by Aya DeAniege
“Now I’m just confused, are you trying to warn me off Sam, or advise me?”
“Advise you, I suppose,” Ralph said. “My brother has been through a lot, and I only want to see him happy.”
“And how do you even know he might be interested in me?” I asked. “You know him that well?”
“He wanted this dinner so that we could all be here and present for you. That way, you could make a decision. If he still felt that way when you arrived, he would have placed you further down the table with us on either side of you and Lilly across from you. Instead, he placed you at his left hand. It gave him access.
“Did you know, you’re more likely to turn toward your dominant hand? It’s an odd comfort thing.”
“I did not know that,” I said.
“Sam rarely manipulates circumstances to get what he wants. Typically, he just comes right out and says it. With his face and voice, he can get away with a lot. I’ve not seen him hesitate and be shy about his desires in a very long time.”
“Hm, well, thank you for telling me that,” I said.
“You deserve what makes you happy,” he said. “If that’s Sam, then I felt you should know. He’s not interested in Lilly. He just doesn’t like people wandering the estate. They like to sneak into places where they aren’t supposed to be or show up in one of our beds naked.
“And I’m not saying that we think Lilly is like that, far from it. It’s just a force of habit to take a visitor to the bathroom unless we’re having a party. Then the entire estate is locked, and guests can only reach the places we have left open. Typically, that’s the garden and a few rooms.”
“I’m guessing there are a lot of rooms,” I said.
“It takes a long time to lock it all down,” Ralph said. “With one or two guests, we don’t go to all that effort. We just escort them about.”
“Interesting,” I muttered, looking out over the garden.
A question nagged at me. I turned back to Ralph and looked him over.
“You were all really, truly, interested in me?”
“Absolutely,” he said without hesitance.
“And you all were interested in a relationship with me?” I asked.
He hesitated, then took in a small breath and sighed out. Ralph shook his head.
“We’d be happy to build a relationship, but this was as much an arranged match as can happen in this day and age. Truth be told, I’m relieved Sam has shown interest. I’m sure Michael is as well. Gabe may be upset about that, but he’ll get over it.”
I got the feeling that Ralph was leaving something else out, but I didn’t even know where to begin.
“But Sam?” I asked.
Ralph smiled and looked away.
“He wasn’t supposed to be a part of this. He doesn’t take part in this kind of thing.”
“Because his heart was broken a long time ago?” I asked.
He nodded twice, lips pressing into a thin line as his eyes slid closed. The man’s head dropped, and he seemed to sigh at his feet. Finally, he turned back to me.
“I don’t even know where to begin to explain.”
“Why do you go to his club?” I asked. “There must be a dozen clubs in the city.”
“There are more than a dozen in a city of this size,” Ralph said. “Gabe goes because he can drink for free. Mike and I go to do some management work for Sam on site. We like to be hands-on, and experiencing the service hands on helps a great deal.”
“And do you all pick up girls often?” I asked.
“We often find ourselves the focus of attention for certain women who go to the club to party,” Ralph murmured. “Sometimes we sleep with them, sometimes we have sex, and sometimes we send them on their way with a sore backside.” He looked at me, then frowned slightly. “Because we smack them to get them to move, not for any other reason.”
“Which means that you do pick up girls at the club often, with your free drinks and your tailored suits.”
“Women, we pick up women. My brothers and I prefer to enjoy life as much as possible. At the moment, yes, we derive a great deal of enjoyment from fishing the club. In a few months, we will be bored of it and will move on to a new hobby. It always happens.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “And Sam? Does he participate in all this?”
“No,” Ralph said. “Sam wines and dines the local businesses and politicians to do his thing. Sometimes, yes, he sleeps with their daughters, nieces, and possibly one of their wives, but it’s nothing more than sex. He’s had experience, but has also been careful and is constantly getting tested. We all are. As much as we want to enjoy life, we don’t want to be subjected to some disease.”
“Are you from this planet?” I asked. “Because I’m pretty certain that you’re trying to reassure me, but you’re doing a terrible job at it.”
“He’s good at sex,” Ralph said, then frowned. “Right, you don’t say that, you suggest it with flowery words and a smile or something. We’re just… We’re used to being direct with one another. Normally speaking, all we need to do is say that we are interested.”
“Except you detail exactly how interested you are?” I asked.
“That does depend on what’s going on. If for instance, Sam were to call me aside and ask me how interested I was in you, that would not be because he is asking on a scale of one to ten, he’d be wondering what I’m interested in doing with you. In that case, yes, I would detail it off for him, as would Gabe and Mike. Normally that ends any dispute we might have. What one brother wants is not always what the others would want. We are more able to share what we might have bickered over otherwise.”
“Okay, that I can understand, I think,” I said. “What is your interest in me?”
