Chapter 8
I pulled a pillow over my chest and thought about that, refusing to react to her answer if that’s what she hoped for. Yet, the look on Trixie’s face didn’t appear as though she were pleased with Coop’s answer. She hadn’t said it for the shock value. She looked at me in all seriousness.
Knowing her penchant for bizarre answers, I tried to interpret what she meant, and it was reflected in my next question. “Do you mean you’re from a bad neighborhood, Coop?”
“Coop. I can’t let you do this. Stop. Please,” Trixie begged, her eyes growing glassy with tears.
But Coop flashed angry eyes right back at Trixie and stomped into the living room in a huff. “You said it’s wrong to lie, Trixie. I read it’s a sin on the Internet. I will not do wrong, sinful things. I’m a good person now. I will always be a good person. I promised you.”
Trixie’s sigh filled the living room when it escaped her throat. It was a weary sigh of pent-up fear. Of aggravation. Of worry. “I know what I told you, Coop. But sometimes, there are things better left unsaid—”
“Yes!” Coop intervened with more emotion than I’d seen since we’d met—more than even when she’d been put in handcuffs and arrested for a possible murder. “You told me that. But I don’t have to leave things unsaid with Stevie Cartwright, do I? She wants to know the truth. I want to tell her the truth because I know she’ll understand. I can smell she’ll understand.”
Smell… How peculiar.
I held up my hand to thwart any more disagreement and sat forward on the chair, making Whiskey lift his head and rub it on my leg. I reached down to scratch him between the ears to let him know everything was all right. “Listen, ladies. I only want to know the truth so I can help you. Luis was very clear about a few things he needs to represent you—like Coop’s last name, for starters. Sure, I’m curious. I won’t lie. There are some things that have happened today I simply don’t understand. But beyond those concerns, you could be in a great deal of trouble, Coop. I’m not sure you understand just how much. So giving me all the information is crucial to helping you. Not to mention Luis. He says you can’t be found anywhere. Not online, not anywhere. And you have no last name? Why is that?”
Trixie rocked from foot to foot, her movements jerky and nervous. If she were planning to lie about the reasons for these strange happenings, she was going to bomb. Her body language said as much.
But Coop? Yeah, Coop wasn’t nervous at all. She took Trixie by the hand and led her to the couch, pointing to the seat next to her as she sat down. “We have to tell Stevie Cartwright everything. I can tell she’ll listen and believe. I told you, I smelled it on her.”
There it was again. My smell factor.
Still, her trust astounded me, but I didn’t want to spook Trixie, who was less enthused, and I was choosing to ignore the bit about her smelling me. Coop waters were murky at best; I wasn’t ready to wade into the deep end yet.
Silence prevailed momentarily until I finally said, “Let’s start here—did you hear someone call me Stephania, Coop? Can you hear that voice…but you’re unable to see the person the voice belongs to?”
Coop looked to Trixie, who smiled at her, even though it was evident she was terrified. “It’s your story to tell, Coop. It’s up to you how you want to tell it. Just like we talked about on the car ride over. But I hope you’ll remember what I said might happen.”
Coop licked her lips but her stare never wavered. “Yes. I can hear that voice. I heard the other one, too. At first it scared me until I realized they were talking to you. You are Dove.”
Indeed, I am. “So then you’re a medium? Like me?”
What the fluff? That left me stumped. When I’d first mentioned I was a medium, she’d looked at me as though I had two heads and one eye.
“No. I’m not a medium. That’s not what my title is. I have a title.”
Her title… “What do you mean by title, Coop? Are you some kind of royalty? Like a princess or something?”
Now that I could believe. First, she was gorgeous. Whoever gave birth to her hit the lottery gene pool. Second, she held herself like someone had taught her to walk with a book on her head—long, tall and seductive.
“No. Where I come from, there’s only one ruler. The rest of us are just minions created to do his bidding. And we must do it right or we’re punished. Severely.”
My mouth fell open at that point.
“Stephania, wipe the corner of your mouth, Dove. You have a bit of wine there,” Win said on a laugh.
Coop leaned forward and did just as Win instructed, using her thumb.
But I brushed her hand off and asked, “And where are you from again?”
“I told you, Stevie Cartwright. I’m from Hell.”
Did she mean Hell, Michigan? I’d heard of it. That had to be what she meant, right?
“Do you mean like Michigan? Hell, Michigan?” Did Michigan have a ruler? Maybe in her muddled miscommunication she meant the governor or the mayor.
Coop shook her head, the curtain of her dusky red hair falling around her face. “No. I mean from down there.” She pointed to the gleaming hardwood floor.
Nope. She didn’t mean the mayor.
Swallowing, I reached for my glass of wine and took a long gulp followed by a deep, deep breath. “Okay, and what’s your title in Hell, Coop?”
“Demon.”
Forget my glass—I blinked and grabbed the entire bottle of wine. In fact, I might even hunt around for some whiskey before all was said and done, because that confession called for some hard liquor.
