The Devil's Playground (29 page)

Dominic squirmed in his chair. “But you said yourself Dougal could
kill
Adam.”

Lugh nodded. “He could. But not on the Mortal Plain. Besides, if he shows up, it will be because he’s chosen to confront me. If that’s the case, he’ll have no reason to kill Adam.”

Dominic clearly didn’t like it, but Adam reached over and squeezed his shoulder, murmuring some kind
of reassurance so quietly the rest of us couldn’t hear. I don’t think it helped a whole lot.

“Does anyone else have an objection?” Lugh asked. “Because if not, I’d like to put Morgan back in control.”

I liked the sound of that. The other members of Lugh’s council looked from one to the other, waiting for someone to object, but it didn’t happen. And between one breath and the next, Lugh slipped into the background of my mind and put my body back under my control. I breathed a quiet sigh of relief, then tensed for the headache and nausea. I felt mildly queasy, and my head hurt a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. The nerves over what Lugh intended to do were far worse, but I did my best to shove my worries to the side for now.

    William had been less than happy to discover we were sending him back to the Demon Realm once more—“less than happy” being the understatement of the century. The poor guy had begged and pleaded, but “Lugh” had been gently firm about it. In the end, William had caved and agreed to do Lugh’s bidding—not that he actually had a choice. I think we all felt at least a little guilty about putting him through this. Well, all but Raphael, who didn’t do guilt.

Knowing that Dougal might once again try to kill the messenger, and knowing that the attempt would be sheer agony for William even though it wouldn’t succeed, we promised William we’d summon him back first thing in the morning. That would give him enough time to get the message to Dougal, but wouldn’t leave
him in Dougal’s clutches for too terribly long. Of course, more than twelve hours of torture might seem kinda long to William.

I tried to assuage my guilty conscience by reminding myself that William had been the de facto leader of the illegal recruitment campaign. That he’d been put in that position despite his protests was a mitigating factor, but the fact remained that he’d sat idly by as his demon accomplices tortured human beings into inviting demons into their bodies. No matter how pitiable William was, he was a long way from being an innocent victim.

The reporters outside Adam’s house had not magically disappeared, more’s the pity. I was almost tempted to ask Adam to let me stay over, just to avoid the vultures. “Almost” being the operative word.

Those of us who weren’t spending the night—Brian, Andy, and me, along with Saul and Barbie—all left together, hoping to stave off the press by sheer numbers. We studiously ignored them as we fought our way through the gauntlet, but that didn’t seem to discourage them.

Most of them stayed camped out in front of Adam’s, but a splinter group started following us. Then the splinter group splintered again when Saul and Barbie veered off. We had about five of them on our tail when we reached my apartment building. They’d been quiet for most of the walk, but when the doorman opened the door for us and we were about to enter private property—where the vultures couldn’t follow—the questions started up again.

If they thought they were going to wear any of us down, they were sorely mistaken. Wear us
out
, maybe, but there was no chance in hell we were going to talk to them.

Once we were safely inside my apartment, Andy announced his plan to sleep for the next week and a half and disappeared into the guest room. I was tired, but not sleepy, if you know what I mean. I guess Brian felt the same way, because instead of heading for the bedroom, he said, “Have you got anything to drink around here?”

I blinked at him. “You’ve been living here almost a week. You know what’s in the fridge as well as I do.”

He rolled his head back and forth, his neck making little popping noises in protest. “I was hoping for something stronger than what was in the fridge. Don’t you have an emergency supply of booze somewhere?”

I’m not much of a drinker. Not for any philosophical reasons, but just because I hate the taste of alcohol. But every once in a while, I can be persuaded to force it down for the greater good of humanity. (When I feel bad enough to want a drink, it isn’t safe to be near me.)

Today had been enough of a strain that I had to agree with Brian that a drink was just what the doctor ordered. In the back of the cabinet over the refrigerator—the one that I could barely reach into despite my greater-than-average height—was a single, lonely bottle of rum, about three-quarters full. I pulled it down and set it on the kitchen counter. My fingers left an outline in the dust that coated the bottle. Guess it had been a while since I’d dragged it down.