“I’ve never had a woman ask me that before,” Ralph said. He hesitated and almost smiled. “I am interested in you. I want to get to know you and find out what it is about you that just draws us all in. I’d like to spend time with you over coffee or dinner in a platonic fashion. I’d like to learn more about your past and how you met Lilly. Perhaps even include her in our coffee dates.”
“You’re a very strange man, Ralph,” I said with a shake of my head.
He smiled widely at me. “I am often told that, and at varying volumes.”
How could I have known?
Known who Grace’s friend was, the woman who had been to my club at least three times in the previous three months. The woman who changed her looks constantly, surrounded herself with the vanity riddled youth of the current generation? The only one I had ever known to take on strays and orphans, to give them everything they could ever ask for and raise them above the standard, and what culture expected of them.
She didn’t do it to party, she didn’t do it to drink or watch the men and women grind on one another. She did it to save those who would be bound for Hell otherwise. And she didn’t do it because she had been commanded to or had to, or any other twisted sense of belief. She did it because she wanted to save as many humans as possible.
Lillith.
The moment I saw her, I recognized her, despite the face that she wore and the makeup she had put on to make herself look like one of her girls.
And she recognized me, had recognized all of us. I saw that flash of a judgmental look she gave us.
Men don’t set their siblings up with women like Grace.
Lilly had agreed to the dinner to out us, to burn the estate to the ground, to drag our souls down to Hell if necessary. Of all the people I had met? She was the only one that I thought capable of dragging one of us down to Hell.
She would have done it too, if she hadn’t recognized us in that moment, and realized what had happened.
Inside the club, we all looked the same. Demon and angel and mortal alike. We were all equals and yet different. The mask that was applied by the stamps placed on hands kept demons from figuring out what was going on. It made it easier to do our work, but that too would have obscured Lilly’s features while obscuring us
from her.
As it was a type of magic she had never seen before, I hardly expected Lilly to have known what was going on, or she might never have returned to my club. During dinner, I swore I felt a foot graze up my leg, under my pants. The feel of stocking against my bare skin confused me for a moment, because neither woman had appeared to have been wearing stockings.
Which was not the point of stockings, right?
When she had excused herself from the table, I had followed, feeling relieved at the chance to speak with her alone.
“What are you doing here?” she asked once we were out of sight of the others.
She stopped and turned toward me as I reached for her. Which made her take several steps back and swat at the air between us. Her finger rose and jabbed right at my nose.
If I took another step toward her, Grace or no Grace, I’d have my face ripped off.
Literally, I would literally have my face ripped off.
Lilly may not have been born a witch, but she had learned a great deal and amassed a large grimoire of spells. She was just about the most powerful magic user in the world.
Oh, and she had a sadistic side.
“You cannot touch me,” she said sternly.
“I know,” I said, sliding my hands into my pockets to remind me to keep them to myself. “I apologize.”
“Never. Touch me.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” I said with a sigh.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“I go where I’m told. I was told to be here, I’m here,” I said. “There is nothing easy about cleaning out a city of this size. I had a witch make a spell for me. It’s laid into the club, draws in the restless souls.”
“That would explain why my girls always want to go there,” she said with a grimace. “And Grace, what in the hell, Sam? She’s nice and normal.”
“She’s not nice and normal if you’re involved,” I said sternly. “She can’t be if you’re trying to save her.”
“Raise her up, not save her. She’s worked hard for almost a decade. I think she deserves a break, some help, a friend, anything at all. Excuse me for providing it instead of just turning her aside like your Father would want you to do.”
If we continued down that line of conversation, it would end in a fight. The kind of fight that humans would notice, and which the others would not soon let me forget.
I had to come up with another way to approach the topic, and quickly.
“Demons keep picking at her,” I said. I watched the startled change come over Lilly’s face and knew that she hadn’t been aware. “Not deep enough to control, but trying to get in enough to whisper and find out where she is. Now, there’s not a damned thing from her past that would suggest that a demon would even want to ride her. That woman is probably about as far from demon bait as she can get.”
“She’s too stubborn for that,” Lilly said. “They’d make a suggestion, and she’d flick them out without even realizing what she’s doing.”
“Does she have magic?” I asked.
Lilly made a face, seeming to consider. Then she shook her head.
“No, she’s open enough to the idea to learn magic, but she doesn’t have any latent ability.”
“The only other reason I could come up with is that this is happening to her because of you,” I said, struggling to figure it all out.
I didn’t want to say that to her. It made an implication that I didn’t want to investigate into. Yet it had to be said, I don’t think there was another way to approach that problem.
“Except if you have a trap spell laid,” Lilly responded viciously. “I met her in your club four months ago on my first trip there. And, besides, they wouldn’t be hunting me. I think I made myself quite clear what would happen if they tried that again. I am not sacrifice for anything. And I am not at fault here. Not now, and not then. You find out what is going on, who they are, and why they are trying to hurt my boo. Then you’re going to give me the names because I’m going to kill them.”
