Kim Harrison - Dates From Hell

“Funny how a little thing like that changes your whole perspective.”

“I wouldn’t call it funny. Why didn’t you throw in with the monster hunters?”

“Even though getting paid would be nice—” he began.

“You don’t get paid?”

“ Chica ,” he said with infinite patience, “who would pay me?”

“How do you live?”

“Very carefully.” At my frown, he lifted one hand. “I do odd jobs for cash.”

Cash?

“Are you an illegal alien?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. “Wouldn’t it be easier to get paid for what you’re already doing for free?”

“The money would be nice,” he repeated, “but the government would want to know where I’m from. How I got here. What I’ve been up to for half my life. I don’t want to tell them. And I don’t like being told what to do. I ask no one’s permission. I never will. I eliminate evil from this world no matter the cost.”

“Sounds like a good policy to me.”

“I doubt you’d think so if you were part of that cost.”

I stopped and stared at him. “You’d sacrifice an innocent person to eliminate a demon?”

He kept walking, but his answer drifted back on the early morning breeze.

“I’d sacrifice anything and anyone.”

So much for any dreams I might have had aboutChavez and me. Not that I’d been having any. I wasn’t that stupid. But I had felt safe with him. Until he’d admitted he’d toss me over a cliff to rid the world of one more demon.

Well, he hadn’t actually said that but I could read between the lines pretty well. Occupational hazard.

“Mind if I use the computer again?” Chavez asked when we returned to my apartment.

The place smelled wet. I opened a window, lit a candle, turned up the heat.

“Go ahead.” I yanked the newspaper out of my mail drop.

“I want to find out who that second guy was.”

“I don’t think you need to.”

I turned the paper in his direction. The face of the man Chavez had lit on fire last night was all over the front page.

He appeared to be missing. Or at least his body was.

“Malcolm Tanner,” I read. “Stockbroker. Hasn’t this demon ever heard of street guys? Their deaths and disappearances would be less noticeable.”

“Would you date one?”

“I didn’t date Malcolm.”

“True. You didn’t even know him. Which might be the point.”

“You lost me.”

“If he picked people you knew, sooner or later the police would be knocking on your door. But random guys? Hard to connect.”

“Why bother setting up a date in the first place? Malcolm just popped in here, uninvited.”

“Some demons need to be invited in first.”

“Like a vampire?”

“Now you’re catching on.”

“But Malcolm—”

“—was the same demon as Eric, just a different body.”

“So since I invited Eric—”

“Malcolm could enter.”

“How do you know this stuff?” I asked. “Is there a www.demonology.com ?”

“No. What I’ve learned is mostly by trial and error.” He lifted one shoulder. “A little half-assed, but all I’ve got.”

“You’ve tried salt, fire, silver. What’s next?”

“Holy water, the Hail Mary, the Lord’s Prayer, sacramental wine, the host.”

“I’m seeing a pattern.”

“Christian symbols.” He sighed. “The problem is, there are a lot of demons that aren’t Christian in origin and some that predate Christianity.”

Since I’d studied plenty of ancient civilizations, I was aware of this. Still, the idea that something could predate time as we marked it had always creeped me out. Probably an American phobia. In countries that had been around for a few gazillion millennia, people didn’t get wiggy over a little pre-Christian demon or ten. Did they?

“How can you kill something so ancient?” I wondered aloud.

“It ain’t easy.”

My gaze was drawn to his earring. “If Christian symbols don’t work, then what’s with that?”

“I didn’t say they don’t work. They do. More than most.” He fingered the cross in his earlobe. “Every little bit helps.”

“What can I do?”

“Any good at research?”

“Actually, yes.”

Research was what had brought me to my major. I loved looking things up, finding answers to questions only I cared about.

His gaze traveled from the tip of my overly curly hair, past my black-rimmed glasses, to the ample breasts and hips ensconced in an oversized sweatshirt and equally oversized jeans.

“I’ve always had a thing for librarians,” he murmured. “They’re so…helpful.”

Considering his face, that hair, the body, I just bet they were.

“I’m not a librarian,” I said stiffly.

“We could pretend.”

I stared at him for several seconds. Was he trying to make a joke? It was hard to tell when he never cracked a smile.

Chavez turned away, and the strange, charged moment was gone. “I’m going for supplies before it gets dark.”

“What supplies?”

“Holy water, host—”

“Where do you get stuff like that? At the discount holy water and host shop?”

“A church.”

“They give it out because you ask?”

“Because I ask, yes.”

My skepticism must have shown on my face because he continued. “Priests believe in evil, Kit. If they didn’t they wouldn’t have a job. They’ve seen amazing things—great good and great bad.”

“And you? Do you ever see any good?”

His eyes met mine. “Not until just lately.”

“What’d I do?”

“You chased me out of the alley. You wouldn’t stop questioning me. You weren’t afraid to stand up to the insane man you believed had shot your date.”

“You did shoot my date.”

“But I didn’t kill him.”

“There is that.” I tilted my head, curious. “What else?”

“You let me into your home.”

“At gunpoint,” I muttered.

“Not all the time. You went breaking and entering with me. No one’s ever done that before.”

“No one?”

He shook his head. I got all warm and fuzzy.

“So your interpretation of good is…”

Pretty damn broad. Basically I hadn’t screamed, called the police, or kicked him out of my house. Give me the Nobel Prize.

“You’re courageous, unselfish, a risk taker,” Chavez said.

That didn’t sound like me at all. It sounded more like the me I wanted to be.

“And then there’s that kiss.”

I looked up and he smiled.

“Good?” I asked.

“More like great.”

Hours passed. The sun moved across the sky and began to descend. I began to get nervous.

Where was Chavez?

If I were a demon, I’d put my death on hold and go straight for the demon hunter. The thought made me unable to sit still, so I paced from the bedroom to the living room and back again.

“I’m sure Chavez has had demons come after him before,” I told myself.

Hell, that was probably what he wanted.

Nevertheless, I was close to frantic. The first man who thought I kissed great—or at least the first who’d told me so—just my luck he’d walk out of my life and never come back.

I’d just completed my fifty-fifth pass into the bedroom when a soft footfall from the living room caused me to freeze.

I bit my lip, then glanced at the window. The sun was still up, though not for long. Nevertheless, daylight was daylight, and we still had it.

“Chavez?” I hurried into the front room and stopped dead at the sight of a strange young man with a huge pot of daffodils.

“How did you get in?”