The Devil You Know mk-2

by Jenna Black

  Since there were no children in the house anymore, I was gambling my dad no longer locked the door. Even so, I held my breath as I tried the knob, letting out a sigh of relief when it turned in my hand. I slipped inside and closed the door behind me. Hopefully, if my mom started to wonder where I was and came to check on me, she’d assume I’d gone home like a sensible girl.

  I smiled faintly as I looked around the room, realizing I still felt a thrill at doing the forbidden.

  There’s hardly a bare patch of wall anywhere in my dad’s study. Two walls are taken up by floor-to-ceiling bookcases, the shelves crammed to bursting with books, grouped by subject matter, then alphabetized by author name, because this is Anal-Retentive Man we’re talking about. The other two walls are dominated by his massive mahogany desk, and more file cabinets than you’d see in a lawyer’s record room. These, too, were grouped by subject matter, with convenient labels on the outside so that prying eyes like mine could find the most likely candidates for interesting reading.

  His personal files were on the bottom, right next to the door. I wasn’t entirely surprised to discover there was one entire drawer devoted to each member of our immediate family.

  For some reason, my palms went clammy when I imagined pulling my own file open, so I started with Andy’s. Inside, there were folders for every aspect of my brother’s life. His birth announcement. A yellowed piece of paper with tiny baby footprints on it. Even the ID bracelets he and my mother had worn in the hospital. Then there was a file of all his report cards starting with kindergarten. Art projects that in a normal home would have been tacked up on the refrigerator but in ours had gone straight from Andy’s hand to storage. The homemade Christmas cards he’d given our parents every year until he turned twenty-one and was lost beneath Raphael’s personality.

  I stopped myself from looking any further, feeling like a voyeur. My throat felt strangely tight as I realized that for all of Dad’s deficiencies, for all his coldness, he must love Andy somewhere deep down. Otherwise, why would he keep all this stuff?

  I slid Andy’s drawer closed, then wiped my sweaty palms on my pants legs before taking a deep breath and opening my own.

  I wasn’t surprised to discover my drawer was very different from Andy’s. That didn’t stop the hurt that stabbed through me when I saw that whereas Andy’s file was so full of memorabilia you could barely pull anything out, mine was positively sparse. No birth records. No cutesy, childish art. No report cards, though I could hardly blame him for that. I don’t think there’s a report card in existence that didn’t mention how much of a pain in the ass I was, even though I was smart enough to get good grades without having to work too hard.

  The first thing of interest I found was the record of the paternity test, which was conducted when I was about a month old. I saw in black and white that Dad and I were not related. I swallowed hard and shoved the folder back in the drawer.

  My files, being much duller than Andy’s, were organized by year rather than subject matter. I skipped forward to the year of my possibly mysterious hospitalization. I laid the file open on my lap and started flip-ping through it, looking more carefully than I had at anything previously. My hand—and my heart—came to a stop when I found a letter with the Spirit Society’s logo emblazoned at the top. It was from Bradley Cooper, although he hadn’t risen to his exalted rank of Regional Director yet and was merely a Team Leader.

  Dear Mr. Kingsley,

  We are sorry to hear about the difficulties you and your wife are experiencing with the child. We understand your frustration, and thank you again for the heroic efforts you have made for the Cause.

  Our suggestion is that you have the child speak with one of our psychiatrists. He will examine her and make a determination as to the likelihood that she can be turned at this late age. It is possible that the resistance you are experiencing is nothing more than the rebellion of a normal teenager. If so, we would ask that you continue on as you have at least for the next couple of years until we can make a determination as to whether she will join with us of her own free will.

  If our doctor determines that she is, in fact, intractable, then other, more desperate measures may be needed. We will discuss those measures when and if they become necessary so that we may come to a mutually acceptable arrangement.

  Once again, I thank you on the behalf of the entire Society for your loyalty to our Cause, and for service above and beyond the call of duty. If you are amenable to our suggestion, please give me a call and we will set up an appointment.

  My stomach flopped like a fish out of water. I could only assume this “teenage rebellion” of which Cooper spoke was my insistence that I would never, ever host a demon.

  My parents had begun the recruitment effort on my twelfth birthday—the same age that they’d started working on Andy. But while Andy had immediately succumbed to the allure of becoming an all-powerful hero, I had balked. And more than a year of dragging me to Society meetings and shoving Society propaganda in my face had only made me dig my heels in deeper.

  I remembered that trip to the psychiatrist. It had been the first of many. With trembling fingers, I turned to the next page, and saw the psychiatrist’s report. I was still reading through it, simultaneously fascinated and appalled to read this stranger’s impressions of me, most of which seemed surprisingly accurate, when the study door opened and my dad walked in.

  For a long, breathless moment, we were both too shocked to move or speak. Inwardly, I cursed myself for getting so absorbed in my reading that I hadn’t heard him coming. If I’d heard him, maybe I could have stuffed some of the more interesting pages into my pockets for later perusal.

  Dad snapped out of it first, stepping fully into the room and slamming the door behind him. I winced at the sound, then reminded myself that I was an adult, not a six-year-old girl.

