The Devil's Playground (15 page)

Even in the most demon-friendly states, transferring a demon via skin-to-skin contact is illegal, even if both participants are willing. Those who hate and fear the demons—and that’s about half the population of the U.S.—feel safer with that kind of legal protection and don’t care how many lives could be saved and how much pain avoided if demons could be used as healers. Of course, I suspected Adam was far from the only demon to do this kind of illicit healing.

“I’ll be careful,” Barbie promised, and Adam put the ice bag back on her hand. Her eyes squinched at the corners, but she made no other sign that it hurt.

We all turned our attention to Cooper, who looked small and fragile with Raphael looming over him.

“Did you get anything useful out of him?” I asked Adam.

He nodded, but I got the impression that something about what he’d learned bothered him. “I have the name of the leader of the illegal recruitment drive:
Jonathan Foreman. Cooper didn’t have an address for him, but I’m sure I can find it myself.”

Raphael, standing behind the couch, bent and put his hands on Cooper’s shoulders, right next to his neck.

“Oh, good,” he said. “That means we don’t need Cooper anymore.”

Cooper let out a squeal of alarm as Raphael’s hands slid to encircle his neck. He clawed at Raphael’s wrists, leaving red marks on Raphael’s skin, but his efforts probably wouldn’t have dislodged Tommy, much less Raphael.

“Don’t you dare kill him!” I said, glaring at Raphael.

Raphael raised his eyebrows, looking mildly curious as Cooper continued flailing at his hands. “Why on earth not? After everything that’s happened tonight, he’s a considerable liability.”

Cooper’s face was turning red, and he was making pathetic little gasping sounds. I loathed Cooper, had loathed him for all of my life. And I had good reasons to want him dead for some of the things he’d done to me in the past. But it turns out I haven’t yet found it in me to just turn my head and let someone be murdered. And I hope I never do.

“Because we’re the good guys,” I said, “and good guys don’t go around murdering people. Now let go of him!”

Raphael, of course, ignored me. I wished my Taser were charged, because there was nothing I could do against Raphael my own puny self without a weapon.

“Adam!” I snapped. “Do something!”

Adam gave me a look, at once impassive and full of
meaning. He probably approved of what Raphael was doing. Even if he didn’t, Raphael outranked him. No, only Lugh could stop Raphael, and he didn’t seem to be volunteering for the job.

I was trying to come up with a plan C, but Raphael suddenly dropped his hands from Cooper’s neck. Cooper sucked in great, gasping swallows of air, his hands going protectively to his neck as if to stop Raphael from choking him again.

Raphael smiled pleasantly. “My advice would be to kill him and hide the body where it will never be found.” He looked at Adam. “You’ve had intimate contact with him. Do you think if I reminded him that I could change my mind and come back for him at any time he would see the wisdom of keeping his mouth shut?” Raphael turned his unnerving attention to Cooper. “You’d have to make yourself disappear so you wouldn’t have to tell your Spirit Society friends your demon is gone, but I know you have the means to do it.”

Adam flashed Cooper a feral grin. “What do you think, Brad? Are you going to run around flapping your lips, or would you rather live?”

Cooper, still gasping and coughing, managed to sputter out a promise that he wouldn’t say a word to anyone about what had happened here tonight. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I believed him. But Adam seemed to think he’d keep his mouth shut, and Raphael, for the second time in one night, was showing something that resembled mercy. I wasn’t going to be the one to start baying for Cooper’s blood, not when I’d been about to make a heroic effort to save him.

We trooped out of the house together, leaving Cooper sobbing on his love seat. Adam carried a garbage bag that contained Cooper’s bloody clothes, the bag from his vacuum cleaner, the pillow that had served as a makeshift silencer, and the rags they’d used to clean the floor—the hard evidence that we’d been here tonight and done Cooper harm. Adam was going to have to “lose” his Taser somehow. It wouldn’t go over well with the brass—losses like that couldn’t help but be suspicious—but he’d have a hard time explaining why the Taser had been fired not just once, but multiple times, when he was off duty.

As we closed Cooper’s front door behind us, Raphael turned to me with a little grin and a spark of what looked suspiciously like mischief in his eye.

