The Hinky Velvet Chair Read online

  “Don’t change the subject,” Jewel said. “You do not ‘make up’ a social security number to get a credit card!”

  Randy ignored this. “What is your parlance? She appears to be ‘hot.’”

  Jewel rolled her eyes. “You are such a horndog!”

  “No, seriously. He can, like, read women’s minds in bed, yuh?” Clay looked innocent. “Our secret weapon.”

  “I should like to be a secret weapon,” Randy said.

  “By boning suspects? I don’t think so. We need a new angle on this spa,” she said.

  “You puzzle on that,” Clay said. “Let me take point on the machine. I’ll go in undercover. Then you come in after me.”

  “We’ll meet in the morning and talk it over then.”

  Clay cupped a hand at his ear. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.” He pooched out his kissy-face lips at her and his blue eyes crinkled.

  “Nyet, nein, non,” she said. “You don’t go in alone.”

  He cocked his shaggy blond head. “You’re just saying that.”

  “I am your senior partner and I say we go in together.” She felt her blood pressure rising to almost normal levels. God, what she wouldn’t give for a full night’s rest.

  Clay said, “You know, if you got some sleep, your judgment wouldn’t be impaired. I know Randy didn’t do anything but nooky for two hundred years, but can’t he spare you shut-eye time?”

  “I am present,” Randy said stiffly.

  “Dude, you’re omnipresent,” Clay said, squaring off with her glowering incubus. “Look at this woman. Dark circles under her eyes. Her hands shake. Her hair’s a mess.”

  “Hey!” Jewel said. “I am present.”

  Clay shook his finger at Randy. “You may not remember what being human is like, but a person who misses sleep loses judgment, endurance, mental acuity—” Jewel swiped at him and he ducked. “—And her reflexes go. This isn’t about finding the hundredth woman to make you human, is it?” he sneered at Randy. “It’s your ego.”

  “Sh!” Jewel flapped her hands. “Don’t talk about that here!”

  Randy inflated his chest, his long black hair bristling. They were the same height, but Clay was actor-slim. Randy looked like he bench-pressed taxis.

  She began, “Can you two please—”

  Randy said with sinister softness, “Jewel is your senior partner. She chooses her own bedmates.”

  “So you’ll leave her alone tonight?” Clay said offensively.

  They were nose-to-nose.

  Randy looked like thunder. “She did not choose you.”

  Jewel picked up the files and headed for the car. They would knock it off when they saw their audience was gone.

  Probably.

  Chapter Three

  In the middle of the night, dead exhausted and fuzzy in the head, Jewel rolled over in bed and realized something was different. Blindly she reached out. Her palm touched warm skin.

  Then she remembered.

  This wasn’t different. It was the same, the new same. Different from how things used to be, back when she had privacy and loneliness and perpetual body-hunger.

  Her sex demon was in bed with her.

  She groaned.

  Awake again? she heard him say inside her head.

  “Why do you ask if you already know?” she said aloud.

  He rolled to face her. His hand slid up her leg, around her bottom, up her back. He pressed gently, so that her back arched and a lot of muscles stretched.

  Give him this: The first week, she used to wake up sore. Now her body was getting used to him, though her brain was still in first gear. She arched more and her belly touched his marvelous schlong.

  “You want me to ask,” he said aloud, his voice husky.

  Tired, tired, she was so tired. Her eyes were gluey with unfinished sleep.

  He traced a circle on the small of her back. Two square inches of skin woke up. She squeezed her eyes shut. “No, no.”

  He moved in again, nuzzling her throat with dream-soft lips.

  Her eyes closed. “Can’t it wait? Please... uh... mm.” Friday, two hours of sleep. Saturday, three hours, but then he did that thing with the swings and the vat of chocolate pudding. Sunday he had magicked himself into a football offensive line, and she’d slept ninety minutes. She was losing short term memory. Her eyeballs were dry. She couldn’t think.

  The thing was, he did it for her. He always did it for her.

  He bit down, his teeth sharp against the curve of her neck. Every muscle in her back zinged down to her tingle-tangle, and she arched up tight against him.

