Sympathy for the Devil

by Christine Pope

  I had no idea. Even if I had asked him to explain his powers to me, I wasn’t sure I could have understood. After all, the human mind, intricate as it is, has its limits.

  So all right, maybe I should assume he had known. And if I assumed that, then he had deliberately kept me occupied all day even though my family needed me. I chewed on that thought for a moment and decided I didn’t like the taste very much. Up until now Luke had been the soul of consideration, the very antithesis of his supposed persona, but maybe there really was a darker side lurking in there. After all, he was the Devil.

  A full moon broke out of the clouds just as I reached up to close my bedroom curtains. A silvery wash of light shimmered against the puddles in the courtyard below, and I paused to stare down at it.

  Maybe Luke really hadn’t known anything. After all, he’d admitted to me a few days ago that he wasn’t completely omniscient. Still, he’d been awfully familiar with my family and their activities…too much so, actually.

  Brooding about it wasn’t going to help the current situation, though. I pushed those nagging thoughts away as best I could while I got ready for bed. By that point I was so bone-weary I thought I’d fall asleep the second my head hit the pillow, but for some reason sleep had decided to run off to the Bahamas.

  I couldn’t stop thinking of Luke, the way his arms had felt around me, the scent of his skin and how my body responded to his. An aching wave of desire passed over me, and I curled my hands into fists, willing it away. My doubts suddenly seemed silly and foolish in the face of my need.

  I don’t pray, but that night I prayed I would dream of him.

  Chapter Twelve

  I didn’t dream at all. It figures. I should have known from my futile pleading with God in the parking lot of St. Gregory’s that he wasn’t listening to me. Or maybe he was, but wanted to see how I would handle all this on my own. Maybe this was some sort of test. If so, I got the impression I was flunking pretty badly. Somehow I found it hard to believe that God actually wanted me to be having hot monkey sex with the Devil, but it was a little late to be worrying about that now…especially when the aforementioned sex was the best I’d ever had.

  The next morning felt like ten Mondays instead of just one. My in-basket looked depressingly full, considering we’d just finished shipping off the last issue of the magazine. The one guarantee about my job was that the cycle never ended. No sooner were you done with one month than the next was poised to get started, all shiny and eager like a new puppy.

  No email from Luke, either, which both puzzled and worried me. I hoped he wasn’t going to turn into another Danny — I’d had enough of the whole on-again/off-again thing to last me a lifetime.

  And guess who showed up around ten-thirty? None other than Mr. Industrial Espionage himself.

  He walked straight into my office, removed the stop that had been holding the door open, and let it close behind him. Then he said, “We need to talk.”

  “Hi, Danny,” I replied, still glaring at the half-edited article on my computer screen. Did no one in the world know what a comma splice was anymore? I added, in conversational tones, “You know, I could get you and Victor fired for that crap you pulled last week.”

  At least he didn’t bother to deny it. “I was desperate,” he said.

  Giving up, I swiveled my chair away from the computer screen so I could face him and then took off my glasses. “Give me a break.”

  “Well, I had to do something. Here you’d taken off with this rich, good-looking guy, and — ”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, frowning. “How do you know he’s a rich, good-looking guy?”

  Danny flushed, then apparently found something really fascinating to stare at in the weave of the carpet at his feet. Finally he mumbled, “Zach followed him.”

  I screeched, “What?” even as Danny winced. Good thing he’d shut the door.

  Looking as if he’d be perfectly happy for the earth to open up and swallow him at that point, Danny said, “It was Zach’s idea. He’d found this whole article on the Internet about how to follow people so they don’t know you’re following them…some CIA guy wrote it or something.”

  I found it more likely that it had been written by some high school kid with an overactive imagination, but whatever. Geeks could be so gullible sometimes. “So when did this James Bond maneuver take place?”

  “Uh…a week ago Saturday night.”

  “I was in Orange County that Saturday,” I pointed out.

  Danny’s face twisted, and for a second his pleasant features looked downright ugly. “So you said…but Zach saw this guy’s Jag parked in front of your house.”

