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  The Demon’s

  Wife

  A Novel of the Supernatural and Attempted Redemption

  By

  Rick Hautala

  JournalStone

  San Francisco

  Copyright © 2013 by Rick Hautala

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  JournalStone books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  JournalStone

  www.journalstone.com

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  The views expressed in this work are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-95-8 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-98-9 (ebook)

  JournalStone rev. date: September 13, 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-936564-97-2 (hc)

  JournalStone rev. date: August 16, 2013

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013941615

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Design: Denise Daniel

  Cover Art: M. Wayne Miller

  Edited by: Norman Rubenstein

  Dedication

  This book has got to be dedicated to Holly, who edited this book—and lives with me—with love, patience, and understanding.

  I don’t know how you do it.

  Also, a special shout out to Hank Schwaeble who helped me out of a legal jam …

  Thank God it was a fictional one

  Endorsements

  "The Demon’s Wife asks the question What do you expect when you marry a demon? Rick Hautala answers that question with harrowing suspense, dark mystery, and masterful plotting. Not many women can say they're in love--or lust--with a man who has a tail, but Claire McMullen can. This DEMON has style, sensuality and soul." — Robert McCammon

  "The Demon’s Wife is wonderfully entertaining and entirely compelling, a horrifying and heartfelt urban fantasy sure to appeal to fans of Charlaine Harris and Kelley Armstrong. Cloaked inside this dark, frightening tale is horror legend Rick Hautala's surprising treatise on the purifying, redemptive power of love." — Christopher Golden, New York Times best-selling co-author of Joe Golem and the Drowning City and Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism

  "Rich in detail, and with a unique and devilishly good premise, Rick Hautala’s The Demon’s Wife is a completely compelling journey into a most-unusual marriage of the supernatural and earthly. A master of horror, Hautala conjures up twists and turns that will keep readers guessing what will happen next to the demon’s wife, Claire, and her very different husband, as the pages go flying by." — Matthew Costello, Author of Vacation and Home

  “The Demon’s Wife is a sly examination of the strangest marriage you will ever see. It’s a fast-paced, mordant examination of contemporary relationships, full of clever twists and irreverent reversals that turn the ideas of love and standard theology inside-out. Echoes of Wodehouse and Sheckley resonate through the pages. A fitting capstone to a magical career.” — Thomas F. Monteleone, 4-time Bram Stoker Award winner

  “THE DEMON’S WIFE is a brilliant, chilling, mind-blowing and heart-stopping novel of horror and magic. A superb novel, first page to last.” – Jonathan Maberry, New York Times best-selling author of EXTINCTION MACHINE and FIRE & ASH.

  "Quirky, funny, frightening, and romantic, THE DEMON'S WIFE would have been right at home in that paragon of pulp magazines, John Campbell's UNKNOWN (and there is no higher praise for fantasy). Reminiscent of John Collier, Thorne Smith, and Roald Dahl at their most wicked, the tale turns on a dime from charming to chilling as it asks the eternal question, 'How far are we willing to go for love?'" — Chet Williamson

  Chapter

  1

  Enter Samael

  Now, Claire McMullen says she might never have married Samael if she had known that he was a demon. Then again, his demonic nature might be what attracted her to him in the first place. He certainly had “devilishly” good looks—impeccably dressed with long, dark hair, even darker eyes, a terrific build, and a smile that captivated both women and men, in various ways. She didn’t find out about the tail until later.

  Of course, it’s easy for her to say that now but at the beginning, back when neither she nor anyone else knew how things would eventually turn out, it was quite another story.

  Picture this, because it’s all too easy:

  Claire was in her early thirties. She was tall and lanky—not skinny—with pale, freckled skin and round blue eyes. The only thing she liked about herself was her hair—a long, thick mass of curly tangles so bright red people often thought it wasn’t her natural color. Her hair was the first thing about her that Samael noticed.

  She also had a job she hated, a roommate she…tolerated. She also had a mountain of debt—mostly from college loans—that she had concluded was never going to be paid off. She also had, of course, the usual expenses for room and board, electricity, heat, cell phone, Internet, and weekend nights bar-hopping around Portland, always on the prowl for Mr. Right…or at least Mr. Right Now.

  Let’s consider her job for a moment.

  For the past seven years, she had worked as a purchasing agent for Montressor, a chemical company in South Portland, Maine. What this had to do with her degree in Communications from Ithaca College, in upstate New York, she had no idea. Then again, most of the friends she was still in touch with from college had jobs that had absolutely nothing to do with their majors. The best writer in her class—Ally Dixon—was working as a nanny for a doctor in Austin, Texas. At least Claire hadn’t studied the bottom of beer and booze bottles, like many of her college friends. With the background she’d had growing up in Aroostook County, Maine, and wanting so desperately to escape, she studied harder than most students. To offset the need for student loans, she had worked part-time in a donut shop—Tony’s Donuts—in downtown Ithaca for three years, summers included. To this day, the smell of fresh-baked donuts never failed to nauseate her.

