Infernal Town

Sunday morning the five of them ate brunch at O'Hara's Tavern: Brenda Carville, her husband Sam, her daughter Alice, her friend Saffy Harwell, and Saffy's mother Ginger.

They were on the restaurant side, which was the larger of the two big rooms that made up O'Hara's. The other part was the bar side, and Alice and Saffy, being over 18 but under 21, were not allowed in that part of the tavern.

"Don't you agree, Sam?"

"Absolutely," Sam said, without giving any impression that he'd been listening. He had been watching the two big screens on the wall, one showing a college basketball game, the other an English soccer match. "Don't know why they bother showing soccer," he added, in the tone of a man reinforcing his agreement with his wife. "There aren't very many foreigners in Shadow Creek."

"I was talking about the library," Brenda said. "They seem to be getting more and more books about demons. Wanda claims she's just responding to what circulates, but surely there has to be more to the collection than that? I mean, they have two copies ofSilas Marner, but who reads that? By choice, anyway. I can't believe those are there because they get checked out all the time. No, a library has to have standards."

"I likedSilas Marnerokay," Saffy said. "Way better thanLook Homeward, Angel."

"OrBabbitt," Alice said. "I mean, who wants to read a book about a dull businessman." She shot a glance at her father.

"Reading dull books in school is part of what school is about," Brenda said. She chose not to acknowledge Alice's sly glance, while inwardly agreeing that her husband was a Babbitt if there ever was one. "But you can't tell me they get checked out much. And yet, those are the kind of books that belong in the library. The classics."

"But you mostly read bestsellers, right, Mom?" Alice asked.

"Well, those belong too. And books on how to do things. And history. And biography. But not demonology."

"Or romances?" asked Alice.

"Romances are fine," Brenda said, seemingly reluctantly.

"Because I noticed you got a couple more books by Sister Voluptua the other day."

"She's a very good writer," Brenda said, defending her choice. "Very, um, evocative. I don't read them because they have demons in them. I read them in spite of that."

"Sure Mom," Alice said. She looked past her mother, and her eyes widened. It was all she could do not to say, "Speak of the devil."

Two demons walked into the restaurant. One of them she knew. Malphas. He was nearly seven feet tall, and the fact that he was wearing an open-necked white shirt that showed off his fire-engine red, muscular chest didn't distract from his handsomeness at all. The other was a woman who looked short next to Malphas but towered over everyone else. She was gorgeous, with long black hair, lustrous candy-apple red skin, and a figure that managed to have both curves and leanness to it. She walked effortlessly in five-inch heels, which may have been the most amazing thing about her.

The waitress, a girl named Verity who had been two years ahead of Alice in high school, did a double take. Verity had been a brunette a few years ago, but her hair was in a short, blonde bob today. She recovered herself enough to guide the demons to a table.

Brenda was going on, oblivious, her back to the newcomers. "I mean, why can't they stay in the big cities? Or California? Why do they have to be here?"

Saffy giggled.

"That's funny?"

"Well it's just because -" Saffy started.

Alice cut her off. "Mom, if you were friends with someone, who maybe wasn't very popular, but you were good friends, but it would be like embarrassing to be seen with them in public, would you like ignore them when other people were looking, and pretend you didn't know them, or would you go talk to them and let people see that?" Alice knew full well what her mother would do. She was also pretty sure what her mother would say, and they were not the same thing. Either way, Brenda Carville would do or say whatever made her look the best.

"Well, of course I'd acknowledge my friend," she said.

"Glad to hear it," Alice said, getting up.

"Where are you going?" Brenda asked.

Alice didn't respond. Instead, she walked toward the demons' table. Brenda had to swivel in her chair to see. Once Alice's back was to her mother, she unbuttoned a couple of buttons on her blouse, to show a little cleavage. From what she'd read on the internet, demons liked boobs.

"Hi," Alice said when she got to the table where the infernals sat. "I don't want to annoy you, but I just wanted to make sure you felt welcome, too."

"Ah," said Malphas, showing his bright white teeth. "Alice, this is Lilitu. Lilitu, Alice."

"Pleased to meet you, darling," Lilitu said, reaching out and touching the back of Alice's hand.

A pleasant shiver went up Alice's spine at the contact. Male or female, demons were sexy. "Likewise," she said.

And then Brenda was standing next to her. "Hello," she said, neutrally. "I'm Alice's mother. How exactly did you come to know my daughter?"

