Devil May Care

by Patricia Eimer

  “Wait.” Hope held a hand up in front of my face. “Dan’s in Pittsburgh? Does Matt know?”

  “Not yet.” I sighed.

  “Oh my goddess.” Mom gasped. “You’re seeing someone else behind Matt’s back? Faith, how could you?”

  “I’m not having an affair on Matt,” I yelled, and then froze as everybody in the parking lot and standing on the sidewalk in front of the various shops in the strip mall all turned to look at me.

  “Dan works for MEDTECH.” I lowered my voice. “They sent him to the hospital to do some work on our security systems. Not that it really matters, since he doesn’t remember me.”

  “At all?” Hope looked at me, her eyes filled with pity, and I felt my stomach plummet. How pathetic had I become that even Hope felt sorry for me?

  “Why haven’t you told Matt?” Mom asked. “I mean you can’t keep this a secret from him. Trust me, I’ve tried to keep the men in my life from your father at times and it always ends badly. Always.”

  “I’m not trying to keep it from him.” I rubbed my face, suddenly much too tired to deal with all of this. “But with everything going on right now there just hasn’t been a good time to tell him. Between Brenda, and the weddings, and I’ve been working double shifts and twelve hour shifts and—”

  “About those twelve hour shifts…” Lisa shrugged when we rounded the corner of the bridal shop and started toward the shaded area where I parked my Civic. “I’ve got one tonight and I want to spend some time with Tolliver before I go in. So if you don’t mind me bailing on you guys…”

  “You don’t need to ask my permission.” I waved my hand at her. “Go forth and get your demon nookie on.”

  “More like argue over wedding locations again.” Lisa popped out of sight without bothering to open a phase portal, leaving nothing behind but a faint whiff of brimstone. She’d gotten a lot better at controlling her powers since the engagement and I knew Tolliver’s mom, Lilith, had been helping her get the hang of things. Lisa had even become somewhat comfortable in Hell. She still wouldn’t leave Dad’s villa except to phase, but hey, at least she was going there willingly now.

  “So what are we going to do now?” Mom asked. “Oh, I know, you can help me finish the wedding favors. I’m still terribly behind on those. Or we could even discuss the surprise ‘Welcome Home’ party you’re hosting for me after your father and I get back from Hawaii. I’ve been thinking about all the things I want.”

  “Lisa and Tolliver are both off the mortal plane and out of my apartment.” I unlocked the car. “I am going home, changing into my jammies, and then I’m taking a nap. No calls. No interruptions. Just me and my pillow snuggled up together in sleep’s sweet embrace.”

  “But it’s the middle of the day and there are so many things we need to plan. I mean really, neither of you have even started on the hand calligraphied thank you notes for all my wedding presents. Those will need to go out the minute I get back. We don’t want Lilith to accuse me of not following proper etiquette. ”

  “Neither of us care,” Hope retorted. “You heard Faith—her apartment is empty and I just don’t want to bother doing all that other stuff. It sounds boring and so instead I’m going shopping.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is about having an empty apartment,” Mom insisted.

  “Do you know what it’s like with those two as roommates?” I put my key in the ignition, starting the car.

  “Lisa’s been your roommate for years,” Hope pointed out. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that Tolliver is a screamer. And the walls in our apartment aren’t very thick. All night long I have to listen to the two of them going at it.”

  “So stay at Matt’s.” Hope pulled on her seatbelt. Now that she could no longer enchant her way out of a ticket my sister had gotten a lot more diligent about the law.

  “He’s been working late and comes home exhausted. Besides, with Brenda on my couch the past couple of days even my fantasy guys are saying ‘Not tonight, dear. I have a headache.’” I looked pointedly at my mother. She stared back defiantly for a moment before huffing and putting on her own seatbelt. The only mortal being in the car, and she’s always the one I have to fight with about it. You’d think she would be more careful about those sorts of things.

  “Agh.” Hope shuddered. “Even that guy from that television show? You know, Hot SyFy Channel Guy, the one with the eyes and that suit he always wears?”