  With what I hoped was cool aplomb, I closed the folder and tucked it back into the drawer, then stood. I was a full head taller than my dad, and we looked nothing alike. When I’d been a kid, people had always commented to my mom that I was her spitting image in everything but height. No one had ever said I looked like my dad, but I’d always assumed that was merely a gender thing. Now I realized the true reason. Even so, as I stood there and watched him trying to absorb the indignity of my intrusion upon his sanctum sanctorum, he still felt like my father to me. The little girl in my core wanted to apologize, to finally see a hint of approval on his face, but it wasn’t going to happen.

  “You have some nerve,” he said when he recovered enough to talk. His voice was highly controlled, but I could hear the fury in it anyway.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against the cabinets behind me, pretending to be a hell of a lot more relaxed than I was. “Nice to see you, too, Pops,” I said.

  I think I saw a wisp of steam rise from his ears. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, and the look on his face said he was seriously considering taking me over his knee again.

  I managed to swallow the laugh the mental image conjured and just shook my head at him. “You know the meaning as well as I do, assuming you spoke to Mom before you came in here. And if you’re planning to go the denial route, don’t bother. You conveniently kept the results of the paternity test filed for me to find.”

  His face turned red with anger, but it seemed he wasn’t in the mood for a good knock-down, drag-out. “Get out” was all he said.

  “What else is in those files?” I asked, not about to budge. “I saw Cooper’s letter about the ‘desperate measures’ the Society would take if you decided the brainwashing wasn’t working. And I can’t help connecting those desperate measures to my stay at The Healing Circle that very same year.”

  “I said get out!”

  “I heard you. But like I told Mom, I’m not leaving until I get the answers I came for. So you’re either going to answer my questions, or I’ll help myself to the contents of my file.” Or both, actually. It wasn’t like I’d trust anythin
g he told me under the circumstances. Still, I wouldn’t mind getting the Cliffs Notes before I got started on the heavy reading.

  When he didn’t start talking, I began to bend down for the drawer. He grabbed my arm and yanked me back.

  “You’re leaving now,” he informed me, and tried to pull me toward the door.

  “The hell I am.” I spread my legs and flexed my knees to give myself more leverage, and he couldn’t budge me.

  Anger still flashed in his eyes, but the expression on his face turned to stern paternal disapproval. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be. You have no right to paw through my personal records.”

  “They’re my personal records, from what I could see. And yes, I definitely do have a right to see them. Now let go of my arm before I show you how difficult I’m capable of being.”

  His grip tightened to painful proportions. “There’s nothing in there you need to see. Let the past stay in the past, where it belongs.”

  Was that a hint of desperation I saw in his eyes? I didn’t much care. With a twist and a hard yank, I freed my arm from his grip and once more bent for the drawer.

  “Morgan, stop it!” he said in his most commanding voice, but I ignored him.

  My fingers had just closed on the folder when my dad grabbed my arm again. I whirled on him with a snarl.

  And turned my head right into the fist that was coming for my face.

  I doubt I was out very long, but apparently it was just long enough for my dad—possibly with my mom’s help—to drag my unconscious body out onto the front stoop. I was just struggling back up through the blackness when the door slammed loudly, followed by the sound of locks clicking shut.

  A couple of passersby in the street gave me curious looks, but this being the city, they kept on walking. A sweet little old lady stopped to ask if I was all right and offered to dial 911, but I managed a smile and declined her offer. Behind the closed door, I could hear my parents’ voices raised in argument, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Just as well, no doubt.

  Feeling disconnected with reality, I fingered the bruise that was forming on my jaw as I walked. Who knew my dad packed such a punch? Other than the occasional spanking when Andy and I were growing up, I’d never seen my dad hit anyone before. Never even seen any sign that he might be capable of hitting someone, even when he was madder than hell. My feelings might have been hurt if I hadn’t remembered the sound of desperation in his voice. He’d tried everything he could think of to keep me from delving into those files, until he’d realized he wasn’t getting me out of that room without resorting to violence.

  And that told me that there was more in those files he wanted to hide. Much more, if he was that desperate to keep me from looking.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t think I was getting in that front door again. Not unless I broke in.

  I wasn’t opposed to bending the law here and there. But for all my wild, rebellious childhood and adolescence, I’d never broken into a house before. I hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it.

  Of course, I did have an officer of the law I could call on for help. And I had no doubt Adam could get in the house if he wanted to. Hell, I could file a charge of assault against my father, and Adam could “investigate” it.

  As tempting as the idea was, I nixed it before it took hold. I’d never had any warm, fuzzy feeling toward my parents, and I had even less right now. But I knew from cold, hard experience what could happen if I sicced Adam on them. My stomach tightened as I remembered Val’s scream when Adam’s whip had torn through her flesh. And I thought I might heave when I remembered the sickening crack of her neck breaking in his dispassionate hands.

  No, the relationship between me and my parents wasn’t all flowers and bunny rabbits. And yes, they possibly had information I needed to learn. But never again would I willingly give someone over to Adam.

