Playing With Fire (6 page)

She had to be dreaming. She just thought she’d woken up. She must still be asleep.

For what she saw could only have come from a nightmare.

The sole source of illumination in the loft was from the lights of the city outside, and so she could see nothing in detail. Only the vague outlines of enormous leathery wings. Blurred points on the top of his head that might have been horns. And a sudden gleam of red eyes, a crimson glare that met her shocked gaze and was immediately extinguished.

Felicia opened her mouth — to what? Gasp? Scream? She wasn’t even sure. She didn’t know what she saw, because even as her mind tried to put a word to the horrific vision in front of her, it melted away. Sam stood there, holding a pair of black underpants.

“Sorry,” he said, his tone casual, as if an escapee from a Bosch painting hadn’t just been standing in the middle of the loft. “I tried not to wake you up. Just wanted some water.”

“What — ” The word came out as a sort of strangled gasp, and she swallowed. “Didn’t you see that?”

“See what?”

She supposed there was always the possibility that she’d somehow gone stark raving mad between the time she fell asleep and the time she heard the noise out in the loft. Then again, she didn’t feel crazy. Shaken, yes. Weak from the aftermath of that acid bath of adrenaline, absolutely. Wondering if she should get her eyes checked? Very likely.

Then Sam turned toward her, and once again she saw that flicker of red in his eyes, just as she had on the street outside the restaurant. The same baleful glow she’d spotted in the nightmare form that had been standing next to her couch seconds before.

Skittering fingers of dread worked their way down her spine. Her eyes were just fine. And she was pretty sure her brain was doing okay, too.

“Who are you?” she whispered. Her throat felt like sandpaper.

“What?”

“I saw — ” She paused. What exactly had she seen? She didn’t know. She didn’t want to know.
 

What she did know was that it couldn’t have been human. Still, directly confronting him now sounded like a pretty terrible idea. And the thought of letting him back into her bed was even worse. But she knew with sudden, sickening certainty that she mustn’t speak a word of what she’d just seen.
 

She swallowed, then said, “That is, I’m not sure I want you to stay the rest of the night. If you don’t mind.”

“If I don’t mind?” He sounded incredulous, and a bit angry, too. “Look, I’m sorry I woke you up, but — ”

Such a normal, human reaction. Why did she get the sudden feeling that it was all an act, that he was merely saying the things he expected a regular man might say in a similar situation?

“That’s not it,” she said quickly. “It’s just — I guess I’m used to sleeping alone.”

Even in the dim light she could see the bitter twist to his mouth. “I can see why.”

Once he’d delivered that remark, he moved past her and went to gather up his clothes. Funny how she’d barely noticed his naked form. Well, she supposed there was nothing like spotting a huge demonic shape in your living room to kill off the old libido.

She didn’t bother to respond to his comment — not that she had enough functioning brain cells to come up with anything remotely clever. At least it looked as if he meant to leave without causing any trouble.

In silence he pulled on his clothes, then draped his leather jacket over his arm. She couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t bothered to turn on a light. Maybe he didn’t have any trouble seeing in the dark.

She held her breath, wondering if he had seen her unease, whether he’d been able to read the terror she thought must surely have revealed itself on her face. But he only looked down at her for a few seconds, his expression inscrutable. “I’ll let myself out.”

And he brushed past her, heading straight for the front door. He didn’t slam it, but he might as well have. The silence that descended after it closed behind him seemed to press against her ears, heavy as the air that preceded a thunderstorm.
 

For a long moment Felicia stood where she was, rooted in the opening between the two Japanese screens that hid the sleeping area. Belatedly, she realized her hands were shaking. She clenched them into fists and shut her eyes. At least he was gone. She wouldn’t think about what she had seen, or the fact that she’d let him touch her, had taken him into her body.

Slowly she uncurled her fingers, then went to the kitchen and switched on the lights. She didn’t know how much a cup of tea was going to help, but at the moment she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

She set the kettle on the burner, and turned on the gas.

• • •

Sloppy, Samael berated himself. Not just sloppy.
Fucking
sloppy.

