Straight To Heaven

The boy who’d been following Ariel ran past me, his wake kicking up an otherworldly tingle. It was another angel! No wonder he’d seemed familiar.

The manager charged over, his hands fisted at his sides. He had hated Ariel ever since he’d caught her hiding packages of steak behind the canisters of coffee. I’d offered to pay for the damage, but it hadn’t cooled his temper.

Ari picked herself up from a pile of crushed cereal boxes. “It was an accident. I was pushed.” She glared at the manager, but at the same time, I detected an undercurrent of fear. It was a look that I recognized. It meant that my niece had been doing something wrong and was worried she’d be caught.

I scanned the accident site for clues, and sure enough, I spotted nearly a half-a-dozen things that didn’t belong in that aisle. A can of spray cheese, three candy bars, a bag of marshmallows, and a box of fruit snacks.

I cursed myself for not watching my niece more carefully. That’s because Ariel was a really good thief. The girl could steal the underwear off a sales clerk. Don’t believe me? Well, consider the lacy bra I found one afternoon after we’d been school shopping at the mall. Victoria’s Secret, size 32B, lavender. Definitely not mine and definitely used.

The manager was smart. It was only a matter of time before he also realized that Ariel had been shoplifting. If I wanted to rescue my niece, I had to put my succubus to work. Quickly.

I walked over to him, pulverizing bits of cereal under the heels of my sandals. “I am so sorry,” I said.

He thrust his jaw out. “You’ll have to pay for this, and I don’t want the two of you back in my store, either.”

My succubus was in overdrive, working out the best way to win this man over. He was young, only a few years out of college, and his look said junior executive wannabe. He wore khaki pants, a white short-sleeved shirt that had been carefully pressed, and a striped tie complete with a University of Michigan tie pin. His hair had been clipped so short that it was practically army regulation.

My demon self spoke up before I had a chance. “Go Wolverines!” I pointed to the tie pin.

He was too angry to be taken in by such a simple ruse. My demon had to do better than that. Luckily for me, she had more tricks up her sleeve. “When you were in college, I’ll bet your professors never told you that running a business would be this hard.”

His jaw tightened. “No,” he admitted.

I helped him pick up the cereal boxes. “Those professors are so lame. They’d never survive in the real business world. Am I right?”

He nodded. “Completely.”

I moved in closer and brushed against his shoulder. The glamour in my touch made him relax. “I’ll bet that you’ve learned more in your first year on the job than they taught you in four years of college.”

He placed several boxes back on the display. “Definitely.”

“And those classmates of yours? The ones who graduated and went to Wall Street to work in finance?”

His eyes hardened. Finally, I’d struck gold. “Losers,” he said bitterly. “A bunch of a-holes who used their parents’ money to go to college, then got jobs in investment firms because their daddies worked there.”

“They can laugh at you all they want, but what do they know about a real day’s work?” I asked.

“Nothing!” The manager was furious now, but no longer at me and Ariel. “They don’t have to worry about student loans or finding a real job.” His fists clenched.

“You’re better than they are,” I assured him.

“Damn right!” he agreed.

I would have continued, but Ariel’s wide-eyed stare stopped me. So instead, I patted the manager’s shoulder. “Sorry,” I said again.

He glared at the wreckage, no doubt seeing the faces of his fellow college graduates. “No problem.” He kicked at a box of cereal, sending it skidding across the floor. “No problem at all.”

As we wheeled our cart away, I realized that Casey had disappeared like smoke, bless her evil little heart.

“How’d you do that?” Ari asked.

I played innocent. “What?”

“Get the manager to stop being mad at us. He was ready to throw us out.”

“Yes, he was,” I said, “and for good reason, considering what you did.”

“Like I said, it was an accident,” she protested.

“I don’t mean the cereal display,” I said. “I’m talking about the fruit rollups and the candy bars. Or were those accidents, too?”

She looked away.

We wheeled the cart into a checkout line. “You’re lucky he didn’t catch you,” I told her, “but since I did, you are in so much trouble.”

Ari glared at the floor as if her own fate was spelled out there.

When we got back home, I was ready to dish out my punishment, but Ariel sprinted to her room the moment I opened the front door.