Instead, I took a long swig and said, “Ah. I see.”
Coop, however, didn’t miss a beat. “Unless you care to count head tattoo artist. Then I’m a demon head tattoo artist. I tattooed all new entrants to Hell with a special insignia. Everyone gets a unique tattoo so if they escape Hell, they can be caught and dragged back. Escapees make Satan very angry.”
Dragged back to Hell. Yikes. Having confirmation that Hell truly existed was one thing. Hearing all the things we fear are reality? Quite another.
Okay, look. I know I’m a witch. Er, was a witch. I know magic exists, spells, all sorts of stuff, etcetera. I know the paranormal exist, too, in a sort of “we are the paranormal world” kind of way. Meaning, I get others exist; I’ve just not met many of them.
But this? A demon? I didn’t know how to respond. So I didn’t. I just looked at Coop and blinked again.
Then I took another long gulp of my bottle of wine. Were I a smoker, I’d have lit up the whole pack.
“Do you believe me, Stevie Cartwright?” Coop asked in her straightforward way.
“I…” My mouth slammed shut. In all seriousness, how could I not believe her? I was an ex-witch, for gravy’s sake. But a demon fresh outta Hell? Rolling my head on my neck to ease the mounting pressure, I entered this new bit of information with caution. “I believe you believe you’re a demon.”
Which did not satisfy Coop. Not one bit. “I am telling you the truth, Stevie Cartwright. I do not lie, and I won’t have you say I do.” She rose, her knees bent as she spoke, her fists clenched.
But Trixie tapped her on the arm and pointed to the space on to the sofa beside her. “Coop. We talked about this. Sometimes our story’s a lot to swallow. Let Stevie digest this information, please. We can’t force this on someone. Remember?” Then she turned to me, her eyes compelling me to believe. “What Coop says is true. I’d swear on a stack of Bibles, but I suppose that’s not terribly believable since I left the church. I was a nun at a convent in Oregon, which is why Coop calls me Sister Trixie Lavender. To shorten a very long story about how all this came to be, Coop saved me from certain death by an evil spirit, and in the process, escaped Hell. We’ve been together ever since.”
“Not so different than our story, eh, Dove?”
Coop looked around the living room and settled her eyes on the ceiling. “There he is again. The man with the funny-sounding words.”
“Winterbottom,” he introduced himself. “Crispin Alistair Winterbottom. But you can just call me Win, Coop. A pleasure to meet you both, I’m sure. Please pass those words on to Trixie.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” Coop chirped and almost—not quite—but almost smiled. Win did that to a woman. Made the unsmile-able smiley.
Trixie, who clearly couldn’t hear Win, frowned and whispered to her friend, “Is he talking again?”
“Yes. He said it’s nice to meet us and I responded in kind, just like you taught me,” Coop assured, clearly pleased with herself.
I was still waiting on words to form when Trixie reached out a hand and patted my knee, her soft eyes sympathetic. “I know this all sounds crazy, Stevie, but we figured it might not sound as crazy to someone who truly can hear ghosts. You’re the first person we’ve ever told, and we’re terrified to share. But if this is too much, if we’re too much—and believe me, I get the ‘too much’ part; sometimes I don’t even know if I can handle our story—we can leave and we won’t bother you ever again.”
I ignored her offer to leave and plodded forward, trying to stick to the facts. “So that’s why Coop is so strong? Because she’s a demon?”
Trixie bounced her head, finally sliding back on the couch and settling into its deep cushions. “Yep, and we’ve talked about her strength and how people can end up seriously hurt because she’s so strong. In Hell…well, let’s just say sometimes she had to fight to keep her place. I liken it a little to prison after hearing her stories about what it was like there. It genuinely is everything we fear and more.”
Prison.
Hell.
Eep.
I know my shock was seeping into my facial expressions, but I had no clue how to stop them from doing so. Coop had lived in Hell. There was a real Hell. Like, real live fire and brimstone. My next question was to ask what despicable crime had landed her in Hell and whether or not I should be sleeping with headgear and one eye open. Yet, Coop didn’t strike me as someone who wanted to hurt you just to hurt you.
Gosh, she was complicated.
“Anyway,” Trixie continued, her voice low and soft. “Sometimes Coop forgets her own strength—especially if she feels like someone weaker is being threatened. She felt like Detective Moore was threatening you, Stevie. I have to give her credit for at least asking him to back off before she knocked him one in the kisser. She did try. She always tries, and she always will as long as we’re a team, but there was a time she would have fought him to a far greater detriment. His detriment.”
That was fair. She’d clearly asked Starsky to back off. But that wasn’t what impressed me about these two; it was the mention of them being part of a team. That’s how I felt about Win, Arkady, and Bel. We were a team. We’d had some really rough times as a team, but we’d had great ones, too. More great than rough, in fact.
And now we were this patched-together earthly/afterlife family, and we were happy. Mostly, anyway.
