Chapter 23
“Barb!” I said as my grumpy mentor opened the door after a few rounds of enthusiastic knocking on my part. “Are you ready to get shit done?”
I put on my best smile as she stared, silently determining whether or not she wanted to let me inside even after she’d already agreed to do so.
Apparently, Lucifer cast his blessing, because she stood aside and let me in.
In true Barb fashion she didn't use any words, but I didn't get a knife to the back when I passed her so I considered it a good sign.
I plopped down on her plushy couch cushion inside. “I've got a dilemma, and I think you're just the right amount of fucked up to help. You know, since you're a technological savant or some shit.”
Barb's eye twitched like she was an anime character about to lose her shit. “Are you a child?
“Depends on who’s asking.”
“Only children with piss poor manners flop down on a couch like that. Why do you think yours is such a piece of shit?”
“Because a piece of shit owns it. Duh.” I did my best impersonation of a moody teenager and the way her lips narrows confirmed that I fucking nailed it.
Jesus would be proud.
Barb crossed her arms, clearly over my antics. Too bad for her, I was only getting started.
I pointed at her playfully and said, "You are so cute when manifesting murderous rage. I bet if you were in a nursing home, you would be the wrinkled apple of everyone's super poor vision. Or however that saying goes.”
“I have shit to do.”
“Ughhhh,” I groaned, rolling my eyes and resting my head on the back of the couch for added effect. “Fine. We'll get down to business. I need help finding a man.”
“The dead don't need therapy. Especially the evil sort. You're already in hell, Dany. What use is a clean conscience or a man to you?”
“What? No! I don't want therapy, Batty Barb. I need your fancy stalking technology to find someone so I can kill him.”
Despite her old age, Barb was the most tech savvy demon I knew. When Barb did an experiment, she didn't pick people at random. Her methods were too clinical; her experiments too complex to leave anything to chance.
Before she died, the Barbwire Butcher of New Orleans, as the tabloids named her, was notorious for stalking her victims for weeks before abducting, murdering, and leaving them for the public to find.
Her experiments were conducted from beginning to end: the victim’s lives pre-abduction, whatever fucked up theory she decided to test that day, and then the public’s reaction to her staged dump site.
She got a kick out of the way the media tried to make sense of the crimes she committed.
In the end, there was no making sense of it.
Barb was the game maker, humanity, the game.
She rolled her eyes and walked away, muttering unintelligibly under her breath. Though I couldn't make out the words, I could hear the old Cajun accent that slipped past her composure when I pushed just a little too hard.
“Fine," Barb conceded.
“Yes!”
I leapt from the couch and followed her through the living space and into her workshop, nothing but white walls and stainless steel visible along the way.
Barb's tech room looked like something from a TV show set on an alien planet in the future. Rows of monitors were positioned on desks and fastened to the walls. Her desk was U shaped with one pristine white computer chair right in the middle.
“Don’t touch anything,” she grouched, “or I'll cut your goddamn fingers off and feed them to Jesus.” She then proceeded to sit in the chair like she was the queen of fucking England, with a sort of eloquence that parts of society thought should have been impossible for the swamps of New Orleans to produce.
Ignoring her threats about feeding me to my loved one, I said “You are a true oddity Barbara. Sociopathic female extraordinaire with an IQ of 150, a moral compass that is rivaled only by the devil himself, and mannerisms that would make God weep.”
Computer keys clacked as she opened various screens. She didn't deign to look at me as she answered, "Don't call me Barbara.”
The streets of St. Louis lit up on every screen. From traffic cams to personal home security cameras, Barb had access to it all.
I knew she was good, but I didn't know she was that good.
“Alright. What and or who do you need to see?”
“Okay, so, don’t be mad…”
“Blessed Mother save me,” she sighed and rubbed her wrinkled temples.
“The funny thing about being a demon, Barb, is that she can't," I quipped.
“If I could wish for death, I would.”
“I don't think Luci would be willing to let you go at this point.”
She looked at me scandalized. "Do not call him that. He has a title, girl, and you should use it. Unless you're keen to lose what's left of your ashen soul.”
I dismissed her with a sarcastic wave of my hand. “Don’t worry about me, love bug. Satan and I have a special bond. A truce, really. He annoys the piss out of me and I call him whatever I want.”
“I don't know what sort of bond you have with the Devil but it's going to give you the final death one day.”
“Nothing has ever sounded better, Barb. When and if it happens, don't worry.
I'll request that you be the one to end me.” I patted her on the shoulder and winced, hoping it was imperceptible.
You can't show someone like Barb weakness.That was like cowering before a rabid predator. Or maybe I was just dramatic.
Too bad we would never know.
“So here’s the sitch,” I rounded back to the task at hand. “Once upon a time, a group of idiot boys decided that their trust fund no longer provided them with fun, and so they decided to explore more… Exotic forms of entertainment.”
“Mhmm,” she hummed.
“One night, they stumbled upon a super hot girl with a fat ass and the perkiest tits in town. She thought she was going on a romantic date. Instead, she was the abused piece of leather in their sport ball game.”
“Is there a point to this story? Or are you feeding me the most cliché frat boy party story in the history of white privilege?”
“Wow, Barb. That is truly a new low for you. Have you no empathy?"
“No,” she deadpanned.
“Fair enough,” I sighed, attempting to sideline my irritation. What felt like another story to her was the worst night of my life.
Whatever.
The devil was in the details and their importance wasn't hanging on her understanding.
“Long story short, a group of idiots fucking killed me and then I made a deal with Satan to return the favor.”
