by ROCFanKat

Disclaimers: See Chapter 1.

•••

"Do something," Cassie had said. I was at a loss to imagine what. Two demons were having a knock-down, drag-out in my office, which happened to be on fire; she was pretty much all over me; and it was all exactly what it looked like.

Well, I'd wanted an interesting job.

"Is that fire?" the reporter asked, in a tiny voice.

"Yes," I said.

She was trying hard not to see Cassie, I could tell; she was looking somewhere just over my head. "Shouldn't you do something about it?"

"I don't know. I kind of like it."

Cassie sighed, but made no move to disengage herself.

"Dammit, Kerry," Jack complained, "your office is on fire. This is going to come out of your paycheck." He shouldered the TV crew aside, grabbed the coffee carafe, and nodded curtly at Monica and Vanessa. "Stand aside, ladies."

"They're not ladies," I said. "They're..."

"Administrative assistants," Kurt interrupted. "Darn pretty ones, too. Don't you think, Mr. Jenner?"

But Jenner was already gone. At the first sight of fire, he'd bolted.

Meanwhile, Jack was racing around the room, pouring coffee on everything that was burning. So much for that carpet.

Deliberately, I looked right into the lens of the TV camera. "We'll be sacrificing the virgins in a minute, Ms. Hartwell. Guess that lets you out."

"Let's not get personal," she said, suddenly bristling.

"I won't if you won't. But I'll bet you will." Against my better judgment, I let go of Cassie. "Want to tell us why you're here? Or is it a secret?"

"I'm following up on a tip. My editor wants..."

"Ratings? Well, of course he does. Nice engagement ring, by the way. It fits a lot better than the other fake one. How much did it set you back?"

Caught, she flushed pink. "It isn't..."

"Good choice. Zirconium is getting really affordable. And just think--you'll already have the ring when you meet Mr. Right. Or..." Something made me look over at Monica. She was smiling evilly, just the tips of her fangs visible. "Maybe Ms. Right. A person can never be too sure these days."

Jack, still putting out fires, dropped the carafe at that. Monica, Vanessa, and Kurt started laughing, naturally, and there was a sharp tug on the tail of my jacket from Cassie's vicinity. As for Lisa Hartwell...well, she wasn't amused.

"We've been told you consort with the Devil, Ms. Kerry," she said sharply. "We got a tip. We didn't really believe it, but now we're not so sure. How do you respond to that?"

Kurt couldn't resist. "She's got you, boss. Sleeping with women, consorting with devils, kissing TV reporters..."

"She didn't kiss her," Cassie snapped.

"But you don't deny the rest," he said happily. "Are you getting all this OK, Ms. Hartwell?"

To her credit, she ignored him. She was light on IQ, but at least she knew a camera hog when she saw it. "Do you consort with devils, Ms. Kerry?"

Monica badly wanted my attention, but I checked with Vanessa instead. Just perceptibly, she nodded. All right, then.

"Guess the jig is up," I told the reporter. "Yes, I do. Several devils, in fact."

For a second, there was utter silence in the office, except for the whir of the camera.

"Don't listen to her," Jack demanded. "She's insane. Took a bad hit on the head in a car last..."

"He's one of them," I said. "So is Jenner. And don't even get me started on Kurt here. I think he's Jack's familiar, but it's hard to..."

Cassie grabbed me, with purpose, and got between me and the camera. "Really don't listen to her. She gets like this sometimes. Where do you get off listening to Howard Abner anyway?"

"I can't reveal my sources," the reporter said primly. "But how do you explain what we saw when we walked in just now?"

Cassie tightened her grip, by way of warning. "Devvy's a writer. She was testing a concept. I tried to tell her we didn't need to set the carpet on fire, but she gets really stubborn sometimes." She punctuated "stubborn" with a fierce blue glare at me. "So you just tell Howard Abner to jam his devils, and..."

"I doubt they'd fit," I said thoughtfully.

"...get out of this office. Got that?"

The reporter shook her head. "I'm afraid I can't leave yet. Not till I get something I can use."

You could sail the QEII through the opening that left Kurt. He sailed through, of course, leaving awkward silence in his wake.

"Like I said," I told the reporter, "we're not really sure what he is."

He snorted. "Well, we sure as hell know what you are, boss."

"Kurt," Cassie warned, "I'll beat you to death with my cell phone if you say one more word."

As threats went, that wasn't much. She had the very latest, very smallest model there was; it looked like something you used to tell Scotty to beam you up. I'd told her she had reverse size envy, she'd told me I was just jealous because mine was bigger, and it had degenerated into a really stupid argument even for us.

Kurt wasn't buying it anyway. He was having too much fun. "I could say the same word about you, Cass."

The demons had been suspiciously quiet for a while. I glanced over; they were listening intently, but more like spectators than the causes of all this. A fine time for them to act normal.

"Somebody hand me my briefcase," Cassie growled. "The phone's in the key compartment."

The reporter was losing patience. "Look, I'm on deadline. Can somebody just tell me..."

"I did tell you," I said. "I do consort with devils. With demons, too. Did I leave that part out before?"

I felt the fight go out of Cassie. She sank back down on my shoulder, resigned.

"Demons?" the reporter asked, uncertain.

"Demons," I confirmed, putting an arm around Cassie. "They're a little different. They're real. You see those two women?"

Everyone looked at Vanessa and Monica--who took pains to look fabulously bored.

"They're both demons. The sulky blonde is Cassie's, and the sulky brunette is mine. They have a bet about our souls. I've slept with the brunette, by the way."

That got me a dangerous whack from Cassie, but it didn't matter. The looks on everyone else's faces were worth it.