  CHAPTER 9

  I stopped by a Chinese take-out place on my way home. My first inclination was to get two meals and kick Adam out of the apartment as soon as I got there, but I decided that was too bitchy. He had, after all, spent the afternoon babysitting my brother. I could muster up a scrap of gratitude in the form of a free meal.

  I half-expected to find my apartment looking like a war zone, but everything was just about how it should be when I stepped in. Adam reported that the afternoon had been uneventful. No one had stopped by, and the only phone call had been from my mother, who wanted me to call back so she could apologize for Dad’s behavior. Yeah, like that was going to happen.

  I told myself I was relieved as I dropped the bag of takeout on the table and headed for the kitchen in search of plates. If Raphael had shown up, he probably could have beaten Adam in a fight. According to Lugh, he and his brothers were of an elite class, more powerful by far than most of the demons who walked the Mortal Plain—including Adam.

  But though I was glad no disasters had occurred while I was gone, I couldn’t deny that my heart sank just a little lower on realizing that yet another day had passed without a word from Brian.

  I took far longer than necessary to fish three clean forks out of the silverware drawer. My hands itched to reach for the phone, to call Brian’s apartment and assure myself he was all right. After all, the enemy had gotten to him before. But in my heart of hearts, I knew he had made the conscious choice not to call me again.

  The love of my life had finally given up on me. The thought made my chest ache and my eyes burn, even as I reminded myself that it was for his own good. I wished I could proudly and nobly make the sacrifice, but instead I found myself spinning scenarios in my mind where I could somehow free myself from Lugh and resume my interrupted life.

  I guess I kind of spaced out for a while, because I didn’t notice Adam joining me in the kitchen until he cleared his throat loudly. I jumped like a startled cat and barely kept from dropping the silverware.

  “Do you have a concussion?” he asked, and for a moment I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Then I remembered having my lights punched out, and I reached up to the swelling bruise on my chin. “I’m fine,” I said, though I thought I detected a hint of hoarseness in my voice. I hoped Adam didn’t hear it and couldn’t recognize my distress, but his knowing look said he saw straight through me.

  “You should put some ice on that. It’s showy enough that Lugh can’t afford to heal it without giving himself away.”

  I grimaced. I hadn’t looked at myself in the mirror yet, but I took Adam’s word for it.

  “May I ask what happened?”

  I laughed. “Ask whatever you want. Just don’t expect me to answer.”

  Having recovered my composure, or at least some of it, I tried to move past him into what my landlord optimistically called my “dining room.” As far as I was concerned, it was just a corner of the living room with barely enough space for a tiny table.

  Adam stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Remember, we’re on the same team, love. Being on the same team means working together, which means sharing information.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Unless you’d like me to stick this fork into the back of your hand, I suggest you let go of me.”

  I never for a moment expected him to actually let go, but he sighed and his hand slid away. I was so surprised I stood there gaping at him like an idiot.

  “Must we be constantly at war?” he asked.

  This was a side of Adam I’d never seen before. Usually, he was as much into the “take no prisoners” philosophy as I was. Enough so that I didn’t trust this apparent bid for truce.

  “Let’s review a few facts,” I said. “You killed my best friend. You shot my brother. You tied me up and whipped me to within an inch of my life. How can you possibly expect us not to be at war?”

  His eyes locked with mine as he enumerated his counterpoints on his fingers. “You exorcized my lover. You’ve repeatedly tried to drive a wedge between me and Dominic. And you tried to have me arrested
and executed as a rogue demon. Neither one of us has any room to throw stones. The fact remains that we have a common enemy and a common goal. I spent a lot of time today talking with Andrew, and he’s convinced me that trying to hurt one another isn’t conducive to a successful working relationship.” His lips twitched up into a grin. “I can’t imagine you waving the white flag, so I decided I’d be man enough to do it myself.”

  Everything he said sounded perfectly logical. He was even right. I mean, really, how well could we work together when we were both constantly taking verbal jabs at each other?

  But I wasn’t buying it. Although I hated to admit it even to myself, Adam and I were a lot alike in some ways, and our warm, forgiving natures weren’t one of them. I didn’t know what his angle was, but I was damn sure there was one.

  “You can wave as many flags as you like,” I said. “I have nothing to share with you. When I do, I’ll let you know.”

  For half a second, his eyes seemed to glow, an effect I’d noticed before when he got really, really pissed. But the glow faded so fast I was almost able to convince myself it was my imagination.

  He shook his head. “Fine. If that’s the way it’s got to be, then so be it. You’ll only be needing two of those forks.”

  I went to bed that night thinking about Lugh, trying to will myself to fall asleep and wake up in his special room. I was seriously pissed at him for taking a joyride in my body last night, and though he already knew exactly how I felt about it, I was determined to tell him in my own words.

  But I awoke the next morning from a long and dreamless sleep. When I got over the novelty of feeling rested, I cursed Lugh for what seemed suspiciously like a streak of cowardice. Grumbling to myself, I shoved the covers away and sat up. That’s when I noticed the note by the bedside, written in my own handwriting.

  We’ll talk when you’ve calmed down. We wouldn’t accomplish anything useful in your present state of mind.