The Devil's Playground (24 page)

Saul stopped dead in his tracks, his face reddening with something other than anger. I was impressed with Raphael’s strategy. There was nothing that Saul could say now that wouldn’t make him look like a selfish hothead who’d be more useful guarding our prisoner upstairs than participating in our meeting. He swallowed hard, his cheek muscles twitching as he ground his teeth. But he managed to tamp down his rage.

Saul righted his chair and dropped into it without another word.

“Do you really think this plan will work?” I asked Raphael, trying to get our meeting back to order.

Raphael blinked a couple of times, like he’d forgotten where he was for a moment. Then his eyes focused on me.

“I think it
might
work. Nothing even close to a guarantee. But don’t you think a plan that
might
work is better than no plan at all?”

I had to admit he had a point—if William was telling us anything that resembled the truth. “How confident are you that Dougal really is feeling the heat?” I asked. “If we’re not sure we believe the rest of William’s story, why should we believe that?”

“I’m pretty confident that he’s telling the truth about Dougal’s difficulties. People—both demon and human—are more apt to support a winner, and I’d say Dougal is looking less and less like a winner as time goes on.”

“Since you were part of Dougal’s inner circle once,” Adam said, “you know a lot of the players involved, right?”

Raphael nodded. “Indeed. And I see where Alexander’s defection would make them very uneasy. There are a handful who are as loyal to Dougal as we are to Lugh. But there are more than a handful of opportunists like William. And, apparently, Alexander. I would have pegged him as one of the loyal handful, but I guess I was mistaken.” He turned toward me. “I believe William’s story, and I believe Dougal’s troubles give us a legitimate chance to lure him to the Mortal Plain. But it’s up to Lugh to decide whether he thinks it’s worth a shot.”

“One question before we make a decision,” I said.
“What are we going to do with William if we don’t want to try Raphael’s plan?”

The silence in the room was deafening, and suddenly no one wanted to meet my gaze. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what that meant.

“We’re going to kill him,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. I’d been involved in a peripheral manner with the death by fire of several demons now, but each time it happened it was because someone—either Raphael, or Lugh, or, most recently, the state of Pennsylvania—had taken the decision out of my hands. I wasn’t sure I had what it took to participate, or even look the other way, if I had a choice.

Raphael broke the silence. “If we don’t have a use for him, then we can’t afford to keep him alive. You know that.”

I did, but that didn’t mean I was happy about it. I turned to Brian, who’d been avoiding my gaze just like everyone else.

“What about you?” I asked. “Can you really just sit by while we commit premeditated murder?” He’d managed to stomach killing Der Jäger, but that had been in the heat of the moment, with a more tangible and immediate danger. This was an entirely different kettle of fish.

Brian shrugged. “I’m really hoping Lugh will go for Raphael’s plan so I don’t have to deal with it.” He swept a glance over Lugh’s assembled supporters and shook his head. “If these guys decide William has to die, there’s no way you or I can stop them.”

An uncomfortable truth, but truth nonetheless.

I decided I’d join Brian in hoping not to have to deal with it. “What do you think, Lugh?” I asked. “Do we go with Raphael’s plan to send William back to the Demon Realm?”
Please say yes
, I added as a mental aside.

Yes. With some conditions
.

I relayed his answer to the council while sighing in relief.

L
UGH’S CONDITIONS MADE A LOT OF SENSE. THAT
didn’t mean I had to like them. To guard against the possibility that William would continue to side with Dougal, we had to take extra precautions to ensure our safety, with Raphael being the most vulnerable of all. Therefore, Lugh decreed that none of us should be living alone right now, and every “household” should have at least one demon in it.

Even though the words came from Lugh himself, and were therefore tantamount to law, there was a lot of bickering about who would stay with whom. No one, of course, wanted Raphael, but Adam and Dom bit the bullet and invited him to stay with them. Brian could stay with me, and Barbie could stay with Saul—I think they were practically living together already anyway. That left only Andy. I wasn’t real anxious to have him
moping around my apartment, but neither Saul nor Barbie had a spare room in their apartments, and Andy and Raphael in the same house seemed like a recipe for disaster. That left only me.

With the living arrangements worked out, the council meeting broke up. Only Raphael, Adam, and I entered the Black Room to speak to our prisoner.

William was no longer huddling in the corner when we stepped in. He’d lain down on the enormous black bed, but with his arms crossed over his chest, and his legs crossed at the ankles, he looked anything but relaxed. He sat up hastily as we filed in, and he got that white-eyed frightened look on his face again. I guess he knew his life was in the balance.

Raphael, back in Lugh mode, stood slightly ahead of Adam and me. I guess we were kind of playing royal bodyguards, though I’m not good at “playing” anything. William slipped off the bed and rose to his feet, straightening his shoulders and making a reasonably successful attempt to look dignified as he waited for “Lugh” to pass sentence.

“Is your host intact?” Raphael asked, and William looked completely flummoxed by the question.

“What?”

“Is your host intact?” Raphael repeated. “Meaning, would he function without you in his body, or have you damaged his brain?”

William paled a little. I guess he knew Lugh didn’t much approve of demons mistreating their hosts.

“He was already damaged when I took him,” William said. “He was a longtime drug user.”

“Just answer the question.”

“I … I
think
he can function without me. But I don’t know. I’ve been keeping him happy from the moment I first took him. I’m not sure how he’d take to returning to reality.”

“Keeping him happy as in keeping him high?” Adam asked.

William nodded warily. Considering the truly awful ways some demons abused their hosts, I supposed keeping his drug-addict host in a permanent state of euphoria was fairly decent, but I would never feel comfortable with the idea.