  Then he was spinning her back toward sleep, into demonspace, where he could be anything and do anything and she loved it.

  He floated in grayness.

  Where are we?

  As always, he replied, “Somewhere between your desires and mine.” He reached for her.

  She flinched and floated out of his reach. If you would please listen to me!

  In her head, in demonspace, his voice gonged, I listen to you every moment. I can count your breaths. I know when you want me, before you know.

  But why does it have to be all night, every single night? Her throat tightened. Everything was such a contest with him.

  You are my equal here, he said, answering the thought. She had no mental privacy, here in his world.

  I’m trying to tell you, not tonight. Don’t you ever rest?

  When I know you are satisfied.

  She rolled her eyes. I am satisfied every single night! she yelled into the faceless clouds. And don’t tell me how many breaths I took since the last time we did it, because it’s pissing me off! Suddenly she was back in her bedroom, her eyes full of exhausted tears. “You don’t always know what I want, and I never asked for this mess!”

  That wasn’t fair. He hadn’t asked for it either.

  “Don’t you ever settle for a quickie?”

  He said, sounding shocked, “I have learned to make it last.”

  God yes. He’d learned it well. “Okay, maybe less magic sometimes?”

  “But you love the magic!”

  This was true. “But I shouldn’t.” She felt guilty. She looked away from his nine-inch temptation and tried to assemble a reasonable argument. “My job is to minimize magic’s impact on the city. I’m not paid to play sex games with it. Bad things happen to cities that don’t fight magic. Pittsburgh is total chaos.” That made sense. She must be waking up. “New Orleans is above water finally, but half of it is blue zones, and tourists are disappearing nightly. Most of ’em are crackpots, all voodoo-happy, like a bunch of doped-up runaway teenagers, letting their hair grow in the Haight in the Summer of Love.”

  He blinked.

  She stretched out a hand. “Don’t you get it? We can’t let magic take over our lives!” Actually, she loved how magic was taking over her sex life. She just wished her sex life didn’t interfere with her sleep.

  He said, “How does their hair grow in hate? Or love?”

  Beating against his colossal ignorance made her tireder.

  “Look, I’m going to sleep now. I can’t catch you up on last century’s cultural revolution.”

  He reached for her hand. “After we—”

  She slid off the bed. “Oh, no. No, not ‘after we.’ ‘We’ every night. And in the daytime on weekends. And whenever you—” Whenever you disappear on me. But she was too whipped to go there. “Just — just no.” Her treacherous bimbolimbo twanged, but she walked away. “I’m sleeping on the couch. Alone.”

  “Wait! Jewel!” Real panic was in his voice.

  She turned at the door. “No.”

  “No!” he yelled like an echo, his hands reaching for her.

  While she watched, he vanished.

  “Well, that takes care of that.” She felt defeated, which was totally unfair.

  She could get all the sleep she wanted now. As long as she didn’t go back to bed.

  She staggered out to the living room couch, crawl
ed under her ugly yellow hand-crocheted afghan, and fell asleep before her head hit the cushion.

  Twelve fabulous, dreamless hours later, her cell phone rang.

  “It’s me,” Clay said, insufferably cheery. “I’m on my way to the Thompson place.”

  She sat up. “What? No! You can’t go in alone!”

  “I thought you were going to the spa with Randy.”

  “You wanted me to go to the spa. What you’re going to do is wait for me, and we’ll do this together.” She rubbed her head. She felt great. She should sleep on the couch more often. “What time is it?” Her phone said 10:30. “Dear God, did I sleep.”

  “You needed it. So I’ve thought up the coolest cover story. Two layers. You’ll love it.”

  “You can’t just move into a millionaire’s house,” she objected.

  “Bet?”

  “No bet,” she snapped. “Meet me at Wolfy Shekel’s in an hour and a half. We’ll have breakfast and discuss our approach.”

  Jewel hung up, stretched until every vertebra popped, and put on her swimsuit and shorts, detouring past the bed.

  o0o

  Five minutes later, Clay was in the mansion on Marine Drive, face to face with his father for the second time in a month. Almost a record.

