Free Demon 04 - Deja Demon by Julie Kenner Page B

“I thought maybe you were wondering where he hid the body.”

    Allie clapped her hand over her mouth in time to muffle a squeak, and I spilled the cup of coffee that Stuart passed to me.

    “Ha-ha,” I said, forcing a bit of mirth into my voice. “What a thing to say.”

    He grinned, clearly pleased with himself. “You’re all so jumpy I figured murder and mayhem must be involved.”

    “Always is,” said Eddie, shuffling into the kitchen and taking the seat across from Timmy, who immediately passed him a Frosted Flake. “So who died?” He looked at me. “That we don’t already know about, I mean.”

    “We were just saying that if anyone knew where to hide a body it would be you,” Stuart said, while I glared daggers at Eddie. “Former cop and all.”

    “Eh?”

    “Your previous profession,” Stuart said, pulling out the story I’d laid on him when I’d first brought Eddie home.

    Eddie turned to me, peering at me over half-moon glasses. “He knows about that?”

    “That you were a cop , Gramps,” I said, as I grabbed the milk from the fridge and moved to fill up the cup of my toddler, who was now pounding his empty cup on the table and shouting repeatedly for “Mommy, milk! Mommy, milk!”

    “A cop,” he said with a snort. “I’ve watched those reality shows. They think they go after some bad characters? They ain’t seen nothing ’til they’ve been trapped in a mausoleum with fifteen—”

    “Waffles?” Allie blurted, holding up a box of Eggos she’d yanked from the freezer. I considered kissing her on the spot, then decided to take the more subtle approach and raise her allowance, applying it retroactively, all the way back to infancy.

    “My head is swimming,” said Stuart, shooting one final glance toward Eddie, and then shaking his head as if he’d just set aside a Sudoku puzzle that he was never going to work through. “So what fabulous plans do you have for this beautiful Saturday while I’m stuck in my office and Allie is under house arrest?”

    He shot Allie a stern look as he spoke, and she held up her hands, each holding a waffle. “I didn’t forget. Honest.”

    “Laura and Mindy are coming over, and the four of us girls are stuffing Easter eggs,” I said, as Timmy dumped the dregs of his Frosted Flakes on the floor. “And cleaning.”

    “Great,” Allie muttered behind me. “Grounded I can handle. Cleaning and grounded? Not so much.”

    “What’d the kid do?” Eddie asked. “Sneak out and get herself caught up in the middle of some bad-ass rumble?”

    “What?” I said. “No. Of course not.” Not exactly, anyway.

    Eddie snorted. “Just thought. What with the scrape and all.”

    Stuart and I turned in unison to Allie, who automatically raised her hand to brush at her bangs. For the first time, I noticed the angry, red abrasion near her hairline.

    “It’s nothing,” she said. “Doesn’t hurt at all.”

    “I think we should clean the bathrooms before Laura gets here,” I said brightly, before Stuart decided to ask me if I’d bodily wrestled my child to the ground as punishment for her supposed sneaking out. “You could join us, honey. I’m sure Clark understands the need for a candidate to have a sweet-smelling toilet.”

    “It’s a nice offer,” he said. “But I’ll pass.”

    Of course I’d figured as much, but at least I’d distracted him away from Allie’s face.

    “Coffee for the road?” I asked, pulling his travel mug out of the cabinet. Not that I was trying to get rid of him or anything.

    “Thanks,” he said, then went over to get big, sloppy wet kisses from Timmy, our son’s favorite kind. I poured coffee to the sound of slurpy kisses, then planted one of my own on Stuart’s cheek as he came back to take the mug from me. At least, I tried to. He turned his head just in time, and ended up planting a knee-weakening kiss on me.

    I swooned a little, and I’m pretty sure I moaned. What can I say? It’s not every