Saying, "The same way Adam came to know his wife," would not be a good move, so Alice didn't say it, instead pursing her lips so that no words would come out.

"Oh," said Malphas. "We just happened to be in the same place and ended up talking."

"Talking about what?" Brenda asked. "Surely you don't have much in common with someone so young."

"Actually," Lilitu said, "I don't think she's that much younger than we are. A few years, maybe."

"Well, you look a lot older," Brenda said.

"Mom!" Alice said. "How would you like it if someone said that to you?"

Brenda glared at Alice. And noticed the unbuttoned buttons, if her deepening frown was any indication.

"She's your mother?" Lilitu said. "That can't be. She doesn't look a day over thirty."

Oooh, nice.She looked over at her mother, who was smiling for the first time.

"Well, really," Brenda said. "I do try to take good care of myself."

"Oh," Lilitu said, "Well whatever you're doing, keep it up. You look positively..." she lingered over the word.

"Yes?" Brenda prompted.

"Kissable."

Ugh. Gross.

"Well, I," Brenda began, unusually flustered. "I'm flattered, but I'm a married woman."

"So am I," Lilitu replied. "If you like, our husbands can watch." She winked. "I bet you and I could put on quite a show." She looked Brenda in the eye, and then lowered her gaze, making a point of looking her over from head to toe, and then back up again. "Oh my yes."

While she did that, Malphas took Alice's hand, and kissed it. He used his tongue, which Alice would normally think more than a bit gross, but the knowledge that his saliva contained demonol, the chemical that aroused and enhanced pleasure, made her not mind at all.

He winked at her. She winked back.

"I'm not a lesbian," Brenda said.

"That's an odd name," Lilitu said. "Pleased to meet you, Not-a-lesbian. I'm Lilitu. This is Malphas."

"Brenda Carville," Brenda said. She grabbed Alice's hand, not the one that Malphas licked. "We'll be rejoining our family now." She pulled Alice back to the table.

Surreptitiously, Alice licked the back of her hand. She doubted that little bit of demonol was enough to do anything, but if it could, whatever it did would be more effective if it wasn't just sitting on her skin.

"Where," Brenda said, once they were sitting down, "Did you meet those two?"

"Just Malphas," Alice corrected. "I didn't know Lilitu until now."

"Don't dodge the question." She looked at Saffy with suspicion and then turned her gaze back to Alice.

"Where?"

"At school," Alice lied.

#

Brenda asked Ginger to take Sam and Alice home after brunch. She had errands to run, she said, and she needed the car.

"It's not like you not to plan ahead," Sam said. "We could have taken two cars."

Brenda shrugged.

She drove six blocks and parked behind the library. But the first errand was a wash. The library was closed on Sundays, and Wednesdays. She knew that, she just forgot about it. She had to walk around the building, all dressed for church, not that she'd gone, just that on Sundays she thought it was how a respectable woman dressed. She had on a floral dress with a sweetheart neckline that showed just a wee bit of cleavage, and her makeup was immaculate.

She didn't bother to look to see who was looking when she stormed into the Church of the Infernal Angels. She figured if anyone could see, they could tell she was full of righteous indignation.

Devoted looked around at her entrance. She was standing on top of a ladder, putting up little lights around the sanctuary. "Ah," she said. "I thought you'd be back. Do you yearn to serve?" The little harlot had on a dress whose only purpose seemed to be to show as much of her chest as legally allowable, and was very short, as well.

Brenda walked forward. "Can the crap," she said. "I want to know what you were doing setting up my daughter with a demon from hell." She stopped when she got to the bottom of the ladder, and stared. "You're not wearing panties."

Devoted descended. "I don't, usually. I want to always be available for our masters. Of course, when it's that time of the month, I make an exception. No, Mrs. Carville, I did not set your daughter up with a demon from hell."

"I don't believe you."

Devoted shrugged. How her breasts managed to stay in the dress when she did that, Brenda could only imagine. Specifically, she imagined fashion tape. Still, it was hard not to stare at the potential wardrobe malfunction.

"You deny she was here Saturday afternoon? Because I know she was."

Devoted shrugged again, but this time Brenda thought she was intentionally trying to repeat the effect. Her boobs bounced. "I neither deny nor confirm, as they say. If you want to know who is attending services on Saturdays, there's one obvious way to go about it."

"Which is?"

"Attend."