  “He shows up in my head and all he wants to do is talk about his feelings. I’m thinking about relegating him to TiVo until I can get my head on straight. ” I turned onto Cochran Road and merged into traffic. Mom and Dad had bought a fabulous 1940s stone mansion in the older part of Mount Lebanon that was entirely too big for the two of them, but was absolutely amazing. Or it would have been if they hadn’t turned their pool house into a portal to Dad’s realm. I mean, really? Nine bedrooms, a study, a media room, two gyms, and a heated garret over the garage, and they turned the pool house into the portal?

  The phone started singing “I’m Too Sexy” and I narrowed my eyes and punched my foot down on the gas pedal in response. Dad never called about good things.

  Hope picked it and pressed the Talk button. “Hello?”

  I strained my ears and could just make out the sound of Dad on the other end but I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  “No, I don’t think she’d mind,” Hope said suddenly and smiled at me. “I’m sure she’ll be fine with it Dad. Okay. See you soon. Bye.”

  “What?” I asked when she ended the call and put my cell phone back in the cup holder.

  “That was Dad. They couldn’t get a tee time at the course so they’ve decided to cheer Harold up with some Wii Bowling.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. There went my nap.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I made it through four hours of Wii Mario Cart and a heated battle of Modern Warfare 3, six come-ons by Bassano, and one very disgusting moment when he put his hand up Malachi’s skirt, before I threw everyone out of my apartment. Malachi had planned on staying but Bassano assured everyone that he’d set a protection on my apartment to keep both Valerie and Brenda out so I could get some sleep.

  Matt packed Brenda’s clothes and they were gone, but not before I overheard Bassano whispering something in Mal’s ear about a strip chess game in his hotel room. Dad had offered to stay until my bodyguard got back but I sent him home to Mom. Right now all I wanted was some privacy. Besides, him and Mal were both a phone call and a quick phase between spaces in reality away. I’d be fine. I was cool. I was collected. I was a demoness damn it, and two psychobitch nephilim were not going to get in the way of my nap.

  I took a scalding hot shower, groomed my feathers to keep them shiny, and reveled in the quiet of an empty apartment. I sang along with the radio, my tail swinging back in forth with the beat, relaxing for the first time in a month. Brenda was gone, the apartment was empty, and as soon as I finished my nap I was going to make Matt sit down so I could tell him about Dan. Not that my ex had invited me to dinner and seemed unconcerned about me having a boyfriend—I was totally going to edit that part out—but that he was in town and I’d seen him and any feelings I might be having were just regrets about the way the past had played out. The past was just that—the past—and no matter how much I didn’t want to say “I love you” and take the chance of jinxing us, I did love Matt and he needed to know that nothing would change that. And I needed to tell him that, as much for me as for him.

  My phone buzzed on the vanity. Crap. Why was it every time I got a little bit of quiet time someone had to call? Knowing my luck Harold had been spotted at the hospital. Or even worse, Bassano and Mal had done something to get arrested. An angel with indecent exposure charges—really not something I wanted to contemplate right now.

  I used my tail to hit the Power button on the radio and picked up my phone. “Hello?”

  “Faith?” Dan asked, sounding agitated.


  “Dan?” I tried to piece together why exactly it was so wrong for him to have my phone number and couldn’t come up with anything.

  “Do you have a minute? I’m not disturbing anything, am I?”

  “No, but you do realize that I’m going to be on duty at seven tonight, don’t you? I can turn you down for dinner then. You didn’t have to call me at home.”

  “I know you’ve got to work tonight but I was wondering if we could get together and talk now. Outside of Roger’s.”

  “Look, Dan, you’re a nice guy…” I tried to keep my voice pleasant. This new persistence on Dan’s part would be hot if I was single. “I’ve told you before I have a boy—”

  “I know who hacked the MEDTECH system,” he said. “It wasn’t your head of pediatric surgery and I can prove it. But I want to discuss my evidence with you before I go to the police. They might want to talk to you after I’m done.”

