Hit and Nun Read online

  “Morning, ladies. I brought coffee as a thank you for watching my little buddy.”

  I gave Jeff a small nudge so he’d remember to greet Higgs the way most dogs would greet the owners they were supposed to love. As a dog, he had some things down pat. Others? Not so much. He was a work in progress much like all of us.

  Jeff grunted before hopping off my lap and standing on his hind legs, jumping excitedly on Higg, who reached down to give his head an affectionate scruff. “How are you, buddy? Didja miss me?” he asked in that weird voice meant specifically for Jeff.

  “You brought the nectar of the gods for us?” I asked, batting my eyelashes at him as I twirled my hair in my comical bid to be flirtatious.

  Of course, I was jokingly being flirty. We were just friends, but it was fun to try out some of the feminine behaviors I’d never been able to utilize when I was a nun. I looked ridiculous, of course, but whatever.

  He grinned, driving a hand into his pocket as Jeff settled by his feet, winding his tail around Higgs’s leg. “It is. I got your favorite, Sister Trixie, and some ice-cold OJ for Coop.”

  Coop peered up at him, her green eyes glittering as she took the orange juice. “You’re very nice, Higgs. I like you so-so much.”

  Coop was also working on expressing her emotions to everyone around her—we were still working on what was appropriate and what was a little too Terminator, but we were getting there. Though, I had to give it to my demon. She lived every day like she wouldn’t see another, and she spoke her heart in the same vein.

  Higgs gave her a pat on the back with his infamous smile, the vivid tattoo on his forearm of skulls with red bandannas and a colorful eagle taking flight standing out under the morning sun. “I like you, too, Coop. So, you girls ready for World Naked Bike Ride day?”

  Every year, Portland hosts a World Naked Bike Ride, where bikers from all over participate. The route is typically undisclosed until the last minute to avoid gawkers, but we’d heard a rumor it might pass right by our shop, and we wanted to be ready on the off chance someone might want a tattoo to commemorate their experience.

  Plus, Knuckles had some celebrity clients flying in from LA today to participate in the ride, and we wanted to put our best foot forward in his honor. I’d been up sketching late into the night so I’d have something new to show his friends.

  Coop frowned. “Tell me again why everyone rides bikes with no clothes on, Higgs. Seems to me, your tender bits would get all scraped up.”

  Higgs threw his head back and laughed, the exposed length of his bronzed throat strong and supple. “I imagine one’s tender bits take a beating. However, the ride is sort of a protest against the use of oil and what it does to the planet—and it’s also about body positivity. About being comfortable in your skin. Both good causes, right?”

  She frowned harder, the lines in her forehead going deep in her tanned skin. “I don’t understand being uncomfortable in your skin. I like my skin.” To emphasize her statement, she tugged at the flawless flesh of her face.

  I patted her on the arm—her long, slender, perfect arm. “That’s because your skin is perfect, Coop. Not everyone is as lucky or as comfortable, and we have to try and be sensitive about their feelings,” I reminded her, sitting up straighter when I thought about the flabby flesh of my thighs encased in my overalls.

  Coop cocked her head at me, the length of her neck swan-like. “Everyone should just be happy to have skin. I know people in Hell who don’t have any—”

  I interrupted her by coughing really hard, pretending I had something caught in my throat—a clear signal to Coop she was about to spill the beans.

  “You know people in Hell, Coop?” Higgs asked, though his face clearly said he was teasing her.

  Immediately she sat up straight, recognizing her goof. “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Higgs laughed his husky laugh, and I followed suit.

  We couldn’t afford to be found out. Not when our relationships here in Cobbler Cove were all so new. I mean seriously, how do you tell your new friends you’re possessed by an evil spirit, your owl had reincarnated himself in the body of some random road kill, your best friend’s an escapee from Hell and a demon, and the dog your new friend loves so much can talk?

  You don’t.

  That’s how.

  Chapter 2

  We’d arrived at Inkerbelle’s late in the afternoon to find Knuckles in a tizzy, with Goose trailing behind him. Knuckles had some very important clients flying in from LA today, and he wanted to impress them with his new place of employment—which meant we had to have everything perfect.

