Page 8 of Generally Hospitable
“Quite,” he said, now looking like he wanted to be anywhere but here. That made two of us. Or three of us if I counted Pandora.
There was no way in hell I could look at her. If I did, I’d fall over laughing. And since my feet were one with the floor, that could end in a broken leg or dislocated knee. Didn’t have time for that. It would make me break character. I was a pro. Always had been and always would be.
My focus stayed on the Demon on the dais. “So, of course, I’m just staring at Blood Eagle wondering what in the hey-hey is going on, and he says, ‘I thought it would be prudent for you to meet my mother right away.’ And I’m thinking, I haven’t even met you yet. Why in the hell would I want to meet your mom?”
Decatalain raised his hand. I nodded.
“Did you say that part out loud?” he questioned.
“No,” I assured him. “I just thought it. But I most certainly had asked him if he was pranking me. And he said, No. He takes going out with demonic women very seriously. His mom just nods like a sixty-year-old batshit crazy bobblehead. She pulls wet wipes out of her purse and proceeds to clean the table.”
“She didn’t,” Chub Chub said, shocked.
“Yesrsiree, she did. Then she questioned me about my intentions with her son. SHE WAS DEADLY SERIOUS.”
Ten minutes had passed since I’d started my one-woman show, and yet... Still no magic. I wasn’t sure how much further I could take the scene, but I wasn’t a quitter.
“As any sane Demon gal with manners would do,” I continued. “I thought about electrocuting Blood Eagle, but decided that I could write a blog about it on the internet and get popular instead. Maybe even become an influencer and get free shit.”
“A what?” Decatalain asked, his interest perking up at the mention of “free shit.”
“Don’t worry about it. Not important,” I told him. “So, I pretty much checked out for the entire dinner from the pure cringe factor. He ordered the bean dip for her, and she ordered the soup for me. The soup tasted like toes that had been sweating into pantyhose for a week.”
The stupid Demon made a face.”
“Exactly!” I snapped. “It sucked.” I shook my head. “On top of that, the bean dip was definitely farty. Old Mom cleared the entire diner in six minutes and twelve seconds. It had to be a record. The stench was so rank I had to tear up my napkin and shove little pieces into my nostrils. I played it off like I had chronic nose bleeds. They bought it. Blood Eagle didn’t eat. Not sure why. Although I surmised that in order to eat, his mom would have had to chew the food for him, then spit it into his mouth. So gross and so not hot. At one point, the mother asked me if I was into kinky bedroom antics. I had to electrocute her. She laughed. It was weird. Right?”
“Weird,” Chub Chub agreed, now invested.
“I was pretty much over it at that point and left. Totally stiffed them on the bill, sprinted home and drank three-quarters of a bottle of vodka. And wouldn’t you just know…”
“Know what?” Decatalain demanded.
“Blood Eagle texted me that he’d had a wonderful time and that his mom loved me! Wanted to invite me to his basement apartment at his mom’s house for coffee and a cheese Danish the next time. If, and I mean, IF I ever agree to a second date, you’d have my full permission to shoot me in the head.”
Chub Chub Wang’s mouth hung open. He had nothing to say.
“I still have no magic,” Pandora whispered, ventriloquist style. “But that was horrifyingly brilliant. Can you keep going?”
“Does the Pope have a pointy hat?” I whispered back.
“I don’t know,” she replied dryly. “I’m not into that kind of stuff.”
I looked down and grinned. Pandora might be nuts, but she made me laugh. “Yes, I can go all day.”
“Then you’re one up on that dumb ass,” she quipped. “He could barely go ten seconds.”
I stifled a giggle.
“ENOUGH!” Decatalain bellowed, finding his voice. The walls rattled and the floor shook. “Enough of this nonsense. I was correct. You are a half-breed imbecile. You’re not a Goddess. A half-human has no rights to the throne. And you,” he pointed at Pandora. “You are an abomination. You killed a Goddess.”
Pot. Kettle. Black. Chub Chub Wang was the abomination, not Pandora. And if we wanted to get technical, he was about to kill two Goddesses. Yes, Pandora had been evil—seriously evil, but the key word in that sentence washad—had been evil. She’d apologized to Lilith. She’d been forgiven. She was on the path to hope. My frenemy—kind of my friend at this point, though Iwouldn’t admit it out loud—was on the road to redemption. It would be long and fraught with a whole lot of pushback by those she’d wronged in the past, but she was moving forward. Chub Chub Wang’s permanent stagnation would only cause more death and destruction.
We just needed to figure out how to live long enough to stop him.
“We shall negotiate,” Pandora ground out with an imperious sneer on her lovely face.
That stopped Chub Chub Wang in his tracks. He liked the sound of that. The slow grin that appeared on his face was terrifying. I hoped that Pandora wasn’t serious. She had to be buying more time.