  Shit. Another round with the Pittsburgh Police Department. Just what I needed. Detective Kastellero, who was in charge of the MEDTECH investigation and the still-unsolved case of who planted explosives underneath a car I was meant to be in, hated me. Like, seriously, I Want to Throw You in Jail and Lose the Key hated me.

  If Dan thought the police could somehow tie this back to me that meant Kastellero would see it as an airtight case. Whatever evidence he thought he had I was going to have to persuade Dan he was mistaken. Or get Malachi to mind warp him so he’d forget the whole thing. I’d do it myself but mind warps were tricky in the best scenario and I’d never heard of anyone going through two of them. Definitely not something for a novice to try. Either way, my relaxing afternoon had just been ruined.

  “Repeat that for me?”

  “I know who hacked the MEDTECH system and it wasn’t someone on the Roger’s Hospital Staff. But you know the person who did it.”

  “I do?”

  “Look,” he said. “I’m still at the hospital. I’m actually hiding in the stairwell of the parking garage so no one can overhear me. This is huge, Faith. I mean seriously huge. I need someone else to see this before I take it to the police.”

  He sounded nervous. I knew Dan. No matter what the memory wipe had done to his personality, I knew him. If he said it was serious then it was. He wasn’t the type to over exaggerate.

  “I’m home by myself,” I said. “532 Carson Street. Apartment D. If you can’t find parking on the street then we’ve got a lot behind the building. Do you need directions or can you manage it?”

  “I’ve got GPS,” he said.

  “So, I’ll see you and your conspiracy theory in twenty minutes?”

  “I can be there in eighteen.” The line went dead.

  I put the phone back on my sink and climbed back in the shower to rinse the rest of my conditioner out of my hair. So much for the past being the past. Especially with the way mine kept shoving himself back into my life.

  I peeled myself out of my super-comfy home-by-myself-all-day pajamas, hurried into my closet, and grabbed a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved, peach tee. I scrambled into my clothes and stopped, looking down at my outfit. Dan had bought this for me. Back before the whole Losing His Mind thing. Definitely not appropriate.

  I pulled the shirt off and grabbed another one off my pile of clean laundry. Loyola Nursing. Not much better but I didn’t have time to go through my entire wardrobe to find something that didn’t have a connection to Dan. Given how much I hated clothes shopping there wouldn’t be much there besides scrubs that he hadn’t seen me in at one point or another in our relationship.

  I finished getting dressed and looked down, making sure my black bra didn’t show through the light gray fabric. So far so good. I hurried over to the dresser and brushed through my damp curls, trying to tug them back into a ponytail. My horns kept causing bumps, though, and instead of trying to camouflage them, I gave up and let my hair hang down my back instead.

  I heard a knock at the door and froze in front of the mirror. Moss green eyes stared back at me and I swallowed, trying to ignore my wings’ instinctive pull to unfold. There was no need to panic. Dan didn’t know who I was. More importantly, he didn’t know what I was. I ran a hand through my frizzy blond curls again and took a deep breath.

  He didn’t suspect. He couldn’t suspect.

  There was another knock on the door and I let my breath out in a shaky burst. If he didn’t suspect something was up already, acting crazy wasn’t going to keep him in the dark for long. I needed to seriously get my shit together. Now. Which I could do. I was the Daughter of Satan. I was calm. I was cool. I was a professional.

  I hurried into the living room and threw open the front door.

  I was so totally fucked.

  Dan was standing there in the black leather jacket I’d bought him the first Christmas we’d lived together. Which matched with the motorcycle helmet he had tucked under his arm. The one I’d picked out, fussing that I didn’t care what his friends said about helmets being for sissies. There’s a reason ERs had a specialized code for motorcycle accidents. We didn’t call them brain donors for the hell of it. I wondered how he remembered getting the helmet and his jacket. Another girlfriend, perhaps? Some girl who didn’t exist but had replaced me inside his mind?

  “Loyola, huh?” he said. “I didn’t know we were alumni from the same school. I wonder if we were there at the same time.”