  In light of the fact that his happiness was so important to us, especially as of late, we indulged him. Knuckles had been missing his wife something fierce these days, and his melancholy showed up in the times he thought none of us were looking.

  Grief comes in batches sometimes, and I think flying back and forth to LA, and spending so much time with his daughter and her family, had him missing the love of his life. His wife Candice, who he’d lost to cancer.

  But today he was pumped and rarin’ to go and that made my heart smile.

  Though, I have to say, seeing our usually calm knight in shining leather running around straightening magazines and fluffing pillows was equal parts adorable and a little disconcerting.

  In another tragedy of epic proportions (if you listen to Knuckles, anyway), we were out of coffee.

  The horror.

  It’s a special blend Knuckles had specifically asked us to have on hand for one particular client, and I’d completely forgotten it when I ran errands yesterday.

  So now that we were headed toward early evening, and we’d watched several batches of bikers ride by while we peeked through our fingers, I was rather in a rush to have everything in place as I headed for the glass door of the shop, now etched with the Inkerbelle’s insignia. Just looking at it each day as I unlocked the door and pushed my way inside, smelled the scent of ink and freshly painted walls, brought such pride to my heart.

  It had taken a village to pull it off, but we’d done it with the help of Higgs and Knuckles and our shop owner friends along Peach Street. And it was perfect. The walls were bold and bright, the floors were shiny and clean, and the tattoo stations had every necessity a tattoo artist needs. We still had some work to handle in the loft above, but that would happen in time.

  As I made my way to the door, my purse strap thrown over my neck, Coop stopped me at the threshold.

  “Sister Trixie Lavender, close your eyes!”

  I tried to peer around Coop’s unicorn-tattooed shoulder revealed by her off-the-shoulder Inkerbelle’s T-shirt, to see what she meant, but she stepped in front of me.

  “Coop? Why are you keeping me from leaving the shop? We need more coffee for our clients, and we need it soon or Knuckles is going to go airborne from the steam coming out of his ears. Now, what’s the problem?”

  “I said close your eyes, Sister Trixie Lavender. I must speak with you before you leave,” she growled in a low hum of words, forcing me to take a step back.

  And that’s the one caveat to her insane beauty. She’ll eat your face off in half a second flat if she feels as though you’re threatening her or anyone she cares about.

  I think I’ve mentioned before, but it bears repeating: to say she’s a lethal weapon is to say Hiroshima was a small puff of smoke in the distant sky. However, she’d never hurt me, and she certainly didn’t frighten me.

  “What’s wrong, Coop?” I paused a moment before suspicion set in, and I narrowed my eyes. “Wait. You didn’t get into another argument with Livingston again, did you? You have to stop teasing him about being road kill, Coop DeVille. It drives him bananas.”

  Livingston was quite the attraction around Peach Street these days. Gone were the days when we had to leave him home or hide him away. Everyone wanted to meet the cranky rescue owl. Yes. We’d made up a story about him and how he’d come to be ours, but sometimes, as I explained to Coop, you have
no choice if you want to blend in.

  He spent his days perched on a gorgeous shellacked branch Knuckles bought and mounted to the wall, where his captive audience could adore him and shower him with endless compliments.

  “I did not have an argument with Livingston,” Coop promised, her gaze returning to its normal expressionless dead stare. “I promised you I would try not to allow him to bait me into any more debates about what’s messier—runaway soul catching or the lava pit on the fourth level. Unless he eats my potato chips—the sour cream ones, not the barbecue. Then I promise you, we will argue, Sister Trixie Lavender.”

  I smiled and gave her lean, razor-sharp cheekbone an affectionate pinch. “I’m so proud of you for restraining yourself. Now, why are you still addressing me by my former title?”

  She frowned. As you know, Coop’s not capable of many facial expressions, but the frown she had down pat. “You said you aren’t a nun anymore, so I don’t need to call you Sister Trixie.”

  Now I was concerned. In times of stress, which were rare for my Coop, she sometimes reverted back to old habits. “That’s right. So what gives?”

