Heaven can Wait Read online

  "I think it was those vampire twins that eventually did it."

  I could only smile back because his grin was infectious, even though what he was telling me was pretty sad.

  "That doesn't explain why you are back in here," I said.

  He was getting over his funk and I used a finger under his chin to lift his eyes back to my face.

  He gave me an 'I can't help myself' look. "My licence allows for me to reside at one address only. Since Chandra kicked me out and I cannae stay anywhere else out there . . ." He gestured around. "I end up back here 'till she either takes me back or my new application goes through. I'm open to bets on which'll come ‘round first. But enough aboot me, what're you doing back here?"

  I told him very briefly about what had brought me back to the Zone, and even more briefly about why Selene was here, since I only had what she had told me about that to go on.

  "I can understand why you’re here, you’ve always been kindae soft. Side-effect of havin’ all those morals drummed into yae up there, no doubt." All of his no’s were noo’s as usual and he did that Scottish roll on his R’s. "But Selene doesn’t usually put herself out unless there’s something in it for her."

  I could only agree, Selene and altruism did not go together. She wasn’t a bounty hunter because she wanted to round up rogue demons and other miscreants who had managed to evade the human hunter teams. She was in it for the money.

  But I was still angry at Selene, more so since she hadn’t turned out to be following me to apologise after all. That last was probably unfair but I was was angry. So: "I don’t care what her motives are. Perhaps she’s just checking up on the competition."

  "I heard you two arguing," Fluvius told me. "You know you need to work this out between you."

  "Why? Whatever moral compass Selene works by is totally screwed."

  "And maybe yours needs to be recalibrated to function properly down here. Things aren’t always black and white, good and evil. This place is smack in the middle. We’re right between Heaven and Hell, and you need to recognise that. The rules we all play by are different."

  It was strange to hear Fluvius spouting philosophical at me.

  "Besides, you’ll destroy all my fantasies of being the meat inside your lady sandwich if you stay mad at each other."

  Now that was more like it.

  Laughing at the outrage that had to be on my face the gremlin turned and scampered off. "See you around, lassie."

  I could suddenly empathise with how Halberd must have felt earlier at my teasing. I would have to apologise. I would have to apologise to a few people.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I left the Zone and headed for home. I was stopped by the police twice on my way home. On the first occasion the officers had given me a quick search and sent me on my way telling me I was lucky they weren’t taking me in since I was out after the curfew. It was likely that the only reason they had let me off at that was because I was on my way back from working for Detective Braun. See, I am adapting to life on Earth, I can stretch the truth with the best of them.

  The second time I was stopped it was right outside my building. I was blinded by the headlights of the police car standing with my hands on the top of my head just like the officers instructed.

  "Okay put your arms down nice and slowly, Ms Jones."

  I blinked past the tears the light had brought to my eyes and saw the police officers who had driven me home the other day coming towards me. Both officers had their weapons up and aimed at me. One of the officers, I still hadn’t had any introductions and I couldn’t make out their numbers so I settled for identifying them as thick and thin, thick nodded to thin and settled into a covering position. Thin holstered his weapon and approached me from a direction that left thick with a good firing angle on me. Thin proceeded to pat me down, keeping his body always at an angle that left his partner free to fire if necessary and his own gun on the other side of his body from me. His hands seemed to spend altogether too much time checking my rear-end, my breasts and even cupping the front of my jeans between my legs. I wanted to tell him to piss off, but his partner was grinning down the barrel of his gun at me. It wasn’t like anyone would even believe me if I made, or rather tried to make, a formal complaint. These cops would back each other up and nobody who mattered was going to take the word of a non-human over that of a couple of fine upstanding policemen.

  So I endured the touching up without a sound. Not because I was being brave or stoic, but because there was nothing else that I could do.

  When thin had apparently had his fun he stepped away from me and nodded over at thick. It seemed a nod was a universal method of communication for cops and had any number of interpretations.

  "Nothing."

  He sounded sort of disappointed, apparently he had been checking me as well as groping me.

  "Doesn’t matter," thick said. "It’s past curfew and she’s on the streets. That’s enough to bring her in all on its own."

  I tried the same approach as I had on the first pair of cops to try and haul me away. "I was just on my way back from the Zone. I was looking into leads to help on the case Detective Braun brought me in on."

  "Word is that that case is under NIRU jurisdiction now. They’re calling the shots and one of those shots is to get rid of your involvement."

  I shrugged. "I hadn’t heard about that." Even better, a full blown lie, Fluvius and Selene would be so proud of me. Of course it was easy enough to lie when I knew it was in a good cause and the people I was lying to were as big a set of jerks as this pair.

  Thin looked at thick. "What do you want to do?"

  I looked at thick who it appeared got to make all of the decisions for this pair.

  For the longest time I thought thick was going to tell him to cuff me and bring me in, but in the end he just shook his head. "The bitch ain’t worth the paperwork."

