“That’s not it,” she said quickly. “It’s just — I guess I’m used to sleeping alone.”
Even in the dim light she could see the bitter twist to his mouth. “I can see why.”
Once he’d delivered that remark, he moved past her and went to gather up his clothes. Funny how she’d barely noticed his naked form. Well, she supposed there was nothing like spotting a huge demonic shape in your living room to kill off the old libido.
She didn’t bother to respond to his comment — not that she had enough functioning brain cells to come up with anything remotely clever. At least it looked as if he meant to leave without causing any trouble.
In silence he pulled on his clothes, then draped his leather jacket over his arm. She couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t bothered to turn on a light. Maybe he didn’t have any trouble seeing in the dark.
She held her breath, wondering if he had seen her unease, whether he’d been able to read the terror she thought must surely have revealed itself on her face. But he only looked down at her for a few seconds, his expression inscrutable. “I’ll let myself out.”
And he brushed past her, heading straight for the front door. He didn’t slam it, but he might as well have. The silence that descended after it closed behind him seemed to press against her ears, heavy as the air that preceded a thunderstorm.
For a long moment Felicia stood where she was, rooted in the opening between the two Japanese screens that hid the sleeping area. Belatedly, she realized her hands were shaking. She clenched them into fists and shut her eyes. At least he was gone. She wouldn’t think about what she had seen, or the fact that she’d let him touch her, had taken him into her body.
Slowly she uncurled her fingers, then went to the kitchen and switched on the lights. She didn’t know how much a cup of tea was going to help, but at the moment she couldn’t think of anything else to do.
She set the kettle on the burner, and turned on the gas.
• • •
Sloppy, Samael berated himself. Not just sloppy. Fucking sloppy.
He maneuvered the Silverado out of the parking garage and pointed it west, toward his condo. What else could he do? Sometimes he’d join Abigor on the night shift if he didn’t have anything else going on, but his fellow soul-catcher thought he was safely snugged down with Felicia. Exactly where he should have been, except for that one error in judgment.
Never let them see you. It was one of the most basic tenets of topside existence. Demons had all sorts of ways of tricking the eye, of making humans see everything except the truth. He’d used a variation of that manipulation to maneuver himself into the lineup at the speed-dating event where he’d met Felicia.
These human bodies he and Abigor and all the others with topside duty wore were the first line of defense, but sometimes a demon form was necessary. And in those cases, darkness and glamour were his tools. He just hadn’t thought he’d need them in Felicia’s loft.
It had only been for a moment, after all. Just that one moment after he’d alighted on her balcony, then made his way inside. He’d been just about to shield himself in his human body when she appeared. And he’d switched over quickly.
Just not quickly enough.
He took some comfort in the fact that she had seemed somewhat hesitant. Oh, she’d been fast enough about ordering him from her loft, no doubt about that. But he wondered if she were already trying to second-guess herself, to tell herself she hadn’t really seen what she thought she saw. The human mind didn’t like to acknowledge things outside its existence. It would try to rationalize, to explain it away.
He’d give her time to do that. Time he had plenty of. Then again, she was an artist. Artists tended to see the world with different eyes. Perhaps those artist eyes of hers had seen the truth and wouldn’t abandon it quite so easily.
For both their sakes, he hoped not.
• • •
All sorts of random types inhabited the IHOP on Sunset Boulevard, which was the main reason Abigor and Samael had made it their unofficial Sunday morning base of operations. Under normal circumstances, they made a noteworthy enough pair. Here, surrounded by club-goers grabbing breakfast before going to bed for the rest of the day, drag queens, junkies nursing a single cup of coffee for hours, and the rest of Hollywood’s flotsam and jetsam, they were barely worthy of a second glance.
Abigor had ordered the same thing he always did: a rare steak accompanied by scrambled eggs and an overflowing plate of biscuits and gravy. Samael wondered once again how he could eat the same thing week after week and never get tired of it.
“You look like shit,” the demon said, gesturing toward Samael’s face with a forkful of drippy biscuit.
Well, he couldn’t argue with that. He knew he felt like shit.
His own plate of bacon, eggs over easy, and hash browns was barely touched. For some reason he didn’t have much appetite this morning.
“Girlfriend didn’t wait up for you?”
Quite the contrary. Samael knew he’d be having a much better morning if Felicia had just stayed safely asleep. He swallowed a mouthful of harsh black coffee, then said, “She saw me.”
For a second the words didn’t seem to register. Abigor plowed through another mouthful of biscuit and gravy before he stopped cold, fork halfway back down to his plate. “Say what?”
“When I went back to her place, I waited too long to switch back. I think she saw me.”
Abigor’s dark eyes narrowed. He set down his fork. “That’s not good.”
“I know.”
“You might have to take care of it.”
Nice use of euphemism there. They had orders never to be seen. They couldn’t risk humanity discovering there really was a Hell. Sure, there had been slip-ups over the centuries, slip-ups that usually culminated in the unfortunate mortal who’d seen a demon in his full glory getting a quick one-way trip to the afterlife. Most of the time, the unlucky onlookers went to Heaven. Samael guessed that was small consolation for a life cut unexpectedly short.
