The Devil's Playground

by Jenna Black

  Now he was getting pretty angry, too. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it has to do with being kidnapped and tortured.” I flinched again. “Or helping Lugh commit murder. Or letting the council talk a mentally challenged host into summoning a demon. You can’t expect me to do all this crap and not be changed by it.”

  I refrained from pointing out that this was one of the reasons I’d tried to break up with him when Lugh first came into my life. I didn’t want to drag him into the mud with me. But it seemed to have happened anyway.

  Brian visibly calmed himself, and when next he spoke, his voice was a lot softer. “Just think about it, okay?”

  “I don’t need to think about it. The answer is no, and the answer will stay no. I’m not palming Lugh off on some random stranger, even if the host is brain-dead after the exorcism. And if I did decide to do such a thing, it wouldn’t be because you can’t bear to be with me because I’m possessed.”

  Brian rolled his eyes. “I never said—”

  “You don’t have to say it. I’m getting the message loud and clear. And I think it’s time for you to go.”

  “Morgan—”

  I pushed past him and headed for the front door. He hurried after me and grabbed my arm. It didn’t improve my disposition.

  “Let go,” I said, and though I wasn’t shouting anymore, there was no doubt he heard the simmering fury in my voice. “We’re done with this subject, and if you don’t get out of here, I’m going to let Lugh take control so he can bodily remove you.”

  Brian let go of my arm and shook his head. “Fine, I’ll go. I’m sorry I offended your delicate sensibilities.”

  I jerked open the front door and pointed to the hallway. “Out!”

  His shoulders slumped in defeat. “Gee, that went well,” he muttered under his breath as he stepped out into the hallway.

  I slammed the door after him.

  eight

  IT DIDN’T OCCUR TO ME UNTIL ABOUT A HALF HOUR after Brian left, while I was still fuming, that Lugh hadn’t uttered a peep during my little talk with Brian. True, Lugh didn’t always intervene in our arguments, but it seemed to me that that particular discussion was one he had a stake in. It wasn’t like him not to let his opinion be known.

  I waited a couple beats after this surprising realization, expecting Lugh to chime in to answer my thoughts, but he didn’t.

  “What’s with the silent treatment?” I asked him.

  To my surprise, he didn’t answer.

  “Lugh?” I prodded. “Hello?”

  Still nothing.

  When I’d first begun hosting Lugh, he’d only been able to communicate with me through dreams. Then he’d progressed to being able to talk to me when I was under a lot of stress and my mental barriers were weakened. Eventually, it had gotten to the point where my mental barriers were down altogether, and he talked to me whenever he felt like it. I’d gotten so used to it that this sudden silence was strangely unsettling.

  Had my barriers inexplicably gone back up? Did Lugh not feel like talking? Or was there something wrong? Alarm stabbed through me. I couldn’t imagine what could be wrong, but since everything about our relationship was outside the norm for demons and their hosts, who knew what could happen.

  “Come on, Lugh. You’re freaking me out here.”

  No answer. It had to be my mental barriers, I decided. Somehow, my fight with Brian had raised them again. My subconscious is so powerful it’s scary, and I’d never had much luck pushing it around.

  I cursed my subconscious now. I wanted to talk to Lugh, find out what he thought of Brian’s proposal. Did he think I was trying to sabotage my relationship with Brian—yet again—by being so completely obstinate about this? I didn’t think that myself, but then I’ve never been the best judge. Loving Brian as much as I did was arguably scarier for me than being the demon king’s human host. And there were times I’d been scared enough by the intensity of my love for him to do really stupid things.

  But the truth was, I wasn’t sure Brian and I would have lasted as long as we had if it hadn’t been for Lugh’s help. I’d shot myself in the foot about twenty times since Lugh had moved in, and I’m not sure I’d ever have noticed myself doing it if I didn’t have my own internal psychoanalyst.

  I had a long and strange evening. It’s not like Lugh and I are in constant conversation with one another. We could easily go a couple of days without a word passing between us, and it never bothered me. But now, I hadn’t heard from him in a handful of hours, and I was ready to tear my hair out.

