The Devil's Playground (21 page)

Raphael stirred in the backseat. “You left him with only Dominic and Saul as guards?” He didn’t sound happy.

Adam glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t have a lot of options. But they’ve both got Tasers, and they’re not idiots. They’ll keep him contained.”

“If you get my son killed, I’ll eat your liver,” Raphael said, his voice as calm as if he’d said “I think it’s going to rain tomorrow.” Saul might despise Raphael, but Raphael didn’t seem to hold that against him.

I could see Adam’s hands tighten briefly on the steering wheel, and it occurred to me that with someone like Raphael, that threat might have been meant literally. I fought to suppress a shudder.

“What did you tell the police?” I asked Adam, figuring now was a good time to change the subject.

“I kept it pretty vague and mostly stuck to the truth. I told them we’d stopped by to talk to Foreman on a personal matter, and that none of the three of us had ever met him in person. Then I told them what happened—though of course I told them Foreman got away after I fired my Taser at him and missed.”

“And they were satisfied with that?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, of course not. I had no good explanation for why a complete stranger would shoot at us when we came to the door. And they didn’t much like me not telling them why we were coming to see Foreman. But there’s no law that says I have to tell them, so I didn’t. My lack of cooperation isn’t going to go down well with the brass, especially so soon after I ‘lost’ my Taser, but what else could I do, especially when I didn’t know what the two of you might have said?”

Raphael made a disdainful noise in the backseat. “We were smart enough to keep our mouths shut even without having you there to advise us.”

Adam gave him a dirty look in the rearview mirror, but didn’t otherwise comment. I had a feeling “the brass” was going to be giving Adam more than just a hard time about this. He hadn’t exactly been flying under the radar lately, and his involvement with me and all of my troubles had put him on the hot seat before. Still, that was his problem. I had enough problems of my own to worry about.

We were silent until we came to the next red light, at which point Adam looked at Raphael over his shoulder.

“Why did you push me out of the way?”

“I heard—”

“A gun being cocked. Yeah, I heard that, too, about half a second too late. I didn’t ask how you knew Foreman was going to take a shot at us. I asked why you took the bullet for me.”

The light turned green, and despite the weighty question, Adam turned to face front and kept driving. I
kept an eye on Raphael, who was looking out the side window, his expression thoughtful.

“Because I could survive even a gunshot wound to the head,” he finally answered. “You couldn’t.” He turned his head, meeting Adam’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “If I’d known it would be a gut shot, I’d have been more than happy to let you take it.”

Adam made a soft snorting sound. Then, after a brief hesitation, he said, “Thank you.” I don’t think the words came easily.

Raphael’s only answer was a silent shrug.

We didn’t speak for the remainder of the ride back to Adam’s house. Adam’s posture eased somewhat when we pulled into the tiny private lot across the street. I guess he was happy to see Dom’s car, though just because the car was there didn’t mean Saul and Dom were safe.

Still giving each other the silent treatment, we trooped into Adam’s house, heading immediately for the stairs to the second floor. We all knew where Saul and Dominic would be keeping our prisoner. It would be far from the first time that room had been used for an interrogation.

The Dreaded Black Room loomed at the head of the stairs and, as always, I felt a flutter of fear in my stomach when we approached it. It was in that room that Adam had interrogated and then murdered the woman I’d once believed to be my best friend. It was also in that room that Adam had whipped me bloody for his own amusement. Nothing good ever came of setting foot inside its confines, but here I was yet again.

I call it the Black Room because everything in it is black. The floor is gleaming black tile. The walls and ceiling are painted a light-absorbing matte black. A massive black iron bed, draped with black silk covers, dominates one end of the room. And one wall is dotted with black pegs, each of which holds a coiled whip, illuminated by the track lighting above.

Jonathan Foreman sat in the far corner of the room, his back against the wall, his knees gathered up to his chest. Foreman was better-looking than Cooper, but he still wasn’t the pinnacle of perfection that used to be required for a Spirit Society member to host a demon. He was kind of pudgy and soft-looking, and his nose was too big for his face. I doubted he was more than twenty-five years old, but he had a severe case of male pattern baldness that made him look middle-aged at first glance.