In this case, however, Samael refused to admit that was the only solution. The glimpse Felicia had gotten had been briefer than brief. And it wasn’t as if she’d walked into her living room area armed with a camera phone or something. She had no evidence to prove she’d seen anything out of the ordinary. In this day and age, people who claimed to see demons usually ended up in County under a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold. Fortunately for him, visions of demons were taken a lot more seriously a thousand years ago.
“I have it under control,” he told Abigor.
The other demon raised an eyebrow and reached for his coffee. “Yeah? Then why do you look like you’ve had a bunch of pit fiends do ten rounds on your ass?”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
Abigor made a sound that was half-laugh, half-growl. “You know I don’t really care one way or another. But if the brass hears about this….”
“They won’t.”
At least, he was pretty sure they wouldn't find out, unless Felicia decided to sell her story to the Weekly World News or posted a lurid status update on her Facebook page. If she even had a Facebook page.
There was only One who was omniscient, and He wasn’t the one ruling Hell. Lucifer left his lieutenants severely alone as long as they continued to do their jobs with minimal fuss. And if not…well, there were plenty of other demons in the Pit who’d be more than happy to take over his topside duties.
Samael trusted Abigor to keep his mouth shut; the two of them had been stationed here together since the days when L.A. was a sleepy little mission town. No way he would want to break in another partner unless absolutely necessary.
Another slit-eyed glance from Abigor, but the demon didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached for the coffee pot so he could pour himself another cup. After a heavy pause, he said, “So how about those Dodgers?”
Samael repressed a smile. Demons — and Abigor in particular — weren’t big on showing their emotion
s. The off-hand reference to the post-season hopes of the local team was his way of letting Samael know that whatever happened, he trusted his partner to do the right thing.
Now Samael just had to figure out what that was.
• • •
At least, Felicia reflected, it was Sunday, and she had other things to do besides sit around the house and brood over what she had…or hadn’t…seen the night before. Sundays were reserved for visiting her mother, for taking her out on a walk around the grounds and letting her get some fresh air.
Not that the air was terribly fresh today. Felicia locked the Volvo and cast a jaundiced eye at the yellow skies overhead. Smoke from the fires above Glendale had spread out to blanket most of the San Gabriel Valley, reaching all the way to the retirement community in Hacienda Heights where her mother now lived.
“Retirement community.” That was a nice way to put it. Nursing home, if one wanted to be perfectly honest. The very nicest nursing home money could buy, but it was still a home, with nurses and wheelchairs and a crushing sense of inevitability.
The automatic doors whooshed open, letting Felicia into the lobby. Without thinking, she paused to sign in at the visitor’s ledger. She’d done the same thing so many times before that it had become automatic, like putting on her seatbelt or taking her birth control pill each evening.
She spotted Eduardo, the head nurse on duty. He must have seen her almost at the same moment because he smiled and called out, “Constitutional time?”
It was their little joke. She tried to avoid saying she was taking her mother out for a walk — it made her sound a little bit too much like the family dog. “Do you think the air’s okay?” she asked.
He shrugged. “It’s a little chunky, but we can get her a mask if you’re worried about it. I know she’s been itching to get outside.”
The facility had some lovely manicured walkways. Too bad she seemed to be the only person to utilize them with any regularity. “A mask would be great. Thanks, Eduardo.”
“No prob.”
He disappeared, apparently in search of the proffered surgical mask. Felicia headed down the hall to her mother’s room. She paused outside and took a deep breath, then squared her shoulders and went in.
Even at the prices they were paying, they hadn’t been able to afford a private room. But, as usual, her mother’s roommate was already down the hall in the common room they used for movie-watching and bingo and other group activities.
Alice McGovern’s hair was still flamboyantly red; the nursing home had a beautician who visited twice a week and made sure the residents were always well-coiffed. Felicia sometimes wondered what her mother would look like if they let her hair go gray, but was secretly glad they didn’t. She’d already seen enough alterations in Alice to last her a lifetime.
The older woman waited in her wheelchair. She stared out of the window; at what, Felicia couldn’t be sure. Maybe nothing at all.
“I’m here, Mom,” she said, in the usual over-loud and cheery tones she tended to employ whenever making one of these visits. As far as anyone could tell, her mother’s hearing was still in decent shape. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for her mind.
Alice glanced away from the window and nodded vaguely. “It’s Mary,” she announced to no one in particular.
Felicia tried not to wince. Her mother only recognized her about half the time; otherwise, she seemed to think her daughter was her younger sister. She didn’t bother to correct her. “It’s a nice warm day outside. How about a walk?”
Alice nodded again, and Felicia went to install the footrests on her wheelchair so the promised constitutional could take place without her mother’s feet dragging against the sidewalk the whole way. As they exited the room, Eduardo offered a smile and a wave, along with the mask he had promised. From somewhere Felicia dragged up an answering smile as she took the mask from him and carefully placed it over her mother’s mouth. Then she pushed the wheelchair down the hallway and out onto the sidewalk.