I got a Coke out of the fridge, because I’d have to be desperate indeed to drink straight rum. Brian merely threw some ice cubes in a glass and poured himself a healthy shot. He took a tentative sip, then made a face.

“I’m not a connoisseur of rum,” he said, his nose wrinkled, “but I’m guessing this isn’t exactly the good stuff.”

I shrugged. “I bought the cheapest I could find. The good stuff and the bad stuff both taste like shit to me, so why waste the money? Besides, unless I missed my guess, you’re drinking it for medicinal purposes, not for pleasure, so who cares how it tastes?”

I took a sip of my own drink and made a face I suspected was very similar to Brian’s. But I’d have made the same face if it had been the most expensive rum on the face of the earth. Brian gave a resigned sigh, then tossed back the rest of the contents of his glass, the ice cubes audibly clinking against his teeth. He shuddered, then put the glass down.

“Vile stuff,” he said, and I had to agree with him. The look on his face suggested he was thinking of pouring another shot, but he resisted the urge.

I took another swallow of my own drink. The first taste had numbed my tongue a bit, so the second wasn’t quite as repulsive.

“Lugh really means to fight a duel with Dougal, no matter what anyone else thinks, doesn’t he?” Brian asked.

I waited a beat to see if Lugh would answer the question in my head, but he didn’t. I sighed. “Like he said,
let’s take this one problem at a time. We have to get Dougal to the Mortal Plain first.”

He gave me an annoyed look. “Don’t brush me off. You know where I’m going with this.”

Yeah, I had a pretty good idea. The rest of the council was worried about whether Lugh would survive a duel. Brian was wondering about
me
. Truth to tell, so was I. Demons are extremely strong, and their hosts can withstand a great deal of abuse. And the more powerful the demon, the more damage the host could take. But with Lugh and Dougal equally matched, the size and strength of their hosts might be the crucial difference between them. I’m strong, but there were plenty of stronger, bigger people out there in the world, and you can bet Dougal’s host would be one of them.

“What do you expect me to say, Brian?” I asked. “If Lugh really does decide to fight a duel, I’m sure we’ll spend hours in a council meeting listening to everyone trying to talk him out of it. But in the end, he’s the king, and it’ll be his decision.”

A flush rose to Brian’s cheeks, either from the booze or from anger. “But it’s
your
body.”

Tell Brian that if it does come down to a duel, I won’t fight it in your body
.

“Lugh says he won’t necessarily be in my body if he fights a duel,” I repeated, though I’m sure Lugh noticed my equivocation. It was true that using my body for a fight might put him at a disadvantage, but I would have a hard time pushing someone else into the line of fire in my place.

“That’s very comforting,” Brian said sourly. I was beginning to get the feeling he didn’t much like Lugh. I guess I couldn’t blame him.

“Let’s not borrow trouble. Or put the cart before the horse. Or whatever cliché you like best. I’m too tired and generally wrung-out to think about this now. I say some heavy-duty procrastination is in order.”

I’d have liked to procrastinate by taking Brian to bed and burying our powers of higher reasoning beneath physical pleasure, but the look on his face wasn’t what you’d call promising. He dumped the ice out of his glass and poured another shot of crappy rum.

“Come to bed, Brian,” I said, reaching out to cover the glass before he could raise it to his lips. “You still have to go to work in the morning. You don’t want to go in with a hangover, do you?” I bet that wouldn’t go over too well in the offices of Stuffy, Stodgy, and Serious, which was my nickname for Brian’s firm.

Brian made a face, but put the glass down. “It’s hard to care a whole lot about the day job with what I know about the war.”

“Yeah, but we have to hope that someday this will all be behind us, and we’ll get to go on with our lives. Before you got sucked into all this with me, you actually loved your job.” A fact that was completely incomprehensible to me, but different strokes and all that. “You need to make sure that job is still waiting for you when this is all over.”

Brian put his hands around my waist and pulled me closer to him, but it wasn’t a prelude to anything romantic, just the need for a reassuring touch.

“I somehow doubt our lives are going to go back to normal when it’s all over, even if Lugh does end up being the undisputed king. After all, it’s not like anyone is powerful enough to exorcize him and send him back to the Demon Realm. He’ll be with us for the rest of our lives.”

