“Oh, okay.” I nodded my throbbing head. Ow.
“Good. Glad we got that all straightened…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked up at the ceiling. And then she just sorta kinda stared at it, almost like she was watching a tennis table match, her big turquoise eyes darting back and forth.
“Umm…are you all right?” I asked, thinking that if she didn’t reply, it might be a good time to make my exit: grab my cat and chickens and then haul ass.
Some pants would be good, too.
“Oh yeah…” she said with a dirty, phone-sex voice tone. “Auntie Cimi is doin’ great. Yes. Get it right there. That’s the spot. Harder. Slap it harder!” Her eyes continued toggling. It was so, so disturbing.
I sidestepped toward the front door, and her head snapped down in my direction.
“Hey. Where do ya think you’re goin’? Huh? Huh?” She leaned in and popped up on her tippy toes, putting us nose to nose. “Huuuuh?”
I held up my hands in surrender. “Nowhere. I’m going absolutely nowhere.”
“Good. Because despite what Tommy thinks, I like the kid. I mean, yeah, he has his disgustingly good side, but don’t we all?”
I shrugged. “I-I really can’t sa-say.”
She poked her index finger into my breastbone. “Take your Uncle Chuckie, the incubus, for example; did you know he started turning good decades ago? All on his own? Now,” she dropped her finger and perched her fist on her bony hip, “do you have any idea why a thousand-year-old demon who enjoys killing women by orgasm would hang up the old handcuffs—and rope, whips, ticklers, and lubes—to become a dentist and loving father?”
Huh? “Uh. No. Can’t say that I do.”
“Love, chicky. He fell in love.”
“How lovely?” I said, still completely unsure of where this was all going.
“Yes. It truly is. Because if there’s hope for a selfish demonic fucker like him—get it? Fucker? He’s an incubus who likes to…” Cimil noticed I wasn’t laughing. “Never mind. My point is: If there’s hope for him, there’s hope for anyone.”
I nodded slowly. “How lovely…again?”
“Yes!” Her finger shot up. “It is. Because even after Chuckie’s first human wife—his mate—ran out on him and his daughters, rejecting him when he finally told her what he was, trampling on his poor sulfuric-smelling demonic heart, he made a choice. He wasn’t going to give up on the life he dreamed of. He wasn’t going to let anyone but himself define who he was. Not genetics, not his dark and very kinky triple-X urges, and most certainly not his dietary preferences. He took the bull by the dangly, sticky bits and found a woman who loved him for who he was and wanted to share his dream.”
I had no idea if her story was completely made up about Uncle Chuck, but it didn’t feel real. None of this did.
“That’s a very nice story. May I go now?” I asked.
“Not even close, chica. Oh, and by the way, you should thank Uncle Chuckie. He’s watched over you since the day that Maaskab attacked you.”
“He’s watched over me,” I repeated skeptically.
“Oh, yes. That man has racked up some frequent-flier miles. Comes out at least once a week to check on you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“No one ever does.” She shook her head. “But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s always there, lurking in the shadows, watching over you. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed.” She bent forward just enough for her to see outside my front door. “Yo! Chuckie!” she screamed. “How’s it hanging?”
A little click went off inside my head. Could he be the thing out there I’d been sensing? “Is he here right now?”
“Nope. I was just being polite.”
Huh?
Cimil continued, “And so should you.”
“Should what?”
“Be polite, child! Never ever get on an incubus’s bad side. Hint: They love fruit baskets. With chocolate inside. And their egos are very fragile—I suggest you thank him for personally peeing on every inch of the yard around the house.”
Dear God. “Why would he do that?”
She rolled her eyes. “To keep away any bad spirits, vampires, demons, and unwanted solicitors. Demon piss is a great repellent.”
I crinkled up my face. “I’ll take your word for it.” Now please leave. This is all too much crazy to take in one day.
Cimil’s jaw dropped. “You. Don’t. Believe me.”