He maneuvered the Silverado out of the parking garage and pointed it west, toward his condo. What else could he do? Sometimes he’d join Abigor on the night shift if he didn’t have anything else going on, but his fellow soul-catcher thought he was safely snugged down with Felicia. Exactly where he should have been, except for that one error in judgment.

Never let them see you.
It was one of the most basic tenets of topside existence. Demons had all sorts of ways of tricking the eye, of making humans see everything except the truth. He’d used a variation of that manipulation to maneuver himself into the lineup at the speed-dating event where he’d met Felicia.

These human bodies he and Abigor and all the others with topside duty wore were the first line of defense, but sometimes a demon form was necessary. And in those cases, darkness and glamour were his tools. He just hadn’t thought he’d need them in Felicia’s loft.

It had only been for a moment, after all. Just that one moment after he’d alighted on her balcony, then made his way inside. He’d been just about to shield himself in his human body when she appeared. And he’d switched over quickly.

Just not quickly enough.

He took some comfort in the fact that she had seemed somewhat hesitant. Oh, she’d been fast enough about ordering him from her loft, no doubt about that. But he wondered if she were already trying to second-guess herself, to tell herself she hadn’t really seen what she thought she saw. The human mind didn’t like to acknowledge things outside its existence. It would try to rationalize, to explain it away.

He’d give her time to do that. Time he had plenty of. Then again, she was an artist. Artists tended to see the world with different eyes. Perhaps those artist eyes of hers had seen the truth and wouldn’t abandon it quite so easily.

For both their sakes, he hoped not.
 

• • •

All sorts of random types inhabited the IHOP on Sunset Boulevard, which was the main reason Abigor and Samael had made it their unofficial Sunday morning base of operations. Under normal circumstances, they made a noteworthy enough pair. Here, surrounded by club-goers grabbing breakfast before going to bed for the rest of the day, drag queens, junkies nursing a single cup of coffee for hours, and the rest of Hollywood’s flotsam and jetsam, they were barely worthy of a second glance.

Abigor had ordered the same thing he always did: a rare steak accompanied by scrambled eggs and an overflowing plate of biscuits and gravy. Samael wondered once again how he could eat the same thing week after week and never get tired of it.

“You look like shit,” the demon said, gesturing toward Samael’s face with a forkful of drippy biscuit.
 

Well, he couldn’t argue with that. He knew he felt like shit.

His own plate of bacon, eggs over easy, and hash browns was barely touched. For some reason he didn’t have much appetite this morning.

“Girlfriend didn’t wait up for you?”

Quite the contrary. Samael knew he’d be having a much better morning if Felicia had just stayed safely asleep. He swallowed a mouthful of harsh black coffee, then said, “She saw me.”

For a second the words didn’t seem to register. Abigor plowed through another mouthful of biscuit and gravy before he stopped cold, fork halfway back down to his plate. “Say what?”

“When I went back to her place, I waited too long to switch back. I think she saw me.”

Abigor’s dark eyes narrowed. He set down his fork. “That’s not good.”

“I know.”

“You might have to take care of it.”

Nice use of euphemism there. They had orders never to be seen. They couldn’t risk humanity discovering there really was a Hell. Sure, there had been slip-ups over the centuries, slip-ups that usually culminated in the unfortunate mortal who’d seen a demon in his full glory getting a quick one-way trip to the afterlife. Most of the time, the unlucky onlookers went to Heaven. Samael guessed that was small consolation for a life cut unexpectedly short.
 

In this case, however, Samael refused to admit that was the only solution. The glimpse Felicia had gotten had been briefer than brief. And it wasn’t as if she’d walked into her living room area armed with a camera phone or something. She had no evidence to prove she’d seen anything out of the ordinary. In this day and age, people who claimed to see demons usually ended up in County under a seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold. Fortunately for him, visions of demons were taken a lot more seriously a thousand years ago.

“I have it under control,” he told Abigor.

The other demon raised an eyebrow and reached for his coffee. “Yeah? Then why do you look like you’ve had a bunch of pit fiends do ten rounds on your ass?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.”