I had to suppress a shiver. No, there was no one strong enough to cast Lugh out; however, it occurred to me that that wasn’t the only way he could get back to the Demon Realm. My death would do the trick quite nicely.

I would never do such a thing!
came Lugh’s shocked protest in my mind.
Nor would I allow anyone else to do it
, he continued, before I could say something about how Raphael wouldn’t have the same scruples. I believed him—after all, he had said he loved me. The fact remained that Brian was right, and my life would never return to what it had been like before Lugh came into it.

I leaned into Brian’s body, putting my arms around him and holding him close. “Let’s go to bed, okay?” I asked.

I knew Brian was far from appeased. But he let me lead him into the bedroom anyway.

I
EXPECTED TUESDAY TO BE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE
tense, miserable days of waiting. Brian headed out to work first thing in the morning, looking none the worse for his late night. Andy and I were, once again, stuck with each other. It was beginning to feel a bit like house arrest for both of us. It did seem that Andy had lightened up a bit on the doom-and-gloom crap, but he still wasn’t exactly fun to be around. Frankly, I didn’t know how much longer this whole buddy-system thing was going to work. If I was tired of hanging out with my big brother, I couldn’t imagine how Adam and Dominic were dealing with Raphael and William the Wimpy—whom they had summoned back as promised, only to find him even more hysterical than last time. Surprise, surprise, Dougal hadn’t taken the message well.

The news stations were still buzzing about Adam’s press conference, so watching TV was out, even if the Spirit Society had suspended their recruitment campaign, which I suspected they had. I was glad I didn’t get the paper, because I knew damn well what the lead story would be. Whether this gamble paid off in the end or not, there was still plenty of fallout yet to come.

I was reading a book—well, more like staring at the pages of a book until the type all blurred together—and Andy was doing who-knows-what on the Internet when my phone rang. I expected it to be press, but the number that popped up on caller ID was Adam and Dom’s, so I picked up.

“Hello?” Since Adam was at work today, I assumed the caller was Raphael or Dom. Alarm spiked through me when it was Adam’s voice that answered.

“We’ve got a situation,” he said.

Why was it that Adam never had
good
news to deliver? “What now?” I asked. “And what are you doing home? I thought you were working today.”

“I was,” he responded, and I could hear the grimace in his voice. “It’s been suggested that now might be a good time to use some of those vacation days I’ve accrued. It wasn’t quite an order, but I think it would have turned into one if I made an issue of it.”

I sighed. “Is this because of the press conference, or because you didn’t cooperate as much as they wanted when they questioned you about the shooting?”

“Both, I suspect. I get the feeling that I’m lucky I haven’t been fired. Yet. But that doesn’t matter. Like I said, we have a situation. I had a visitor at the station before I left for home. You won’t believe this: It was Dougal.”

“What?” I cried, my voice coming out an embarrassing squeak. Andy shut down whatever he was doing on the Internet and turned to me in alarm.

“He just strolled into the station and told them he
wanted to speak to me. I assumed it wasn’t really Dougal himself, despite what he’d claimed, but when he came up to the office, he let me check his aura. And unless Lugh or Raphael has changed hosts and is playing an elaborate practical joke, it was Dougal.”

“Holy shit.” It was all I could think of to say.

“What?” Andy demanded, still looking worried.

“Adam’s talked to Dougal,” I said, because if I didn’t answer Andy, he’d never shut up. “Let me talk, and I’ll tell you all about it after I get off the phone.” I waited a second to see if Andy would mutiny, but he didn’t.

“So what did he have to say?” I asked Adam.

“He said he was coming in to see me to let me know he’d accepted our invitation, as he called it. He suggested he and Lugh get together at six tonight in the food court at the Gallery to discuss terms. He figures that ought to be public enough that both he and Lugh would feel safe from an untimely attack.”

Crap! We’d all been expecting Dougal to drag his feet about this, not try to rush us. “What is he up to?” I murmured, not really meaning for Adam to hear.

“At a guess, I’d say he’s trying to make sure we’re unbalanced. We’ve kind of got him by the balls, and he’s going to look for any advantage he can find.”