"I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Well, people would talk."

Devoted smiled. "When Sartre said that hell was other people, he wasn't advocating introversion. He was talking about the way we let other people's expectations curtail our own radical freedom. Truly, to worry about the expectations of others, and to try to live up to them rather than make our own choices, is a kind of bondage."

"L'enfer, c'est les autres," Brenda said.

"Hmm?"

"It sounds better in French. The original, you know."

"Ah. Yes." Devoted moved into Brenda's personal space. "There are French things I like," she said. "Kissing, for instance."

Brenda backed up. "Better save that for your infernal masters," she said.

Devoted smiled. "Oh, they like watching a little girl-girl action now and then, and I like to keep in practice."

What was worse, her daughter with a demon, or her daughter with this tramp? The demon, Brenda thought, but only by a little bit. She tried to regain the advantage. "As I said, I know she was here."

Devoted's smile didn't waver. "I enjoy knowledge. Is there anything else you know that you'd like to share with me?"

Brenda glared. "She was here with Saffy and met that demon. Malphas. The demons were in O'Hara's this morning, for brunch."

"Well," Devoted said, "I would have been rather surprised if they'd been in church. So they were eating food. That seems harmless. Why are you so obsessed, Brenda?"

"Obsessed?"

"With our masters. Is it that they are so big and virile? Is it their huge cocks? Is it imagining what that tail might get up to?"

"It has nothing to do with any of that. I think it's perfectly fine if they want to live by themselves, in a big city maybe. I just want them to keep their hands off my daughter."

Devoted smirked. "Where would you like your hands, Brenda?"

"I resent your implication."

"It's just been my experience that the ordinary heterosexual, for instance, doesn't care about gay people one way or the other. They just don't think about them. But the bi-curious, but repressed person? He or she ends up worrying about what 'the gays' are up to constantly." Devoted shrugged. "And you strike me as a little like that. Demons do not come from hell, Brenda. They are humans who have been elevated to become something stronger, smarter, better. And of course, more well-endowed."

"That's ridiculous," Brenda told her. "I'm here about my daughter."

"Because you think your daughter has been with an infernal."

"Been with? You make it sound like she -"

"That's what you're worried about, isn't it? We have to name our fears, Brenda, bring them into the light."

"I'm sure Alice wouldn't do any such thing."

"If you were sure, you wouldn't be here. Do you think you can stop it?"

"Of course I can, I'm her mother."

"A young woman, and the siren's call of the forbidden? And forbidden by whom, Brenda?"

"Don't evade responsibility. You can't say I drove her to this, just by telling her it was a bad idea."

"Well," Devoted said softly. "In this we are allies, because I'd be the first to tell her she shouldn't do something just because her mother disapproves. If I were ever to talk to your daughter, that is. What does she look like?"

Devoted's face looked almost too innocent, thought Brenda. Well, as innocent as a woman could look with an anatomically correct demon on an over-exposed silicone-enhanced breast.

Brenda took one more look at that demon tattoo. They really did have cocks that big. She'd seen Malphas fucking Devoted. He was huge.

At least she assumed it was Malphas. There could be two male demons in town. They all looked alike, pretty much.

"You can touch them, if you like," Devoted said.

"I wasn't staring at your breasts!"

"Could have fooled me," Devoted replied.

"Oh, fine." Curiosity overcame Brenda. She reached out and groped. They were, as she expected, unnaturally firm, but they still gave a little. And Devoted's skin was very soft, and smooth. Very nice skin. She pulled back her hand, having lingered more than was necessary to satisfy her curiosity about silicone, in case she wanted to get some work done sometime. "Happy now?"

"Oh," said Devoted, "That was for your benefit. Now when an infernal touches me there, it's heaven."

Brenda stared at her. "I don't think heaven is quite the right word," she said.

"Do you believe in God, Brenda?"

Brenda biinked. "What does that have to do with it?"

"If you don't believe in all of that, why are you so concerned because some people are red, and look like the bogeymen from a religion you don't have faith in? Why are you letting other people tell you how to react to them?"

Brenda didn't know how to respond to that, so she turned on her heel and stormed out the way she came.

She called Mayor Rhoden.

"Mrs. Carville!" he said. "What a delightful surprise. What can I do for you?"

His wife must be with him, or he would have called her Brenda. "I need an address," she told him.

"You what?"

"An address. The town librarian, Wanda Gonzales. She's in the directory of city employees, right?"

