Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
DEUS
“Deus, my dear demonic worshiper,” Landon calls as I head out with the feisty ferret in my hands.
“Yeah?”
“We need you to watch Ellison. We don’t want him to be alone, so we’re going to need someone in his house with him when he gets released tomorrow. Can you stay with him? August and I… have… very important things that must be done.”
“For the low, low price of a hundred and twenty-five per hour.”
Landon’s face immediately sours. “You want to be paid more per hour to just sit around Ellison’s house than it would have cost for you to murder me?”
“That would be correct.”
Landon growls and I feel like if he had more energy than a sloth, he’d try to strangle me or at the very least punch me, but instead, he just scowls like I’ve insisted on his firstborn, which I haven’t… yet. “I should be worth like a million dollars and sixty-nine cents. Not a hundred!”
I reach out and pat his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. “It’s tough out there.”
“Made tougher by friends like you!”
I beam, pleased. “You called me your friend. How sweet.”
His eyes narrow. “Friends value their friends’ lives more than you do.”
I whip out my invoice pad and write, “Keeping Landon safe fee: $$$69,696,969.” I hand it to him before saying, “Tell Valerie I need it by Monday.”
He seems pleased as he holds it before remembering he was here for a reason. “You’ll watch him, right? Lex would struggle to protect him the way you can.”
“Understandable.”
“So you will?”
“I have a villain to find, so that’s going to be a no.”
“What the fuck was this whole pricing bullshit about if you weren’t even going to do it?”
“I was just telling you how much it’d cost if I chose to do it.”
Landon’s glare turns severe. “You’re going. You have Ellison to protect.”
“Fine, fine. Just for a bit.”
“And don’t eat the ferret.”
“Hmm… it shouldn’t be hot dog shaped if it didn’t want to be a hot dog.”
“Deus, dammit! Give me the ferret.”
I mime eating the ferret like it’s a corncob, holding both ends of it as Landon gasps at me. He hurries after me but doesn’t make it very far before his weak legs give up and he wanders off, deciding that he’d rather allow me to eat the ferret than use one more calorie.
I head out to my car and set the ferret down on the passenger seat. It sets to work at puncturing holes in my upholstery while I watch Ellison’s mom get into her fancy vehicle where a man drives her off.
“Well, bud. What kind of owner do you want? I really only know the four guys… oh, and Nolan… wait, we have Valerie, but if I was you, I’d rather get eaten by a hawk than let Valerie be my owner. We’ll think on that.”
The ferret comes over to me, so I hold a finger out to it which it promptly bites, squeaks at, and fucks off.
“I like you, Pocket Lint the Third, Esquire. You’re my kind of guy…
or gal… no fucking idea which and it feels weird to just like…
sit in my car and stare at your genitals…
Are you a dude or gal? This hand is dude, this hand is gal.
” I hold both out and the ferret comes over and tries prying the nail off the middle finger on my gal side.
“Miss Pocket Lint the Third, Esquire it is.”
So off I drive, on the hunt to find Pocket Lint the Third, Esquire a new home.
I walk into the hospital room the following day to break Ellison out.
“I’m here to set you free,” I inform him.
“I’m… free to go,” he says, suit on. “No breaking out required.”
I scowl at his clothing choice, displeased he is already all covered up again. I didn’t get my fill of staring at his tattoos.
“He didn’t even forget the cuff links,” Landon says, noting my look.
“I see that.”
“What’d you do with the ferret… don’t tell me you scurried around the woods and ate it.”
“She tasted like Wagyu,” I say.
Landon is staring at me like he doesn’t trust me for some reason.
“She’s with the demons now,” I assure him. “They took her in with open arms. She bit a few on the way down.”
“I’m just like… do I laugh? Do I not?” Landon asks.
“You’ll encourage him to continue to make ridiculous choices if you laugh,” Ellison warns.
I pull Pocket Lint the Third, Esquire out of my pocket and toss her on Ellison’s bed. She goes from 0 to 100 in seconds as she arches her back and hops on over to fuck him up.
Ellison looks horrified that I’ve set this ferret loose on him. “I told you to get rid of the thing!”
“I tried! I went into Wendy’s wanting something to eat while I pondered and set her on some little girl’s tray, thinking she’d be ecstatic. She screamed and began sobbing and it was a whole thing.”
“You didn’t ask her? You just like tossed a rodent at her?” Landon asks.
