The Devil's Playground

by Jenna Black

  “I guess we need to call a council meeting,” I said.

  “I’d suggest tomorrow,” Adam responded, clearly feeling the same urgency that I did.

  “I’ll call everyone first thing in the morning,” I agreed, suppressing a yawn. Adam gave me a look that said I shouldn’t be yawning at a time like this, but it was after midnight and I couldn’t help it.

  “We can meet at noon,” I said when I finished yawning. “That ought to give me enough time to catch everyone. Now go home to Dom and let me get some sleep.”

  “I should go to The Seven Deadlies,” he responded, looking less than thrilled with the prospect. “Maybe I can spot one of these illegals Shae was talking about, and we can have a little chat.”

  “You can go tomorrow night. Dom needs you tonight.”

  Adam’s lips compressed into a thin line. “Lugh’s needs come before Dom’s. Or mine.”

  Tell him to go home, Lugh said. If he’s going to go to The Seven Deadlies, he should wait until after the council has had a chance to discuss it.

  I relayed the message to Adam, who accepted it without question. Once upon a time, he would have questioned whether the message really came from Lugh, but he knew from experience that I was a shitty liar, so these days he usually took what I said at face value. Someday I’d have to learn to take advantage of that.

  I wasn’t surprised that Lugh didn’t let me sleep peacefully until morning. Unlike me, he was a big fan of the therapeutic conversation—though his therapy methods were highly irregular.

  I “woke up” in Lugh’s living room, though in reality, my body was still sound asleep and the room was a figment of my imagination. An imagination over which Lugh had total control, I might add. I saw what he wanted me to see, and usually the setting gave me some hint about what kind of conversation we were about to have.

  The living room was a relatively neutral setting as long as I wasn’t lying on the couch and there was no fire in the fireplace. That meant he probably wasn’t making an attempt to seduce me, as he would if he’d conjured his bedroom, nor was he going to try to cow me with his authority, as he would if he’d conjured his throne room.

  Lugh was sitting on his favorite couch, which was upholstered in the softest leather I’d ever encountered. I’d been hosting him for several months now, and I’d seen him—at least, I’d seen the image of himself he created in my dreaming mind—more times than I could count. But that didn’t stop me from feeling a tug of attraction every time I set eyes on him.

  He’s about six foot five, with long, raven-black hair, golden skin, and a body to die for. He was eye candy from head to toe, and he liked to dress in such a way as to show off his masculine beauty.

  The black leather pants and the knee-high black boots were practically a uniform for him, but what he wore—or didn’t wear—on top changed with his mood. Tonight, he wore a black tuxedo-style shirt, the tiny buttons undone to about the middle of his chest. He smiled at me—the smile that reminded me he knew exactly how I responded to him, no matter how much I wished that I didn’t.

  I folded my arms over my chest and declined to sit down. It got incredibly tiresome to talk to someone from whom you could hide absolutely nothing.

  Lugh’s smile broadened. “And it gets tiresome to always feel like you have something to hide.”

  I answered through gritted teeth. “You know the one way to guarantee that any conversation between us will go badly is to start it by responding to my private thoughts, so why do you do it?”

  He didn’t answer me, merely fixing me with a steady stare. He’d told me before that he responded to my thoughts just to remind me that they weren’t really private. It was a form of honesty I could do without, although he had a point when he said I’d resent it if he allowed me the illusion. The illusion wouldn’t hold, and when it faded, I’d feel like he’d lied to me.

  “I suppose that’s your justification for butting in with Brian earlier,” I grumbled. “That he’d feel deceived if the status quo continued.”

  Lugh’s chin dipped in a barely perceptible nod. “It was time to acknowledge that you cannot have a relationship with each other without having a relationship with me. You’ve accepted me. Now it’s time for Brian to do the same.”

  I plopped heavily into a cushy love seat across from Lugh. I’d spent two months living in the land of denial, and the universe seemed determined to tear the carpet out from under me. First with Shae’s ominous news, then with Lugh’s latest machinations.

