by Jenna Black
“I’ve already gone out on a limb for you enough times to raise a few eyebrows. I can’t interfere this time. I’d do you more harm than good.”
“But—”
“As long as you’re just a person of interest, you’re not legally required to answer their questions. I’d advise you to admit to nothing more than when you arrived at the office and when you left.”
“And if Barbie’s already told them about the letter?”
He looked almost as unhappy as I felt. “Then say nothing without the advice of your attorney.”
I was getting far too accustomed to being interviewed by the police. I didn’t like it when I was the victim. I liked it even less when I was the suspect. Oh, excuse me, “person of interest.” Based on the intensity of the questioning, I didn’t think there was a whole lot of difference between the two in the cops’ minds. They were pretty grumpy with me when I refused to tell them what Hillerman and I were talking about. The receptionist had told them I’d said it was personal, and that’s the generic answer I stuck to.
Adam had abandoned me, though with good reason: he wanted to have a word with Barbie before the police tracked her down. I knew he was taking a big risk on my account. If Barbie felt like it, she could probably accuse him of obstructing justice, and the charges might stick. After all, for a cop, he played pretty fast and loose with the law on a regular basis.
Despite my lack of cooperation—or perhaps because of it—the interview with the cops went on forever. They wanted to take our little discussion downtown, but I declined their offer of hospitality. It made me even more popular. I was on the verge of calling my lawyer to see if he could scrape them off my back when they finally wrapped it up with instructions that I shouldn’t leave town. Gee, just like in the movies!
As soon as the cops were gone, I went ahead and called the lawyer who had represented me when I’d been accused of illegal exorcism. I wasn’t sure if Adam would be footing her bills as well, but at this point I was just asking her to be on standby anyway.
By the time I got off the phone, I had an unexpected visitor: my brother, Andy. Apparently, Adam had taken it on himself to call a meeting of Lugh’s council, so I could expect to have quite a collection of testosterone gathered in my apartment before the evening was out.
Andy looked terrible. He’d never fully regained the weight he’d lost while he’d been catatonic. In fact, he might have even lost a little since I’d seen him last. His cheekbones stood out in stark contrast on his face, his eyes shadowed by dark circles. My heart clenched with pity, and I wished there were something I could do to make him feel better. Problem was, I wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. He still insisted it was “nothing,” but I don’t think he expected me to believe it.
He gave me a hug in greeting, but though I appreciated the gesture, I couldn’t help noticing how bony he felt. Damn it, the last thing I needed to do at a time like this was worry about someone else’s problems!
To take the situation from uncomfortable to nearly unbearable, Raphael was the next of Lugh’s council members to arrive. I think Saul is the only person in the universe who hates Raphael more than Andy does, and that’s saying a lot. The air in the room fairly crackled with tension as the three men sized each other up.
“Is a fight going to break out, or can you behave like civilized beings during a time of crisis?” I asked.
Raphael held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I’m on my best behavior. I have no quarrel with anyone here.”
Saul opened his mouth like he was going to make a cutting remark, but I pointed at him sternly. “You be quiet. I know you and Daddy Dearest have issues, but I’m not in the mood to referee.”
Saul’s mouth closed with an audible click, and I could see the muscles working in his cheeks as he ground his teeth. But he didn’t say anything, so it was a moral victory for me.
Andy didn’t look inclined to start anything. On the one hand, that was good, because I didn’t want to deal with it. On the other hand, if he’d started something, it would have given me some evidence that he was still alive inside.
But I forgot all about my brother and my worries when Adam arrived. Because, you see, he’d brought the rest of Lugh’s council with him—including Brian.
CHAPTER 16
I sat there in silent, dumbfounded amazement. Adam and Dominic dragged a pair of dining room chairs into the living room and sat down, pretending they didn’t see my shell-shocked expression. Brian stayed where he was, only a few steps past the door.
He met my eyes when I stared at him, and I didn’t see anything I expected to see in them. Not anger, not hurt, not contrition. Instead, his expression was one of cool neutrality. It was almost his lawyer face, but with an added chill.
My hands clenched into fists in my lap. He had no right to look at me like that. Not when Dominic had gone and told him the truth!
I turned to Adam. “What is he doing here?” I asked. My heart thudded against my breastbone, and I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling. All I knew was it wasn’t good.
“He’s part of Lugh’s council,” Adam said simply.
I glared at him. “He’s only part of Lugh’s council because of me! And, as you can see, we’re not together at the moment.”
Adam was unmoved by my quite reasonable argument. “I already had this conversation with Brian. It doesn’t matter whether you’re dating anymore or not. Once a member of Lugh’s council, always a member of Lugh’s council. He lost his option to fade into the background as an innocent bystander long ago.”
Impatiently, Adam waved for Brian to join our cozy little circle. Brian didn’t look happy about it, but he grabbed a chair and dragged it into the living room.
My nerves buzzed with tension, and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth. I wanted to run away, lock myself in my bedroom, hide.
“I don’t want you here,” I said to Brian in a voice that shook. I don’t know if it was from anger or from pain.
“I don’t want to be here,” he responded. “But I wasn’t given an option.”