“A ‘long cat,’ to be exact,” I say.
Ellison sighs, sounding oddly exasperated. “I want to go home. And then once we get there, we’ll figure something out.”
“Understandable. Landon, are you going with us?” I ask.
“I’m heading home. This place is freezing. I can’t fathom sitting on the bed in one of those gowns without any blankets on, it’s so cold in here,” he says as Ellison glowers at him from where he suffered because of Zacia.
Landon departs with a wave. “See ya, fuckers. Don’t have too much fun without me, ya hear?”
The nurse gets a wheelchair, which makes Ellison holler, but definitely not as much as he hollers when I ask if I can wheel him out. Then he seems to act like the perfect gentleman as he sits prim and proper in his suit while he’s wheeled out the door and to my awaiting car.
“I really don’t need anyone to stay with me, so just drop me off at home,” Ellison says.
“Nonsense. What if someone comes for your head in the middle of the night? What are you going to do? Wallow around?”
“No one is coming for me.”
“Then who cut you open?”
“I don’t know. It was probably an accident.”
“I’m sure,” I say with much sarcasm.
Once he’s in the car, I begin driving toward his home.
“Don’t you need directions?” Ellison asks.
“You think that I don’t know where you live?”
“I should really be creeped out by that. Why do you know where I live?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I ask. “You don’t know where I live?”
“Of course not! I actually don’t envision you even living in a home. I just see you scurrying around and living in other people’s closets.”
“I’ve only done that around seven times. They have no idea I’m there when I’m invisible. This one family, they were so focused on their TV that I managed to eat off their plates during dinner when I lived with them. Oh, I miss them.”
Ellison looks concerned as Pocket Lint chills on my lap, little paws on the steering wheel so she can get a better look. “What… happened to them?”
“They moved away… or at least that’s what the reports say…
I’m joking, they moved down to Florida to be with her family.
It was a whole thing. I showed up to their going-away party and they were all, ‘Who are you?’ and…
it was so sad, it was like I was a part of their family, but they didn’t even know me. ”
Ellison is staring at me in such a strange way that I have to assume is because of the pain pills he’s on. “Don’t think your story has made me forget the fact that you know where I live well enough that you know how to find it.”
“I can find anything.”
“Uh-huh… why?”
I glance at him and then at the rearview mirror. “Why indeed.”
“Asmodeus.”
I sigh. “I was always taught that everyone was out to get you—that you needed to learn everything about them before engaging with them, so if the time came that they turned their backs on you, you’d have the advantage. I just… want that advantage.”
“You think we’d do something?”
“Now? No. Back then? Maybe. Even if you do something to me now, I don’t care. You can have at it. You may use me and throw me away as you please.”
“That’s not… you’re not… Asmodeus, you do realize if one of us turned our back on you, you shouldn’t go, ‘Welp, this is my life now. I might as well let them chop my head off.’”
“Is there a reason why?” I ask.
“Of course there’s a reason why!” Ellison seems exasperated.
Is it because of our tail? Or because he’s easily flustered? I have to assume it’s that one.
“Nah!” I decide on as I turn off the main road and onto a more desolate street with factories lining it instead of houses.
Pocket Lint isn’t overly thrilled that her paws fell off when I turned the steering wheel and shows it by chittering a bit and arching her back before looking for something to bite.
I pick up the feisty ferret and put her in Ellison’s arms. “Hold the ferret,” I say as I stop the car, slip out, and shoot the two front tires of the car following us.
The driver is so alarmed that he slams on the brakes.
I strut over, prepared to blow a hole in his head, while he looks at me in horror and tries to gun the car.
I pull out a metal rod that I can use to bludgeon someone or shatter a window.
I break the window so fast the man has no time to react before I have him by the collar and drag him out through it.
He sure squeals when he hits the road where I press a foot against his neck and aim my gun between his eyes.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Ellison yells as he runs out holding the ferret. “Fuck! Why’s this thing so evil?”
He hands the ferret to me and pushes me back.
“Ah, you want to kill him. Understandable,” I say as I trade him the ferret for the gun. I aim Pocket Lint at the man on the ground like the ferret is a weapon, and she seems prepared for her new mission to assassinate this man.
“Please, don’t! Please!” the man cries.
