The Devil's Playground mk-5

by Jenna Black

  staying power. The restaurant didn’t have its liquor license yet—that took forever in Philly—but patrons were allowed to bring their own, and Dom’s family had brought enough wine to inebriate half of Philadelphia. They were having a jolly old time trying to drink each other under the table, and I started to get antsy again about leaving Raphael unprotected for so long, no matter how hard he was to kill, and no matter how unlikely it was that anyone was gunning for him yet.

  Adam and Dom tried engaging in a slightly more obvious public display of affection, hoping Dom’s relatives would get uncomfortable and leave, but most of them were too drunk to care.

  It was after eleven when Brian, Andy, and I excused ourselves from the festivities to go keep watch on Raphael. Dom was going to be stuck at the restaurant until the wee hours, and there was no way Adam was going to leave him there alone. It would be asking for trouble to send Saul and Barbie, which is why the three of us got the short straw.

  My life had been so unpleasantly eventful lately that it was almost anticlimactic to arrive at Adam and Dom’s house and find no enemies waiting to spring out at us. We explained to Raphael what we were doing there, and he kindly fixed us a pot of coffee to help us stay awake until we could go to our own apartment. I guess I was pretty tired, because I fell asleep on the sofa before the coffee was even ready.

  twenty

  INCONVENIENTLY, RAPHAEL HAD PROMISED TO SUMMON William back to his host on the Mortal Plain three days after sending him to the Demon Realm. Which meant we had to summon him back on the night of the actual grand opening of Dominic’s restaurant. We’d debated whether to do the summoning before or after the opening, then finally decided on after. Dom was nervous enough without getting any worrisome news from the Demon Realm—and it was hard to believe the news wouldn’t be worrisome.

  Just as we’d done on Wednesday night, all the members of Lugh’s council except for Raphael went out to dinner at Dom’s. It wasn’t the joyous, rowdy occasion that the practice dinner had been, but I was pleased to see that he got a pretty good crowd. And that the crowd seemed happy. Dom was a constant blur of motion, flitting from table to table to check on his customers’ satisfaction, then darting back into the kitchen to keep an eye on the cooking. I had to suppress a smile when I noticed more than one female customer trying her best to flirt with him. Although he was no longer a host, he still had the typical demon-host good looks. He was also modest enough not to realize it, which only added to his appeal.

  We might have all stayed until closing time so we could walk back to the house together, but there seemed to be a crowd gathering at the door, and Dom needed the tables. We left Adam to escort Dominic home—with strict orders that Dom was to let his manager handle closing up instead of supervising it himself—then prepared for the ritual to summon William.

  This was only the second time I’d been present for a summoning ceremony. They were usually the exclusive purview of the Spirit Society. But I was there when we’d summoned Saul, so I wasn’t quite as nervous or intimidated this time.

  Jonathan Foreman, William’s ex-host, was still deep in withdrawal, but at least he had some grasp of reality. And William had been right: Jonathan was very, very anxious to have him back. To the point that I was tempted to tie him up and lock him in a closet somewhere just so we didn’t have to listen to him anymore. The constant refrain of “Is it time yet?” got old fast.

  Appropriately enough, Adam and Dom arrived in time for us to start the ritual right on the stroke of midnight. Dom had a happy glow in his eyes when he joined us in the basement, and I was sad to see that glow die down as he transformed from Dominic Castello, restaurateur, to Dominic Castello, member of Lugh’s royal council.

  I’d always imagined the summoning ritual to be something solemn, intricate, and complex. Probably when performed by the Spirit Society, it was. But the demons knew exactly how much ritual was needed to make the summoning work, and it wasn’t much. There had to be a circle of people around the summoner, and those people had to be holding candles. Other than that, the only necessary ritual was the speaking of the incantation.

  Jonathan, who was so strung out he could hardly hold still for more than about five seconds at a time, lay down on his back, with his hands crossed over his chest. Rather like a dead-body pose, come to think of it. The rest of us sat in a circle around him, each of us holding a lit candle.

