, and she had a hell of a time.”

“It’s a very rare subtype,” I said.

“And a weird one.” He glanced at me. “No offense, I just mean most of you get some elemental power or enhanced senses. Being able to sense trouble just, well, doesn’t seem to fit.”

“Full-blooded demons usually have special powers plus chaos sensors. Most half-demons get the powers without the sensors. I just get the sensors.”

“Huh.” He walked for at least ten steps in silence, which told me something was wrong. Before I could ask, he said, “The reason I’m bringing it up is that, well, Guy’s…not convinced.”

“That I am what I say I am?”

He nodded. “I wanted to give you a heads-up. He’s going to test you, and soon.”

HOPE: EASY RIDER

W
e cut through the pedestrian-only Lincoln Road Mall. The sun had set and the temperature dropped to a balmy seventy, though the humidity lingered. On the promenade, no one was pulling on warmer clothing. The barely-there bottoms, plunging necklines and bad boob jobs were on full display as the nightlife began to prowl, skirting the palms and umbrella tables as they zeroed in on their favorite club, hoping being early might get them inside.

Jaz kept up a steady travelogue, pointing out the sights along the way, including the drop-dead gorgeous guys lounging on tables outside Score, every one of them worthy of a magazine cover, and not one of them likely to return any female attention. There weren’t as many gay bars in South Beach as there had been, Jaz said. They’d revitalized the area, made it the hottest place in Miami, then moved on. Many others had moved on too, and South Beach no longer had the cachet of a few years ago, but that didn’t bother Guy. Less hip young things meant more tourists and wannabes, who made easier marks.

His club was a block off the Mall. Not prime real estate, but from the lineup outside, no one seemed to care.

Jaz said Guy liked us to work the line a bit as we came in—find likely marks and let them in, earning an easy excuse for an introduction later. But since this was my first night, Jaz figured they could skip that, and we headed up the other side of the road, cutting across as we neared the front of the line.

We jogged across the road, dodging slow-moving cars, Jaz’s fingers lightly resting on my waist to guide me. The smell of smoke wafted around us, some from exhaust, some from those in line getting in one last cigarette or cigar. A nervous laugh rang out over the murmur of the waiting crowd. Every voice seemed high-pitched, edged with forced fervor, as if they were trying to convince themselves that standing on the sidewalk was a very cool and fun way to spend an evening.

We approached the front of the velvet rope as a girl in a shockingly ugly gauze slip of a dress tried to convince the bouncer that she was the advance party for J. Lo and absolutely had to get inside right away because J.

wouldn’t stop by if her table wasn’t ready. The bouncer listened, eyes never bothering to meet hers, his mouth barely opening enough to direct her to a club two blocks over, where they might believe J. Lo was coming and, better yet, care.

When the bouncer saw Jaz, though, his granite mask of ennui shattered into a wide grin, revealing a missing incisor. He slapped Jaz on the back and greeted Sonny, who edged the hopeful girl back, letting me through.

Jaz lingered a minute, introducing me and making small talk as I felt the weight of stares on my back, and listened to the mutters of “Who are they?” in tones half curious, half contemptuous. Then the bouncer opened the doors and we stepped inside.

EASY RIDER WAS
the club’s name, and now I knew why. “Born to Be Wild” blasted from the speakers.

Smoke swirled around a half-dozen pool tables. Two runways featured tattooed strippers with teased hair and torn fishnets. The female servers were clad in leather bikini tops and chaps; the guys got leather thongs and chaps. The tables were scarred and decrepit, the leather booths battered and torn. It looked like a biker bar, circa 1970.

It didn’t take long, though, to see past the illusion. “Born to Be Wild” was a dance remix. The “smoke”

around the pool tables was dry ice. Those tattooed strippers were gorgeous, and the tattoos probably came off with soap and water. The damage to the tables and booths was an artistic embellishment, not signs of age and misuse.

A club designed to make the young, wealthy and bored feel like they were wallowing in the grimy biker subculture without any danger of soiling their Pradas.

“Cheesy, huh?” Jaz whispered, his warm breath tickling my ear. “Works, though. They eat this shit up.”

“I see that.”

“Sonny? Can you take Faith to our table while I change?”

“Our table” was a booth with a view of the entire club. Bianca was there, with two guys she introduced as Tony and Max. Max was tall with a chiseled profile, a perfect tan and sun-bleached blond hair gathered in a small ponytail. Tony was about five six, compact and muscular, black hair cropped so short it was like a birthmark across his scalp. Both moved to give me room, Max shifting aside with a polite smile, Tony waving me in with a confident grin, as if I should be honored by the invitation. I slid in beside Max.

Having been to many clubs, I expected conversation to be impossible, but the booth must have been specially soundproofed. I still had to strain to hear, but could carry on a conversation.

Bianca set Tony and Max on a group of fortyish women trying hard to look twenty.

After they left, she turned to me. “Faith, I’d like you to—”

“Bee?”

Jaz appeared at her shoulder, dressed in a vintage wide-collared off-white dress shirt and black jeans.

“I thought I’d squire the lady around for a while. Introduce her to some people. Maybe take a tour of the dance floor.”

Bianca looked from me to Jaz. “You two should catch some eyes. Make sure you do—have fun, play it up.

You know the drill.”

I soon understood why Jaz had made it into the gang despite his weak supernatural type. The guy had phenomenal people skills. As we circled the room, it was nonstop “How’s the new job going?” and “Saw you in the paper last week” and “Hey, that girl you were checking out last time is here—without her boyfriend.” Most people would sound smarmy and false, but Jaz had such an aura of bouncy good humor he pulled it off.

“Can I stop now?” he whispered as we left yet another group.

I choked on a laugh. “But you seem to be having such a good time.”