“You and I do a very nice good cop, bad cop act. We should do it again sometime.”

“Fuck off,” I said, with my usual tact and grace. “He could have died before you decided to listen to my good cop.” And I
still
didn’t understand why he had listened.

Raphael dismissed that with a wave. “Did you hear the little noises he was making?” he said with a chuckle.

I curled my lip in a sneer. “You think that’s funny? Why, you despicable—”

Raphael didn’t let me finish, cutting me off with a glare and a growl that made me take an involuntary step backward. He shook his head at me in what looked like disgust, then ducked into his car, pulling the door shut so hard I was surprised the metal didn’t crumple. I
caught a glimpse of his face as he slammed the car into reverse and practically flew out of the driveway. He was seriously pissed, and I hoped he wouldn’t plow down any innocent passersby.

I shook my head. “Why is he mad at me?” I asked of no one in particular. “He had to know gloating like that would offend me.”

“He wasn’t gloating,” Adam answered. “He was pointing out that Cooper was making noise, which meant he could breathe. No air, no noise.”

Adam didn’t glance at me after making me realize what an idiot I’d been, and Barbie didn’t either. So much for my efforts to give Raphael the benefit of the doubt. By the time I’d recovered my poise enough to follow, Adam and Barbie were halfway across the street and I had to run to catch up.

    The ride back into Center City was a quiet one. Barbie was in too much pain to make conversation, and neither Adam nor I was much into small talk. I still didn’t get why Adam and Raphael had let Cooper live. It seemed so … unlike them.

Any ideas, Lugh?
I asked, but apparently we were back to the silent treatment. I didn’t understand what was going on with
that
, either.

My stomach still wasn’t happy, and I felt the beginnings of a headache stirring behind my eyes, so I let my questions go, for now. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the headrest, willing the nausea to recede. At least Adam drove with reasonable care, not
screaming around any corners or jackrabbiting when lights turned green. He probably just didn’t want me puking in his car.

Our first stop was at Saul’s apartment, where we dropped Barbie off. Saul lived in a small, intimate community. You had to buzz to get in, but there were no doormen, and there was no front desk. No one to see Barbie’s obvious injury before Saul swept her behind closed doors to heal her.

I closed my eyes again as soon as Adam pulled away from the curb. I could hardly wait until Adam dropped me off so I could fall into bed in a dark room and, hopefully, sleep through the remainder of these aftereffects.

“It was really nice of you to offer to heal Barbie,” I found myself saying without having intended to say a word.

I didn’t open my eyes, but I could hear Adam’s shrug. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time. She may have saved my life, after all. At least, my host’s life. Cooper’s demon was not rank and file.”

I’d gathered that from the extra effort it had taken me to toss it out. It didn’t seem like a good sign. If we had to have more demons than usual flooding the Mortal Plain, why couldn’t they all be weaklings like Mary?

“Why did you and Raphael let Cooper live?” I asked, my mouth still running on autopilot. My conscious mind would have preferred I not ask, in case talking about it would make Adam change his mind. But being sick to my stomach lowered my inhibitions, and my mouth asked without permission from my brain.

Again, I could hear Adam’s shrug. “I can’t speak for Raphael. But personally, I didn’t dare kill him. We cleaned up the evidence as best we could, but all it would have taken was one stray hair, or one witness who saw us enter, or who saw the car, to implicate me if we’d left a body behind. And if we
didn’t
leave the body behind, we’d have to get it out of there somehow, which would have been too risky.”

I cracked one eye open and glanced at Adam’s profile. “So if you thought you could have gotten away with it, you’d have killed him?”

He stopped at a red light, but didn’t turn to face me. “Yes. I’m sorry if that offends your moral code, but leaving Cooper alive is dangerous. He may be frightened enough of Raphael to keep his mouth shut. Then again, he might find his courage when we’re not right there in his face.”

The light turned green. I closed my eye again and didn’t comment. Everything Adam said was true. I didn’t have to like it, or even agree with him. At least I understood him. Raphael’s mercy was much more mysterious, but then I probably never would understand him. His mind was the most complicated maze I’d ever seen, and I would lose my way in a heartbeat trying to solve it.