  Coop sighed, the curtain of her glorious hair swishing about her face. “Sometimes I forget. I can’t seem to remember to only call you just Trixie. When I learn a name, I learn the whole thing because for instance, in Hell, there are a lot of Mikes. I mean, A. Lot. You absolutely do not want to interrogate and torture the wrong Mike, if you understand my meaning.”

  I gulped a hard swallow. I was afraid to ask what that meant and how Coop was connected to it, because for the most part, she’s a lamb until provoked. She doesn’t talk much about her life in Hell and I don’t pressure her to tell me.

  That Hell truly exists is enough for me to wrap my brain around without getting into the finer details—for now, that is. I’m still of the mind we’ll eventually have a nice long talk and hash out her life before we became friends.

  Coop’s odd nature—her habit of addressing people by their full names, her mispronunciation of words—often wrought equally odd looks from folks. But that usually faded the moment they realized how stunning she is, and then they forgot all about the fact that she’s addressed them as though she were a robot trained to speak via some software program.

  “Hmm. Mike is a very common name. Were there a lot of Bobs, too?”

  She rolled her eyes at me in disgust—or at least I think it was disgust. “So many it’d make your head spin. I don’t mean that literally. Because I can make your head spin—literally. I mean that figuratively, of course.”

  “Of course,” I replied as she inched in front of me, continuing to block the shop’s door. “So is the name thing causing you stress, Coop? Because it’s not that big a deal.”

  Now she leaned back on her booted heels and grimaced. “Not stress exactly. I don’t know how to identify stress with any accuracy. I only know I’m trying so-so hard to fit in, Trixie Lave—Er, Trixie. I practice blending in every day—with our clients, with our new friends. I still read ten pages of the dictionary every day, too. I don’t think I’ll ever get to the letter Z. But I do it so I can learn and be more efficient when I blend with,” she leaned in and whispered, “the humans.”

  Gosh, maybe I’d been pushing too hard? Or maybe Coop was becoming more human that I thought.

  I squeezed her arm in sympathy. “Yes. Blending is important. But you’re doing great, Coop. Girls Scout’s honor,” I offered on a wink.

  And for a demon with zero people skills, she truly was doing a pretty good job of acclimating. We had some tweaking to do, but we worked each day to be better people, myself included, but I didn’t want her stressed out.

  Coop frowned again, the deep lines in her forehead creasing. “I don’t know if I’m doing a very good job. Sometimes I struggle with words. Especially slang words. For example, mansplaining. What the devil is that again?”

  I scratched my head, latching on to a piece of my very ordinary, shoulder-length brown hair, noting the ends needed a trim—among the many things on my person needing tending.

  “How about we save that for another time? I have to run to the market down the street and grab some coffee. Today’s a big day for Knuckles—and us, too—and we want to be ready for potential customers, right? Hot coffee is a must after riding your bike naked.”

  “Yes. The World Naked Bike Ride is very big indeed. But even after Higgs explained it, I still don’t understand why you have to do it in your born day suit.”

  “Birthday suit,” I corrected, growing more worried about her mental state. “And I don’t understand either, Coop. But if we’re lucky, there’ll be people who want to commemorate their ride with a tattoo. That means we have to be ready.”

  “Yes. Knuckles’s very important friends are coming in from Los Angeles to see him after the ride and they might want me to tattoo them.”

  Now my demon’s lithe body went slightly rigid, her spine straight, her facial expression tight. Meaning, she was a little bit excited at the prospect of inking a celebrity tattoo.

  Like I said, Knuckles is our knight in shining leather. We’d both taken to him straight away, and each day we spent with him, he grew more dear to us. His Santa Claus-like laugh, his round belly, his warm smile, were all things both Coop and I looked forward to seeing every day.

  Squeezing Coop’s arm again, I smiled at her and vaguely made a mental note to set the satellite radio to a seventies station. “Is that what this is all about? You’re excited about tattooing someone famous and it’s stressing you out a little?”

