Dr. Demon got to his feet. “I’m not here to harm your clinic.”
“Then why are you here?” Her voice was tense. “Thirty miles south of us, in Jacksonville, there’s a world-class hospital where you’d get a much better cross-section of American medicine.”
“Another demon was assigned there.”
“You told me you’re second-in-command,” she said. “Why would you send someone else there and come to a little country clinic? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Once again, the comfort that he felt in her presence caused him to share too much.
“I didn’t make the assignments,” he said.
“The question still stands.”
He looked down at his loafers. “I may have made a misstep on my last mission.”
“And you’re here as a punishment?” She sounded like she was torn between disbelief and insult.
“A demon with half my rank landed the Mayo, while I”—he gestured toward the cement-block building with its faded paint—”got sent here.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a rivulet of sweat from his temple.
“You don’t much like Florida, do you?”
“It’s like a more humid version of Hell,” he said.
“With bugs.”
He thought about the giant wasps in the vestibule of Hell. She knew nothing of insects.
“With bugs,” he agreed. “How did you come to be so afraid of them?”
She tilted her head. “I think I’ve always just been…” Her eyes widened. “No, wait,” she said. “I wasn’t always. I remember Nana saying when I was small—three or four—I’d drive her crazy, bringing them in the house all the time. One time, I threw a fit. She asked what was wrong, and I said someone took the spider I had put under my pillow the night before. She turned my room inside out, worried it was a black widow.”
“What happened?” he asked. “What made you go from ‘future entomologist’ to ‘woman who screams and runs from the room’?”
“I’m trying to remember.” Her brows knitted together with the effort.
She was so beautiful when she was like this, defenses down, talking to him without her usual wariness.
“I got stung,” she said suddenly. “I was playing in the yard barefoot and I stepped on a bee. I ran into the house, crying. I remember feeling totally betrayed. I told Nana, ‘We were supposed to be friends.’“
“So you did a one-eighty from friends to bitter enemies,” he said.
Dara shrugged. “They started it.”
Belial walked through the door of the beach house to find Lilith seated on the black leather sofa in front of the big-screen TV that hung over the huge marble fireplace. She was painting her toenails crimson. As he closed the door, she arched her foot and pointed her freshly lacquered toes toward him.
“What do you think of this color? Is it me?”
“Is it called Troublemaker?”
She widened her eyes. “Troublemaker? Moi? Why would you say that?”
“Because of the locusts you released in the clinic tonight.”
She set her foot on the floor and splayed her toes. She picked up a magazine from the glass-topped end table and fanned them.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Why would I do something like that?”
“To screw up my mission and make me fail.”
“Belial,” she said, “I know you have trouble understanding this, but this mission is bigger than you. It involves all of us. If you fail, all of Hell fails.”
“Not if someone else succeeds in my stead.”
“How would that be possible? What other demon can compete with your skills, your beauty, your incisive understanding of the human condition?” She stared at her toes admiringly.
Someday, he thought, he would ring the calculating harpy’s neck. “I know you released those cicadas into the clinic. I’ve seen you pull the same trick a dozen times in the past. It’s your signature. Every time the target is female, you plague her with insects.” Realization struck. “The lice last week—you planted those, too, didn’t you?”
Lilith set the bottle of acetate down on the table and picked up the nail polish.
“I don’t know what you’re whining about.” She nodded toward the TV. “I was watching the feed from the camera in the parking lot. She said ‘thank you.’ Twice. That’s the nicest she’s been since you met her. You should let me help you strategize. Working as a team, we could really move this thing along.”
“I don’t need your help.” Letting Lilith get closer to the mission would only grant her more opportunities to sabotage him. But it was more than that. When Dara came to him, as she inevitably would, he wanted it to be because of his own actions, not the manipulations of her so-called friend.
“As the ranking demon on this mission, I command you not to release any more insects into the clinic. Do you understand?”
Lilith bent over once more, her hair falling forward to cover her face.
“Fine,” she said. “No more bugs.”
Chapter 23
Dara massaged lemon verbena lotion into Nana’s feet. It was the only way she ever got a chance to look at her grandmother’s ankles. The old woman’s skin was so taut with fluid it had no wrinkles.
“You’re retaining water again,” Dara said. She circled Nana’s ankle with her thumb and forefinger to demonstrate that they wouldn’t touch. “I’ll give Dr. Stevens a call.”
“Get that demon back in here to look at me.”
“No way.” She slid Nana’s slipper back onto her swollen foot. “I don’t want him around you.”
“I don’t want him around you, either,” Nana said, “but he’s there every day.”
Dara pulled a wipe from her purse and wiped her hands. “Not every day.”
Close enough, though. He’d been working in the clinic just over two weeks and, since she wasn’t willing to leave him unsupervised, she’d worked side by side with him every day but Monday, when they held the pediatric clinic.
“He’s going to lead you to your destruction,” Nana said.
They had this argument every time Dara came to visit.