  “It’s an honor to have you under my roof,” Virgil said at his most urbane. “But why?”

  Clay ground his teeth. This was even harder than he’d expected it to be. “Maybe I’m here to see Griffy.”

  Virgil raised his eyebrows. “She’s at home, I believe.”

  The service elevator opened and a burly bald guy in a black suit pushed a room service cart into the collection room.

  “What’s with the help?” Clay said, mystified.

  His father shushed him. “Thank you, Mellish, we’ll manage. Ms. Griffin will come upstairs to pour.”

  Clay waited until the elevator closed behind Mellish. “But you hate servants.” He realized that Virgil must be involved in another scam. He wouldn’t lay on hot and cold running help if he only wanted to replace Griffy. Sovay might be just a mark.

  At this moment Griffy peeked around the door. She squealed, “Clay, honey! You came after all!”

  Clay gathered her up for a big hug. “Mm-mm! You sexy thing!” When his lips were near her ear he whispered, “What are you up to?”

  Griffy squeezed him back. She pushed him away to give him a smile. She was thinner than he remembered, in full showgirl war paint, and her blonde hair was cut in a new bob, but she had dark circles under her eyes. “You’ll stay until the birthday party?”

  “There is no birthday party,” Virgil stated.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she said in an odd tone. “The block party. I just can’t help thinking of it as your birthday party.”

  That was weird. Virgil had just laid down the law and Griffy sort of skated over it, instead of knuckling under.

  “I have a houseguest,” Virgil said. That would be the golddigger. “If you stay, I’ll need you to take another name.”

  Clay let go of Griffy. “She knows my name?” What was Virgil up to? And, darnit, he had just revealed that he already knew the houseguest was a she. How did Virgil do this to him?

  “No, no. Dawes will do,” Virgil amended. “But you’re not my son. You don’t know me, you don’t know Griffy.”

  To Clay’s amazement, Griffy made a protest in her throat.

  Virgil rounded on her with a What? look in his eye.

  Griffy said nothing.

  Clay got goose bumps.

  Virgil said, “You can stay Clay Dawes, but you’re not my son, you’re, hm, what? A shill, a fool, a bumbling worshipper of new age theories, a woo-woo wonder, a clown.” Clay felt every word like a punch in the gut. “I happen to have a use for someone like that right now.”

  “I want him here for the birthday party,” Griffy said.

  Virgil inclined his head. “You can stay five days. I’ll be through with you by then.” It wasn’t clear from his gesture or his glance whether he was talking to Clay or Griffy.

  Griffy stumbled out, looking pale.

  When she had gone, Clay blurted, “Why are you torturing her? That woman has put up with you for eighteen years! You don’t have to marry her or anything. But if you plan to dump her, wouldn’t it be decent to pay her off and pack her off?”

  Virgil started fiddling at his workbench. “Got a job going. Oh, and for the next five days, she’s my sister.”

  “What?!” Clay already knew this, and it infuriated him.

  “You can remind her. I have to keep correcting her tells. She’s like a sheet of glass.”

  Clay exploded. “I can’t believe you’re running a con in your own house!”

  “Job came to me,” Virgil said, peering through a loupe.

  “Griffy deserves better than this!”

  “She gets what she’s earned.”

  “If this is just a job, you owe her an explanation!” I’ve got to stop shouting. How did Virgil do this to him? Anytime he wanted, bam, he could destroy Clay’s hard-won Buddha calm.

  Virgil aimed the loupe at him. “The last time you got foolish over her, you stomped out of my house and didn’t come back for three years.”

  His chest got tight. “You asked me to come back.”

  Virgil held still. “All right, I asked you to come back.” He took the loupe out of his eye. “So is this another fit of gallantry?”

  “I won’t abandon Griffy, and neither should you.” Why couldn’t he tell the old man off?

  Because last time he went off on Virgil, he’d had to leave the house at age seventeen and support himself through college. Virgil had cancelled his credit cards, appropriated his bank accounts, and sent a repossessor after his car. Clay considered he’d got off lucky.