“Well, I, uh—”
“Fine, but believe this: Your aunt Claire told your mother about Uncle Chuckie and put the fear of demons and monsters into her. From there, your sweet mama thought of nothing else, and there’s a funny thing about thinkin’ too much.”
I felt an unwanted pearl of wisdom coming my way.
She continued, “When we think of something constantly, we attract it. I mean, look at me. I constantly think of my awesomeness and look how awesome I am!”
Yeah, you’re oozy with it. “So you’re trying to tell me that my mother chose to go mad?”
“No! You’re totally missing the point! Why are humans so dense?” She took a breath and whooshed it out. “She kept thinking about monsters and ended up attracting them. Ask and the Universe shall deliver.”
“So it’s her fault I was attacked?” What a load.
“No! Gods! That was the Maaskab’s fault, you silly squirrel. He made a choice to be an evil bastard, and as I just explained, he could’ve chosen to be something else. Just like dear old Uncle Chuckie. Have you not been listening?”
I nodded and then switched to shaking my head. “I’m not quite sure.”
“No matter what the Universe plans for us, we all have free will. We are the captains of our own crunch! The dicks in our dictatorships. The French in our ticklers—”
“Okay. I get it.”
“You ain’t got squat, sister!” she said. “Uncle Chuckie needed someone to feed his good side, to help him see another possible future. And you were supposed to feed Tommaso the same way. But noooo…you had to go and feed his angry side, didn’t cha?”
“Now I’m really lost.”
“Why? It’s perfectly clear to all of us!”
I looked around the room. “All of who?”
“Us. Me.” Cimil pointed to herself and then to the corner of my living room, just through the doorway. “And all of them.”
I didn’t want to ask. So I didn’t.
She shook her head, tsking at me. “Tommaso ran off to confront the Grand Poobah, the big evilness himself. The master of everything dark and unwholesome and cruel, including books that end in cliffhangers. Ick.” She made a sour face.
“He’s going to fight Satan?” I mean, if gods existed, then that meant he was real, too. Right?
“Satan?” Cimil cackled toward the sky. “That big pussy? Heck no! Satan sits around all day knitting little horned caps and coming up with ideas to get kids to vape e-cigs. He’s a total loser. And spineless as a pickle. Get it? Spineless as pickles?”
“Yes?” I didn’t get it at all.
“Awesome. Anywoo, I’m talking about the king of the Maaskab.”
“There’s a king.” That sounded not-wonderful.
“Oh yeah. And he’s so powerful that he got my brother Chaam, the God of Male Virility, to join Team Scab for a while. Of course, Chaam doesn’t really remember much and thinks it was just some evil fluke; but trust me, Mr. Ass is always behind the scenes pulling the strings.”
“Mr. Ass?” Oh, God. Her rant just kept getting weirder and weirder with no apparent point or end in sight.
“His real name is Ta’as, which I believe translates to ‘banana’ in Mayan, but don’t quote me on that. Without paying me five dollars first—everything I say is copyrighted. But once Mr. Banana, there, recruits a few new head priests, he’s going to start regrowing his army, and then we’ll all be knee deep in Scabs again.”
“Why don’t you do anything about it? You’re a…a…” I found it very difficult to say th
e words. “A god.”
“(A) I’m Cimil. I can’t help cheer for Team Evil. And Team Good. It’s funner that way. (B) if the Universe is flip-flopping and I kill the most evil Scab of them all, then I’d really be killing the future nicest person on the planet, and then where would we be?”
“I really, really don’t know,” I groaned.
“Exactly. Of course, Ass Banana does have his eye on a special someone—one of my sisters, if you can believe that—and if he decides to give her his evil crusty heart, then he won’t flip-flop, and he’ll stay evil. So he probably should die.”
“So what are you saying?” I asked.
“Haven’t you been listening?”
At this point, I was so lost by her random story that I just wanted it to end. “Yes. Every word.”
“Good. Now, I expect you to go and fix this mess you’ve created ASAP.” She poked me again in the chest, and with my back to the wall, it really hurt.