He looked up when Adam and Raphael and I entered the room, but he made no aggressive moves. Possibly because both Saul and Dominic had Tasers trained on him and he knew it would be pointless. There was a little too much white showing around his eyes, and even at a distance, I could see his chest rising and falling too fast as he panted. He hugged his knees more tightly to his chest and pushed himself more firmly into the corner. Call me crazy, but he didn’t seem much like a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy.

Adam turned to Raphael. “You’re going to let me handle this, right? Because if you’re planning to Taser me the moment my back is turned, I’d just as soon leave.”

Raphael grinned, apparently enjoying the memory of one of his more badass moments. We’d been interrogating a demon, and we all knew Adam was planning to torture him if he didn’t talk of his own free will. But Raphael came up with his own plan, which was to Taser Adam so he wouldn’t interfere, then douse the demon with gasoline and threaten to light him. The demon had started talking real, real fast.

“This one’s all yours,” Raphael said. “Unless it turns out you need help.”

Adam gave him a long stare, then turned his attention to Foreman. Foreman cringed slightly, reminding me of the pathetic Mary.
This
was the ringleader for the illegal recruitment campaign? I’d have said Cooper was lying to us, but since Adam had plucked the information straight from his mind, that wasn’t possible.

Adam stalked closer to Foreman, his eyes glowing slightly with demonic light, his body lithe and predatory. Foreman swallowed hard and looked like he might pass out. Adam stopped just out of reach, looming over what looked like one very frightened demon.

“Care to tell me why you tried to shoot me?” he asked. His voice wasn’t particularly sharp or loud, but he still managed to make the question drip with menace.

Foreman swallowed hard again. “I thought you were coming to arrest me,” he said. His voice was thin and whispery, but at least it didn’t shake.

Adam cocked his head. “Why would you think that?”

“You’re Adam White,” Foreman said. “I recognize
you from TV. They said they’d report me as a rogue if I didn’t cooperate. When I saw you at the door, I figured I hadn’t cooperated enough.”

Adam had only asked two questions, and already Foreman had raised about a million more with his answers. I had to bite my tongue to keep from butting in. Patience has never been my strong suit. But Adam did this kind of thing for a living, so I figured he’d do a better job than I would at picking the right questions to ask.

“Who are ‘they’?” Adam asked.

Foreman hugged his knees tighter. “If I tell you, will you protect me from them?”

“You say ‘if’ as though you think you have a choice.”

“They’ll kill me,” Foreman said, shaking his head. “I don’t mean they’ll just kill my host, they’ll kill
me.”

“Would it be more to your liking if
we
killed you instead?” Raphael asked. We all should have known better than to expect him to keep quiet.

Dominic and Saul were still standing guard, though Dom had lowered his Taser to his side. I could hardly blame him—I couldn’t imagine Foreman making a break for it.

Adam glanced at Saul. Some kind of silent communication must have passed between them, because Saul suddenly grinned and turned his Taser toward Raphael.

“You said you’d let Adam handle this,” Saul said. “I suggest you keep your word. You have no idea how much I want to shoot you.”

Raphael crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall as if it didn’t bother him in the least
that his own son was threatening to Taser him. I knew it
did
bother him—I’d been around him too long not to know that—but he sure didn’t let it show on his face. He feigned a bored look and kept his mouth shut.

Adam turned his attention back to Foreman. “I’m going to be brutally honest with you,” he said. “I can’t promise you protection. Not when I don’t know who I’d be promising to protect you from. What I
can
promise you is that this will be a very long night for you if you don’t start talking before I lose patience. So, tell me who you think is going to kill you.”

There was a sheen of tears in Foreman’s eyes, and if he’d been any more scared, he’d probably have wet his pants, but he started talking.

“The recruitment team I’m supposed to be running,” Foreman said, looking at the floor instead of at Adam. “We’ve been picking up street people and, er, persuading them to summon demons.”