  By bedtime, I felt like a junkie who hadn’t had her fix. As illogical as it was, I could hardly wait to fall asleep and talk to Lugh. Maybe he would understand why my subconscious walls had suddenly gone up again. And, of course, I could ask him if he thought I was being a stubborn, self-destructive bitch for reacting so violently to Brian’s suggestion.

  I wanted to fall asleep so badly that it was actually pretty hard to sleep. But eventually, I drifted off.

  When I woke up at eight in the morning, having slept dreamlessly through the night, I was on the verge of tears. Lugh had been able to talk to me through dreams almost since the very beginning, and yet last night he hadn’t talked to me. What the hell did it mean? I was having trouble believing my subconscious barriers had gotten so strong he couldn’t even talk to me in my dreams. I pressed a hand to my chest.

  “Lugh, where are you?” I asked the empty room. There was, of course, no answer.

  I spent the day trying not to worry about what was going on with Lugh. Of course, you know how successful it is to order yourself not to worry.

  And anticipation of another trip to The Seven Deadlies didn’t make the day any better. But it turned out I needn’t have worried about our planned visit.

  At a little after five, the front desk called and let me know Adam was there. I wasn’t expecting him, so right away I suspected that something bad had happened. I told them to send him up and spent the time it took him to get to my door worrying about what was going on. It sure would be nice if these demons would call me every once in a while instead of just showing up. But I guess talking on the phone is less than discreet.

  The look on Adam’s face when I opened the door confirmed my suspicion that bad news was coming my way yet again. He looked as grim as I’d ever seen him, and I had the cowardly urge to shove him out the door and cover my ears so I didn’t have to know what had put that look on his face. Of course, we’d already established that shutting the door against a demon wasn’t going to do a lick of good.

  “How bad is it?” I asked as I led the way into the kitchen for the ritual pot of coffee.

  “Pretty damn bad,” Adam said as I started shoveling the last of Dom’s Italian roast into the filter basket. “Shae’s dead.”

  I dropped the coffee scoop, scattering grounds all over the counter and the floor. “What?” I asked, hardly believing what I thought I’d just heard him say.

  “Neighbors heard a commotion this morning before dawn, Shae and some guy yelling at each other. It sounded like it started getting violent, so they called the police. By the time the police got there, smoke was pouring out the windows.”

  “Holy shit!” He didn’t just mean Shae’s host was dead—he meant Shae, the demon, was dead.

  “The fire was relatively easy to contain, so at least there were no other casualties,” Adam continued, his voice flat. “It was set in Shae’s bedroom, and the killer made a tidy little bonfire there, complete with some kind of accelerant. It doesn’t take a lot of expertise to tell that her body was ground zero.”

  I swallowed hard. There was something primally terrifying about the idea of burning to death, and as much as I’d disliked Shae, I wouldn’t have wished it on her. “Are you sure it’s her?”

  “The body’s burned beyond recognition and we’ll have to wait for dental records to be legally sure. But I’m sure it’s her.”

  I started sweeping grounds off the counter and into the sink, but I think I was spi
lling as much onto the floor as I was getting in the sink. I kept doing it anyway, because as long as my hands were moving it was harder to see how much they were shaking.

  “Do you think it’s because she gave me that information?” I asked, and my voice sounded thin and tight to my own ears.

  “I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  Yeah, neither did I.

  I frowned as a confusing thought occurred to me. “The bad guys, whoever they are, beat Mary to death, but they didn’t burn her, didn’t kill the demon. Why did they burn Shae?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but I have a guess. You remember what Mary was like—about as weak and miserable a creature as there is. Shae was anything but weak. Maybe they thought they needed a more permanent solution than killing her host. I doubt she’s the kind of person anyone would want as an enemy.”

  I could see his point. I dusted the coffee grounds off the palms of my hands, then glowered at the floor. I wondered if my vacuum cleaner would work on the linoleum. I didn’t feel like doing the broom-and-dustpan thing.

  “You’re not actually feeling guilty about Shae, are you?” Adam asked.