  So five days a week, from seven o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon, she sat in an office not much bigger than a broom closet. There were no windows, and her only lifelines to the “real world” were cruising Facebook and listening to WXPN, a radio station from Philly that she streamed over the computer, no matter how many times Marty, her boss, told her not to because she was taking up too much of the company’s bandwidth.

  After another seemingly endless day in a seemingly endless parade of days in what amounted to little more than an experiment in sensory deprivation, she would come home to the small apartment on Congress Street that she shared with Sally Lewis.

  Sally was, as they say, “a piece of work.” She had grown up in a rich family in Cape Elizabeth, and never seemed to lack money even though her current job as a bookstore manager didn’t pay all that well, considering how hard she worked.

  Claire hadn’t always felt this distance with Sally. In fact, they had been close friends for several years, back when Claire had first moved to Portland to be closer to Billy Carroll, her boyfriend at the time. That hadn’t turned out as well as she had hoped. Most relationships don’t, right? But once she was back in Maine—something she had vowed to avoid—a kind of inertia set in, and she…well, she simply stayed here now that she was fam
iliar with the city. At least she hadn’t moved back home to the “County.”

  Claire met Sally when she had worked part-time over Christmas at the local Borders bookstore. Sally was a manager there, although year after year, her job looked increasingly shaky, what with the economy and people not buying books like they used to. She kept threatening to pack up and move—maybe to Florida or some Caribbean island. More and more, Claire wished Sally would do exactly that, even though she had no idea how she’d make the rent without a roommate. She didn’t have many friends locally, and she didn’t like the idea of searching for a new roomie on Craigslist or whatever—

  And she hadn’t forgotten about the “Craigslist Killer either.”

  In spite of her bluster and job insecurity, Sally stayed where she was—in the apartment and at Borders—and Claire stayed where she was.

  On weekends, like I said, they went out. Sometimes they went with friends of Sally’s from the bookstore. Sometimes it was just the two of them. On the night she met Samael, it was just the two of them.

  It was Sally, in fact, who first noticed him that night at Margarita’s Grille. They had tickets to see “The Economy,” a local band that had made it nationally and was playing a “coming home” gig at the Civic Center. Before the show, they decided to grab a quick bite to eat and have something to drink.

  That’s when they wandered into the bar.

  At the time they met him, neither one of them knew that he spelled his name “Samael.” That might have given her a hint of his demonic nature, too, but how could she have known? They could have Googled the name, perhaps, but no one expects to meet an actual demon, face to face…not in a city like Portland, Maine. New York City? Sure. No problem. Both of them assumed he spelled his name the usual way: “Samuel,” even though he pronounced it without the “U.”

  Sam-a-el.

  On the night they met, Sally tried calling him “Sam” a few times. It irked Claire, but as the drinks flowed, Sally even tried “Sammy” once or twice. To Claire, it didn’t “sound” at all right. He was definitely not a Sam much less a Sammy. He appeared not to appreciate being called that, either. After Sally used the nickname a few more times, Samael politely—but firmly—corrected her—once—and asked that she please use his full name, “Samael,” and to pronounce it correctly. He even wrote it down on a bar napkin…along with his telephone number, which he slid over to Claire.

  Claire experienced a thrill when he scooted his chair closer to her.

  “So what do you do?” he asked. His dark eyes were focused on her…a little too intently, maybe?

  “Not much.”

  “I manage the Borders,” Sally chimed in. “Believe me. I could tell you stories.”

  “Go on, Claire,” Samael said, still staring at her like she was the only woman in the bar.

  Claire sighed. “I work as a purchasing agent for a local chemical company. I order the stuff they put into your drinking water and the salt they spread on the roads in winter. It’s a soul-sucking job.”

  Samael chuckled, and Claire was concerned she had said something wrong.

  “Interesting choice of words,” he said as if to allay her embarrassment. “’Soul-sucking.’ Nice turn of phrase. I like it.”

  “Talk about ‘soul-sucking, ’’’ Sally went on, all but wedging herself between Claire and Samael. “I should tell you about this one guy last week.” As she launched into a detailed rendition of one of the barely literate idiots who worked for her, much less patronized the store, Claire noticed that Samael barely listened to her. His dark eyes—which, in this lighting, now appeared to be flecked with gold—never left hers. She should have felt uncomfortable, but she didn’t.

  While they were both trying their best to ignore Sally, Claire felt a subtle tug on her hair and glanced over at her shoulder to see that Samael had curled a lock of her red hair around his forefinger and was twirling it like spaghetti on a fork. She shot him a ‘What the fuck?’ look, but he simply smiled at her.