Ellison looks exasperated. “Asmodeus… this man… is my mother’s private investigator. She uses him to look into pretty much everyone she comes across… she must have been using him to look into you. He’s pretty much harmless.”
I laugh while I threaten the man with the ferret. “You were going to investigate me? Wow, you’re pretty shitty at your job if I noticed you so quickly.”
“You fucking attacked me! Ellison, your mother was right, this guy is bad news,” the investigator says as he tries to fondle my ankle.
He’s got easy access to it from where my foot is still perched on his throat.
I’m not sure what he plans to do with it or if he thinks a few strokes will get me to release him.
It would take so little for me to crush his throat so he can’t tell Ellison the shit I’ve done. So he can’t inform everyone who’s taken a chance on me how awful of a person I am.
He seems to see something in my face that makes him stop talking, so I pull my leg back.
“Please, go ahead, tell him every horrible deed I’ve done. Just be warned that I might sic Pocket Lint the Third, Esquire on your ass if you do. She’s itching for a fight.”
I head back to the car, assuming the man is going to spill it all and Ellison will choose to stay with him, but Ellison promptly turns around.
“Ellison, you need to hear this shit about him!” the man calls.
“I don’t really need to hear anything,” Ellison says as he follows me.
I get in my car and Ellison climbs into the passenger seat before holding my gun out to me.
“Did it look like I wanted this?”
“How could you not?” I ask, setting Pocket Lint down to take my gun back.
“That thing is demonic,” he complains as he points at the white ferret.
“Maybe that’s why we get along so well,” I say while I scritch the top of her head. She closes her eyes, enjoying the attention.
“I apologize that my mother was having you looked into.”
“It’s fine. But if you want to know anything, all you need to do is ask,” I assure him. “I’m an open book.”
“You’re like one of those books someone would find in a crypt and be like, ‘Will civilization be cursed for a thousand years if I open this?’”
I laugh, loving the comparison. “The possibilities are endless.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You okay?” I ask, noticing he looks a little pained.
“Fine, I just got out of the car a bit too fast.”
“I apologize. I will ask next time someone’s following us if they were sent by your mother. Maybe our mothers have more in common than I thought. My mother sent an assassin after me to see if I was good enough for the coming-of-age trial. Yours sends them after your friends because she’s nosy.”
Ellison hesitates. “Like… to test your fighting? They weren’t actually going to kill you if you failed… right… right?”
“Oh no, it was kill or be killed for sure. She didn’t want to be disappointed in me when the trial began. Better to just cull me early in that case.”
“Did… did your mother hate you?”
“HA! Probably. We weren’t supposed to know who our parents were. I found out and I think she did what she could to make sure I never felt overly attached to her.”
“I’m starting to wonder if my own mother isn’t as bad as I thought.”
When we reach his home, I follow him inside. It’s an extremely expensive home that is very modern, even from the outside. There are a lot of windows on the first floor, which… doesn’t that just give a sniper ample opportunity to off you?
Inside, everything is black, white, or cream.
There’s no color to any part of the rooms and the stairs leading up to the second floor are made of glass.
The second floor has a thin black railing that allows people to look down on the living room since it’s completely open until one reaches the bedrooms.
Ellison waves me toward one of the rooms. The bed is perfect, corners tucked in; the towels in the bathroom are folded neatly and the toilet paper has a little V on the end. The odd thing is… I can’t quite tell whether Ellison’s stick-up-her-ass mother has it arranged like this or Ellison does.
“Please don’t let that thing wander around, it’s going to shit all over,” he says as he eyes Pocket Lint who is galloping after me.
“It’s okay, I got her litter boxes.”
“And a cage?”
“She is a free woman. She cannot be contained.”
“Do you even know if it’s a female?”
“That’s what she told me,” I say, which translates to, “I sure as fuck don’t know.”
Ellison picks up the ferret, looks her over, and hands her back. “So you speak to ferrets now.”
“Of course,” I tease, knowing that Ellison is confirming she’s female. I set her down on the floor where she takes to biting my sock.
Ellison waves me off and heads toward his room where he plans to retire early.
Pocket Lint gallops after him and tries to bite his ankles the whole way. “You damn vermin,” he hisses while he hurries away.
Pocket Lint is quite pleased with herself as she gallops back to me, and I head into the room he’s given me. It’s late, so I take a shower and then toss Pocket Lint in bed with me.
I close my eyes, but sleep eludes me, as it does most nights.