  I winced. “Of course not. Why should I feel guilty that I’ve gotten one woman beaten to death and another burned alive?”

  I bent to open the cabinet under the sink. At least if I did the broom-and-dustpan thing, I could keep my hands occupied. I was pretty sure I had a whisk broom under here somewhere.

  Adam bent over me and closed the cabinet door. I barely got my hands out in time. I was very aware of his body as he loomed there behind me.

  “I wouldn’t have wished that on anyone,” he said. “But the truth is, Shae was bound to get into trouble eventually, considering who she consorted with.”

  I remained where I was, squatting on the floor with my forehead leaning against the cabinet doors. “So that makes it okay that someone burned her alive? She led a high-risk lifestyle, so she was bound to be tortured to death?” My voice was rising, but it wasn’t just from anger. “That’s like saying Helen What’s-her-name was bound to be tortured into summoning Mary because she turned tricks and did drugs.” I’m not given to fits of hysterics, but one might have hit the spot right then.

  Adam grabbed my arm and hauled me to my feet. “Go sit down for a bit,” he ordered, giving me a little shove toward the living room. “I’ll handle the cleanup, and I’ll brew some coffee.”

  I could have argued with him, but I just didn’t see the point. I trudged into the living room and sat on the couch, pulling my feet up and wrapping my arms around my legs. I ordered myself not to cry over Shae’s death, no matter how horrifying it was, and no matter how responsible I felt.

  Eventually, Adam brought a couple mugs of coffee into the living room. Since the good stuff was now down the drain or scattered on the kitchen floor, we were reduced to plain old Colombian, but at least it was fresh, and the mug was a soothing warmth in my hands.

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen with The Seven Deadlies now that Shae’s gone,” Adam said as he sat beside me on the couch. “What I do know is that it won’t be open tonight, or likely anytime in the near future.”

  I grimaced and inhaled the fragrant steam from my coffee. I wasn’t heartbroken that I couldn’t go to The Seven Deadlies tonight, but … “If we can’t troll for illegal newbies in the club, that puts us back at square one. Again.”

  The corners of Adam’s mouth tightened. “That about sums it up. I don’t know about you, but I have a bad feeling about all this. Like we don’t have all the time in the world to figure out what’s going on before it’s too late.”

  I had to agree with him. But without the club and without Shae, I didn’t know how we could get our hands on one of these new illegals.

  Then I thought of the new Spirit Society ad campaign, and was struck by an idea. “Did you know the Spirit Society’s been running recruitment ads on TV?” I asked.

  Adam nodded, his lip curled with distaste. “Yeah, and it’s not just on TV. They’ve got recruitment posters all over the buses and subway stations.”

  My idea of public transportation is a taxi, so I hadn’t been aware of the posters. But I imagined there were plenty of citizens of our fair city who were less than pleased to see these Satanist (in their worldview) advertisements leering at them wherever they went. I hoped they outnumbered the impressionable young people who saw those posters and thought, “Hey, I could be a hero!”

  “What do you think the chances are that the Spirit Society is behind the illegal recruitment campaign as well as the legal one?” I asked.

  Adam cocked his head to one side as he thought about it. “It’s possible, I suppose,” he said, though he sounded mildly skeptical.

  “They had no moral qualms about helping Dougal and Raphael with their sick experiments,” I pointed out. Although the Spirit Society supposedly worshipped all demons, there was no doubt that their leadership favored Dougal. Hard to believe they would sell out the entire human race to appease the “Higher Powers,” but all the evidence suggested that was exactly what they were doing.

  “Do you really think they wouldn’t be happy to help Dougal and his allies take over humans that even the police sometimes think of as expendable?” I asked.

  Adam scrubbed the top of his head—a gesture of frustration. “Damn it! Of course they’d be happy to help. I keep wanting to think the Spirit Society at least gives lip service to the law, but I know you’re right. Maybe the rank-and-file members know nothing about this, but the upper echelon almost certainly does.”

  I nodded. “Well, then, at least we have a lead we can follow up on.”

  Adam raised an eyebrow. “Cooper again?”