Abigor made a sound that was half-laugh, half-growl. “You know I don’t really care one way or another. But if the brass hears about this….”

“They won’t.”

At least, he was pretty sure they wouldn't find out, unless Felicia decided to sell her story to the
Weekly World News
or posted a lurid status update on her Facebook page. If she even had a Facebook page.

There was only One who was omniscient, and He wasn’t the one ruling Hell. Lucifer left his lieutenants severely alone as long as they continued to do their jobs with minimal fuss. And if not…well, there were plenty of other demons in the Pit who’d be more than happy to take over his topside duties.
 

Samael trusted Abigor to keep his mouth shut; the two of them had been stationed here together since the days when L.A. was a sleepy little mission town. No way he would want to break in another partner unless absolutely necessary.

Another slit-eyed glance from Abigor, but the demon didn’t say anything. Instead, he reached for the coffee pot so he could pour himself another cup. After a heavy pause, he said, “So how about those Dodgers?”

Samael repressed a smile. Demons — and Abigor in particular — weren’t big on showing their emotions. The off-hand reference to the post-season hopes of the local team was his way of letting Samael know that whatever happened, he trusted his partner to do the right thing.

Now Samael just had to figure out what that was.

• • •

At least, Felicia reflected, it was Sunday, and she had other things to do besides sit around the house and brood over what she had…or hadn’t…seen the night before. Sundays were reserved for visiting her mother, for taking her out on a walk around the grounds and letting her get some fresh air.

Not that the air was terribly fresh today. Felicia locked the Volvo and cast a jaundiced eye at the yellow skies overhead. Smoke from the fires above Glendale had spread out to blanket most of the San Gabriel Valley, reaching all the way to the retirement community in Hacienda Heights where her mother now lived.

“Retirement community.” That was a nice way to put it. Nursing home, if one wanted to be perfectly honest. The very nicest nursing home money could buy, but it was still a home, with nurses and wheelchairs and a crushing sense of inevitability.

The automatic doors whooshed open, letting Felicia into the lobby. Without thinking, she paused to sign in at the visitor’s ledger. She’d done the same thing so many times before that it had become automatic, like putting on her seatbelt or taking her birth control pill each evening.

She spotted Eduardo, the head nurse on duty. He must have seen her almost at the same moment because he smiled and called out, “Constitutional time?”

It was their little joke. She tried to avoid saying she was taking her mother out for a walk — it made her sound a little bit too much like the family dog. “Do you think the air’s okay?” she asked.

He shrugged. “It’s a little chunky, but we can get her a mask if you’re worried about it. I know she’s been itching to get outside.”

The facility had some lovely manicured walkways. Too bad she seemed to be the only person to utilize them with any regularity. “A mask would be great. Thanks, Eduardo.”

“No prob.”

He disappeared, apparently in search of the proffered surgical mask. Felicia headed down the hall to her mother’s room. She paused outside and took a deep breath, then squared her shoulders and went in.
 

Even at the prices they were paying, they hadn’t been able to afford a private room. But, as usual, her mother’s roommate was already down the hall in the common room they used for movie-watching and bingo and other group activities.
 

Alice McGovern’s hair was still flamboyantly red; the nursing home had a beautician who visited twice a week and made sure the residents were always well-coiffed. Felicia sometimes wondered what her mother would look like if they let her hair go gray, but was secretly glad they didn’t. She’d already seen enough alterations in Alice to last her a lifetime.

The older woman waited in her wheelchair. She stared out of the window; at what, Felicia couldn’t be sure. Maybe nothing at all.

“I’m here, Mom,” she said, in the usual over-loud and cheery tones she tended to employ whenever making one of these visits. As far as anyone could tell, her mother’s hearing was still in decent shape. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for her mind.

Alice glanced away from the window and nodded vaguely. “It’s Mary,” she announced to no one in particular.

Felicia tried not to wince. Her mother only recognized her about half the time; otherwise, she seemed to think her daughter was her younger sister. She didn’t bother to correct her. “It’s a nice warm day outside. How about a walk?”