Raphael pursed his lips, which was not an expression I’d seen on his face very often. He was usually so sure of himself. But then, he was pretending to be Lugh, and Lugh always thought things through before he acted. Eventually, he reached some kind of decision—or pretended he did.

“I’m going to exorcize you,” he said, and there was no missing the relief on William’s face. Relief that quickly faded when Raphael explained exactly what William was to do once he got back to the Demon Realm.

“I can’t!” William wailed, almost hyperventilating. “If I start running my mouth, Dougal will throw me in prison!”

Raphael made a soothing gesture with his hands. “Calm down, William. Hear me out before you panic.”

William’s eyes showed too much white, and there was no missing the fact that he was still on the verge of
panic, but he managed to rein it in. “Okay,” he said in a choked whisper.

“The reason I was asking about your host’s condition is that I plan to summon you back in three days’ time. That ought to be enough time for you to stir up plenty of trouble. But even if Dougal imprisons you, I can summon you back. If your host isn’t capable of performing the ceremony himself or isn’t willing to, then I’ll have one of my other human allies do the summoning and then transfer you back into your host.”

I hoped that was just a soothing lie. No way did I want one of my friends to have to summon William the Wimpy.

William bit his lip, still looking worried, though the panic was gone. “If my host is capable, he’ll be more than willing,” he said, almost absently. “He’s chased the ultimate high for his entire adult life, and now that he’s found it, he’d do anything to keep it.”

My face scrunched up with disgust, but I didn’t say anything. Maybe someone as fucked-up as William’s host—if he was indeed as fucked-up as William said—was just better off if he could completely check out of reality.

“Then it seems we have a plan,” Raphael said with satisfaction. “But if you have any thought of betraying me, remember that you will be summoned back into our custody. I don’t enjoy being cruel, but I will be if I find that you haven’t obeyed me.”

William swallowed hard and nodded. “I won’t betray you. I swear it.”

Raphael nodded in kingly approval. “Very well then. Give me your hand, and do not resist.”

William’s hand was shaking when he held it out for Raphael to clasp, but he did as he was told.

The exorcism took all of about forty seconds. I was impressed. I’d never timed myself performing an exorcism, but I knew it took me way more than forty seconds, and I was the most powerful exorcist I’d ever heard of. Of course, I’m not demon royalty, so I guess I was outclassed. Hmm. Outclassed by Raphael. Not a comfortable thought.

When William was gone, his host collapsed to the floor, but it wasn’t because he was brain-damaged. Tears streamed down his face, and a piteous, wailing moan rose from his throat as his whole body began to shake. Sweat dewed his skin, and his eyes had an empty, glassy look to them.

“What’s the matter with him?” I asked. I’d never seen a host act like this when his demon was exorcized before.

Adam shook his head in what looked like disgust. “At a guess, I’d say he’s already having withdrawal symptoms.” William’s host raked one hand over his face, leaving five distinct, bloody scratches. Adam hastened to grab both his hands, at which point he started struggling and screaming. Who knows what he was actually seeing, but I was pretty sure it was nothing in this room.

“This is going to be a very, very long three days,” Adam said, and I couldn’t help agreeing with him.

Before we left Adam’s house, I decided that the next three days were going to be unbearable if I didn’t lay down some ground rules for Andy. Living with my older brother in a cramped apartment wasn’t going to be much fun in the first place, but living with him
and
his own personal thundercloud of doom was going to get old so fast he might not survive three whole days.

I cornered him as soon as he set foot out the door, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him to a shadowed corner by the front stoop, where we could talk in relative privacy. His eyes widened at my manhandling, but he didn’t protest. I might have preferred it if he did—that would at least be a sign of life. That he used to be even worse than this was a sobering thought.

I suppose, as his loving sister, I should have been warm and nurturing, full of sympathy and gentle words, but that was never my style. I didn’t have it in me to be as brutal as Raphael, but I was sick and tired of the kid gloves.

“If you’re going to come live with me for three days,” I said, poking him in the chest, “then you’re going to need an attitude adjustment. I can’t have you sitting around my apartment crying, ‘Oh, woe is me,’ constantly, or I’ll go insane.”

His jaw set stubbornly. “When have I ever said ‘Woe is me’?”

No, my brother is not an idiot. He knew perfectly well what I meant. “Just stop it, Andy! So you’ve done
some things you’re not proud of. So what? Who hasn’t? Deal with it and move on.”

He laughed, but the bitterness in that laugh was thick enough to make me wince. “That’s your advice?” he asked, an angry glitter in his eyes. “Deal with it and move on?” He shook his head. “That’s cold even for you.”

I decided to try a low blow.
Anything
to knock some sense into him. “Did you learn all this mopey poor-me shit from Raphael? Because he’s raised feeling sorry for himself to an art form, and you seem to be emulating him.”

Andy’s wince and gasp proved my low blow had hurt plenty. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be a constructive sort of pain.

“If you can’t bear to have me around, then I’ll take my chances on my own,” he said. “I don’t care if Lugh likes it or not. I may be on his council, but that doesn’t make me one of his subjects.”

I’d been kidding myself to think that a few well-chosen words would fix whatever was wrong with him. “I think I liked you better when you were catatonic,” I muttered under my breath. Yeah, it was another low blow, and I’m not proud of myself for saying it.

“You and Brian have a good time playing house,” he said, then pushed past me.

I grabbed his arm before he could get too far. “You’re coming to my place,” I informed him. “I’m sick of your attitude, but that doesn’t mean I want you in the line of fire.”

He jerked his arm from my grip. “You’re all heart.” He started walking away.

“If you’re not at my apartment by nine
A.M.
, I’m coming to get you,” I yelled at his back.