  I hadn’t, but that meant absolutely nothing. After all, Luke was a master of letting people see only what he wanted them to see. “That doesn’t explain why Zach was there to see it.”

  “Because even though you’d said you were going down to Irvine to see your mom, I had a feeling you’d be seeing him again. And I was right.”

  “So you sent Zach out to spy on me because you were too chicken-shit to do it yourself?”

  He flinched, but answered, “No, Zach volunteered to do it. That’s what friends do for each other.”

  I wasn’t sure if engaging in morally — if not legally — suspect behavior was exactly the best way to prove your friendship with someone, but the Lone Gunmen had always followed their own weird code of what was right and what was wrong. “So Zach followed Luke from my house back to his place.”

  “Right. And he told me the guy had this huge mansion, and at least two other expensive cars besides the Jag, and — ”

  Interesting. I’d only seen the Bentley. I wondered what else Luke was hiding in his garage. Fixing a look of what I hoped was bored contempt on my face, I asked, “So is being rich and owning nice cars a crime?”

  “No,” Danny said. “But Christa — this guy’s the Devil!”

  “And what evidence do you have to support that, except for a few comments I made in a private blog that you guys hacked? Maybe I was making a joke. Maybe,” I added, thinking of my father and his love for Carl Jung, “I was just using that as a metaphor, a way to express the shadow that people repress.”

  As usual when I’d said something that he didn’t entirely understand, Danny ignored that last comment. “Whatever,” he sneered. “That doesn’t explain how this guy can leave his house driving one car and then come back driving the other one.”

  “Maybe he was picking one up from the mechanic’s or dealer’s and leaving the other one behind,” I suggested.

  “Nice try, but Zach thought of that. He went and peeked in the garage window and saw that big green thing — ”

  “The Bentley.”

  “Yeah, that, and then like half an hour later the guy comes driving up in the same car! Explain that.” Danny crossed his arms and shot me a triumphant look.

  Well, I couldn’t explain it, because I knew it was entirely possible that Luke could have left the house with one car, become disenchanted with it for some reason, and swapped it out when everyone in the vicinity’s head was conveniently turned. I also knew I couldn’t admit that to Danny, so instead I went on the defensive. “Great, so Zach looked in the garage. Now we can add trespassing to the list of misdemeanors involved here.”

  “Like anyone’s going to care when we tell everyone that the Devil is living here in L.A.!”

  Despite the fact that I knew no one would probably believe him, I still felt a little trickle of unease thread its way down my spine. The last thing I needed was for Danny to go public with this whole mess. If nothing else, I really didn’t feel like explaining the situation to my family if I could possibly avoid it.

  “Go ahead,” I said, knowing the only way to handle this was to call his bluff. “All it will get you is a hot date with a straitjacket and some serious anti-psychotics.”

  For the first time Danny appeared a little unsure of himself. Maybe the comment about the straitjacket really had gotten to him. It also looke
d as if he’d decided he had committed himself to this course of action and so was determined to see it through to the end. “You’d like to think that,” he retorted. “I talked to my priest, and he said it’s entirely possible the Devil is walking amongst us.”

  I quelled the urge to jump over the desk and throttle Danny with his badly knotted necktie. “All that proves is that your priest is as crazy as you are,” I said, not caring how rude I sounded. “From what I’ve read, the Catholic Church really isn’t that keen to get involved in discussions about the Devil. Your priest may be old school, but I doubt he’s going to get much support from his higher-ups.”

  That appeared to stymie him for a moment, but then Danny said, “Yeah, but you know what’s really interesting about this whole discussion? Not once have you said, ‘No, Danny, he’s not the Devil.’”

  “‘No, Danny, he’s not the Devil,’” I said immediately, with a curl of the lip. “Feel better?”

  “No.” He crossed his arms and glared at me. “Because I know you’re lying.”

  “Really? Have you developed psychic powers all of a sudden?” Maybe the scorn I injected into my voice would help cover up my growing sense of unease.