  He concentrated on me giving me his best cop stare, it wasn’t all that impressive. The trouble was the cops who couldn’t intimidate by their presence alone tended to rely on force instead and I didn’t want to do anything that would aggravate these guys into giving me a beating, or worse.

  "But, don’t you take this lightly, bitch," at least it made a change from freak, "We catch you out again after curfew without an escort and we’ll run your freak ass in." He reverted to the wholly unoriginal insult after all.

  I took that as my permission to leave and had to fight not to run up the steps to my apartment. I knew they were watching me again and I had a very good idea of what thin was thinking at least while he did. At least his greasy hands had had to make do with feeling me up outside my clothes. It didn’t really make it any better.

  I almost didn't notice the writing on the door and front wall of my apartment I was in that much of a hurry to get away from thick and thin. I spotted the graffiti because part of it passed right over the lock where I was attempting to insert my key.

  I took a step back so that I could take in the scrawl. It was about as original a piece of work as thick had managed with his insults. It read; 'Humans against FREAKZ' and 'Freak go home'. Maybe thick had even been the author of these messages, and maybe not. There were no shortage of bigots in this world and this wasn't the first time they had targeted me.

  I didn't react to the graffiti, I kept myself together until I was inside. I closed the door, making doubly sure that all of my locks were securely in place. And then I just stood there for a moment leaning my back on the inside of the door. It took a few seconds like that, just standing there breathing, to make sure I was composed. I had developed a pretty thick skin since I started living here, but sometimes it was harder than others.

  When I had gathered myself together, or as together as I could manage for the moment, I moved further inside. I wanted a bath. I wanted to let the hot water cleanse me of my argument with Selene, I wanted it to rid me of the feeling of rejection the graffiti conjured up against all my better intellectual reason. Most of all I wanted the sea
ring liquid to burn across my skin and take the memory of the thin cops busy hands and the thick one’s bad attitude.

  The quiet rumble in my stomach urged me to consider that there was another activity I should consider performing before I indulged by desire to wallow my troubles away. Food. I took myself into the narrow corridor that served as my kitchen and had a look for something to eat. What with one thing and another I hadn’t gotten around to doing any shopping in the last couple of days, violent crimes tend to take my mind off that sort of thing. There was an old newspaper in the waste bin at the end of the kitchen so I fished it out and flicked through looking for adverts for take-aways in my area.

  I ripped the page out of the paper and went over to the phone. There wasn’t a menu with the advert, it was little more than a name address and contact number, but it was a pizzeria how complicated could it be to get a pizza?

  As it turns out it can be plenty difficult. I gave them a call and everything seemed to be going well, I was well on my way to having an individual vegetarian elite with a side order of fries and a free portion of garlic bread, delivered within half an hour or I got it for half price. I was going to be getting that until I gave them my address. There was a moments hesitation on the other end of the line.

  "Is anything wrong?" I was well within their delivery area.

  The woman on the other end read me my address back and asked me to confirm it.

  "Yes, that’s right." I couldn’t keep my annoyance out of my tone, that was all right though because when the woman replied hers was worse.

  "That address is registered as a non-human residence. We don’t deliver to non-human residences after sundown. No exceptions."

  "What?"

  My exasperated comment was wasted on thin air because the woman at the pizzeria had already hung up.

  I cradled the receiver in my hand for sometime, I honestly can’t say how long it was because my mind was far away. Eventually I set the phone down. I crumpled up the newspaper but seemed unable to gather the energy needed to throw it at the far wall, as had been my intention when I screwed the scrap up in my hand. In the end I just let my arm flop over the side of the settee/bed and the ball of paper roll out of my hand. It left my fingers and made a leisurely drop to the floor. It bounced once and rolled out of sight under the bed.

  I wasn't really watching it because I wasn't really watching anything. My eyes were open and I could see well enough, it was just that my brain didn't seem to want to take anything in right then. Operating purely on a sort of autopilot I got off the bed and went into the bathroom. The next thing I know I am seated on the toilet lid looking at a bathtub that is about thirty-seconds away from overflowing. I stopped the taps and let some of the water out so that it wouldn't overflow when I got in. I was out of my clothes before I could even remember starting to strip.

  I carefully slid my way into the bath, I had left it a bit too full so there was a small amount of spillage when I sank fully into the water but I was past caring.

  That was when the tears came and I was adding to the water level myself. I could hold up a brave front pretty well but sometimes it was just too damn much effort.

  I let the tears come and dropped my head back so that they would disappear into the water surrounding me. If only it was that easy to be rid of their cause.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I had fallen asleep in the bath. My plug must not quite fit the hole because the water didn't even reach halfway up my body anymore. I had a heck of an ache in my neck and my shoulders, especially the small nubs on my shoulder blades, and the water was cold, but it was neither of those things that had awakened me.

  "Hey. You know it's dangerous to go to sleep in the tub."

  I was aching I was cold and I was a little bit embarrassed, but I wasn't mad at Selene anymore, at least not for last night. Events since then had put things into a better kind of perspective for me.

  "Don't you have any respect for a person’s privacy?" I snapped. I wasn't still mad for last night but I was getting pretty sick of entertaining visitors every time I took a bath.