  “Who knows? Loyola’s a big school, lots of people there.” I swallowed and clamped my mouth shut to keep from rambling. Way to be cool, Faith. Way to keep it together. “Come on in. Do you want something to drink? Something to eat? I’m not much of a cook but I could manage something.”

  “Could I get a glass of ice water maybe?”

  Instead of answering I hurried into the kitchen, trying to put some space between us. He set his helmet on the table next to my front door and made his way into the living room. I fixed two glasses of ice water, trying to stall for time long enough to compose myself. It was now or never.

  “So you said on the phone that you think you might have found something?” I handed him his glass and sat down on the couch.

  He took a seat beside me and set the glass on my coffee table. “I’ve found the guy who hacked the MEDTECH system,” he said. “Or should I say the guys?”

  “Are you sure?” I took a drink of my water, trying to keep my composure. He knew two guys were involved. Matt’s brother Levi and my sister’s ex-husband Boris. Shit, this was worse than I’d thought. I didn’t want to mind wipe Dan again. He didn’t deserve that. He’d just gotten his normal life back after his time in a mental hospital. What if the second mind wipe went wrong and he ended up back in an institution?

  “Yeah,” Dan said, looking down at his hands, “and I’ve got the proof.”

  “So how do you know who did it? How did they bring down the MEDTECH system and the security cameras all at once without anyone noticing? You can’t be in two places at once.”

  “They weren’t,” Dan said. “Well, they were, but not in the sense that you mean.”

  “So how did they do it?”

  “Simple—one of them killed the two systems and the other waited until Bernice was distracted. Then he walked into the medication room and walked back out with your morphine.”

  “So how do you hack two systems at once?”

  “From inside MEDTECH headquarters in Chicago.”

  “Excuse me?” My stomach dropped. We sat there staring at each other for a few minutes, or more precisely, I stared at Dan and he kept his eyes trained on his hands. If the person responsible had hacked the system from Chicago that meant it hadn’t been Levi and Boris. Levi had been here, stalking me, and Boris had been with my sister in Idaho. They hadn’t been involved. It also meant I wouldn’t have to steal Dan’s memories again.

  “My boss hacked my system,” he said, not looking up. “When I started digging it was logged into the system like routine maintenance on his part, which would have been strange enough because my boss doesn’t do
system maintenance since he’s a manager and not a tech. Then I remembered something he told me just after he got promoted last year and I took over his service area.”

  “What?” I leaned closer to him, trying to appear sympathetic, but close enough not touch him.

  “He told me about this little restaurant down in Washington County. A place called Soloman Brothers. He said every time he came to town on a maintenance call he met his brother there for dinner. He told me it was one of those out of the way places you had to try.” Dan tugged at the collar of his shirt.

  “I’ve heard of Soloman Brothers,” I said. “But a love of fried catfish doesn’t predispose people to being drug traffickers. Heart attack victims, maybe, but not drug traffickers.”

  “No, but it told me that he had someone here to do the physical stealing when he killed the system back in Chicago. Divide and conquer. It’s ingeniously simple.” His shoulders slumped forward.

  “So one brother broke into the system from Chicago and the other swiped the medication? Once again I have to ask you how? We don’t just let anyone on the PICU unit. You can’t just wander in and steal medication without someone noticing. Maybe it was a routine maintenance matter and someone else got lucky? I mean it’s a sucky coincidence but that could be it.” I knew the likelihood that it had been some random stroke of thieves’ luck was almost nil.

  “That’s what I thought, but it kept nagging at me. So I hacked into the MEDTECH human resources system,” Dan said. “Not exactly ethical on my part but right then I didn’t care. My boss had just finished a six weeks family leave before the break-in. Last week he took leave again.”

  “So?” I said and leaned back, trying to keep space between us now that he didn’t seem on the verge of crying.

  “The first leave was to help care for a sick niece. This one is for funeral leave. I dug a bit more and I found his brother listed on the faculty page of the local university in the English department. Except, according to their website, his brother has taken the year off for a sabbatical.” Dan sank back against the cushions, crossing his arms. He looked miserable, like his faith in humanity had just died. Which it might have, considering how he’d always respected his boss.