‘My boo’ was unfamiliar to me, but I knew Lilly, and I knew that her not using clear, normal terms was an indication of how attached she was to Grace. Something about their relationship had resulted in Grace offering Lilly something that no other living human could.
Even if it was just a sounding board for her crazy schemes.
I didn’t doubt that Lilly would kill whoever was involved, but that was a part of the problem. We didn’t kill, we were not executioners. We excised and banished, we locked away the demons, but we did not execute them.
I could do it, we could all do it, but we very rarely did. Three times in all of history, had we killed someone.
Lilly, on the other hand? Her body count was over a hundred.
“Absolutely not, you know our orders.”
“Your orders be damned!”
She took a moment to huff out a breath and try to compose herself.
“Let’s face it, Sam, it wouldn’t be the first time that you disobeyed a direct order. Obedience isn’t required of anything in existence except for the following of the commandments. Unless it’s suddenly a commandment.”
“Thou shalt not kill.”
“Is for mortals,” she said, making a face at me. “Like I don’t know why you had her on your left hand? Or me on your right? Instead of placing us further down the table with your brothers? How can it already be that bad? That you’re considering murdering an innocent woman just to make the city a little calmer?”
“The other option is long-term care, and none of them will agree to it. They damned well broke my rules, at my table!”
“Yeah, that wasn’t them,” Lilly said with a shake of her head.
My mouth fell open. Everything in me bristled with anger that I simply couldn’t express. Not to Lilly, never to Lilly. She didn’t deserve that anger. I probably deserved every nasty trick she ever pulled on me.
“Which means my brothers think that I’m interested in her, and that’s why they kept apart,” I growled through gritted teeth. “Lilly, I don’t carry on relationships. I don’t do long-term care.”
“You shouldn’t ask something of your brothers that you wouldn’t do yourself,” Lilly said.
“What’s wrong with Michael?”
“That twat still has the original commandments—you know, the stone tablet kind?—turned sideways and shoved so far up his ass that he’s never hungry. Oh, and Gabe? Have you heard how he’s talking to women now? It’s disgusting. Audit your brothers.”
“It still works, that’s all that matters,” I countered.
“And Raphael.”
“Not in that tone, there’s nothing wrong with him. You used to like him.”
“I do like him. I might even say that I care about him and love him like a brother,” Lilly said. “But I’ve seen the work he’s doing and Grace deserves better than that.”
“Gabe could still do it, he’s more than available, and if it’s just how he talks that’s the problem, we can fix that tonight,” I said.
“That leaves one option for my boo,” Lilly said.
“Yes, Gabe.”
“No. Samael.”
“Please don’t call me that,” I said.
“Sammy, you used to have a sense of humour.”
Please don’t call me that either.
Lilly was the only one who didn’t get snarled at for using the nickname, however. I allowed her to use it and bit my tongue to keep from saying the words out loud.
“And you decided to help it along,” I said. “I thought they were doing it.”
“Your skill at banishing magic is getting much better,” Lilly said.
“All I did was wipe away the spell you put into her stocking,” I countered. “It’s not difficult. Anyone could do it by accident. Mind telling me what exactly it is that she thought I was doing?”
“Playing footsy,” Lilly said with a smile. “And then when you touched her? That woman is smitten with you, Sam. Isn’t it time? Fo
r both of us, I think it’s time.”
She’s enjoying this.
I couldn’t tell if Lilly’s mirth was at finding someone for Grace, or finding someone for me. She would have been happy about either of us finding happiness.
“My heart hasn’t recovered and never will.”
“Neither has mine,” she said with a little shake of her head. “But to live, we have to slap some tape on the cracks in our hearts and learn to love again.”
I dared to take a step forward but kept my hands firmly in my pockets as I did. We couldn’t touch, but neither of us had to touch the other to feel something. Stopping just short of her, I saw the flush to her face, even under her makeup. Her lips parted as she let her breath out slowly.
“The problem isn’t that my heart has been broken, Lilly. It’s that you took half of it with you when you left me.”
That first betrayal was my fault. I had caused the first fracture that had eventually led to our end, but she had chosen to walk away entirely.
“We didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” I said.
“No, there’s not. Not when they’re the ones making the deci—” she stopped and frowned, turning her face away from me.
As she did, I felt outward, recognizing the look on her face.
Something dark, cold, and slimy rolled over me. There was a sulphuric taste in my mouth and the smell of brimstone in my nose as I wavered and took a step away from her. Outside of her personal bubble, I felt it all over my home. A feeling of violation and invasion, a damp shadow trying to drag its mutilated form into the physical realm.
“What in the Hell is that?” I asked.
“A devil,” Lilly whispered.
“A devil?” I asked.
“I’ve only ever met one before, when they tried me back in the Dark Ages,” Lilly said. “Had to purify an entire town to get it out. Once it’s latched on, there’s no way to shake it without smiting the entire city, because it’ll pass from body to body until nothing is left.”