I wanted to tell Trixie and Coop that. Yet, all I could manage were meaningless words. “That explanation makes sense,” I muttered, still wrapping my head around this fantastical story.
“It’s also why she has no last name or can’t be found online, and why she addresses everyone so formally. She forgets it’s unnecessary to use your full name. Coop doesn’t always know how to interact with people on a social level just yet. She wasn’t taught the things we were—or should I say, you were. But she’s learning every day, right?” Trixie asked with a smile as she gave Coop one more of those reassuring pats on the back—a pat that touched me. “And she’s doing a great job, too.”
Somehow, through this crazy circumstance that had thrown them together, Trixie had ended up being Coop’s human guide to all things, well…human.
And even more ironic, Trixie was an ex-nun guiding what is perceived by most as evil incarnate. They were essentially polar opposites. Which now begged the question, why did Trixie leave the convent with, of all beings, a demon? Didn’t that go against everything she’d ever been taught by the church?
“But to be fair,” Trixie continued, making me wonder if this was a cleansing of sorts for her—a long-awaited chance to tell her story. “I’m sort of stunted in social nuances, too. I was in the convent a good portion of my late teen years right into my adult life. We didn’t learn things like popular slang and such during…prayer. I mean, who knew things like Netflix even existed? Beverly Hills 9021 would have been a whole different ball game had I been able to watch every episode available. I’d have probably stopped season three.”
I almost gasped out loud at that. I couldn’t live without my Netflix binges. How did civilized people survive?
Yet, that statement lent to still more mounting questions. I wanted to know why Trixie had left the church. But that only led to another question pile-up.
Before I could remind myself to quash my curious nature in favor of sensitivity, I blurted out, “How did Coop end up in Hell?”
If we were to go by the biblical nature of tales, you had to be evil to end up there, right? Didn’t that mean she’d done something heinous?
Trixie twisted her hands together again, meaning the explanation was going to be an unbelievable one, but her answer was tinged with seriousness. “She was created there, as are most minions.”
By the time this evening was through, my title was going to be “boozer” for all the chugalugging I was doing.
Taking another sip from my wine bottle, I asked, “Created. Meaning?”
“That means I don’t have a mother or father in your earthly traditional sense. Satan is technically my father. He created me for his sole purpose. I’m his property,” Coop provided.
His property? I didn’t know how to process that, but I can’t tell you the relief I felt knowing she hadn’t spent her life killing kittens and maiming seniors.
“So you didn’t sell your soul to him or do something horrible to end up in Hell when you died, is what you’re telling me?”
“Yes, Stevie Cartwright. That’s what I’m telling you.”
I wiped my brow, noting drops of perspiration on my fingertips. Somehow, her answer was a relief. “But then how did you get here?”
Now Coop smiled, widely, and just like everything else on Coop, it was gorgeous, magical, perfection; her entire face beamed and her eyes lit up like sparklers. “I escaped. When the evil spirit attacked Sister… Uh, Trixie, I took my chances and escaped with my friend, Livingston.”
Out of nowhere, Trixie jumped up from the couch, knocking pillows to the floor, her pretty face a mask of worry. “Livingston, Coop! Oh, gracious! How could we have forgotten Livingston? He must be starving by now. We have to go back to the store!”
I jumped up, too, and when I did, I was a little wobbly from all that wine. But I couldn’t let them drive in this weather with that old rust bucket of theirs. Looking out the tall windows in our living room, I saw the snow was still falling in white clumps. Surely the roads were slicker than snot by now.
So I gripped Trixie’s arm. “Wait, wait, wait! You can’t drive your car. It’ll never make it without snow tires or chains. Mine has chains. So you drive, Trixie, because I’ve been drinking. And who’s Livingston? Is he another demon?”
Trixie stopped all motion and bit her bottom lip. “Sort of.”
Wine made my lips a little loose, and the decorum I tried so hard to hang onto during this whole bizarre conversation slipped away. “Okay, from here on out, no more secrets, ladies. Please. We don’t have a lot of time to waste, keeping things from each other. Just tell me who Livingston is. Gargoyle? Vampire? Werewolf, maybe?”
Coop’s eyes scoured my face. “Don’t be silly, Stevie Cartwright. Vampires and werewolves aren’t allowed in Hell. Satan says they’re sketchy.”
“But he’s okay with gargoyles?” I found myself asking in wonder.
She shrugged with nonchalant shoulders. “I never asked him.”
“You know, the next time you talk to him, you might want to check,” I commented. “Surely gargoyles are perfect vessels for evil. I mean—”
“Stephania!” Win barked. “Get to the point. We have no time to waste.”
I rolled my eyes and popped my lips. “I was just being social. I mean, who am I if I don’t ask questions, Winterbutt—”
“Stephania!” he howled again with that scowl in his tone.
My sigh was ragged and executed just for Win. “Fine. So what exactly is Livingston, Coop?”
“He’s an owl. Livingston is trapped in the form of an owl. A talking owl.”