  “No,” he replied, his eyes boring into mine. “But I know you.” And with that parting shot he threw open the door and marched out. He probably would have liked to slam it behind him, but it was on one of those overhead gas spring thingies and would never have cooperated.

  I stared at the shut door for a moment, thinking of all the things I should have said and didn’t. Then, because I couldn’t come up with anything better, I said, “Well, shit.”

  My mood didn’t improve any when I finally got a chance to log into my personal email account, only to find a terse email from Luke. Business takes me away, it read. See you on Thursday evening.

  Great. Just great. Not for the first time I wondered exactly what this “business” of his was and why he, as the Devil, couldn’t bend his schedule to fit his own needs. Of course, there had to be Someone above him calling the shots, but what did that mean, precisely?

  I didn’t know, and it seemed as if I wasn’t going to find out any time soon. Scowling, I hit the “respond” button and typed, Call before you come over, please, then sighed and backspaced over what I had just written. That sounded too curt, even if I did happen to be more than a little ticked off. Instead I wrote, I hope everything is all right. Could you please call before you come over? and sent it off into cyberspace before I could second-guess whether I was being a doormat or not. After all, the beginning stages of a relationship were difficult enough without factoring the whole supernatural-being element into the equation.

  Was Luke playing games? Pursuit, followed by evasion? Did he think that was the sort of thing I enjoyed? Well, I didn’t, and if he thought he could get away with it just because he’d gotten me into the sack, he was about to discover he was sadly mistaken.

  The phone rang. I picked it up and barked, “What?” before I stopped to think that probably wasn’t the most professional way to answer the phone at work.

  Jennifer’s voice. “Geez, Christa, who woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

  “Oh…sorry,” I said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  “I’d hate to think who.” She paused, then asked, “Are you having problems with Luke already?”

  Already. Now there was a nice, confidence-inspiring thing to hear from a friend. I said, with some asperity, “I wouldn’t call it problems. He’s just busier than I would like. I won’t get to see him again until Thursday.”

  “Well, there is such a thing as taking a relationship too quickly. You don’t want him to think you’re totally needy, do you?”

  “No,” I replied slowly. So what if I found myself craving his touch, the sound of his voice, that smile of his the way an addict craves a crack pipe? I needed to be an adult about this. “I, well — I miss him. But at least he did say he’d see me later this week.”

  “There you go,” Jennifer said, with a false heartiness in her voice I didn’t buy one bit. Her tone lowered conspiratorially as she went on, “I have a foolproof plan for you.”

  “What?” I couldn’t say I completely trusted Jennifer’s advice about men. She hadn’t dated much in college, but I had to say that once she found her target — Phil, the guy who was going to be the big-shot surgeon — she zeroed in like an ICBM. Maybe she knew something I didn’t.

  “Pot roast,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “So it sounds like he’s been wining and dining you, taking you out and showing you the town. But you should really make him dinner.”

  “Gee, what a great idea…except for the fact that I can’t cook.” This was her big plan to keep Luke firmly at my side?

  “You can follow directions, can’t you?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  My unenthusiastic tone must have been getting to her, because Jennifer said, a little waspishly, “Cooking is just following directions. I have a great recipe for roast that you do in the crock pot — set it up before you leave for work in the morning, and you’ll gave a great dinner when you get home. I’ll email the recipe to you when I get home tonight and can pull it up from my desktop there.”

  “Pot roast, huh?” Not that I had anything against roast; my mother used to make a great one back in the days before she decided meat was murder.

  “Yes,” Jennifer said. “I made it for Phil, and three days later he proposed. Coincidence? I doubt it.”

  I protested, “Look, Jen, I’m not really trying to get Luke to propose to me — ”

  “Go to the kosher butcher up on Third,” she continued inexorably. “He’s got great roasts.”

  “Kosher?” I asked. My mind was spinning. “But we’re not Jewish.” At least, I wasn’t, and I sort of doubted that Luke followed any religion, for obvious reasons.

  “That’s got nothing to do with it. Kosher butchers have great cuts of meat because they’ve got to follow stricter rules. My friend Sarah told me that in high school.”