  And the truth was, she didn’t mind in the least.

  Claire wasn’t the kind of girl who took a man home on the first date, no matter what…and this wasn’t even a date. She and Sally had first noticed Samael sitting in the bar with either a friend or business colleague, and they had made a point of sitting where he couldn’t help but notice them.

  And it worked.

  His business partner or friend left, and Samael came over to their table and introduced himself. He took a seat at their table as if he owned the place, and his lines were the smoothest Claire had ever heard…and she had heard plenty. It was obvious from the get-go that he had money and wasn’t simply pretending to have it. Having grown up poorer than poor, Claire could always tell the real money from the fake.

  Claire caught the signals from Sally that she wanted to sink her hooks into this guy. She was the kind of girl who would take a man home on the first night, date or no date. But Samael made it clear that he was much more interested in Claire. After he excused himself and left, saying he had to go home but hoped to see them again—both women watching him go and admiring his broad shoulders and slim hips, Sally turned to Claire.

  “I dunno…I mean, he looks good…tasty, but…I’d say he’s kind of a dickhead.”

  Claire was still staring at the door he had used to exit the bar. She had the weirdest sensation that he hadn’t walked out into the night, but that he had vanished…like a magician in a puff of smoke. His face—that smile…and those eyes!—were seared into her memory. She barely paid attention to what her friend was saying.

  “Claire? … Are you listening to me?”

  Claire shook her head, feeling like she was just waking up, and everything was hazy. She looked at Sally.

  “Huh?”

  “I said…” Sally leaned close and looked around as if suspicious that Samael was lingering nearby and would overhear her. “I think he’s kind of a dickhead.”

  “I don’t think so,” Claire said. She took a slow sip of her mojito and looked longingly at the door as if expecting—wishing he would reappear in the doorway, walk over to her table, and sweep her off into the night. The napkin with his name and phone number on it was a wrinkled wad in her sweaty palm.

  “I don’t know,” was all she said as she looked down and flattened out the napkin, relieved to see that the name and number were still legible. She suspected Sally was reading a lot more into what she said and did, but she didn’t care.

  “I mean,” Sally went on, “come on. The clothes, the haircut, the tan…in the middle of March? In Maine?” She snorted. “All too perfect. Who’s he think he’s kidding?”

  Claire felt an urge to rise to Samael’s defense, but she let Sally’s snarky comments lie where they fell.

  Go ahead and talk yourself right out of any interest in him. That leaves the field wide-open for me.

  Sally took out her cell phone and glanced at the time.

  “Think we should get going?”

  Claire considered, took another sip of her drink, emptying her glass, and then nodded. She could sit here all night, and that wasn’t going to bring Samael back into the bar…Not tonight. But she had his phone number, and she damned well intended to call him. Not tonight. Maybe not even tomorrow. There was no point in looking desperate. That’d scare him away. Definitely, she’d call him soon. She was smiling as she slipped the napkin into her coat pocket. Then she slung her purse over her shoulder.

  Both women kicked back their chairs and stood up. Claire started walking toward the door, thinking how foolish it was to get excited, thinking that she’d soon be touching the same door latch Samael had just touched. No one else had left the bar since he had left, so she’d have direct contact with something he had touched.

  What are you, crazy, thinking like this?

  “I gotta use the little girls’ room,” Sally said.

  “I’ll meet you outside,” Claire said, not wanting anyone else to touch the door before she did. She looked straight ahead as she
walked to the door and, feeling a curious tingling thrill inside, put her hand on the latch and pressed it down. The lock clicked, the door opened, and a cool, damp breeze blew into her face, raising goosebumps on her arms as she stepped outside.

  The parking lot was empty except for three cars. Not a rocking night tonight. The surrounding streetlights cast a cold, eerie blue glow onto the pavement and the remnants of the last snowfall. Hopefully, that had been the last storm of the winter, Claire thought, but knowing Maine, there could be a blizzard in May. At the far end of the parking lot, she noticed a black Mercedes, and the foolish hope—conviction?—that this was Samael’s car and that he was waiting for her to come outside filled her. It certainly looked as though someone was sitting in the driver’s seat, but at this distance and in the darkness, it was impossible to be sure.

  Claire felt suddenly isolated and vulnerable as she looked around, certain, now, that if not Samael, then someone was watching her from the shadows. The street was unusually quiet, but on a cold night like this, what would you expect? The distant sound of traffic passing by on I-295 sounded like tearing paper. Claire sidled over to the side of the restaurant and looked around, avoiding the bright lights because it made her feel like she stood out all the more. If she smoked, this is when she would have lit up. A peculiar emptiness…a sense of disappointment or of something irretrievably lost filled her, making her feel hollow inside.

  She glanced at the door, then at her wristwatch, then at the door again, expecting Sally to come out of the restaurant any second now, but there was no sign of her.