I suddenly remembered how unhappy Adam had looked when he left Cooper and returned to his host. He hadn’t told us anything that justified the look on his face, though it wasn’t surprising that he’d decided not to talk too much in front of Cooper.

“What else did you learn while you were getting to
know Cooper up close and personal?” I asked. “There was something bothering you.”

Adam’s heavy sigh said he was not happy. “We were right about the recruitment campaign not being restricted to Philly. And Cooper thinks about a hundred new demons—some legal, some not—have come to the Mortal Plain in the last six weeks. And that’s just in Cooper’s region.”

That made me sit up straight and open my eyes. “Shit! That’s a lot of demons.” If we let this go on much longer, Dougal would have a freakin’ army at his disposal.

“Yes, it is,” Adam agreed, but apparently he had nothing more to add. Which was probably just as well.

Worry struck me out of the blue while I was riding the elevator to my apartment. If Cooper was a legal, registered demon host, that meant the Spirit Society had seriously lowered their standards. Unfortunately, Cooper wasn’t the only person I knew who’d had hopes of hosting a demon.

I dove for the phone and called my mom as soon as the door to my apartment closed behind me. We had reached an uneasy truce after my father’s death, but still we hardly ever spoke. I was pretty sure that even the lingering tension between us wouldn’t keep her from calling to let me know if she finally got her wish to become a host, but “pretty sure” wasn’t good enough.

To my surprisingly intense relief, she assured me that she had no plans to host. “That was a young woman’s dream,” she told me wistfully. “But I’m not a young woman anymore.”

I managed to keep my opinion of that “dream” to myself, so it turned out to be one of our most civil conversations ever. Afterward, my head and stomach still feeling less than their best, I decided to make an early night of it. Everything would look rosier tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, I assured myself.

But I was dead wrong about that.

I
DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I WAS
ASLEEP
ASLEEP, BUT IT
felt like I had closed my eyes only moments before I opened them to find myself in Lugh’s imaginary bedroom. Last night, I’d willed Lugh to appear to me in my sleep, and he hadn’t done it. Tonight I wanted nothing more than oblivion, and here he was. Contrary bastard. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to him about his unusual reticence. It was just that the headache and queasiness that came with control changes had followed me into my dreams. Also, it was never a good sign when I found myself in Lugh’s bed.

I was lying on my back, staring up at a cream-colored ceiling. My head lay on a fluffy down pillow, and the sheet that caressed my skin had the luxurious softness of pure silk. It was a fantastically comfortable bed, but I couldn’t help noticing how much of my skin
was in contact with that silk sheet. Which was practically every inch. Which meant I was naked beneath.

A shadow loomed in the candlelit darkness beside the bed, but I didn’t turn toward it. I knew who it was, and the bedroom combined with the silk sheets and nudity told me just what was on Lugh’s mind tonight.

The bed dipped beneath his weight. I knew he was about to lean over me, take away my option not to look at him, so I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see what he was wearing—or
wasn’t
wearing, as the case might be.

“Let me go back to sleep,” I said, my voice sounding unflatteringly petulant.

Lugh chuckled, the sound so full of warmth that I felt a flush rising on my face. “You
are
asleep,” he reminded me.

I kept my eyes closed, but that didn’t keep me from sensing his presence, his
closeness
. His breath caressed my face, smelling faintly of coffee and cinnamon. Of course, he didn’t really breathe, and his breath didn’t really have a scent. He just thought I’d find the scent of coffee and cinnamon enticing, and so he crafted it to please me.

I felt him shift on the bed beside me, then heard the silky slither of his hair as he loosed it from whatever confinement he’d had it under. The strands stroked across the skin of my chest, right above where the silk sheet came to a stop. My traitorous nipples hardened, and desire kindled low in my belly, despite my best efforts to squelch it.

Would I have better success fending him off if I
opened my eyes, or if I kept them closed? I felt sort of silly lying there with my eyes closed like he was some kind of monster under the bed and was about to go away. But if I opened my eyes … Lugh was an expert at pushing my buttons—he probably knew what they were better than I did—and adding visuals might tempt me to do something I’d regret later. So I kept them closed, though I still felt silly.