It was warm, almost uncomfortably so. California autumn, Felicia thought, somewhat ruefully. Hard to believe that Halloween was only two weeks away. It felt like early June. Well, except for the smoke-tinged air. Although the experts had been saying for some time that fire season was now year-round in Southern California, she always associated the smell of ash and the odd yellowish tint in the sky with fall.
Thoughts of Halloween and costumed trick-or-treaters — not that she got many in her building — brought her around to Sam. She’d tried very hard not to think about him all morning, not as she stood in the shower and let the hot water run over her for twice as long as necessary, and not as she bundled the sheets from the bed and shoved them into her washing machine. So what if she was trying to erase all physical evidence of their encounter? She certainly wouldn’t be the first woman who’d done whatever she could to remove all traces of a disastrous one-night stand from her bedroom. It figured that the one time she decided to even have a one-night stand, the guy in question turned out to be a demon.
Maybe.
“Carrie couldn’t make it today,” she said, pushing the image of Sam’s dark, demonic form to the back of her mind. “They keep scheduling her to work on Sundays even though she’s told them over and over again that she needs the day off.”
“She left her bicycle in the driveway again,” Alice replied, her tone petulant even beneath the surgical mask. At least she hadn’t tried to remove it. “I keep telling her not to do that. It makes Pat angry.”
A few years ago, this non sequitur would have taken Felicia completely off her stride. Now she gave a mental shrug and said, “I’ll remind her.”
The bicycle incident had happened when Carrie was ten and Felicia sixteen. Their father hadn’t seen the bike in the driveway until it was too late. The bike had been crushed, and the family car ended up needing a new bumper. Apparently the episode had been traumatic enough for her mother that it was one of the memories which seemed to float to the surface with unnerving regularity.
They made their way down the flower-lined path. Roses still bloomed on either side, although the dry, warm air held little of their scent.
It would have been easier if Carrie had come. Her sister always managed to keep a lively conversation going, even though she had to know that most of what she said went right over their mother’s head. Now Felicia found herself stumbling to come up with anything to say. It didn’t help that, no matter what she did, she couldn’t quite seem to rid her mind of thoughts of Sam — the sound of his voice, the feel of his hands on her. The heat of his body against hers.
She shook her head, as if the motion could somehow knock those memories clean out of her mind. Maybe it was some weird demon mumbo-jumbo that made them keep resurfacing. “Guess what, Mom? I’m painting the governor!”
Alice stared fixedly ahead. “If you go to the movies, make sure you’re home by ten, or you know your father will ground you.”
This was how it always went — synapses making the wrong connections, comments jumping around so that a rational conversation was almost impossible.
Lauren kept telling her that she didn’t need to go every week. “You’re a mess afterward,” she’d said once. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t visit your mother, but maybe just every other week?”
“She’ll know if I don’t come,” Felicia had said, but now she wondered whether that was even true. How could her mother miss her, when half the time she didn’t even recognize her own daughter?
She tightened her fingers around the handles of the wheelchair and kept going. Her mother had lost weight over the past few years; it almost felt as if Felicia were pushing a child instead of a grown woman in her sixties.
Pale flakes of ash drifted down from the sky, touching the backs of her hands, her mother’s shoulders. A little dandruff, courtesy of Mother Nature.
Fitting weather for the morning after you’d slept with a demon. If that’s what she’d even seen. It had been dark, and she’d awoken
from a deep sleep. Sometimes a person’s mind could play all sorts of nasty tricks.
She wanted to believe that. Maybe it was only weakness, weariness of being alone, but she wanted to be wrong. She wanted Sam to be nothing more than a man she liked very, very much.
Not that that would do her much good, after the way she’d thrown him out of her loft. Even a normal man probably wouldn’t be in a forgiving mood following a stunt like that.
And if he weren’t a normal man?
She wouldn’t think about that now. She squared her shoulders, and continued to push the wheelchair down the carefully swept sidewalk.
• • •
Samael watched Felicia’s Volvo disappear into the parking garage. Good. The neighbor lady had been right.
After breakfast, he’d had to hurry over to Pacific Palisades to escort an insurance company executive who’d suffered a fatal heart attack to the underworld. This one didn’t land head-down in a lake of boiling blood, however. No, the man who had spent his days on earth maximizing profit at the expense of minimizing care instead got to spend eternity having his limbs slowly pulled from their sockets. His screams still rang in Samael’s ears.
Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Funny how some people seemed to think they could spend their whole lives doing horrible things and never have to pay the price for their misdeeds. Their mistake.
After that pleasant interlude, he decided he should try to speak to Felicia. He went to her loft, but she was nowhere to be found. Disappointed, he began to turn toward the stairwell and saw a bright-eyed Hispanic woman in her late fifties watching him.
“Just missed her,” she said. “She always goes to visit her mother on Sundays. But she’s usually back by two.”
“Thanks,” he replied, then went back down to the street, where he’d seen a newspaper dispenser outside a coffee house. At least he could loiter there until Felicia returned without looking too conspicuous.
Playing With Fire Page 5