  “Is it a coincidence that you decided to butt in on the same day Shae came to talk to me?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “I’d been meaning to do it for a while,” he said, “but I’m afraid I was growing a little complacent, too. After Shae’s visit, I realized I was procrastinating, so I decided to get it over with. I have never been anything but honest with you, and I owe Brian the same courtesy. When he makes love to you, he makes love to both of us. If he can’t learn to deal with that, then it’s best to find out sooner rather than later.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. I didn’t have a headache, but after that little speech, I should have. Lugh had never lied to me—that I knew of—but that wasn’t quite the same as being completely honest. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know there was more to this story than he was telling.

  “If it was best that he find out sooner rather than later, then why did you wait until now to make your point?”

  He flashed me a rueful smile. “With all the troubles you and Brian have had since I’ve been in residence, do you really think he’d have been in the proper state of mind to deal with that dose of reality?”

  I wished I had a snappy comeback for that, but none leapt to mind. There had been a lot of bumps in the relationship road for Brian and me, and I doubted things would ever be easy. But we loved each other, and though I don’t believe love truly conquers all, it conquers a hell of a lot. Could it conquer Lugh?

  “I’m not the enemy,” Lugh reminded me, and I scowled at him.

  I tried to remember what it was like in the days before I had Lugh in my life, but they seemed impossibly distant.

  I blinked, and suddenly I wasn’t sitting on the love seat anymore. I was sitting on the couch beside Lugh. I hated it when he did that, but there was no point in protesting.

  He laid a hand on my shoulder, the touch innocent and yet strangely intimate. “Brian will come around,” he said. “He’s fought too hard to keep you to give up because of me.”

  “You can read my mind. You can’t read his.”

  Lugh’s mouth quirked into a grin. “I can make an educated guess. And my guess is that he’ll come around eventually. It’s just going to take a little time and … adjustment.”

  I regarded him suspiciously. “You think he’ll ‘come around’ to the idea of you trying to seduce me, too?” In Lugh’s mind, there was no competition between himself and Brian, because I never had to choose between the two of them. Lugh could only interact with me as something other than a phantom voice in my head when I was asleep. Brian could only interact with me while I was awake. Therefore, in Lugh’s opinion, no conflict.

  “That might be a little harder for him to accept,” Lugh admitted, startling me. This was the first time he’d ever indicated that he thought there might be a problem with his cozy little plan.

  Once again, he answered my unspoken thoughts. “After seeing his reaction when he thought you’d had an affair with Adam, I can hardly pretend that I don’t know he’s the jealous type.”

  I laughed halfheartedly. “You say that like it’s unusual, like most men would have no objection to their girlfriends having sex with another guy. If that’s what you think, then you don’t understand humans anywhere near as well as you’ve pretended to.”

  To my surprise, Lugh leaned back on the couch, cocking his head and seeming to give my words serious consideration. “It’s not that I don’t think other men would be jealous. But there is a certain … territoriality t
o humans that is foreign to the demon experience. Still, perhaps my lack of a separate physical body would lessen the strain on most men. There is no one he can lay his hands on and fight, if that makes sense.”

  Perhaps to Lugh, but not to me. “So if demons aren’t ‘territorial,’ as you call it, about their lovers, then that means Adam wouldn’t mind if Dom screwed around on him.” Not that Dom ever would, but I had no doubt that Adam would object vociferously. After all, he was already at least mildly jealous of Saul, who had resided in Dom’s body when he and Adam first became lovers.

  “Walking the Mortal Plain changes us. It’s hard to live within our human hosts, knowing their deepest thoughts and feelings, without being influenced by them. That’s part of the reason why my brothers were so eager to develop a less intelligent host. Raphael said it’s because he doesn’t like hearing his host’s opinion of him, but I suspect he’s more concerned with how his host’s opinion might influence him.”

  “So Adam has become territorial because his host is territorial?”

  “That would be my assumption.”

