The Unfortunate Story of Roddy Mayhem, Julie Steimle [i can read book club TXT] 📗

I had heard Trouble’s real name was something ordinary, like Tom Jones. Kinda’ like Rhodes Smith.

Gads, I really had escaped an awful name.

Anyway, mind on the present, I watched Dervish chuck the puck back to the game table then toss his paddle to Spastic who was standing by to take over the game for him. Spastic—who was only thirteen and didn’t know any better—straightened his pink bowtie and manically hopped over to the game table in his grubby oversized clothes to play. Spastic was everyone’s kicking toy, though I actually think Dervish had a soft spot for the kid. Spastic had no horns, and for some reason, the imps adored him.

“Yeah, but you caught the interest of a guy willing to hand you twenty dollars,” Dervish said, advancing on me. “Why?”

I shrugged. I had no clue. I tried to demonstrate it, hands out, shoulders shrugged and strong facial expressions.

Dervish rolled his eyes at me.

Mutton grabbed the back of my neck. Honestly, that dude would have been able to break it if he wanted. And I jerked away as quickly as possible before he could tighten his grip. I staggered toward Piranha who was watching us.

I liked Piranha. She was this seventeen-year-old goddess who colored her dark hair with this silver-blue hair wax. I’ve seen her always in stilettos with spikes on her leather clothes—but in her core, she was a softie. She kept silent, though. Piranha was afraid of Dervish, and for good reason. She had almost as many cigarette burn marks as I did. She was standing with Wispy, a girl her same age who wore her fair hair loose down her back, barely hiding the short spiky horns on her head. Wispy always looked like something could blow her over in any second. She just seemed half-starved all the time. Anorexic, Piranha often whispered. Wispy hardly ever talked to me, though. Too scared.

We could hear the thump of feet above our heads as the bar continued on with hearty business. It distracted me for a minute as Dervish talked.

“…not like us to draw attention. Are you even listening to me?”

“Not really,” I replied too honestly as usual.

Huffing, Dervish growled. “Roddy! You have to listen! I can’t have your mayhem going on right now while we are in the middle of an important deal the Unseelie Court. Queen Maeve herself is interested in expanding her operation with us. US! It is an honor—and you are going to spoil it if you keep drawing this kind of attention to yourself.”

He sounded tense. It was weird. Dervish usually didn’t get this easily rankled. He was more like a force of his own, tearing things up. But he did kowtow to those from the Unseelie Court.

But I really didn’t care. Who in blazes was Queen Maeve? And why did I have to care? I was an American. She sounded foreign. And some snooty-patooty foreign lady of some Unseelie Court thingy was not going to change the fact that I needed to pay for a bed to sleep in when winter came. I hated sleeping outdoors in the winter. Even Southern California got freezing in the wintertime.

More noise echoed from above.

Thug looked up at it. Then with a glance from Dervish, Mutton thumped his way up the stairs to see what the trouble was. The Unseelie Gang owned the establishment, you see. They lived in the building in the apartments above, though most stayed down below in the club room.

“And you have been acting weird lately, besides,” Dervish said. “Coming in-town more than sticking to your beach.”

I rankled with a shiver. My mind went to my current demon problem.

“Spill,” Dervish ordered.

Moaning, I said, “There’s a new demon frequenting my beach. Ok? I get the heebie-jeebies. I have to avoid her now.”

Dervish stared dryly at me. Shaking his head, he said, “Did you think to invite her to the gang.”

I groaned this time, shoulders hanging. “I am NOT a member of the gang!”

“You are,” Dervish said through his teeth. “You pay gang dues and you are on our turf. Besides, you are a halfer. And we need to report rogue demons to the Unseelie Court. So who is she?”

“I don’t know and I don’t really care,” I said.

“Roddy, Roddy, Roddy,” Dervish moaned, advancing on me. He reached over to grab me.

Another boom from above rattled the ceiling. This one was heavier. We all looked up. And we all listened to imps who were shrieking up above. They were saying things like, “Just stab him through.” and “Set the building on fire.”

Dervish narrowed his eyes. He looked to Speed. “Go up there and make sure Mutton is not entertaining arson. We don’t need one impulsive action to bring this place down in flames.”

Nodding, Speed ran up the stairs.

“Now where was I?” Dervish said, his hard orange eyes swiveling onto me again.

“You were asking about the demon at the beach,” Skunk replied with an up-jerk of his chin.

“Ah.” Dervish then looked at me again. “Right. This demon. What kind is it?”

I shrugged. I avoided the demon because most imps did.

“What does it look like?” Dervish asked.

Oh. That.

Sighing with an eye-roll, I said, “I dunno. Kinda like a vampire, but not a vampire. Big black wings that can expand and shrink. She likes to surf.”

All the gang’s eyes rested dryly on me.

“A surfing demon?” Dervish asked, looking tired.

“Dude, a demon of the waves!” Spastic snickered. So did the imps around him.

Dervish shot him a dirty look to make him shut up. The kid looked stupid with his bow tie jiggling on his throat as he continued to giggle.

But one of the gang drew in a breath. “Oh… I’ve seen her.”