I set the groceries in the kitchen, went upstairs, and knocked. “Ariel?” When she didn’t answer, I tried to open the door, but she’d jammed it shut. I pounded harder. “Ari! Open up right now.”

It was times like this that I missed Tommy the most. Now that he was overseas on his spiritual pilgrimage, I realized how much I’d relied on his advice. He was endlessly patient, and always serene. The night before he left, Ariel had grown desperate to keep him home. She’d hidden my car keys and his passport so well that, even after hours of searching, we couldn’t find them. I was ready to strangle her, but Tommy had taken Ariel outside and calmly talked with her. When they’d come back inside nearly half an hour later, one of the large, metal gauges was missing from Tommy’s earlobe, and Ariel was wearing it around her thumb. “It’s my promise to her that I won’t be gone forever,” he told me when I asked about it. I hadn’t thought that the trick would work, but to my amazement, Ariel quietly fetched the missing keys and passport from the inside of the toilet tank lid where she’d secured them with duct tape.

Now that Tommy was gone, however, I was on my own. And with no otherworld doorways in Ariel’s room, I couldn’t sneak in that way, either. After counting to ten, I said, “Fine. Stay up here if you want to, but you can’t escape your punishment. Sooner or later, you’ll have to come out, and when you do, I’ll be waiting.”

The door opened. Ari glowered up at me. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s a promise.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“You stole half the store,” I argued. Which was a stupid thing to do. Arguing, I mean. Since, like Ted, Ariel knew how to fight.

Immediately, she turned the accusations back on me. “It’s not like you ever give me anything.”

“I do give you things,” I argued. “Swimming lessons, a cell phone – ”

“Yeah, but Grace gets whatever she wants because she’s your daughter, and you love her. Not like me.” She dropped her head.

“That’s not true!” Her arrow struck right where she knew it would, piercing my heart. I had tried and tried to make Ariel understand that I loved her, but no matter what I did, she refused to believe it.

“I wish Tommy was here,” she said miserably. “At least he loved me. But then you chased him off, and I’ll probably never see him again.”

I wanted to argue that she was wrong and that I hadn’t chased him off, but unfortunately, she was right. “Well,” I said. I picked up a dirty T-shirt from the floor. “Well.” Now, I was the one who felt like a heel. How had that happened?

The doorbell rang. Before I could stop her, Ariel dashed down the stairs to answer it. Thinking it was Vickie or Casey or some other neighbor, I took my time gathering more dirty laundry and composing myself into the happy, suburban housewife I was supposed to be. Halfway down the stairs, I paused, listening to the conversation. It wasn’t a neighbor that Ariel was talking to.

It was her mother.

I dropped everything I’d been carrying and hurried to the door, wanting to cut Tanya off before she made it inside my house. Ariel was a good thief, but Tanya was a professional. I’d lose everything from the espresso machine to the plasma TV if I didn’t hurry.

Luckily for me, Tanya was still on the porch, but to my surprise, she looked better than the last time I’d seen her. She’d put on a little weight. Her hair was freshly washed and neatly combed. Although her T-shirt was old and the decal was starting to flake away, it too was clean. Her teeth were still that bottom-of-the-ashtray brown from her meth use, but her eyes were clear, and she no longer jittered. In fact, she was very calm.

“Hey, Lilith.” She grinned like a whipped dog begging for a treat. “How are you?”

Ariel had her face buried in her mother’s stomach and was clutching her around the middle.

“Hi, Tanya.” Ari’s mom might have looked good, but I was still wary. The only time she ever came to see her family was when she wanted something.

She peeked around me to look inside. “Your house looks really nice.”

I shut the door behind me to block her view. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m clean.” She grinned again, but with a little more pride this time. “Five weeks.”

Ariel lifted her head and smiled. “Mom, that’s awesome! Isn’t that awesome, Aunt Lilith?”

“Yes. Terrific. Good for you,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it. Who knew? Maybe the impossible really had happened, and Miss Spry’s realm had frozen over after all.

That tiny ray of hope was extinguished in a heartbeat, however, when Tanya said, “I stopped by so I could ask you something.”

My stomach clenched.

“I’m living in a new place now…”

Ari’s head popped up again. “A real place? Like a house?”

“An apartment. A real nice apartment with a pool.” Tanya licked her lips. “You’d really like it, kiddo.”

