Love Bites Then it Sucks by Julie Steimle (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

Tom lurched back from me. Then he said with a raking look at my appearance, “You look terrible.”

I rolled my eyes. Of course I looked terrible. My wounds had not healed but had continued to ooze. I probably looked like walking death, but there was no mirror I could look into to see myself. There was no way to regain my reflection.

The hotdog vendor stared at him, glancing to the space where I was, without seeing me.

Tom made a goofy face at him, then started walking down the road. I walked beside him.

“Wow, when I heard you had gone reaper….” He shook his head. With a peek to me, he asked, “Does it feel any different?”

I shrugged. Then I thought about it with a nod. “Yeah. I feel… less here and at the same time more.”

He stared.

“Imagine being immaterial all the time,” I said.

Then he nodded. “Oh. I see. I get it.”

He probably would be the only person who could.

But then he led on to a broken down looking car where Roddy Mayhem and that punk-haired half-imp chick (who was with Roddy before in California) were waiting for him. I didn’t know her name, though she looked a little healthier this time, less starved. They both stiffened when they saw me. That chick pulled back.

“So it wasn’t a lie…” Roddy’s eyes seemed as wide as saucers when they set on me.

I shook my head. But then I looked him up and down. He was wearing a filthy set of overalls while the punked chick was dressed in a classy sort of suit. Her hair was still punky with splotches of color here and there in her spiky ‘do’, though she looked less trashy. I wondered where the other two half-imps who had been sent off with Roddy were at. To Roddy, I said, “You look respectable. But I thought you went to Gulinger Private Academy.”

Roddy nervously laughed, sticking his greasy hands into his pockets. “This is just an off-site career training thing.”

I nodded, peeking to Tom who was grinning with pride. I noticed, however, his eye tracking to the punky chick with mischievous fondness.

So I looked to her. “I don’t think I know your name.”

Her orange eyes were tensely fixed on me. She said nothing.

“Her name’s Piranha,” Roddy said.

She back-handed him in the stomach, a dirty glare in her orange eyes. But Roddy laughed.

I raised my eyebrows. That was a funny name. Obviously it had to have been self-selected. The imps around her were shouting for her to pull out her gun and shoot me. And the thing was, she knew I could hear and see them just as much as she could. Her cheeks colored.

Chuckling, I said, “You can’t hurt me—and I think you know that.” Then I turned. “Tom, what is it you want? Matthew sent you, right?”

Tom nodded. “You don’t waste any time, but yeah. Matt sent us.”

“He thinks you can get in where we can’t,” Piranha said with obvious hostility. I didn’t think it was hate that made her hostile though, but instinctive terror. I was an angel of death after all. “Death sneaks up on everyone.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. But death angels are also extremely petty and territorial.”

Roddy snorted, nodding. The other two shot him looks, wondering how he knew.

“They won’t like me wandering around in their territories,” I said. “If I go in to a territory that is not mine, I’ll be dealing with more than just… I don’t know— Is this the Unseelie Court we are dealing with here?”

Piranha nodded, relaxing some.

Tom was also nodding, though he later shook his head. “It feels more like a splinter group faction. I actually bugged Queen Maeve about this last Halloween, and she got all offended, neither confirming nor denying it. I get the feeling that there might be an internal coup going on within the Unseelie Court on top of this mess.”

He would be the expert. I knew so little about them. But he handed me a paper folder. And oddly, I could take it. A notion struck me as I gripped the paper between my fingers, feeling it. It was in my hands. It was not going to slip out. That’s when I realized he had made it immaterial while holding it—something I used to be able to do but could no longer do. It hit me hard what I had been lacking, and I broke into a laugh.

They stared at me for a second as I took the folder from Tom’s hand to make sure it did not vanish once it left his fingers. Sure enough, it was mine to hold. I would have laughed more if it were not for their stares. All this time, I realized, I probably could have gotten imps to steal stuff for me to make them immaterial. They would have been able to make lots of things immaterial for me. It was not reaping that I needed. It was a bridge from the material to the immaterial that I had needed.

But I was wasting time. I quickly sobered up to get back to work. I opened the folder. In it was a police report on those deaths. The people killed were regular folk, but also law enforcement. There was also a map. They even triangulated a location.

“We can’t get in,” Tom said. He then shuddered. “They keep a boogieman.”

Cocking my head to the side, I was not sure I heard him right. “A what?”

“An imp-eating demon,” Tom said. His eyes were wide, his pupils narrow. I could see him sweating. “They’re super-fast and look like… uh…”

“Gremlins,” Roddy said. “You know, from that old Spielberg movie?

“The cute one, not the ugly ones,” Piranha clarified, nodding. She was relaxing a bit more, though still guarded.

I blinked, wondering about that. I had never seen one.

