24 SECRET AGENT: Are You Hooked?

TITLE: Lucifer’s Porsche
GENRE: Urban Fantasy



Satan shivered.

The air shimmered with Seattle’s late-August radiance. Still too chilly for his taste, despite the rugged human body he’d conjured for himself. In the past few decades, he’d noticed an uptick in carbon dioxide that promised a toastier future.

He strolled past two-story colonials and well-tended lawns. With hefty mortgages and a competitive need to accumulate gadgets, suburbanites made promising candidates. A forty-something male drove by in a gold Mercedes. Satan performed a quick soul-scan: theft, adultery, assault, chronic emotional abuse. No need to waste a deal on that one.

A cloud of sweet fragrance attacked him. Coughing, he stared at the offending honeysuckle, infusing it with an undertone of vomit that would puzzle the homeowner until she replaced it with a scentless shrub.

Two girls played hopscotch in a driveway. Under fifteen. Off-limits per the treaty. One of them gave him a beady stare, nudging her friend.

He clenched his fists, fighting the urge to strike her across the head for impertinence. A soul-scan revealed a malicious streak that if left unchecked would grow nicely.

He winked. “See you later, alligator.”

“Perv,” she said. As if that were a bad thing.

Staring at a bird overhead, he frightened it into defecation. The treaty didn’t protect hopscotch grids. My, my, such language from those innocent mouths. Smiling, he sauntered, pausing to alter a tinkling wind chime into discordance.