“Cool! I’ll get my stuff.” Instantly, Ari was in the house and pounding up the stairs.

Tanya blinked and looked at me as if I had the answer to whatever question she wanted to ask. All I could do was shrug. Ariel was a worldly-wise preteen who knew how to roll a joint, steal pseudoephedrine, and tell a dead person from a stoned one. But for all that knowledge, there was one thing Ariel didn’t comprehend: her mother didn’t want her.

Tanya shuffled her feet. “I’ve got this new boyfriend.”

Great.

“In fact, the apartment is his.”

Knowing where this was going, I crossed my arms over my chest.

“See, he doesn’t know I’ve got a kid.”

“Uh huh.” I wondered how many of my neighbors were watching us right now. The only person they feared more than Ariel was her mother.

Ariel was back on the porch before my sister-in-law could get to the point of her visit. Seeing her daughter standing there with her packed suitcase, Tanya licked her lips again. “Well, I stopped by because I need a few extra dollars. You know. To hold me over until I get a job.”

Ari looked up at me, her eyes pleading. She thought that a few extra dollars might give her an inroad with her mother whereas I knew that a few extra dollars would probably mean a phone call to Tanya’s supplier or a trip to the liquor store.

“Tanya, I’m sorry, but I can’t. Not this month.”

Tanya looked like she’d been expecting this, but Ariel, furious, flew at me. “What do you mean you can’t? You’ve got all kinds of money. You just put in a pool. And you’re getting Grace a computer. I heard you talking to someone on the phone about it.”

Tanya’s eyes lit up. “Sounds like you’re doing really good, Lil.”

“She is! But she and Uncle Ted are so selfish.” Ariel was crying hard now, her thick mascara making tire tracks down her cheeks. “They give everything to Grace, but nothing to me.”

That accusation cut me to the quick. True, Ted treated her like garbage, but I loved her. “Ariel, I’m sorry you feel that way.” My voice was so taut that the slightest breeze could have snapped it. “Unfortunately, I have a policy of not lending money to family members.”

“That’s bullshit!” Spittle flew from Ari’s mouth. “You used to give your stepsister money all the time.” She looked at her mother. “She did! I watched her do it.” She turned back on me. “You don’t like my mom because you think you’re better than her. You think you’re better than everyone! Well, to hell with you!” She grabbed her mother’s hand and started down the stairs. “C’mon, let’s go. We don’t need her.”

Tanya’s look of vicious triumph suddenly changed to surprise. “Wait! Hold up!” She yanked her hand out of her daughter’s. “Ari – ”

This time, the look of triumph was on my face as I waited for Tanya to admit that she didn’t want her daughter. Instead, Tanya flashed an evil smile and said, “Okay, kid. You want to go with me? Let’s go.” Then she turned and walked off with Ariel.

It was a blow I hadn’t seen coming. I stood on the porch gaping in astonishment as they got into the car, then blinked back tears as they drove off. Somehow, Tanya had bested me by taking the one thing I had wanted all along: my niece.

Chapter Four

Back in the house, I immediately picked up the phone to dial 911. Before I could punch the final number, however, I hesitated. Technically, Tanya had done nothing wrong. After all, she’d never signed custody of her daughter over to me. Legally, I wasn’t even a guardian. Not only that, Ariel had willingly gone with her mother. Her sober, in control of her faculties, mother.

Still, I knew Tanya’s history too well to give up that easily. I left the phone for the computer to visit the website for Michigan’s Protective Services Department. I scrolled down the page, looking for any information that would help me, but there wasn’t much I could use. Since Ari was in no immediate danger, there was no emergency – according to protective services. And because it was Friday evening, when I called the local office, I wasn’t too surprised to find it closed.

Discouraged, I decided to talk to my stepdad. Even though Simon was a tax attorney and not a criminal or family lawyer, I hoped that he’d be able to give me some advice.

I dialed my dad’s number but, to my surprise, Jasmine picked up. “Yeah?”

“Jas!” I said, thrilled. My stepsister had stopped speaking to me since she found me in bed with her boyfriend, Tommy. I’d tried everything – voice messages, texts, e-mails – but she refused to reply. When I tried to visit her in person, she locked herself in her room until I left. The only reason she’d answered the phone now was because my dad didn’t have caller ID.

