Monster - A. Lee Martinez [7]
Monster waved to Hardy and pulled into the street. “Little much, wasn’t that?” asked Chester. “Hey, I owed him one. Last week he sprayed my underwear with chupacabra pheromones, remember?”
“And two weeks before that you replaced all his grimoires with Dr. Seuss books, if I recall correctly.”
“Only because he phoned in that false gryphon call to keep me from scoring that cockatrice bag.”
“And, if I remember correctly, a month before that, you—”
“Hey, I owed him one for the pheromones, and that’s that.”
“I suppose it would be a waste to remind you of the dangerously cyclical nature of these kinds of feuds.”
Monster pulled the three yeti fangs he’d managed to scavenge from the Food Plus Mart and stuck them in the ashtray, smiling. “You suppose right. Not least because I don’t know what the hell cyclical means.”
Three scores in one call was an unexpected windfall. He wondered if the Food Plus Mart might be a hot spot. A change in architecture or street names could create an imbalance in the flow of magic, but usually the Bureau of Geomancy was on top of that sort of thing. He decided it must’ve been a fluke. Even in the world of magic, shit just happened sometimes.
Half past six in the morning, he decided to call it a night. One of the advantages of being his own boss. He had enough cash in his pocket and figured he’d wait to drop his bags in the afternoon. For now, he was just tired and ready to get some sleep.
It wouldn’t be as simple as that. Liz would be waiting. She was always waiting. But it was either go home, sleep in his van, or get a motel room. His back was achy, and even fleabag motels cost money that he’d rather not spend.
He parked the van outside the house and sat there for a while, just looking at it. The lights were on. Liz didn’t sleep. Demons didn’t need to, and Liz was all demon, dragged up from the Pits. He’d dragged her up himself.
Demons were like people. They came in a lot of varieties. Though they were always evil or self-serving or, at the very least, obnoxious, they weren’t all the same. On the surface Liz was warm, intelligent, and charismatic. She was also part succubus and had the perfect body to show for it. There were a lot of good things about having a succubus for a girlfriend. She cooked. She cleaned. She had a job at Sin Central Incorporated that brought in more money than he made, and she never bugged him about playing too many video games. And there was all the sex too.
But there was a real downside to having a succubus for a girlfriend. Little things such as spitting fire, superhuman strength, that slight brimstone scent that no amount of air freshener could ever quite mask no matter how many gallons of aerosol artificial pine stench she sprayed over everything. And there was all the sex too.
“If you hate coming home so much,” said Chester, “why don’t you just break up with her?”
He’d tried once. There were still scorch marks on the ceiling, and he’d had to buy a new television after she’d melted the old one. She hadn’t hurt him. She never would, though she could’ve killed him easily enough. In her own way, she loved him, and he cared for her too. They just weren’t a good couple.
But they were stuck with each other. He kept her out of the Pits, and she kept from tearing him to pieces as per the scorned woman clause of their contract. He reminded himself that should he ever find a way to escape this relationship, he would never again answer a personal ad in the Weekly Underworlder.
“See you tomorrow, boss.”
Chester folded himself into a palm-size square. Monster stuck the paper in his pocket and went inside.
Liz was sitting on the couch. She didn’t look up as he entered, just kept reading her Cosmo.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey,” she replied. “How was work?”
He grunted. “I made some spaghetti, if you’re hungry.”
He grabbed