  Sarah and Jennifer had been best friends since third grade or something, and Sarah was going to be Jennifer’s maid of honor (thank God, since that was more work than I thought I could deal with at present). I started to ask what Jennifer was doing discussing roasts with Sarah back before they had even graduated from high school, then thought better of it. Jennifer’s goal had always been wedded bliss. If she’d lived a hundred years ago, she would have been one of those girls who had her hope chest stocked before she even turned sixteen.

  Okay, fine, I’d bow to a higher authority. What I didn’t know about roasts could probably fit into a cookbook of its own, but if this recipe was as foolproof as Jennifer said.…

  “He does eat red meat, doesn’t he?” Jennifer asked, sounding suddenly suspicious. Old school in every way, she’d had a nasty bout following some tofu my mother had sprung on her unexpectedly back when we were in college and she’d come down to Irvine with me for a long weekend.

  Now that I stopped to think about it, I’d never seen Luke eat anything except red meat. I would have said he was just an über-crazed paleo-diet follower, except that pretty much all those servings of red meat had been matched with equal helpings of potatoes or some other equally heinous carbs.

  “Oh, definitely,” I replied.

  I couldn’t see her face, but the feeling of relief that rippled down the phone line was practically palpable. “Thank God,” she said. “Anyway, I was actually calling to see if you could make it up to Pasadena for a fitting this Saturday afternoon. Nina said she’s available, and Micaela has some time off for once because they just went into an emergency rewrite and halted production for a week.”

  That couldn’t be good. Still, I knew it happened every once in a while, and if the shutdown gave Micaela a few treasured days off, more power to her. I hated to commit time when I had no idea what (if any) plans Luke had for the weekend, but to be fair, Jennifer had the first claim o
n my time.

  “Sure,” I said. “Just tell me when.”

  “Two o’clock at Abbey Rose. It’s on Green Street.”

  “Got it,” I replied, jotting furiously on the little pad I kept next to the phone. “I’ll see you then.”

  “I can’t wait to hear how the roast worked out for you,” Jennifer burbled, and then hung up.

  Neither can I, I thought, and wondered exactly what I’d just gotten myself into. Then again, I’d always heard that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. I’d just have to see whether that particular piece of folk wisdom could be applied to the Devil as well.

  I did email Luke again to tell him that I wanted to cook dinner for him on Thursday, and at least he replied to tell me that sounded wonderful. Now all I had to do was put the whole thing together without it turning into an unmitigated disaster.

  The kosher butcher, a sweet man by the name of Saul Eisenstein, fixed me up with what did look like a lovely sirloin-tip roast. All I had to do was tell him that I was making dinner for my boyfriend, and he was all smiles, telling me it was so good to see a girl actually cooking for her man. He hoped I would eat plenty, since I looked awfully thin. I smiled and thanked him, blushing a little that he would consider me too slender (since in L.A., as everywhere else, popular thought had it that one could never be too rich or too thin. As a size six in the land that created the double-zero, I felt like a heifer sometimes). I made my escape clutching a paper-wrapped parcel before he could start pushing anything else on me. I figured it was better to get through this one roast before I went on to anything more ambitious.

  Thursday morning I got up a half-hour early to prep everything. I felt a little nervous, since cooking was definitely not my area of expertise. But I followed Jennifer’s instructions step by step and found it really wasn’t as hard as I’d thought. She’d even told me how to nuke the potatoes for a couple of minutes in the microwave before putting them in the crock pot, since they didn’t cook at the same rate as the meat. I actually did own a crock pot, unbelievable as that might sound. Traci had given it to me for Christmas a few years back, and at the time I’d thought it was about the most useless present I’d received in a long while. It had been sitting, forlorn and neglected, in the back of one of my cupboards, but I promised it that if everything turned out okay tonight, I’d give it lots more use in the future. Anyway, I layered in the ingredients as instructed, then threw in a cup and a half of port, the “secret weapon,” as Jennifer referred to it in the recipe she’d emailed me.