“How are you?” I asked.

She ignored the question. “Dad’s not here.” Her voice was flat, like she was talking to a telemarketer and not her sister. “He and my mom went to the lake.”

I’d forgotten that my dad and his wife were making their annual pilgrimage to the other side of the state. They had rented a cottage, and right now would probably be sitting on the deck watching the sun set over Lake Michigan.

“Do you have a number for him?” I asked. I gave a brief explanation about Tanya and Ariel. “I was hoping Dad could give me some advice.”

“Oh, poor Ari.” Some of the dullness left Jasmine’s voice. “As if that kid hasn’t been through enough.” I heard my stepsister shuffle through some things. “No, I don’t have the number for the cottage.”

My heart fell. Since my dad didn’t own a cell phone, not even for emergencies, I wouldn’t be able to talk to him until he got back from vacation.

I heard a man cough in the background, then a voice that set my teeth on edge. “Hey, Susie Sushi! Hang up and let’s go.”

“Please tell me that isn’t who I think it is,” I said.

“Don’t start with me, Lil,” Jas warned.

“It’s Karl, isn’t it?” I gripped the phone tighter. “What’s he doing there?”

There was a long pause. “We’re back together,” she said.

“Jas, no! You can’t be serious.” Karl had been Jasmine’s boyfriend before Tommy. He was a dozen years older than my stepsister, and owned a successful computer graphics company. At first, my stepdad, Jas’s mother, and I had thought Jasmine had struck gold when she started dating him, but it didn’t take long for us to realize that Karl was a scumbag.

When Jas was around Karl, she drank much more than normal. She also smoked pot and, if her red eyes and dripping nose were any indication, did other drugs as well. Once, after my dad, Evelyn, and I had spent months convincing Jasmine to enroll at the local community college, Karl talked her out of it because he said that the classes would be too hard for her, and she’d end up dropping out anyway. Implying that she wasn’t smart was only one of his many putdowns. Because of Jasmine’s Asian features, Karl called her ‘Susie Sushi’ and his little ‘Jap’ – which he said stood for Japanese-American Princess. I used to lay awake at nights terrified that Karl would get Jasmine pregnant and forever link her destiny to his.

Karl spoke up in the background. “Jasmine! C’mon, chop, chop!”

“I gotta go,” Jasmine said, miserable once more.

I wanted to scream at her and demand to know why she was letting that cancer back into her life, but I knew from experience that if I spoke out against Karl, she’d fly to his defense. Still, I had to say something. “Maybe dating Karl on the rebound isn’t such a good idea,” I said.

“Why, Lil? Are you planning to sleep with him, too?” she asked.

The knife thrust went straight to my heart. Although I worked to maintain my ‘let the past stay in the past’ philosophy, my mistakes always came back to bite me. Hard. “I’m sorry about Tommy, Jas. You have no idea how sorry I am,” I said.

But my apology fell on dead air because she’d already hung up the phone.

Six months ago, when my stepsister, my daughter, my niece and I were all living in the cramped townhouse, I would have given anything for an hour alone. Even when the girls were in school, Jasmine would be home hounding me for money or whining because there was nothing to eat. Later, when she brought Tommy to live with us, I’d felt even more claustrophobic.

Now however, with both girls gone, Jas not speaking to me, and Tommy out of the country, I was completely alone. The silence of that big, empty house rang loudly in my ears. It was eerie, like visiting a shopping mall after all the stores have closed and everyone has gone home. With all that quiet surrounding me, I had nothing to distract me from my own, dark thoughts.

Deciding that I couldn’t endure another minute of the day sober, I drove to the nearest liquor store and bought a bottle of wine for me and a fifth of bourbon for my demon who begged for it like a little kid begging for candy in the checkout line at the grocery store. When I got home, I muscled down a shot of the bourbon to shut up my succubus, then poured a glass of chardonnay. I brought it over to the computer and went back to researching a way to get Ari away from her mother.

A small, instant-message window popped up on my computer screen. It was from Tommy.

Lil – u there?