  The rest of the ritual was entirely up to Jonathan, and that was not a good thing. There was a Latin sentence he was supposed to repeat three times. Lugh informed me the sentence translated roughly into

  “I, of my own free will, invite thee to enter my world, to reside within my flesh, and to make of my body thine instrument.” The sentence was to be followed by William’s True Name, which Lugh had told Raphael so that Raphael could continue to play king.

  The problem was it was all such a mouthful—especially the True Name, which sounded like a bunch of nonsense syllables strung together at random—that it was nearly impossible for the twitchy, still semidelusional, and easily distracted Jonathan to get it right three times in a row. I don’t know how many times he tried, but it was at least twenty, maybe more, before he finally managed it.

  And then William was back, and the twitching stopped. I think we all breathed a sigh of relief. I know I, for one, had begun to worry Jonathan wouldn’t be able to manage the summoning at all.

  William let out a deep, shuddering breath, then reached his hands up to cover his face. He wasn’t twitching, but there was a tremor in his hands, and you couldn’t miss the tension in his body. It looked like he hadn’t had a fun time back in the Demon Realm.

  Raphael broke the circle and went to kneel at William’s side. The rest of us stayed put.

  “Tell me what happened,” Raphael said, and his voice sounded way gentler than usual. He laid a hand on William’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. Being such a talented liar made him into a talented actor as well, and he was doing a pretty good Lugh impersonation.

  Yes, he is, Lugh agreed in my head. Rather … unnerving.

  William pulled himself together by bits and pieces. Eventually, he let his hands fall away from his face and allowed Raphael to help him sit up. He was still pale, but at least he was no longer on the verge of hysterics.

  “What happened?” Raphael asked again, with no hint of anger or impatience in his voice.

  William shuddered and looked at the floor. “I did as you ordered,” he said. “I started telling people that I had spoken to you, and that Dougal was trying to take the throne.” He swallowed hard. “Most people didn’t believe me. But some did, and I know the rumor started to spread, because Dougal called me.”

  His eyes closed and his fists clenched at his sides.

  Raphael patted his back like he was comforting a small child. “And what did Dougal have to say? Did he mean to put you on trial, or was this a private meeting?”

  Again, a shudder rippled through William’s body. “Private meeting,” he said, his voice whispery. “He didn’t believe I had talked to you. He thought I was spreading trouble in an attempt to blackmail him. I told him you would summon me back to the Mortal Plain and that would be proof that I was acting on your behalf. He still didn’t believe me, but he did give me a message for you, on the off chance I was telling the truth.”

  Raphael arched his eyebrows. “And what message would that be?”

  Once again, the whites of William’s eyes showed. “You are not like Dougal, right? You won’t kill the messenger?”

  Raphael shook his head. “No, I’m not like Dougal. Tell me the message, and don’t worry that I’ll take it out on you if I don’t like it.”

  William braced himself. “He called you an arrogant fool for coming out of hiding. He said it would be your undoing, and that he wished he could be here on the Mortal Plain to watch you burn.”

  Raphael blinked a couple of times. I think he had a little more trouble acting as the calm, impersonal monarch when his temper was rouse
d, but he managed to answer with only the faintest hint of tightness in his voice.

  “That doesn’t sound like Dougal,” he said, and gave William a narrow-eyed look. “His quarrel with me has never been personal. At least, not that I knew.”

  William had relaxed a bit when Raphael didn’t immediately blow up at him, but he tensed again under the scrutiny. “It’s personal now that things are starting to go so wrong.”

  Raphael cocked his head to one side. “And just how wrong are things going right now? How desperate is Dougal feeling?”

  “Now that you’ve actually summoned me back and given my ‘ravings’ some credibility? Pretty desperate.”

  The rest of us had all been quiet, an audience to the conversation rather than participants, so I don’t think I was the only one who jumped a bit when Saul spoke.

  “Those who don’t want to believe it will just say you gave your True Name to someone else so you could be summoned back. They don’t have to believe it was Lugh who summoned you.”