"Monica is pretty much my fault. I repressed my sex drive for six years, so she decided to get out and make me pay for it. Hell hath no fury, and all that. I happen to like the hell she raised, so I'm not complaining. Questions so far?"

Apparently not.

"Vanessa's another story. We're not sure where she came from. Cassie isn't exactly into sexual repression, so..."

Kurt started laughing again.

"Bite me, Kurt," Cassie snapped.

"...we just work with her as best we can. So far, it's worked out fine. Cassie's demon checkmates mine, nobody goes to Hell, and it's more fun than therapy. Questions now?"

Lisa Hartwell looked to Cassie for help, but found none. "They're really demons?"

"Yes," I said.

"Can they do something on camera to prove it?"

"I can't imagine why not. They know lots of parlor tricks."

Monica gave me a resentful look. But she pointed at Kurt, and suddenly there was a possum on the carpet, trying to dig its way out of Kurt's clothes.

So that was what possums were. Not a bad look for Kurt, though; those beady eyes were all him. I watched in fascination, Cassie hanging on to me for dear life, laughing so hard that she probably couldn't have stood on her own, while the thing scrabbled out of Kurt's shirt. A few feet away, the reporter was making little strangling sounds; I figured she'd be climbing up on the desk as soon as her motor skills kicked back in.

"You could have made it uglier," Vanessa told Monica, aggrieved. "He tried to feel me up in the elevator the other day."

Monica shrugged. "I promised Devlin possums. Besides, you've kissed worse."

Vanessa huffed and puffed, but didn't actually defend herself. At the same time, Kurt started waddling toward Jack, who was frozen in horror where he stood.

"You don't think...?" Cassie asked.

I shook my head. "The other one was supposed to be Walt. But this works too."

Kurt sniffed Jack's expensive wingtips, tail twitching madly. Then he lunged up inside Jack's pants leg, thawing the man out in a flash. There was a brief terrible scene, Jack shrieking and trying to shake Kurt out of his pants leg, Kurt stubbornly holding on, before Jack tripped, hit a wall head-first, and went down cold. Kurt promptly scampered the rest of the way up his pants.

Cassie half-collapsed in delighted hysterics, gripping my shirt. Hartwell, perhaps in shock, held her ground, and the cameraman kept shooting it all like a trouper.

"That is so cheap," Vanessa grumbled.

Monica gave her a superior smile.

"Any more questions?" I asked the reporter.

She blinked a couple of times. "These are all special effects, right?"

"Oh, yes," Cassie said. "We're really good at those around here. Want to see one more?"

I didn't know about anyone else, but I'd seen more than enough for one morning. "What are you up to, Cass?"

"It's like you said, honey. We might as well be hanged for wolves." She brushed some stray hair back out of my eyes. "That's better. I want this to look good on TV. Ms. Hartwell?"

The reporter whispered to the cameraman again, and they both moved closer. "I don't believe we have your name," she said. "Would you mind..."

"Cassandra Wolfe. With an 'e.' Devvy sleeps with me now--not with the witch. Is that camera on?"

"Of course it is. Can I ask..."

"No," I said, finally catching Cassie's drift. "We're not taking any more questions. We're making a statement. You want ratings, correct? This is sweeps month?"

The woman tried to look offended. "We're in the news division. We report stories. The ratings..."

"Pay your salary, just like they pay ours. We're going to do you a professional courtesy, Ms. Hartwell. Do you remember the last time we met?"

That spooked her. But she did her best to look both brave and perfectly straight.

"Of course you do. Females who can't even remember who fathered their children remember this sort of thing. Not that I'm accusing you of anything. It's just a general comment."

"Get on with it," Cassie said, tugging me closer.

"It's not even just you, Ms. Hartwell. It's everyone. Two actresses kiss on prime-time TV as a ratings stunt, and the country comes to a screeching halt. You'd think nobody had ever thought of it before in real life. The hell of it was, that wasn't even a kiss. This is a kiss."

Cassie met me more than halfway, in the spirit of demonstration. Regrettably, the demonstration got out of hand, so we didn't quite hear the crash until a while later.

Lisa Hartwell turned out to have been what crashed; she was passed out cold on the floor. That was about right. It pretty much completed the picture: scorched carpet, bodies on the ground, and something furry scavenging in Jack's trousers. I was impressed by the cameraman's control; he was still rolling. My guess was that he'd done military service, or jail time.

"This'll get on the 6:00 news?" I asked.

He didn't answer for a second, busy panning over the room. "Yep."

"And you'll make sure she gets back to the station in one piece?"

"Yep."

A man of many word. Oh, well, we were done here.

"I move that we adjourn," I said. "Let's go see Jenner. I think it's time to show him the diversity ad. One of the demons here want to do something about Kurt?"

"What for?" Cassie asked.

"I'm not carrying that thing upstairs. Look where it's been."

"Humans," Monica grumbled. But she fixed a hard red stare on Jack, and the possum crawled back out of his pants. Then she pointed at the creature, and it turned back into Kurt. Only trouble was, his clothes were in a pile on the other side of the room.

It took a few seconds for him to figure out his predicament. Maybe he was still fuzzy from being a possum. But finally, he did--and then yelped, snatched up his clothes, and hightailed it out of the office.

Out in the hall, we heard female screams, followed by howling laughter.

"This has been a really interesting day so far," I told Cassie. "Ready for Jenner?"

"This is the Laurel-and-Fucking-Hardy part, right?"

"Right."

She smiled and took my arm. "Ready."

•••

(c) 1999, ROCFanKat

Continued - Part 19