My heart nearly stopped. Jasmine wasn’t the only one refusing to talk to me. Since he’d left the country, Tommy had been incommunicado as well. I’d called, texted, and e-mailed, but he never answered back. The silence was terrible. I had no idea where he was, or more importantly, how he was.

As much as I wanted to talk to him, I was afraid. I drained my glass and then took a deep breath before gathering enough nerve to reply. Hi.

I held my breath until, moments later, his response popped up. How r u?

I hesitated, then typed: K – and u?

Hot. Sick of Indian food. Earth-shattering diarrhea.

I smiled. TMI, I told him. Besides, don’t you mean earth-shittering?

He sent back a laughing smiley face.

Where r u? I asked.

Aurangabad to see Ajanta caves.

Before I’d destroyed his belief in God, Tommy had talked endlessly about his pilgrimage, and the Ajanta caves in India had been one of his favorite topics. He had shown me pictures from the Internet of the massive statues and ancient paintings hidden away in that secret place. Knowing he had finally made it there lifted my spirits. If any sacred spot would help him rediscover his faith, certainly it was that one.

I wrote: How r the caves?

To my surprise, he sent an emoticon that had its eyes squeezed shut and its tongue sticking out. Pain in the ass to get there, and the weather sucks. Constant rain.

But the caves themselves r awesome, right? I typed.

They r depressing. Just a wasted effort to impress the Great Nothingness.

My heart clenched. His pilgrimage hadn’t done a thing to restore his faith. The Tommy I’d first met would have been raving about the unity of human spirits and the rapture of touching the divine. He would have crawled over broken glass to get to those caves. Not any more.

Tommy sent another message. How r the girls?

I was tempted to tell him the truth about Ariel moving in with her mother, but I didn’t want to worry him. After all, there wasn’t much he could do from the other side of the world. So I typed, Girls r good.

And Jasmine?

I hesitated. Finally, I typed, Still upset.

She won’t return my calls, he said. I keep dreaming that she’s in trouble. I’m really worried.

So that’s why he was finally speaking to me. Tommy had an uncanny connection to the supernatural world. For one thing, he could read auras. He’d also known that there had been something different about me after I’d become a succubus. It didn’t surprise me that he’d picked up on Jasmine’s psychic distress signals.

For a moment, I thought about keeping Karl a secret. If Jasmine wasn’t speaking to Tommy, there wasn’t much he could do about the bad boyfriend. But it had been a hell of a day. Ariel, Grace, Jas…I was worried about all of them, and I desperately needed to share my burden. I bit my lip and typed: J got back together with Karl.

There was a long, long pause. So long, in fact, that I was sure the Internet had cut out on Tommy’s end. Realizing that my glass was empty, I refilled it, gulping down the chardonnay like a sports drink after a hard workout. Still, no new message appeared on my computer. I swore to myself that, no matter what, I wouldn’t contact Tommy again. I would let him go and live his life in peace, just as he deserved. This time, I really meant it.

Then my phone rang.

Of course, I knew who it was. I picked it up on the second ring. “Tommy!” His name came out more like a sob.

“Tell me what’s going on, Lil.”

I began crying as I gave him the drunken version of my conversation with Jasmine. “Karl was at my dad’s house,” I said. “I tried to talk to Jas about it, but she hung up on me.”

“Karl.” Tommy spoke the name like a curse word. “That bastard!”

“Believe me, I know. I just wish I could make her believe it.”

“He’s being investigated by the IRS, did you know that?”

I did, actually.

Tommy, furious, continued, “And one time he convinced her to – ” His voice dropped off.

“Convinced her to what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“Tell me,” I insisted.

He sighed. “He convinced her to pose nude for him. I think some of those photos ended up on the Internet.”

Furious, I slammed my hands down on the desk. Jas thought that she was good for one thing only: looking beautiful. Karl, predator that he was, knew exactly how to exploit that.

“This is all my fault,” Tommy said. “God! How could I have been so stupid?” He didn’t get angry very often, but he certainly was now. I pictured him with the phone pressed against his ear, pacing circles in a cheap hotel room. “How could I have hurt her like that?”

Tears stung my eyes. He hated himself when I was the one who had caused the entire mess. “It was me,” I said. “I seduced you.”

He laughed harshly. “I knew what I was doing. You didn’t rape me.” Something fell over with a bang. Then something else shattered.