  Her startlingly green eyes narrowed when she scoffed at me, sucking in her cheeks. “I don’t care if they’re famous, Trixie. I just want to tattoo as many people as I can so they don’t ever have to suffer like you do. We cannot let Satan win. I will not let him win.”

  Ah. Now we were getting down to the nitty-gritty. Coop’s determination to keep everyone’s soul intact so it can’t be bartered or stolen by Satan.

  As Satan’s head tattoo artist, responsible for branding every soul to enter Hell, she knew her stuff. And according to her, many of the souls she tattooed were tricked into a shoddy bargain with good old Beelzebub.

  She works tirelessly to prevent the same from happening to future souls with some special ink she’s concocted, courtesy of Hell. No one will ever know what she’s doing to save the world one tattoo at a time, but it’s proof that what I say is true. Her heart is pure—even if her lust for blood is savage.

  “You know, Coop, if you listen to some of the rumors people tell about Hollywood, some of these celebrities have already sold their souls for fame and fortune. Maybe you can’t save them?”

  “That’s horse pucky. Only Beyoncé did that.”

  I blinked. “Seriously?”

  She poked my arm, driving a finger into the doughy flesh of my pec. “No. That was a joke. I’m trying to make people laugh because I still can’t smile. Everyone will always think I’m angry if I can’t smile, Trixie. Knuckles’s friends will think I’m angry. I don’t want him to be displeased. Especially since lately he’s been so sad about Candice. He misses his partner. I like him so-so much. I don’t like seeing him sad when he thinks we’re not looking. Also, it’s no good if we hope to bring in new clientele. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t do it without help.” She pulled up the corner of her mouth and held it there. “See?”

  I laughed and pulled her hand away from her mouth. Practicing smiling was something else she did every day. Do you have any idea what it’s like for mediocre me to share a bathroom mirror with ethereal Coop?

  “No one will think you’re angry if you keep the tone of your voice light. We’ve worked on inflection. You’ll be fine. Now stop pulling on your pretty face or it’ll get stuck like that.”

  “It will not. That’s a lie. What did you say about lying?” she asked indignantly, as though the grasshopper was about to teach her sensei a lesson.

  “Oh, Coop,” I teased, patting her cheek. “It’s not a li
e-lie. It’s not one that affects others. It’s just an expression, if you will. My mom used to say that to me all the time.”

  She shook a lean finger at me. “I don’t understand human expressions and metaphors and analogies. Well… Maybe I understand analogies. But that’s not the point. Lying is very wrong, Trixie. You know it is. No matter the circumstances.”

  I suppose, in Coop’s black and white world, any tiny, inconsequential fabrication was a lie.

  Thus, I conceded. “Fine. You win that round. That’s a lie. Your face won’t stay like that, but I wish you’d just give yourself some time and let it happen organically. I bet it will if you wait it out.”

  “Are you appeasing me?”

  “Is that the word you learned from the dictionary today?”

  “It is. There are a lot of words that begin with the letter A.”

  Thumping her on the back, I nodded my approval. “Nice job, pal. And no. I’m not appeasing you. I’m letting you win this argument. Do so gracefully, would ya?” I said with a nudge and a smile.

  Suddenly, her eyes grew somber again. “You’re always so worried about me, I forgot to ask, how do you feel today, Trixie?”

  “Feel? What do you mean?”

  She scrunched up her pert nose and gave my shoulder a light shove. “You know what I mean.”

  I guess I sort of did. It was a little stressful to wander around with this ticking time bomb inside of me and worrying someday I’d have an episode and have to tell Higgs or Knuckles the ugly truth. How many ex-nuns do you know who are full-on possessed by an evil spirit that entered their body when a portal from Hell opened up right in the middle of their convent?

  I’m betting the number is zero, and I’m also betting most people would like to keep it that way.

  We still haven’t pinpointed what triggers my possession, and it hasn’t happened again since an incident under the Hawthorne Bridge, but that meant nothing. Whatever lurked inside me had no schedule and no warning when it made an appearance. But so far, we have a lot of x’s on the calendar to mark the days since Trixie’s last possession.