I had something else pithy to say, but Raphael shocked me into silence by grabbing my arm in a firm grip. I turned to snarl at him, but of course he didn’t let go.
“If Saul can tolerate my presence, then you can tolerate Brian’s,” he told me, and there was none of his usual sarcasm or mockery in his voice. “I agree with Adam: Brian knows too much already. He’s a member of this council whether we want him or not, and whether he wants to be or not.”
Again, I started to argue, but Raphael squeezed my arm hard enough to make me gasp.
“Who here in this room do you think has an option to walk away?” he demanded.
I swallowed my protests. There was no way I could argue Raphael’s point, though I wished I could. We had all been dragged into this at least somewhat unwillingly. Even Lugh, for that matter. I wasn’t the only one whose choices were limited, and I wasn’t the only one suffering.
I glanced at Andy, with his hollow cheeks and haunted eyes, and it put things in perspective for me. My pain was nothing compared to what he’d gone through, what he was still going through, but though he wanted nothing to do with demons ever again, he had never protested his inclusion in Lugh’s inner circle.
I nodded to indicate my agreement, but I couldn’t find my voice. For a long moment, it seemed like no one else could, either. The silence in the room was thick with tension, dense enough to make the air feel heavy and hard to breathe. If ever there was a group of people as unsuited to working together as this one, I’d never heard of it. But not one of us could live with the consequences of letting Dougal usurp the demon throne. Between Lugh and Raphael, we all had a pretty good picture of what the Mortal Plain would be like if Dougal had his way. Humans would be nothing more than slaves, available to any demon to possess and discard at will.
As long as Dougal sat on the throne only as regent, his powers were severely limited. If he became king, he would have everything
he needed to reshape our world into one of his own liking. It was a damn good motivation to keep us all working toward our common goal, no matter how we felt about each other personally.
My thoughts cooled and solidified something inside me, and my emotions stopped rioting. They were still there, buried under the thinnest veneer of calm, but I didn’t have to act on them right this moment.
I sat up straighter in my chair and looked at Adam. “I gather this meeting was your idea. Care to tell us why you felt the need to round up the usual suspects?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the crazed demon who’s out to destroy you? Or maybe it’s the fact that you could be arrested for murder any day now? Or maybe—”
I held up a hand for silence. “All right, I get it. I just don’t know what we can do about any of it.”
“First off,” said Raphael, “you can bring those of us who aren’t quite in the know up to speed on everything that’s going on.”
I didn’t feel up to that, and I was insanely grateful to Adam for taking on the responsibility himself. I let my eyes glaze over as he talked. This morning’s numbness was seeping back into my system, shutting down my emotions—and a lot of my reasoning power.
Do you need me to take over for a while? Lugh asked.
For the briefest moment, the offer actually tempted me. I could let Lugh send me to some secluded place, where I didn’t have to interact with anyone, where I didn’t have to think, where I didn’t have to feel.
The fact that the offer tempted me was enough to shock me out of the creeping numbness. I was a fighter, damn it! I wasn’t going to crawl away and hide.
When I focused my mind on my surroundings once more, it was to find everyone staring at me expectantly.
Adam asked if you have any idea who the demon who’s after you could be, Lugh said.
Thanks for clueing me in, I responded. At least one of us had been paying attention.
“I’ve exorcized probably hundreds of demons. I don’t know why any one of them would hold more of a grudge than any other one.”
“Is there someone who was in a particularly sweet situation when you came around to kick him out?” Raphael asked.
I shook my head. “Keep in mind that by the time I’m called in, the demon is already toast. If I or another exorcist can’t cast him out, he’s either dead or imprisoned for the life of his host. I can’t see any reason why they’d hold me responsible.” I looked up at Saul. “Did you blame me when I exorcized you?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
“Let me rephrase that,” I said, strangely stung by his silence.
“No, don’t bother,” Saul said. “I did blame you in a way, but that’s just because I was angry at the world in general. If I were out for revenge, I’d be hunting down the God’s Wrath fanatics who beat me, not you.”
“The ones who are still alive, you mean,” Raphael needled. It was a low blow. Saul hadn’t meant to kill any of his attackers, had just been trying to escape.
Saul’s eyes blazed, his demon shining through. I was the only one who seemed to notice this, but then, I was the only one in our circle who could read auras. Usually I had to be in a trance to do it, but I’d seen this demon eye-shine more than once, and I knew it wasn’t my imagination. I tensed, afraid there was about to be a fight, one it would be beyond my power to stop.
To my shock, however, Raphael didn’t respond to the flare of aggression, instead lowering his gaze.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Saul looked at him with all the trust he’d give an angry cobra. “You’re apologizing? You never apologize.”
“That’s because no one ever accepts my apologies.” Ah, now that was more like the usual Raphael— whiny self-pity.
Though considering my current state of mind, I wasn’t in a position to throw stones.
Tell my brother it’s because it’s hard to tell if his apologies are sincere.
Oh, yeah. This was so something I wanted to get in the middle of. Not!
“Let’s just move on, shall we?” I suggested.
Saul leaned back in his chair, looking stubborn and angry. But at least he refrained from stirring the hornets’ nest.