  “So you’ve come to keep the old man honest?” Virgil showed his teeth. “Then I guess you had better stay, if you want to protect her interests.” He stuck the loupe in his eye and turned back to his tinkering. “You’ve gone sentimental, boy.”

  Without thinking it through, Clay lashed out. “I’m here on business.”

  “Good. Maybe you’ll finally make some money.”

  “It’s not a con. I’m done with that. I told you a week ago, I’m an investigator with the Department of Consumer Services.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Clay hardened his voice. “The department received a complaint against a Sovay Sacheverell. My partners will be showing up today. I expect you to cooperate.” Wow, he sounded like Jewel, facing down a crook and laying down the law.

  Virgil turned toward him with amusement and disbelief in his face. “Why should I bother helping you?”

  “Because your new girlfriend is a black widow?”

  “Blah. You can’t even make an arrest. You’re here because Griffy boo-hooed on your shoulder and ‘you want to see justice done,’” Virgil said meanly. “Like last time, when you thundered at me to ‘do the right thing.’ That was about Griffy, too.”

  “If you think you can con a murderer, you’re playing with fire. Worse, you’re playing with Griffy’s life. What if she decides to get rid of Griffy first, to clear her path to you?”

  “Murderers make excellent marks. They don’t dare scream when you take ’em,” Virgil said.

  Clay noted that he hadn’t responded to that last question. Griffy still meant something to the old man. But what? “You have to cooperate with our investigation.”

  “Who complained?”

  Clay stood tongue-tied, caught off-guard again.

  Virgil waved a hand. “I don’t need you and your flat-footed friends clumping around in a delicate job.”

  He’s not willing to talk about Griffy. In a sick way, that was a sign of hope.

  Virgil changed the subject. “Speaking of explanations owed, that explanation you gave me for losing my brass bed sucked sour owl stool. What really happened? I suppose you fell for some girl and gave her all the money.”

  “I still have
my money. You got yours.”

  “I don’t have my bed,” Virgil said. He looked up again and Clay felt paralyzed, facing those snaky eyes.

  “The bed got crushed. It was, uh, special.”

  “What was so special about it?”

  And Clay told him. He hadn’t intended to. Randy’s story just fluttered out of him on its own. “—Because his mistress turned him into an incubus, and he spent two hundred years giving orgasms to women,” he finished. A sinking feeling gripped Clay. Virgil could get him to betray himself or anyone else. “The bed got crushed. The guy’s magical. He gets stuck in beds and my partner, uh, gets him out.” It sounded so dumb when he said it out loud.

  His father snorted. “And you believe this fairy story.”

  “It’s true.”

  “You take the cake. There’s a master con man in this story somewhere, but I’m not looking at him.” Virgil turned away as if the sight of Clay made him sick. “Get out of here. I’m sure Griffy will be glad to talk to you.”

  Sweating, Clay got out.

  Now to get Jewel organized.

  He found a corner on the back stairs and phoned her. “Did you order breakfast?”

  “I’m at the beach.”

  “Whoa, what happened to the case?”

  “I’ll be in Wolfy Shekel’s in half an hour. Where are you?”

  “So you’ll bring Randy?”

  “No, I will not bring Randy.” She sounded guarded.

  “Why isn’t Randy coming?”

  “We had a fight. As a matter of fact, he’s stuck in my bed back at my apartment.”

  “In your bed? Like when he was stuck in that brass bed for two hundred years? And you left him there? That wasn’t nice.”

  She went off like a bomb. “Darnit, I needed the sleep! You said so, yourself!”

  “I didn’t say you should trap him. I can’t believe you did that. He must be freaking out, the poor schmuck.”

  “Since when do you care if I’m nice to Randy?”

  “I don’t. But we’re gonna need him.”

  “Randy is not a city employee.”

  “Three cases at once? This will be tough. He might be the cover you need. He seems to know more about the Venus Machine than you do. Plus the mind-reading-while-boning-the-suspect thing. He’s a person, Jewel. Treat him like one.”