Page 21 of Hellfire & Tinsel

Beau wanted to laugh, but he was too overwhelmed.

“This is too much,” Beau said. “I can’t take this from you. Where did you even get it from?”

“The devil.”

“Excuse me?”

Kassel thrust the money back into his face. “He is my boss. Bosses give money to their minions.”

“Employees.”

“Sure.”

“I can’t take that,” Beau said.

“It won’t stay with you. You’ll just take it from me and then feed it to the machine like them.”

“That’s not…” Beau started, but Kassel was already tucking the money wherever he could on Beau and pushing their overstuffed cart to an empty register.

“Come on,” he said, lifting one of the barcode scanners and brandishing it like a gun toward Beau. “We have plans.”

And who was Beau to say no to that, he thought as he plucked money from his collar, pockets, left nostril, and the cuffs of his sleeves.

They did, in fact, have plans.

5

Kassel

“Why are you here?” Kassel asked, watching Oren as he fiddled with his bowtie. It had a strange pattern, like someone had taken a picture of Beau’s living room and printed it on fabric.

“I made Luc let me come up so I could check on you,” Oren said, looking around the room with interest. “It’s weird being back up here again.”

“And them?” Kassel pointed behind Oren to Zorun, who was standing with his arms crossed, wings tucked close and a scowl on his face.

Zorun wasn’t looking at Kassel. He was intently staring at the two identical menaces poking and prodding at the dangling bits on Beau’s tree. Until one slipped free and tumbled to the ground. It didn’t shatter, but the side that hit the floor was severely dented.

“Looks better now,” Tarik said, using his tail to poke at the thing.

“Looks better there too,” Azoth agreed, wrapping his tail around Tarik’s and tugging him back to Zorun. They coiled around him, nuzzling his massive chest.

“Zorun had to escort me because I’m dead and all of that,” Oren said. “And, well, it’s not like Zorun can detach from those two, so they came along.”

“Right.” Kassel wasn’t exactly sure what to do with that information.

“So, how are you doing?” Oren asked with a very strange wiggle of his eyebrows.

Kassel shrugged.

Oren scowled. “A font of information, you are. Where is Beau?”

“He went to shower after we got back into the house,” Kassel said. “We went food shopping and later we’ll be baking cookies.”

“Wait, what?” Oren asked.

“Cookie?” Tarik questioned.

“Do we like cookies?” Azoth asked as Zorun slapped his hand away from where it was trying to sneak into his back pocket.