“It’s their perfect watchdog to keep us out,” Tom explained with earnest terror.

“To keep you out,” Piranha said with masked admiration. That’s when it hit me—she liked Tom. But her imps were not making any overt suggestions to her to act on it as she clearly was not allowing herself to even entertain a romantic idea about the guy. In fact, they were telling Piranha to kick him in the shins—which funnily enough made Tom smirk more crookedly, enjoying it. And, man, that’s when it hit me harder that he liked her. They must have had some funky relationship as clearly the age gap between them was not socially appropriate. She still had to be in high school or just barely graduated.

I looked to Tom and said, “So you need me to go in because a boogieman, or whatever, cannot touch me?”

“You are sort of death incarnate,” Roddy said with a crooked shrug.

That invoked a laugh from me, and I so needed a laugh. Half-imps really were fun people.

“They probably won’t be able to see you,” Tom said with a glance to Roddy and Piranha.

“Unless they have a half-imp with them,” I replied.

But all three shook their heads in unison.

“No halfer would want to be in the same room as a boogieman,” Piranha said, “who will be able to see you maybe. It can see imps, but we don’t know about it being able to see death angels.”

I nodded, acknowledging her. Apparently a boogieman was a scary deal. “How do you kill one?”

Tom nervously giggled. His eyes watered from amusement. He looked to his ‘trainees’ and said to me, “A reaper is asking us mortals that?”

With a tired roll of my eyes, I said, “I’ve only been a reaper for a short time.”

He nodded. “Ok—the Chinese boogiemen hate loud noises—especially fireworks, but I don’t know about the American version.” But then he sobered up more, leaning near me in a whisper while ignoring the question, “How did Hanz take it, by the way—you becoming a reaper?”

I paled, all mirth falling out from me like sawdust. But Tom knew Hanz. At least he met him and knew Hanz was important to me. “I haven’t seen him since I left him the letter. I have no idea how he is.”

Piranha and Roddy exchanged uncomfortable looks, her eyes asking Roddy about that.

Tom looked like he was going to be sick. “So he doesn’t know where you are?”

Shaking my head, I stared at the ground. “Matthew and JJ think that it is best he does not know. If he saw me like this….”

Tom nodded. So did Roddy, though Piranha looked confused. I could tell she wanted to ask them who Hanz was. She had never met him, though Roddy had interacted with Hanz a couple times.

“Can I keep this file?” I said, holding it up.

Nodding, Tom said, “It’s a copy just for you.” He then handed me a business card. “I know you can’t call me or anything, but our fix-it shop is here. We’re there sometimes if you need to get a hold of us.”

I took it from his hands and read over the print. It was just an auto repair place somewhere near Chinatown, nothing out of the ordinary. I tucked the card into my pants pocket.

“Is there anything else I need to know?” I asked.

Tom shook his head.

I nodded. But then a thought occurred to me, and I asked, “Are there any vampires involved in this crime group?”

The faces of all three looked confused. All three shook their heads.

“Not that we know of,” Tom said. “Why?”

Shrugging, I replied, “It’s just… at one of our death-angel meetings I overheard something about the Order of Blood stalking somebody out in the city, that there is an increase of vampires in the city.”

“Oooooh.” Tom pulled back from me. “That is news. I, I… I think we should tell the Seven about this. And JJ.”

 I nodded. Of course they should. And I felt a little stupid that I had not told Matthew or JJ earlier. It just had not been on my mind at the time.

“We have a friend who is worried by vampires,” Tom said. He did not elaborate. His imps didn’t either. “Let’s go,” Tom said to the other two.

All three waved to me as they got into the junky-looking car., which actually wasn’t broken down at all. It just looked it. It was probably one of their auto shop rebuilds. Roddy was driving—or learning to. It was good to see. The kid probably never had driven a car before now. When I first met him, Roddy was sleeping under a pier at a beach I frequented back in California. He really was turning his life around. I felt proud of him.

As they drove off, I also watched that girl Piranha. I could tell from her posture she was big-sister protective of Roddy, which was good. But it was also clear to me that she was trying desperately not to crush on Tom. It was cute. I just hoped Tom kept everything legal. Imp nature was a dangerous thing, and she still looked young to me. I didn’t want Tom (or Piranha for that matter) to have more trouble than they already had being who they were.

Once they were gone from my neighborhood, I finished my rounds of the streets, reading the files. I took it at a stroll, turning each page and skimming them for any outstanding detail. Several things caught my attention. First off, the location where those supernatural thugs hung out was nowhere near my area—however, it was near where that shootout had been the day I had taken a bullet for Matthew. That would be a problem. I didn’t know whose area that was, so I was not sure whom I had to avoid. I would have to find out. Briefly, I considered sending imps to cause those Unseelie thugs trouble—but Tom’s words about some sort of dangerous boogieman there that ate