“No, he won’t.” Dara refused to be that stupid. “To be honest, he’s done a lot of good.”
Nana snorted.
“No, he really has. He diagnosed several things other doctors missed. I can think of at least three patients he convinced to quit smoking and lose weight, and they’re actually doing it.”
He’d also been no further away than her elbow on any given day, smiling down like she was the only woman in the world. She went home every night with sore muscles from clenching her jaw and her thighs, trying to resist his allure.
“He’s lying low, trying to lull your suspicions.”
Dara thought so too, but she didn’t want Nana to worry any more than she already was.
“Last week he even chased some bugs out of the clinic.” Dara shuddered. “You know how I feel about bugs.”
“They’re God’s creatures, same as you and me.”
“Maybe. Or maybe cicadas come from the other place.” She spread the afghan back across Nana’s legs. “Maybe that’s why he was so good at getting rid of them.”
Nana grabbed her wrist. “What kind of bugs did you say they were?”
“Cicadas.” She patted Nana’s hand.
“Locusts.” The old woman nodded like she’d suspected as much. “How many?”
“A dozen, maybe.” Dara shivered at the memory.
“Have you ever had an infestation of locusts before?”
“Never.” Where was Nana going with this?
“And it happened on a night when the demon was in the clinic?”
Dara nodded.
“Have you had any other infestations or visitations since he started? Flies? Frogs? Wild animals?”
“Nothing like that.” Dara knew where this was coming from, and she wasn’t going there. It was ridiculous.
“Lice?”
&nbs
p; That pulled her up short. They’d found lice the first night he was at the clinic. And he’d seemed surprised she was unfazed by them.
“His first night, we had an infestation of lice. The cleaning supervisor told me he’d never seen anything like it.”
“There’s your answer, then.” Nana settled back in her chair, nodding grimly. “Your demon is visiting the plagues of Egypt on you.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The plagues were sent by God, not by Satan.”
“That demon of yours—”
“He’s not my demon.”
“—is a smart aleck. He probably thinks he’s being cute.”
Maybe it wasn’t so ridiculous. Dara had grown complacent, thinking her only danger was in his potent attraction. “What other plagues are there?”
“Frogs, blood, wild animals, boils, hail, darkness, pestilence and death of the firstborn.”
Dara’s heart picked up speed as she listened to the litany. Anything on that list had the power to damage the clinic’s reputation, though most posed no real threat to her patients. But the last item was different.
Every eldest child who came into the pediatric clinic would be in danger. No, the threat was broader than that. Even the adults had been children once. Everyone fell somewhere in their family’s birth order. Panic choked her at the thought of all the patients who were the oldest child in their family.
Her pulse thumped so hard she could hear it in her ears, till an image pierced the fog of fear—an image of Sarah, motionless, her eyes rolled back in her head while Granddad prayed over her without results. Dara’s panic receded. Not all troubles were demonic in origin.
“He didn’t bring in the lice or the locusts,” she said, though she didn’t really know that for a fact. She’d been at his side most of the time, but not every minute.
Nana folded her arms across her chest. “Get rid of him.”
“How?” Dara asked. “What do I tell my board? ‘I want to fire this volunteer because he’s bringing the plagues of Egypt to my clinic’? They’ll think I’m crazy.”
“He said his mission will only last another three weeks, right?”
“Three and a half,” Dara said reluctantly.
“Then close for four weeks. Take a vacation and go somewhere.”
Dara opened her mouth to point out that she had patients scheduled throughout the next four weeks, hypertensives and diabetics that needed continual monitoring to keep their meds balanced. And what would the staff say when suddenly presented with four weeks of vacation? How would she justify paying them for a month when the clinic was closed? Then she looked at Nana’s flushed face. Her wrinkled nostrils flared with each quick breath.
“Okay,” Dara said.
Nana’s mouth fell open. “What?”
“Okay,” Dara said. “I refuse to risk losing you. We’ll shut down for a month. You’re going to worry yourself into a stroke if I don’t.”
Fury filled her. What right did the demon have to inflict himself on them and upset Nana like this?
In between patients, he’d enticed Dara to share anecdotes from her childhood, from nursing school, even from her relationship with Matt. She’d tried to keep a wall of professionalism between them, but it was impossible with him always there, enthralled by every detail of her life. It made her feel fascinating, but it seemed to go deeper than that for him. It was as though she held the answer to some existential riddle.
She had thought she’d kept up her guard, but the betrayal she felt now said she’d begun to trust him. As he’d said, it was what he did.
Nana uncrossed her arms. “Oh, no you don’t.”
“What?” Dara recalled herself from her reverie with effort.
Nana banged her fist on the arm of her chair. “You’re not closing down your clinic because of me.” A vein beat in her temple.
Dara stared at her, stupefied. “You’ve been driving me crazy for the past two weeks to close the doors, and now that I’ve finally agreed to do that, you say don’t?”