  Bradley Cooper was a regional director of the Spirit Society. Adam and I had questioned him once before about his involvement in Dougal and Raphael’s experiments. Cooper had been less than cooperative, and Adam had ended up taking temporary possession of his body so he could rummage through his mind.

  I nodded. “Might as well go straight to the top.”

  Adam grinned. “What do you think the chances are he’d open his door if you and I paid him a visit?”

  I suppressed a shudder. I loathed Cooper, both because of what he stood for and because he was such a nasty little weasel of a man. But Adam’s amusement at Cooper’s expense still made me uneasy. It was true that possessing Cooper had been more … humane than some of the other ways we might have gotten information out of him, but I would never be comfortable with allowing anyone to be possessed against their will, even temporarily.

  “Slim and none,” I answered, fighting down my unease. “Which is why we won’t be the people he sees on his doorstep.”

  nine

  BARBIE IS ABOUT AS HARMLESS-LOOKING A PERSON AS I can imagine, which made her the perfect candidate to charm Cooper into opening his door when he shouldn’t. We kept our raiding party small—just me, Adam, and Barbie—for the sake of simplicity.

  Cooper was divorced and lived in the suburbs in a house that was meant to hold a family, not a single man. A rich family. Possibly with live-in help.

  The lights were on inside when we drove up, and there were no other cars in the driveway. It looked like we would have Cooper all to ourselves, which was just the way we wanted it.

  We parked by the curb across the street, not wanting to attract Cooper’s attention by pulling into his driveway. If he caught a glimpse of me or of Adam, there was no way in hell he’d open the door without a scene, so we were going for maximum stealth. Instead of walking up the well-lit path to his door, we picked our way across the lawn in the shadow of the decorative privacy hedge that blocked the view from the neighbor’s house. Then we ducked down under the window and crept up to the front porch.

  Adam and I plastered ourselves against the wall beside the door. Cooper wouldn’t be able to see us without sticking his head outside, and if he did that, we’d be inside before he knew it. Barbie raised an eyebrow at us, and we both nodded to indica
te we were ready. Then she rang the bell.

  Footsteps echoed in the foyer. Barbie stood up a little straighter and licked her lips, adding a faint wet sheen.

  The footsteps stopped by the door. Cooper was probably checking out the view from the peephole. Like I said, it was hard to imagine anyone more harmless-looking than Barbie—though, of course, she wasn’t as harmless as she looked. I expected Cooper to open the door right away. What middle-aged, heterosexual male wouldn’t open the door when a twenty-something blond bombshell was standing there?

  Apparently, Bradley Cooper.

  “Who is it?” he asked through the closed door.

  Barbie batted her eyelashes. It probably looked pretty sexy, but I knew it was a sign of surprise rather than a come-on. “My name is Barbara Paget,” she said. There was no point in using an alias, since Cooper would recognize Adam and me anyway. “My car broke down, and I was wondering if I could use your phone. I’ll only be a minute.” She smiled up at the peephole hopefully.

  Cooper hesitated a moment longer, but apparently even he wasn’t immune to Barbie’s charms. I heard his faint sigh, then the rattle of chains and locks being undone. Barbie stepped back a bit, and the moment the door started to open, Adam jumped in front of her and gave the door a hard shove.

  Cooper, having been knocked back on his ass by Adam’s shove, cried out in surprise as Barbie and I slipped in through the door that Adam held open.

  “Get out of here!” Cooper commanded, but it was hard to sound too commanding when you were sprawled on the floor. Especially when your looks were a perfect match to your weaselly personality, complete with the buckteeth and beady eyes.

  Cooper scrambled to his feet, glaring at the three of us. “Get out or I’ll call the police!”

  Adam laughed. “Are you forgetting that I am the police?”

  Cooper sneered at him. “It doesn’t mean you’re above the law. Or do you have a warrant you’d like to show me?”

  Adam took a step closer, smiling. It wasn’t a nice smile, and a sheen of sweat broke out on Cooper’s forehead. He took a corresponding step backward and held out his hands.