"I suppose. Brenda - Mrs. Carville - you could have called anyone up to get an address."

"Yes, but I called you. Just get it for me, okay? I'll let you play with my breasts later."

"I would want more than that," he said.

"It's just an address, Peter. Don't push your luck."

She got to her car and waited in it while the mayor searched for what she wanted. Finally, he gave her the address.

"Thanks," she said, and hung up. There was no sense in talking to him with his wife around, anyway. Better to conduct business when he didn't have to watch his words so much. If he slipped up it would be bad for both of them.

She drove to Wanda Gonzales' house, which was in one of the little developments near the town center. The sort of place where factory workers lived. Brenda didn't often go to that part of town, but she didn't think it was unsafe, exactly. Shadow Creek was not New York. It didn't have slums or ghettos.

Well, maybe most of the people who lived here were Irish or Latino, but that wasn't the same. Not everyone could be a Dalton or a Carville.

She made sure no one was too close, and then she walked swiftly from the car to knock on Wanda's door.

Wanda greeted her. She wore a snug T-shirt and shorts. Brenda was used to seeing her look more professional, but she supposed it was her day off. Perhaps she hadn't been to mass, either, or whatever they called it. Or she'd changed afterward.

"Hello Brenda. What a surprise. Come on in," Wanda said. "I wasn't expecting you."

"I should have called," Brenda said, not meaning it. She stepped inside and looked around. Such a small place, but neat. The living room had two bookcases. Brenda walked over and scanned the titles. If Wanda actually read all those books, she had a very eclectic taste. Physics, Evolutionary Biology, old Cherry Ames books, Chaucer, and ah, a few of Sister Voluptua's romances.

"May I get you a drink?" Wanda asked.

"A martini would do," Brenda said.

"I don't have any gin. Or vermouth."

"Well, I'm not going to drink straight vodka," Brenda said. "What do you have?"

"I have Coke. And rum."

"Fine. Add a little lime juice, it makes it more sophisticated."

Brenda went back to looking over Wanda's book collection while Wanda mixed drinks. A complete collection of Harry Potter. Some mysteries. A few Russian novels. Nothing incriminating, really.

After handing Brenda her drink, Wanda gestured to her that she could sit in the room's one chair, and plopped herself down on a sofa that had seen better days. Once Brenda was seated, Wanda asked, "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Brenda hadn't gotten much out of Devoted by bluffing, but if at first one doesn't succeed, try, try again. "I know my daughter was at the Infernal Angels service Saturday. And that you were, too."

Wanda stared for a moment, and then said casually, "Well, it is a free country after all. One can't help but be curious."

Bingo. "And Alice met a demon there."

"Yes," Wanda said, with the voice of someone who senses a trap.

"And then she went home with you, supposedly."

"Not supposedly. She and Saffy were shopping. I thought I might have some old things that would fit Alice, so I took her here to show them."

"But she and Saffy weren't shopping. They were attending the ritual."

"Just a service," Wanda said.

"A service. Ah, yes, Devoted is very big on service, isn't she," Brenda said sarcastically. And then she stopped.

A key was turning in lock on the front door. Now who would have a key to Wanda's place? A boyfriend? Well, no big surprise that Wanda was dating someone. She was an attractive young woman. Brenda wondered what her boyfriend made of her going to infernal services.

Wanda looked scared. Well, whatever made her nervous was worth sticking around for. Brenda looked over her shoulder at the new arrival.

He was big, tall, and red. He had ram like horns, just like the demon in O'Hara's. Malphas. And he had a key to Wanda's apartment.

"Well hello Brenda," the demon said. "This is unexpected. Twice in one day."

"You two know each other?" Wanda asked.

"We met this morning. Did I come at a bad time?"

Wanda hesitated and then slowly shook her head. "There is no bad time, when it comes to you." She got up and put her arm around his waist. He put his arm around hers. "We were just talking about you."

Brenda stood up. "I want you to have nothing to do with my daughter," she told Malphas.

Malphas raised his eyebrows. "Your daughter is an adult and can make her own choices."

"In return," Brenda said, "I won't say anything about you and Wanda."

"Ah," said Malphas. "How generous of you." He looked at Wanda.

"Don't let her blackmail you," Wanda told him.

"Blackmail!" Brenda said, trying to sound scandalized. "I didn't make a threat. I simply made an offer of discretion."