  William shook his head. “No one who knows me would believe I’d do that. Give up my True Name in a quest for power of some sort?” He actually laughed, though there was a bitter edge to the laughter. “I don’t have the … constitution for it.”

  “And even if some people believe it was someone other than Lugh who summoned him,” Adam said,

  “there will be a hint of doubt in their minds. If Dougal’s position was already tenuous …”

  Time to take this conversation somewhere private, Lugh said, and I relayed his message to the council. Without saying the message came from Lugh, of course, since William thought Lugh was sitting right next to him. But either everyone got the hint, or it was just obvious that it was time to stop talking around William, because Dominic broke what was left of the circle to go turn on the basement lights, and the rest of us blew out our candles.

  We made the same arrangements we’d made last time we’d had to have a council meeting while keeping William contained, Andy and Barbie taking up their posts while the rest of us gathered in the living room.

  Once we were seated, all eyes turned to me. I guess the guys had figured out it was Lugh who wanted the private time. I waited for Lugh to tell me what was on his mind, but he was eerily silent.

  “Well?” Raphael asked, obviously low on patience. “What does Lugh think we should do?”

  “I’ll let you know as soon as he tells me,” I answered, my voice a bit sharp because I was finding Lugh’s silence ominous.

  The silence continued, but that didn’t stop the rest of Lugh’s council from staring holes in me, waiting breathlessly. If I were a better actress—or had a good idea—I’d have started making shit up just to cut through the discomfort.

  As soon as that thought struck me, an idea came into my mind. I honestly don’t know if it was purely my idea, or if somehow Lugh’s thoughts had leaked into my brain, but I felt a shock of recognition that told me he and I were on the same wavelength. And I understood now why he was reluctant to speak.

  I sat up straighter in my chair, hoping what I was about to suggest wasn’t going to trigger a mutiny.

  “So our plan was to make Dougal’s situation more desperate, in the hopes that he’d decide to come to the Mortal Plain to try to flush Lugh out of hiding himself, right?” I asked.

  Everyone looked back and forth at each other, but it was Raphael who answered for the group. “That was the idea.”

  “But we’d rather get him here on our own terms than on his,” I continued.

  Adam snorted. “No kidding? Really?” I guess he knew I wasn’t relaying Lugh’s words, because I couldn’t see him smarting off to Lugh.

  I decided to ignore him, not even giving him the dirty look he deserved. Lugh wasn’t jumping in to interrupt me, so I kept going.

  “Dougal’s shown an absolute fascination with the Mortal Plain. Aside from the experiments he did with you,” I said, nodding toward Raphael, “he also decided to move on the throne as soon as Lugh suggested he was going to make it illegal for demons to possess unwilling hosts.”

  “Just get to the point,” Raphael said.

  I smiled sweetly at him. “I’m telling you all the reasoning that leads up to the point, so you’ll understand what I’m thinking.” I wished I could remember the exact phrasing he’d used when he’d made the same sort of comment to Saul, but even with the paraphrase, he recognized what I was saying. It shut him up.

  “So Dougal—and his supporters—really, really want access to the Mortal Plain. And Dougal’s gained his supporters by promising to give them unlimited access. If they’re already starting to get out of hand now, just imagine what they would be like—and how desperate Dougal would be—if we threatened to cut off access altogether.”

  I looked carefully from face to face as I made this suggestion. Brian wore his lawyer face, hiding whatever he was thinking. Adam’s face had frozen in a look of shock, his expression so raw that Dom felt the need to reach over and give his hand a firm squeeze. Saul looked mulish, as usual. And Raphael

  … Raphael looked grim, but not a bit surprised.

  “This thought has occurred to you before,” I accused.

  Raphael examined his manicure while he spoke. “I thought of it as a last-ditch way to stop Dougal from getting what he wanted. I thought maybe if we made it impossible for him to get what he wanted, he might eventually decide it wasn’t worth it to kill Lugh for the throne. But I never liked the idea enough to mention it. There are so many downsides …”

  I laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. “You mean you’d lose your access to your own personal playground.”