  Selene grinned, apparently she wasn't still angry either.

  "If you slept in your bed instead of the bath tub . . ."

  I held up a hand. "Whatever. Look, would you mind going outside for a minute and let me get out of here."

  Selene looked long and admiringly at my naked form. "I don't mind if you stay like that."

  I didn't want to but I blushed. "Well I do mind. It's freezing in here."

  Selene was looking at my chest. "I can tell."

  That was enough. I got out of the bath and wrapped myself in a towel. I grabbed a second towel for my hair and bustled Selene out.

  "What do you want?"

  The currently red-haired half-demon dropped into a lounging position on my bed. She picked up a supernatural journal from the floor at the side of the bed and started flicking through it.

  "Well?" I asked again, standing there dripping under my towel.

  Selene dropped the journal slightly so that she could see me over the top of the publication.

  "I thought you wanted to get dried." She raised her eyebrows. "And to get . . . decent."

  "You can speak to me while I'm doing that."

  "I wouldn't want there to be any distraction," Selene said, still regarding me over the top of the journal.

  I tilted my head to the side, causing a slight unbalancing of the towel and my hair wrapped above my head. "I think I can listen well enough while I'm getting dried and dressed."

  Selene was still staring at me. "Perhaps you are not the one I am concerned about being distracted."

  She spoke in a softer tone than she had used before and I wasn't entirely sure that I had heard her correctly. One look at her face and I knew that I had.

  Sometime coward that I am I didn't ask for an explanation.

  I stood there dumbstruck and I don't know exactly what was showing on my face.

  Selene gave me a sort of half nod, so subtle that I doubted that that was what the gesture was almost as soon as it had passed. She raised the journal back up and her face was hidden from view. Still, I gathered a selection of clothes and took them back into the bathroom with me for some privacy.

  As soon as I had the door closed I leaned heavily on the bathroom wall. I was sort of used to Selene's casual attitude towards sex and relationships. But our relationship had never gone down that track. Back home there was no such thing as casual sex, we had all of the requisite parts but living up there the sexual urges never developed. I knew too well from personal experience that once one left the serenity of the environment up there all sorts of feelings, urges and desires would be awakened.

  I had been affected by all manner of needs and desires brought on by my extended stay in the mortal realm. I could admit, if only to myself, that I had even thought about what Selene had brought up. I wasn't a naturally sexual sort of a person, I could play that role a little but it wasn't me. But being around someone like Selene . . .

  I shook my head to try and clear it. I was still feeling drained from last night and I was confused. I had managed to control myself before, I hadn't given in to any of the violent, sexual or other impulses that had hit me before and I wasn't going to let my confusion make me give into them now.

  I hurried up the drying and dressing process, realising too late that in my hurry to get away Selene’s general vicinity I hadn’t made the best choices of garments. There was nothing wrong with the skirt and blouse I had chosen, the skirt was a bit too short and showed much too much leg for the conservative outfit the blouse had been bought to go with but together they didn’t look bad. The main problem came with the underwear I had selected. The crimson bra would show through the almost sheer pale blue blouse and look totally out of place. The panties wouldn’t be a problem since I had no intentions of flashing my knickers to anybody, whatever confusion I might be feeling I was sure that I didn’t want to do that. I had also selected a pair of stock
ings that were designed to be worn with a skirt somewhat longer than the little thing I was wearing. They stayed up without the need for a suspender belt but their tops were low enough on my thighs that they would show just under the hem of the skirt. I wasn’t about to go out there and get some different clothes so I made do with what I had. I left the bra off but decided to stick with the stockings, my pale legs looked better with them on than not.

  My long hair was going to take too much drying for me to get it done before Selene got impatient, besides how distracting could drying my hair be for either of us. To tell the truth I was starting to feel a little bit foolish for running away to the bathroom in the first place. No doubt Selene had just been teasing me, winding me up like she had innumerable times before.

  I prepared myself for a continuation of the teasing, for having fallen for her joke. I left the bathroom rubbing my hair in the towel to try and get it dried. To my surprise I walked back in on Selene in almost exactly the same position as I had left her.

  "I saw the graffiti outside on my way in," Selene said, just barely looking up from the journal in her hands.

  I tried to shrug it off but it turns out that Selene knew me too well for that to wash.

  "You’re usually stronger than this."

  I couldn’t exactly tell if Selene was genuinely concerned with my feelings or bothered by the fact that I had apparently let a few scrawled insults get to me. I sat myself down on the other end of the bed dangling most of the length of my hair over my left shoulder in front of me so that I could continue to towel it dry. I gave her a condensed version of my night after I left her. Starting with both sets of cops, especially thick and thin, then seeing the graffiti and then the pizzeria.

  "They wouldn’t deliver to me because I am a non-human. It’s not like the rogues who would pose a danger to their delivery people live in registered housing, that would kind of defeat the point. So it’s only those of us who are honest and live by the damn difficult rules they impose on us that have to deal with this kind of shit."