“Not over me.” Nana lifted her head, bringing back memories of when she’d fought alongside Granddad as an equal partner. “A Perdue never gives in to demonic forces.”
Dara tried to regroup. “So, you want me to keep the clinic open?”
Nana nodded firmly.
Thus far, the demon had won every round. He had aligned Dara’s board on his side. Her patients loved him. Thanks to the daily lunches, her staff worshipped him. He had maneuvered her into a corner where she had no choice but to let him do as he chose.
Well, those days were over. It was time to stop letting him have everything his own way.
“I need to restrict his time in the clinic,” she said, thinking out loud, “to the bare minimum.”
For the first time since Dara had walked in the door, Nana’s shoulders relaxed.
“I need to put him someplace where I can watch him every second,” Dara continued, “and minimize the number of patients he sees.”
“You shouldn’t let him in there at all.”
“Agreed,” Dara said. “Since that’s not an option, my next best choice is to put him where he can do the least damage.”
Reluctantly, Nana nodded.
Dara picked up her purse and got to her feet. She leaned over to drop a kiss on Nana’s white hair.
“Pray for me,” she said.
“I always do,” Nana said.
Lord knew someone needed to.
Chapter 24
On the way back to the clinic, Dara all but talked herself out of her plan to alter Dr. Demon’s schedule. It was just Nana’s background that made her insist that a couple of perfectly ordinary swarms of insects were a re-enactment of the Plagues of Egypt. After all, it wasn’t like Dara was Pharaoh, refusing to bend to God’s will.
Unless her non-existent prayer life fell into that category. She pushed the thought away. If God came after everyone who didn’t pray, the world would be a mess of broken lives.
When she approached the back door, though, she heard screaming. A second later, the door slammed open and Gabby, Kelsey and Javier ran out. Her heart jumped into her throat.
“What’s wrong?”
“Raccoon,” Javier said, his eyes wide. “It just ran in the door with Kelsey came in this morning. It hisses if you try to get near it.”
What are the other plagues? she had asked Nana.
Frogs, blood, wild animals, boils, hail, darkness, pestilence and death of the firstborn.
Dara sent the staff to the local coffee shop and called Animal Control. When the specialist left a couple of hours later with the raccoon in a cage, he confirmed that the animal was likely rabid.
As soon as her staff returned, she went to the doorway of the office Javier shared with Kelsey.
“Could you come to my office,” Dara asked Javier, “and bring the October schedule?”
“Sure.” He picked up his laptop and followed her.
She looked over the schedule while she waited for her own computer to boot up. Just as she thought. Ben was scheduled for every clinic for the entire month, with the exception of the Monday pediatric clinics.
“Please remove Dr. Lyle from the schedule,” she said. That would limit his opportunities for mischief, and it would have the added benefit of removing him from her immediate proximity.
Javier stared at her, open-mouthed. “But he volunteered for all those shifts. He wants to work.”
“Please schedule him into the peds clinics.” It was counter-intuitive, but while she’d waited for the animal control expert to remove the plague of wild animals from her clinic, she’d decided the pediatric clinic was the safest place to put Dr. Demon. Most local children had coverage, so the pediatric clinic had very few patients. Some nights there were none, and even on the busiest nights she would be able to stay right by his side.
Javier’s expression changed from aghast to confused. “He specifically asked me not to put him on for peds.”
“Did he say why?”
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br /> “He’s not that comfortable working with kids.”
“Then this will be an opportunity for him to hone his skills.” The board had final say over who she brought on as a volunteer. They had no say over how she chose to use those volunteers.
Javier eyed her, looking baffled. “Are you sure about this? I mean, he’s—”
“I’m sure.” She cut him off before he could tell her how great Ben was.
“I thought the two of you were getting along better. What happened?”
She considered telling him she’d discovered his wonderful Ben had planted lice and cicadas in the clinic, but there was too much chance he or Kelsey would follow up, and Dara didn’t want the demon forewarned.
“I know this seems capricious, but I need your support. Please?”
Javier nodded, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. This was probably the last time he would back her solely on her say-so.
“What about tonight?” he asked.
Much as she would have loved to boot the demon immediately, she had her patients to think about.
“You can leave him on for tonight.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
She nodded. “I’m sorry about all the extra work this creates,” she said. “Leave the schedule out and I’ll rework it before I go home.”
He shook his head. “You already do too much around here.”
After he left, Dara pulled up the template for the patient medical history form on her computer. Because of the plagues, it was now painfully clear who his intended targets were. To protect her patients, she would need to identify the ones most at risk.
She hesitated. Was Nana right? Should she close down the clinic, at least for the next couple of weeks? Her eyes fell on a sticky note, reminding her that Dr. Salujah, a lung specialist from Jacksonville, was coming in Tuesday. Dara had four patients with COPD, including one she thought might have idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He had been waiting months to see a specialist.
The Demon Always Wins: Touched by a Demon, Book 1 Page 15