Dervish turned to him. It was Jester. I liked Jester usually—when he wasn’t trying to steal from me. He had a crazy sense of humor, no horns and he dyed his hair all the time to match the nutty patches in his clothes. Jester usually minded his own business, kept quiet, and did what he was told—-all while pulling crazy pranks on everybody not in the gang. He had come into the gang with Wispy a few years back.

“You’ve seen this demon?” Dervish asked.

Shrugging, Jester then nodded. “Yeah. She’s a college student.”

“What?” I stared at him. That was just impossible. A demon going to college?

“No way,” Skunk said, glaring at Jester.

The ceiling rattled and thumped again. There was a clatter of a fallen chair. Then the sound of broken glass. All of us looked up as more imps shouted for someone to set the building on fire—like it would be the best prank ever.

“It wasn’t Mutton thinking it then,” murmured Thug.

I hardly peeked to him. It was probably a bar fight going on upstairs and one of the patrons was acting up.

Dervish gestured for Thug and Ricotta to go upstairs. “Hey, and cheese-face, let me know what is going on up there. Find out what Mutton is doing.”

Ricotta nodded as she and Thug hurried to check out the noise. I always thought it was rude that Dervish called his girlfriend cheese-face. Her obsession with cheese might have been a little silly, but she was a sexy-hot woman.

Turing to Jester again, Dervish asked, “So you’re saying a demon somehow managed to slip into the university and is now going to the beach to surf? Is this demon honing in on our turf?”

Jester shook his head, suppressing a chuckle at the idea. “No. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying, there is a girl whose been going to the university for the past few years, and she is also a demon. Don’t you remember when there was that serial killer on the loose killing chicks around town? The bloody one who was kinda freakin’ you out? She killed him.”

I froze, chills going down my back.

“What?” Dervish did remember. He went pale.

So did I. I remembered it. It was a few years back, I was still getting used to the area, and the killings had started before she had shown up. And as I thought about it more, the killings did end just a few days after I had first seen her show up at my beach. I had no idea she had been the end of it.

“I thought the cops had stopped him,” Dervish said in a murmur.

So had I. The cops were all over it. The news said the killer had been shot. Apparently that had been a lie for the public.

But Jester shook his head. “Nope. I was at the police station for snatch-and-grab when they first brought her in under suspicion. I was waiting for a moment when I could sneak off when this supernatural expert from New York was there training them over stuff about us, and they called him over to deal with her. Some kind of psychic. And I later heard from the imps around that area that she had ripped the guy’s heart out with her bare hands—the killer, not the psychic cop.”

“Good reason to avoid a beach,” Piranha murmured, nodding to me meaningfully.

My hands were shaking. I knew that demon had been dangerous. My instincts were that good. But man. Ripped his heard out with her bare hands?

Another thump and a scream came from above. The scream was from Ricotta.

“Seriously, you should just smoke them out!” an imp screamed now.

“That’s it!” Dervish grabbed me by the neck. “Were you followed?”

I shook my head. “Why blame me? I didn’t want to come here! They could have followed Mutton and Skunk as much as me.”

But he dragged me with Skunk to the stairs where he had decided to deal with whatever it was that was causing all the noise upstairs himself.

We came up. It wasn’t just Dervish and Skunk dragging me up the stairs, but also Jester and Piranha came with us. The bar was mostly empty, cleared of most of the usual patrons. No glass was on the floor. All chairs were upright. In one corner sat a pair of young men in their twenties with draft beer and playing cards. At the pool table was this group of guys whom I had never seen there before, but looked ordinary enough. But all their imps were making irregular suggestions. Things like, “Don’t wait. Arrest them now.” Cops. Thing was, the arson shouts were coming from one of the card players.

 Dervish was about to deal with them when this tall, pale guy with platinum blonde hair and sunglasses strolled in through the front doors. Though he came alone, the imps flying about him looked like they were preparing for a party—or they had just been in the middle of one. They were laughing, giving the guy all sorts of crazy ideas, and practically dancing around him. I knew he was a halfer right away.

Dervish drew in a breath. “Trouble.”

I blinked. Then I stared at this new man.

Smirking with the most crooked grin I had ever seen on a halfer, Trouble replied in a bold, dramatic voice meant for the stage, “The name’s Tom Brown. And you are…?”

Frowning, Dervish glanced to Tom’s imps. “Dervish.”

“Dervish?” Tom laughed. His laugh was impishly musical, so full of mockery. It sent my bones a shivering with excitement. “For reals? What is that like, a superhero name? I mean what is your real name?”

I closed my eyes. Dervish hated that question. Like many of us, he didn’t like the name he had been given at birth. I had no clue what his birth name was. For all I know it could have been David or Daniel or Dwayne. Most halfs hated their birth names because they were given to us by those who had rejected us. It was weird that Tom clung to his.

“Are you the one causing trouble up here?” Dervish asked him. His jaw started to clench. “You’re part of the Unseelie Court.”

Tom flinched. Nearly automatic. It was as if he didn’t like that connection in the least. “Unofficial.”

Coloring, Dervish gasped with personal shock, if not insult. “Are you kidding me? Are you dissing that?”

Tom rolled his