“I’m still sorry,” Raphael said softly, before he, too, sat back and subsided.
“The point was that it’s really weird for a demon to hold this kind of a grudge against an exorcist,” I said. “I don’t know how to begin guessing who it could be.”
“We’re pretty sure he’s currently residing in the intern who supposedly found the body, right?” Saul inquired.
“Yeah.” I got the feeling there was supposed to be a follow-up, but Saul grimaced and stared at his feet instead of continuing.
“Since everyone already thinks I’m the world’s worst bastard,” Raphael said, wearing a mocking smirk that I was beginning to think was a mask for some inner pain, “I’ll finish my son’s thought. The obvious solution is to send the son of a bitch back to the Demon Realm again.”
“I didn’t mean it the way you’re making it sound!” Saul protested. “I wasn’t ever going to suggest we kill anyone.”
Raphael raised an eyebrow. “Then why did you suddenly become so shy?”
The glow was back in Saul’s eyes. “I just started thinking about all the logistical issues with capturing a hostile demon and holding it still long enough for an illegal exorcism.”
Raphael nodded. “And following that thought to its logical conclusion—which is it would be a hell of a lot easier to just kill the host.”
“No!” Saul shouted. He leapt to his feet and lunged after Raphael, who remained seated.
Adam had apparently been on the lookout for such an eventuality, for he managed to grab hold of Saul before he reached Raphael. Saul then whirled on Adam with a snarl, which Adam didn’t seem to appreciate. They grabbed each other’s shirts, both sets of eyes blazing now. I flinched, sure one of them was about to hit the other and then all hell would break loose.
Moving slowly and carefully, Dominic sidled up to them and put one hand on each man’s shoulder. “Let’s take it down a notch, shall we?” he said, his voice low and gentle.
They both turned to look at him. If it had been me, I’d have let go and backpedaled. Saul and Adam were both scary-looking when they were mad. But Dom wasn’t intimidated by either of them, and he didn’t back down.
“It’s not each other you’re mad at,” Dom reminded them.
Raphael still hadn’t risen from his chair, and now he released a little breath of air that may have been a choked-off laugh. “Gee, thanks, Dominic. Sic them both on me.”
By now, I’d had enough. “Everyone sit down and shut up! I’m not in the mood to deal with all this macho chest-pounding bullshit.”
Dominic smiled at me. “Always the diplomat.”
I shrugged. “Your way wasn’t working.”
Adam and Saul let go of each other’s shirts and moved apart. Saul seemed to have regained his composure, but Adam bared his teeth at Dominic.
“Don’t ever get between two angry demons again!” he snapped.
Dom wasn’t any more intimidated now than he had been before. “I wasn’t between you,” he said mildly.
“Listen to Adam, bud,” Saul said as he returned to his seat. “We couldn’t have hurt each other if we’d tried. Not really. You, on the other hand …”
Dom dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “You wouldn’t have hurt me.”
“Not on purpose,” Saul agreed.
I suppose Dom got the point, because he didn’t argue anymore.
Saul grinned. “I’m sure Adam will ‘explain’ the error of your ways later,” he said with a waggle of his brows. Then he looked at Adam. “Give him a few lines of ‘explanation’ for me while you’re at it.”
Dominic blushed and returned to his seat.
Ick. Maybe it was better when they were fighting. I didn’t voice that opi
nion, and I breathed a sigh of relief when everyone was again peacefully seated.
“For the record,” I said, “we’re not killing anyone. Got it?” I let my eyes roam over all of them, though I skipped right over Brian. I saw various expressions of acquiescence or annoyance, but no one contradicted me. I let my gaze rest a little extra long on Raphael. He was the loose cannon among us, the one who might disregard orders. But he just shrugged.
“So,” Adam said, “the plan is to grab the intern and do an illegal exorcism, right?”
He was looking at me, so I nodded. Then I frowned. “But if we send him back to the Demon Realm, what’s to stop him from coming right back?”
It was Raphael who answered. “The only way to stop him for sure is to kill him.”
“No!” I said. “Killing the intern is already off the table as an option. And I sure as hell am not sitting by and letting you guys burn him alive.” Which was what it took to actually kill a demon on the Mortal Plain. I had more than one gruesome death on my conscience already. I refused to entertain the idea of adding another.
“That’s the only sure thing,” Raphael repeated, then cut me off before I could light into him. “Our second-best option is to put the fear of God into him, so to speak.” He grinned and let his demon shine through his eyes.
Just the mention of Raphael’s name was enough to make most demons piss themselves in terror.
“We don’t even have to let on who’s hosting me,” Raphael continued. “You just tell him I’m your close personal friend, that you had to work hard to convince me to let you handle him this time, and that if he ever shows up on the Mortal Plain again you’ll let me have him. That ought to be some pretty strong incentive for him to butt out.”
And it was probably the only hope I had of keeping the poor intern alive. I hoped Raphael wasn’t just blowing smoke up my ass and planning to take things into his own hands no matter what I said. I was going to have to keep a very close eye on him.
“That’s as good a plan as any,” I said. “Now, if we could grab the intern before he manufactures some evidence linking me to the murder, that would be a nice bonus.”