This time
I
was the one who had trouble keeping my mouth shut, but I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to say something indignant.

“Now why would you be doing that?” Adam asked.

Foreman looked around as if hoping to find an ally in the room. He was out of luck. He seemed to shrink in on himself as flop sweat made dark circles under his arms.

“Answer the question!” Adam demanded.

Foreman squirmed. “Um …” He cleared his throat. “We’re trying to shorten the waiting list for demons who want to walk the Mortal Plain. The Spirit Society has been recruiting hard, but they haven’t been able to
provide enough willing hosts. So we were trying to … make more hosts available.”

“You do understand that that’s against the law,” Adam said in a suspiciously mild voice.

Foreman shuddered. “I know. But I didn’t have much choice.”

“Oh? I thought you said this was
your
recruitment team.”

“No, I said it was
supposed
to be.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning I’m not really running it. I’m just the stalking horse. Anyone who isn’t one hundred percent trustworthy thinks I’m in charge. Only I’m not.”

“So Bradley Cooper wasn’t one hundred percent trustworthy?”

Foreman started at the mention of Cooper’s name. “I wouldn’t have expected him even to know
my
name. Humans, by definition, aren’t trustworthy.”

This time, I couldn’t suppress my outrage. “Gee, could that be because you’re pulling an Invasion of the Body Snatchers on us and trying to make us into your handy-dandy puppets?”

Adam made a growling sound from deep in his throat. “Shut up!” he snarled at me. “If one more person butts in, I’m going to kick you all out of the room.”

Raphael snickered, and for once I got his humor. With three members of the royal family present, Adam wasn’t kicking anyone out unless they wanted to go.

I shut up, but that didn’t stop me from giving Foreman a death glare, which he ignored. I guess with Adam
looming over him like that, the rest of us didn’t seem all that threatening.

“So if you’re not really in charge, who is?”

Foreman took a deep breath and let it out slowly before he answered. “His name is Julius. He’s not a royal, but he’s definitely of the elite. And his host was a football player in college. He’s about three hundred pounds of pure muscle.”

Adam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter how big he is. A Taser will stop him like anyone else.”

“You’d have to find him first. He didn’t trust me anymore, so I’m sure he’s been having me watched. Now that I’ve been captured, he’ll assume I’ve told you everything I know and will take evasive action. That was the whole point of making me the leader in name only. Besides, even if you could track him down, stopping Julius won’t do you any good.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “Why not? Generally, when you chop off the head, the monster dies.”

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but suddenly Foreman looked even more scared. His thinning hair was plastered to his scalp by sweat, and his eyes were practically bugging out of his head. Call it a hunch, but I think he was regretting his last words.

Adam nodded in understanding, though Foreman hadn’t answered him. “Julius isn’t really the head, is he?”

Foreman closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Dougal’s the one who’s really in charge,” Adam said. He hadn’t made it a question, but Foreman nodded anyway.

“If you manage to track down Julius and take him out, Dougal will just send someone else. He’s gotten so many people sucked into …” Foreman’s voice died, and he stared at the floor.

“Sucked into his conspiracy to take the throne,” Adam finished for him.

Foreman flinched, but again he nodded. “The only way to stop it,” he said softly, “is to stop Dougal. And the only way to stop Dougal is to kill him.”

Adam cast a quick glance back at the rest of us. “It’s on our to-do list. But you’re working with Dougal, so why do you sound like you think killing him would be a good thing?”

Foreman rubbed his eyes, wiping away some tears. “Because he lied to me. He lied to a lot of people. I supported him in the beginning, but I didn’t know he actually planned to kill the king. I just thought he was taking advantage of Lugh’s absence to arrange things more to his liking. He tricked me into throwing in with him until I was in too deep to back out.”

Adam suddenly looked a lot more … intense. “He lied to you personally, you mean. You’re not just some peon.”

Foreman blew out a breath. “I am now. But yes, I know Dougal. At least, I thought I did. I used to consider him my friend. But his only true friend right now is his ambition, and he’s making that more and more clear as the water gets hotter.”