That meant no more time to be up.
“Delaney, I swear on every last throw pillow I have, if you don’t tell me who the fuck Vincent is, I’ll beat you until the words fall out of your toothless mouth! Who is Vincent, Delaney?”
“He was just someone I knew a long time ago—when I was in college.”
“Was he your lover?”
Her face must have belied the bile that rose in her throat at the very thought. “No. Christ, no.”
Marcella paced, her white wedge sandals clacking on the tile. “Okay, look. Now’s not the time to hide shit from me, mi amiga. If you won’t tell me how he’s connected to you, then I don’t get it—but here’s the gist of what I overheard. Vincent’s contract is up, and according to the evil, douchebag fuck I caught talking about this—so is yours. How in the bloody fuck can you have a contract with Hell, Delaney?”
Now that was curious. “But I don’t have a contract with anything. Swear it on my echinacea.”
Marcella latched on to Delaney’s shoulders, digging her nails into her flesh. “I swear, you’re going to make me kick your ass, aren’t you? What are you protecting? Who are you protecting and why won’t you just tell me so I can help?”
“There’s nothing to help me with, Marcella. Vincent’s dead.” Dead, dead, dead. The whoring, boozing, fuckfest of a freak pig was cold and dead.
Marcella froze, the wild look in her eyes tearing at Delaney’s gut. “That doesn’t explain a goddamned thing and you know it, and admittedly, I only heard pieces of this conversation. But riddle me this, if this Vincent’s contract’s up, how does that have anything to do with you? I literally had to clamp my jaw shut to keep my mouth from unhinging when I heard the words contract and Hell with your name in the mix. The world’s gone mad, and if you don’t give me some answers, I’ll hunt them down myself. Whatever you’re doing this for—whomever you’re protecting—they’ve got you by the short hairs and I promise you, I’ll kill them before I’ll let them touch one strand of hair on your head.”
Marcella’s cell phone chirped “A Rose in Spanish Harlem,” breaking the intensity of their confrontation.
“Argh!” Marcella shouted, digging into her trendy, red leather jacket and yanking out her cell phone. Her brow furrowed as she flipped it open. “What?” she yelped into the mouthpiece, but then she grew silent. “Yeah, you prick—you can bet your slimy ass I’ll be there.” Her eyes narrowed in Delaney’s direction before clamping the phone shut again with a snap. “I gotta go, but I’ll be back, and when I come back, you’d better be ready to bring your toys to the sandbox.” She snapped her fingers, turning first to a crackling white light, indicating her extreme displeasure with Delaney, then disappearing.
Delaney took long swallows of air, the thrash of her heart against her ribs almost debilitating. How in all of bloody hell was she connected to Vincent by a contract?
Yes, Vincent must’ve signed a contract with Lucifer for all the power and connections he’d had. For all the trouble he’d escaped in the short time she’d known him, he’d had something working in his favor. But Jesus Christ in a miniskirt, no—she’d had nothing to do with it. What did Vincent’s time running out have to do with her? None of this made any fucking sense.
Her chimes tinkled in the store, then her flesh pimpled with familiar goose bumps. “Now’s not the time, people! Can’t you see I’m in crisis?” she called to the ceiling, hoping whoever was here now could just hang on. She couldn’t piece other people’s lives together if she couldn’t even keep her own together.
But Robert Young, one of the most famous fathers ever portrayed on television, not to mention a cutting-edge doctor on a hit medical show in the late sixties and long into the seventies, wasn’t about to be denied. What he appeared in always fascinated Delaney. Sometimes he was dressed in a crisp suit and tie, other times in his medical coat complete with stethoscope.
“Bob? Busy here, okay? Can you come back another time? And do me a skinny, tell everyone else I’m busy, too. I’m on hiatus or something. Sort of like those breaks you rich actors who star in a series take in the summer to sail off to exclusive islands or get massages and find Jesus in sweathouses, ya know? The breaks that piss the rest of us off because there’s nothing to watch on TV but crap. It isn’t like the viewing audience doesn’t want you to have a vacation, but does it have to last for three damned months? And who the hell said you could have a midseason break on top of it, too? I don’t want to be pissy here, Bob, but that’s Easy Street. If they paid me the kind of money they pay some of these schmoes on TV these days, dude, I’d do a whole show with just me as the cast and I’d work even if I lost a limb—three hundred and sixty-five.”