  “And yet you haven’t absorbed any of that territoriality even though I’m not your first human host.”

  He shrugged. “Humans aren’t all the same. Surely you don’t think demons are.”

  “Whatever. Why are we having this conversation? You already explained your position to me earlier, so why can’t you just let me get a good night’s sleep?”

  Yes, I was technically still sleeping, but these dream interactions with Lugh took something out of me. The longer we spent talking, the more tired I’d be in the morning.

  “Since you called a council meeting for tomorrow, and since Brian is a member of the council, I thought it would be best if you and I worked things out beforehand.”

  “This isn’t something we can ‘work out’ just by talking.”

  “I know, but it’s a start. I hope that you at least understand my position, and understand that I’m not arbitrarily trying to make things difficult for you.”

  I heaved a sigh. I already knew that. One of the things I could count on with Lugh was that he had good intentions. Too bad those good intentions didn’t make everything better.

  “Get some sleep,” Lugh said, like it was somehow my fault I wasn’t soundly asleep right now. “I have a feeling that by tomorrow, all of our personal lives will have to take a backseat once again.”

  And on that cheerful thought, I drifted off into la-la land.

  five

  THERE ARE ABOUT A MILLION AND ONE GOOD WAYS to spend a Saturday morning. Calling each member of Lugh’s council and telling them to drop everything for an impromptu meeting is not one of them.

  Lugh’s council had grown to eight members, with the recent inclusion of Barbara Paget, a private investigator who’d found herself roped into our cozy little nightmare. We were not one big happy family. My brother, Andy, who’d been forced to host Raphael on more than one occasion, hated Raphael. Saul, Raphael’s son, also hated Raphael—though in his case, for causing the death of his mother. Raphael despised Andy for reasons I didn’t fully understand.

  Come to think of it, if we could just get rid of Raphael, the rest of us wouldn’t have it quite so hard. But Raphael was loyal, and—though I hated to admit it—useful. Not to mention that whole being-Lugh’s-brother thing.

  Andy was the first to arrive. Not because he was so all-fired eager to attend a council meeting, but because he wasn’t doing anything more important than hanging around his apartment when I called. He just hadn’t been the same since the last time Raphael had possessed him. He was quiet and withdrawn, almost listless. He’d improved a little after some tough love from Raphael—you’ve got to love the irony—and at least he wasn’t losing weight anymore. But I was still both worried about him and exasperated by him.

  Andy had become a host because he wanted to be a hero. It was incredibly shitty luck that he’d ended up stuck with Raphael. The last time he’d been possessed, he’d been so desperate to get rid of Raphael that he’d been willing to foist him off on a God’s Wrath fanatic who would hate Raphael even more than he did. The guilt was still eating him alive. I understood how he felt—I wasn’t exactly guilt-free myself, having allowed it all to happen—but the wallowing was getting on my nerves.

  I busied myself preparing an oversized pot of coffee so the awkward silence between us wouldn’t feel so … awkward.

  Dominic and Adam arrived next, and their playful flirtation lightened up the mood. Next came Saul and Barbie, who were either dating or fuck-buddies; I hadn’t figured out which yet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Brian showed up right on their heels with two dozen doughnuts. The guys fell on them like a school of rabid piranhas, and Barbie and I laughed at them from behind our coffee cups.

  When the front desk rang to let me know Raphael was on his way up, there were two doughnuts left in the box. Saul, who still had powdered sugar on the corners of his mouth from his last victim, picked up one, and Andy took the other. Yes, they were petty enough to eat the last of the doughnuts so Raphael wouldn’t get any.

  Raphael noticed the decimated boxes when he walked in, and raised an eyebrow. “What?” he asked in feigned shock. “You didn’t save any for me?”

  Saul opened his mouth, and I knew it wasn’t his doughnut he was about to take a bite out of. I was getting used to being quick on the trigger to stop their bickering before it began.

  “Serves you right for being late,” I said as I handed Raphael a cup of coffee.