  His eyes flashed, and he bared his teeth at me. “And so would every other demon, even the ones like Adam and Saul, who make your world a better place. Think what you want of me, but the reason the U.S. legalized demonic possession is because of how much we can contribute to your society.”

  In my usual tactful manner, I’d been about to remind Raphael that he wasn’t the only demon who wouldn’t recognize the concept of “conscience” even if it bit him in the ass, but Brian spoke before I did.

  “What exactly do you mean when you talk about cutting off contact between the Demon Realm and the Mortal Plain?” he asked.

  I gave him a grim smile. “Think about all we’ve learned about demons since we’ve gotten sucked into this mess. There’s a reason demons keep all this shit secret, and it’s not just because they like being mysterious.”

  Brian processed that thought for a moment. “You mean if we start telling the public about the secrets the demons have been keeping, the anti-demon lobby will get demonic possession outlawed once again?”

  “Exactly. It’s not like it would completely stop demons from getting to the Mortal Plain—it never has before—but it would make it a hell of a lot harder for them to get here.”

  “And a hell of a lot less fun,” Adam contributed. “If we came to the Mortal Plain and then had to stay in hiding …” He shook his head. “I’ve gone that route before, as I suspect most of us have, since possession was illegal much longer than it’s been legal. I enjoyed myself enough to want to come back, but now that I’ve seen what it’s like to be out in the open, I don’t know if I could go back to the way it was.”

  “But we’re not actually going to do it, right?” Raphael asked, fixing me with a piercing look. Once again, I was pretty sure the look was directed at Lugh. “We’re just going to threaten to do it if Dougal doesn’t come to the Mortal Plain and fight like a man, as it were. Right?”

  We’ll try a threat first, Lugh said. But I suspect Dougal will think we’re bluffing. If we make the threat and aren’t willing to back it up, we have gained ourselves nothing.

  I relayed Lugh’s message. It might have been easier to just let him take control and do his own talking, but it hadn’t been all that long since he’d last been in control, and I wasn’t sure how my body would react to another control shift. I preferred not to find out.

  Raph
ael looked very unhappy. He might not have wanted what Dougal wanted badly enough to kill Lugh, but he did still want it.

  “We don’t have to give away everything,” Raphael said, and his voice sounded a lot calmer than his face looked. “We can reveal something humans won’t like but that won’t get us outlawed. That might convince Dougal we mean what we say.” He looked at me, and this time he was really looking at me, not Lugh. “You’ve been a demon-hater all your life. Which of our secrets would piss you off but not make you want us all to be outlawed?”

  They were all looking at me now, and I didn’t much appreciate the scrutiny. Raphael made me sound like some kind of bigot when he called me a “demon-hater,” and that was certainly not the way I’d ever seen myself. And yet …

  Before Lugh had come into my life, I had made no bones about my dislike of demons. If I knew someone was possessed, I disliked him or her on the spot, and no number of good deeds would make me let go of that dislike. It wasn’t like I’d marched on the streets of Washington shouting “down with demons,” but if you’d pressed me, I would have admitted I thought demonic possession should be outlawed again.

  I didn’t feel that way anymore, which was in a way kind of strange considering everything I’d learned and everything I’d been through. Demons had been the authors of all my worst troubles, and I’d dealt with the darkest, the most dangerous, the most evil of them. But I’d also dealt with Lugh, who could annoy the shit out of me at times, but who was so good and honorable that I couldn’t really think ill of him even when I was pissed off at him. And I’d come to know Adam, who was far from one of the nicest people I’d ever met, but who was a hero in every sense of the word, and whose love for Dominic had shown me that demons really were capable of the same depth of emotion as humans.

  Demons were people to me now, not inscrutable aliens. And I had no grounds to argue Raphael’s assessment, even if I didn’t hate them anymore. I knew what it was like to hate them and to want them gone.

  “If we told people that demons don’t die when they’re exorcized,” I said softly, “that would make a lot of people very unhappy.”