“Ouch!” I rubbed the spot. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but putting this ‘mess’ on me is a huge stretch.”
“Is it? Is it really? You were supposed to be mated to Andrus, and for whatever reason, his heart and soul weren’t on the same page. The heart won, leaving you mateless. But then, the Universe in her infinite nincompoopery decided to give you another path to happiness. You didn’t jump on it, and now look what happened? Chaos! You have twenty-four hours to fix it or that’s that and I can’t be held responsible.”
Something told me that responsibility, along with sane behavior, was something she never held.
“Okaaay. What exactly do you want me to do again?” I was terrified to hear the answer, but I had to ask.
“You must go save Tommaso. And it must be you and only you. Alone.”
“I won’t even ask why because I have a strong feeling you’re not going to tell me. That said, I don’t love him. He is one of those things.”
“This is what I was afraid of.” She tsked and shook her head at the floor.
“What?” I immediately regretted opening my mouth. I should’ve just kept it shut so she’d leave.
“I was afraid you’d turn out just like your old aunt Claire, who ’til this day is hiding in a cave in Peru.”
“Aunt Claire is still alive?” No one had seen her for decades.
“If you call eating bugs for sustenance and not having access to the show Outlander—or The Carbonaro Effect or John Oliver—being ‘alive,’” she made little air quotes with her fingers, “then you’ve got bigger problems than having Tommaso’s death on your hands.”
“Death?” I croaked.
“Yes. He’s going to try to take Ass Banana down. Not a chance! Ass will squash him like a bug. Unless Tommy simply becomes Ass’s second Mmm—Ass—Kab in command—get it? Maaskab? Ass? Oh, fuck you—that was funny. Anygiggles, I highly doubt, given that the Maaskab murdered Tommaso’s family in cold blood, that he’d let that happen. He’d rather go down fighting than go back to Team Scabby.”
The Maaskab murdered his family? All of them? And now he was becoming one of those beasts?
Ohmygod. My heart felt like it had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Everything finally made sense—his desperation to keep from flipping. The way he’d avoided telling me what was happening. The reason he’d felt so upset and run out after I’d told him what they’d done to me. He had a very deep emotional scar running through him. But here I’d been feeling disgusted by Tommaso and what he was becoming when the situation for him was unfathomably worse.
I ran my hands over the top of my head, pushing out a dread-filled breath. “God, this is so messed up.”
Then the truth hit me like a bolt of lightning: Yes, my story was horrific, but I had been nineteen at the time, and here I was seven years later, letting that moment define and control me when what I should’ve been doing was taking back my life and putting the past where it belonged. Because, at the end of the day, the past no longer existed and never would again. Yet I’d single-handedly fueled the memory of that one night and kept it alive.
This was what ruined my mother: the not letting go. And it was ruining me. I kept seeing my entire world through the lens of one ugly, horrific night when really, there were so many beautiful moments, thousands perhaps, I could’ve focused on instead: The long hot summer days I spent at my best friend Mike’s house when we were little. His mother watched us while mine worked. He didn’t have a pool or air-conditioning, so we’d invent our own ways to escape the heat. My favorite had been filling up trash bags with the hose and trying to sit inside them without spilling the water. There was also the very special relationship I’d had with my mother and all the times we laughed together even when we got angry. But it was her laughter that always let me know she was still there for me. I loved the way she laughed. I could’ve even focused on the fact that for the past four years, I got up every morning and went to a job where I got to breathe fresh air and gaze out at the stunning desert mountains. People paid thousands for one day of what I got paid to do every day.
I’m such an idiot.
How could I have allowed myself to blame Tommaso when he was just as much a victim as anyone? He’d had his entire family wiped off the map, savagely murdered, and now he would be forced to essentially become the thing that killed the people he loved.
“You think he’ll become this…this Ass’s minion if he’s not killed?” I asked Cimil.