“Haven't you been dead for like a hundred years?”
My gaze whipped to hers and this time, the offense was not mock. “Uh, first of all, fuck you. Second of all, no, it's been more like thirty years. You and your Lancome wrinkle cream can kindly fuck off. I don't look a day over twenty-five.”
Barb’s mask of mild irritation morphed into some sort of horrid realization. “Have you not sealed your deal with King Lucifer?”
“Ew,” I sneered. “Don’t call him that. He already acts way more important than he actually is. Don't inflate his ego.”
“Dany.”
“Barb.”
“Have you not met the terms of your agreement with the devil?”
“That's what I'm trying to tell you, Barbara. I need help finding one of them.”
“How many are there?”
“Alive? One. Total? Three.”
“What was the exact deal you made with Him?”
“That's a bit personal don't you think?”
It was taboo in our world to talk about the deals struck between demonkind and Lucifer.
Most demons felt like the bond was their one personal, intimate connection with their Recreator.
I tended to disagree and, if I were the gambling sort, would bet a pretty penny that Luci felt the same way.
Our deal was a business transaction. Not a love affair.
“Perhaps to some. Not to you.”
“You sound so sure of that.”
“You have zero boundaries, Dany. Don't be coy.”
“Fine,” I conceded like it was a bother. “Three souls in exchange for eternity.”
Perplexity deepened her scowl. “But four humans died that night.”
“Yyyes,” I drew out, confused. “I literally just told you that.”
“So if four humans died that night, why do you only owe him three souls?”
“I don’t know Barb, I don’t making the fucking rules!
Maybe I never had a soul to give. Or maybe it was so worthless to Lucifer that he was nah girl, you don’t have to pay me back for that one, it was going in the garbage anyway,” I said matter-of-factly, even though I'd never actually come to terms with that. The joke tasted like acid the second it left my mouth. If mine didn’t count, it was because it never had.
It meant that I never had. Unwanted is easier to wear when no one says it out loud.
Barb started clicking away on her computer, satisfied with my information or feeling sorry for my dead-ass, the world may never know.
My stomach soured when old newspaper clippings of my death came up on every monitor.
“Runaway Teen Found Dead Years Later.”
“Murder or Misfortune?
“Coal Mine Cold Case.”
I wanted to say something sassy. To ask her how she knew my last name for the search or how she found it so quickly. Instead, I just stared.
“Brutal,” she stated, her voice so calm and clinical it knotted my insides.
I liked to forget sometimes that Barb didn't experience human emotion. Sometimes, I even liked to pretend that I couldn't either. It made moments like these easier to stomach. Usually, it worked. Tonight, however? As my past life stared down on me, I felt that deep chasm between us.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Brutal.”
Barbed hacked into the local police files and sorted through photos of my crime scene. Snapshots taken to record every angle of my death. Beer bottles and cans of Diet Coke were scattered around a broken, naked body that laid face down on a forgotten gravel road.
Vomit burned as if my new body felt the ghost of those bottles crammed so far down my throat that it forced my chin up. Old aches and bruises throbbed, and the misery of that night rode in on a phantom breeze.
“You’re dead, girl.” Barb’s voice intruded on my spiral. “Satan is a master of many things, but even he cannot manipulate time. Living in the past will do you no favors.”
“Yeah.” I wiped away a stray tear. “Thanks for the news report Captain Obvious.”
Barb didn't skip a beat. “What were their names?”
“Two of them don't matter. They had dinner with Luci a long time ago.” I tried to hide the sniffle and failed. “Callen. He’s the last one.”
“Do you have a last name?”
“Whitcomb. Callen Whitcomb.”
Her fingers flew furiously over the keyboard and it didn't take long before the tales of Callen's life were displayed like a buffet in front of us.
His face hit me before the words did. It wasn’t news that he existed.
I had seven boxes to prove that. But seeing him rendered by a living feed on the internet instead of yellowed clippings felt like a sucker punch.
All of these years, I’d kept him frozen on paper.
On Barb’s screens he was current. The camera didn’t care that I’d tried to stop time.
“Well, well,” Barb murmured around the finger rubbing her bottom lip. More clicking. More scrolling. “Oh, he’s good.”
“I'm feeling left out over here, Barb," I said impatiently because it was safer than admitting my hands were shaking.
“Antisocial personality disorder, textbook narcissism, and the ability to hide within society, completely undetected, like a chameleon.”
“We're not talking about you, Barb. We were talking about Callen.” I was only half joking. Having Barb there with me was like a comfort. If I stared too long at the screens, I’d float away in the despair Callen had left me to die in. Barb was grounding, though. And so was our reliable banter.
“Pfft,” she waved dismissively. “I'm not a narcissist.”
“I'm not a fancy psychologist like you, but I'm pretty sure that’s something a narcissist would say.”
“Piss off,” she said, her eyes still narrowed and skimming the fine details of Callen's life.
A photo snapped open on the center screen. It was Callen outside a tidy doorway; the big wooden slab was decked out in fresh garland with two festive trees on either side. Perfect white teeth shone all in a row from his big fucking smile with a pretty blonde wife on his arm.
Ordinary.
That was the part that lit the fuse. He’d built himself a life while I was fighting to stay above water in the afterlife, drawing in death and self-loathing. I hadn’t wanted to admit that it was time to face the proverbial music.
I squared my shoulders and summoned the rage that brought me to this moment.
“Alright. Let’s go catch ourselves a monster, Batty Barb.”