Eternal Spring YA short story collection

Dating After Dark (With Clowns) by Tawny Stokes

Dating After Dark (With Clowns)

By

Tawny Stokes

As I turned up the Sum 41 tune blaring from the CD, the speakers rattled in the car door. The stereo system in the new Toyota Matrix kicked ass. I had to thank Dan for loaning me the car. I didn't ask him when he got it, mind you, or why he needed it. There are just some things a person just shouldn't ask a Great Duke of Hell . But I had to have some kind of vehicle to pick up Aspen. It was our first official date, and I didn't want to come off as a complete douche with a pocket full of bus fare and a transit map.

I checked Google maps on my iPhone while slowing to a stop at a four-way intersection. When I accelerated again, there was a definitive pop in the air and the smell of cigarette smoke filled the car. I glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Dan lounging in the backseat with a cigarette dangling between his pale lips. As always.

"You’re going to be late, brother.” He blew a perfect smoke ring, and it floated toward me with a happy face inside. The face winked.

For a demon, Dan had an incredibly upbeat personality.

"Go away.” I said. “You’re stinking up the car. Now she’ll think I smoke.”

He sat up and hung his arms between the two front seats. "Just tell her about me. Problem solved.”

"So not going to happen.”

"She’ll believe you, she is a necromancer.”

"Necromancer in training.”

"Whatever.” He waved his hand, scattering cigarette ashes on the seat.

“Watch it.” I brushed at my jacket. “I actually washed this with my own two hands, you know.”

“Mate, she’s totally not going to care. All she’ll be paying attention to are those big beautiful eyes of yours.” He ruffled my hair. Hair I’d spent exactly twenty minutes on to get that perfectly messy look.

I slapped at his hand. “Don’t you have some demon-like thing to do tonight?”

“I suppose I could go possess someone, but it’s only fun when you’re there to exorcize me out of them.”

Not only were Dan and I best friends -- well as much as an exorcist and a spawnling from hell could be friends -- we also worked together. He possessed them, and I saved them for a disgustingly large fee. Most of our clientele resided in the City of Angels, Hollywood. We didn’t con just anyone. We picked out marks carefully. Only those truly deserving of a little trickery and thievery. I’d seen true possession and the damage it did to people, so Dan and I limited our jobs to the real dickwads of the world.

“I’m sure there are plenty of other things you could be doing right about now.” I pulled to a stop in front of a small yellow bungalow and parked. “And I mean now.”

“Fine.” He sighed. “But if you need any help with…”

“Dan,” I warned.

There was another pop and he vanished. Cigarette smoke lingered in the air from where he’d just been sitting. Even after all these months, his sudden comings and goings still freaked me out.

I turned the car off, opened the door then slid out. While I made my way up the front walk to the door, my gut tightened. I was so nervous my knees shook. I’d performed dozens of exorcisms, stared down a multitude of nasty demons, heck I’d even spent a year in Hell, but girls were a whole different matter. I had no clue what I was doing.

When I reached the door, I did a quick breath-check then knocked. By the time the door opened, my heart was thumping hard. And when I saw Aspen outlined in the doorway, her blond curls framing an incredibly sharp face, it beat twice as fast. She was just as pretty as she’d been when I first saw her in the cemetery. More so because she didn’t have flecks of dirt on her face or spots of blood on her slim hands.