“Toootally. He’ll then be the second most powerful A-hole in the world. And, despite being a sadistic A-hole myself, I am a god. Hardwired to protect you shitty creatures, so I will have to kill him.” She grinned and held out her bony hands. “With my bare Minkies. Unless it’s Wednesday, then it’s actually Minky’s turn to kill.”
I seriously didn’t understand what was happening. And I wasn’t referring to Cimil’s verbal trip around the wacky-go-round. I actually felt a horrific urge to protect Tommaso. I didn’t want her or that Ass man to touch him.
That said, “What can I do?”
She shrugged. “Besides rescue him? Completely on your own because the Great and Powerful Cimi has prophesied this is the only way for a successful outcome?” Her mouth scrunched to one side. “How the hell should I know?”
Seriously? “Because you’re a goddess.”
“Wrong! I have zero powers. So you’re totally solo on this mission.”
Why did I get the distinct impression she was lying to me? “Can you at least tell me where to find him?”
“I could, but I won’t. It’s no fun that way.”
“Wow,” I said. “Suddenly, this fucked world is all making sense.”
“Oh, boohoo.” She fake fisted her eyes. “You try being alive for seventy thousand years with humans and their clusterfuckery, in this giant clusterfuckopolis, and try not to get clusterfuckafied!”
Dear God—sorry—dear gods, please help me to not slap this deity.
“Cimil, I know you can probably squash me like a ripe melon, but I swear to gods, or the Universe or whatever clusterfuckedupness you subscribe to, that if you don’t tell me where to find Tommaso, I will turn to the dark side and eat your damned liver!”
She grinned. “That a promise?”
“Yes.”
She made a little clap. “Yay! But I still won’t tell you where he went. Because I don’t really know if I know. You know? The master of the Maaskab is very skilled at hiding his presence. I recommend you drink heavily and replay every conversation you’ve had with Tommaso until you figure it out.”
Nice. Wow. Great advice. “Please leave now.”
She jerked back her head. “Well! I never!” She stomped out the front door. “Come, Minky.”
“And give me back my putter,” I griped.
I watched a twisted piece of metal drop from thin air to the floor. “Sick,” I winced.
“Yup.” Cimil reached into her pocket and handed me a card. “Call if you need anything. We’re always here to help.”
I slowly took the
card. “Thanks.” Of course, the card was blank.
“See you at the wedding. Or at Tommy’s execution. Either way, I’ll be wearing pink.” Cimil sauntered away in her tight pink pants.
Someone needs to strangle her.
As for me, it was time to crawl out of the ugly hole I’d been living in and make a stand. Not just for Tommaso, but for myself.
Oh, crap. I have to do this alone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I’d never been to Mexico, I did not speak Spanish, and I had no idea if I would live through the next few hours. Or this massive hangover. Turned out that having a few drinks and combing through my conversations with Tommaso, as Cimil suggested, had sparked one and only one idea as to where he might have gone.
Might.
The only thing I knew for sure, as I drove through the jungle in a thirty-year-old Jeep with bald tires, was that this insane trip to find him was just as much about me as it was about him. I needed him to triumph. And I certainly didn’t want him dying. But also, I had to confront this darkness living inside my head. I’d wasted too much of my life feeling afraid.
Yes. This was a bit extreme, and I’d be the first to admit it. But my head was in a very jumbled place, searching for an end to my self-perpetuated nightmare.
So. If I did happen to find Tommaso and find him alive, what was my plan?
I didn’t believe that loving him was a magical antivenin. Cimil said that all I had to do was help him imagine another future—a good one. Uncle Chuckie forged his own from there, and so could Tommaso. So while I couldn’t promise him love, I could promise my friendship and understanding. Okay, and possibly some humping. But only if he asked nicely and apologized for lying to me. Jerkface. But I did like the man. I mean to say, I was attracted to him. I just wasn’t happy about him deceiving me, even if I understood why and sympathized with his situation.
Still, I was here. Putting my ass on the line to help him because it seemed that I was the only one who could. Either that, or Cimil just wanted to watch me suffer and die terrified and alone.