  He glanced at his watch. “Hmm. Must be running slow.”

  I doubted it. Raphael was rarely, if ever, annoying by accident. He’d give Machiavelli a run for his money. I’d given up trying to figure out what he was up to every time he pulled one of his little mind games.

  While waiting for everyone to get here, I’d pulled the dining room chairs into the living room and made a big circle of them with the couch and love seat. Now that all the council members were present, we took our seats, and I told everyone what Shae had told me. Then I opened the floor for comments and waited for the fireworks to commence.

  “How reliable is Shae’s information?” Barbie asked. “You’ve said she’s a mercenary. Can you be sure she’s not feeding you a bunch of crap in hopes that you’ll give her something she can use?”

  “Sure? Hell, no,” I answered. “But my gut instinct says she’s telling the truth. You should have seen the look in her eyes when she talked about being given a gag order. She was seriously pissed.”

  “Yeah, but you can’t be sure exactly what she’s pissed about,” Barbie said.

  “Shae wouldn’t come to Morgan on a random fishing expedition,” Raphael said. “Not when she knows there’s a chance Morgan would sic me on her. Something’s going on.”

  I nodded my agreement. “Yeah, but what? And is it just happening in Philadelphia?”

  More discussion ensued, though no one seemed to have anything useful to say. For the time being, I just sat back and listened, ready to jump in if my services as referee were needed. But Raphael kept his mouth shut, which kept the bickering to a minimum … and aroused my suspicions. Raphael is not one to keep his opinions to himself.

  I was sitting directly across the circle from him, and the expression on his face said he was thinking deeply about something. Something that didn’t make him happy.

  “What do you think is happening?” I asked him, and everyone else fell silent to stare at him.

  “I told you that we couldn’t sit around twiddling our thumbs forever,” he said. Before I could protest his tactless description of our recent activities, he continued. “I think Dougal is taking advantage of the fact that Lugh isn’t around to stop him and is funneling a higher number of demons onto the Mortal Plain. And the longer we stay out of his hair, the more demons he’ll send through. And whose side do you think they’ll be on if this conflict goes public?”

  “Christ,” Brian muttered. “It’s the Invasion of the Body Snatche
rs.”

  “Something like that,” Raphael agreed.

  Adam had come up with the same theory earlier, but although it seemed like a logical—if terrifying—conclusion, I wasn’t convinced we had enough evidence.

  “Let’s not panic yet,” I said. “All we know for sure is that Shae says there have been more illegal demons in her club than usual lately. We don’t know if it’s happening all over the place or just here.”

  “Forgive my ignorance,” Barbie said, “but if Dougal simply wanted to send more demons to the Mortal Plain, why wouldn’t he just try to get the Spirit Society to lower their standards?”

  Like I said, the Spirit Society practically worshipped demons—or “Higher Powers” as they called them. They felt it was beneath a demon’s dignity to reside in an unattractive host.

  “Maybe they have,” I answered. “But even within the Spirit Society, there are a limited number of people who actually want to be hosts. The rest of the membership likes to kiss demon ass, but that isn’t the same as being willing to give up your life for a demon.”

  Adam gave an exasperated grunt. “How many times do I have to tell you that our hosts don’t ‘give up their lives’? My host is alive and well and perfectly content in this body.”

  Yeah, we’d had this argument before. And on a rational, logical level, I knew he was right, at least about many demon/host relationships. But emotionally, it would always feel to me as if the hosts were dead, because they were so completely cut off from the outside world.

  “We don’t give up our lives when we agree to host,” Dominic said. “We just give up control of our lives. There is a difference.”

  I held up my hands to signal my surrender. “Fine. I get it. But there still aren’t all that many people who are willing to ‘give up control of their lives’ to host a demon. So if Dougal wants to get more of his minions onto the Mortal Plain, yeah, he can ask the Society to lower their standards, but that wouldn’t … widen the pipeline as much as he might want.” I raised an eyebrow at Raphael. “Right?”