Their guilt hit me in one rock-solid wave. Good. Served ’em right. Then a thought occurred.
“Wait a minute,” I said as we stood and gathered ourselves. “How many times have you two done this?”
“This is the first time,” Quentin said, his expression full of earnestness.
“I meant, how many times have you two skipped school?”
Their gazes instantly locked; then Amber’s dropped to the ground in guilt.
“Quentin!” I shouted. Or, well, signed really fast. “Amber is twelve years old.”
“I’ll be thirteen next week!” she said.
“I’m thirteen,” Angel said.
I ignored him. “You are sixteen, Quentin. That is so wrong.”
He gaped at me. “You think —?” He stopped and shook his head at me. “No way. She’s just a kid. We’re friends.”
Well, I’d put my foot in it. Amber winced at the pain that overtook her. His words had hurt. Clearly she thought they were more.
I turned to her and voiced my next words, holding my hand up to block Quentin’s view so he couldn’t read my lips. He tried to see past it, but I spoke fast. “He’s lying,” I said to her. “Whatever you do, for the love of all things holy, please don’t let your mother know you two have kissed.”
Quentin may have been able to hide that one, but there was no way Amber could have managed it. Guilt once again radiated out of her.
I gasped and turned to Quentin, appalled. “You kissed her?”
“What? No.”
Amber caught on. She stamped her foot. “Aunt Charley, you tricked me.”
I was still busy being appalled at Quentin.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets before he said another word.
“Wise decision,” I said before stalking away. Or trying to. The world toppled again and I tripped, flying headfirst into Captain Eckert. Oh, well. Better that than pitching myself off the side of a mountain. And he’d be fine once his cracked ribs healed.
12
I have a perfect body.
It’s in my trunk.
— T-SHIRT
I was still wobbly on the way down. Captain Eckert stayed close until he gave up and just wrapped one of his arms around me, holding me tight to his side as we descended. Not that the ramps were that steep. I was just that wobbly. Though the captain and I had a lot to talk about, now was not the time.
He held me all the way to the bottom of the tramway and walked me and the kids to Misery. I left him there with a warning scowl when he asked if I was okay to drive.
I dropped Quentin off at the convent to – just as I’d suspected – a horde of frantic nuns. They rushed out in one solid mass. They reminded me of penguins attacking. Our only hope was to drop into a fetal position and whimper. That stopped them in their tracks. Worked every time. Quentin didn’t follow my lead, but that was okay. I was very willing to sacrifice my dignity for the both of us.
After barely escaping with life and limb, I took a very nervous Amber home and dropped her at her door. It was on the way. Cookie was busy pretending to get ready for her date. Pretending to be oblivious of the fact that Amber was two hours late. She wasn’t the least bit angry. Fear and worry had swallowed any anger she might have had. The anger would hit later. Hopefully I’d be very far away when it did.
We walked back to her bedroom, where she was in the middle of spritzing perfume onto her neck.
“Mom?” Amber said, her voice thin and fragile.
“Oh, hey, hon. You’re late.”
Amber hesitated, then looked down at her feet. “I went to Paula’s house. We made cookies.”
And there it was. The spike of emotion I’d been waiting for, but instead of anger, I sensed a spasm of pain. She was hurt that Amber had just lied to her. “Go do your homework. I’m going out for a while.”
“’Kay.”
The little fairy princess shuffled off, feeling more miserable for having lied. She’d figure that out soon. I had complete faith in her. But Cook was hurt by her deception. No idea why. I lied to her all the time.
The second Amber was out of earshot, Cookie rushed to close her door and whirled on me. “What happened?”
“Sit down first.”
She did as I asked and I explained the entire event in detail, including the part about Captain Eckert. And what he’d been up to. He had to be behind all the panhandlers and the cop with the camera.
“What is that man’s deal?”
“I wish I knew, but I wanted you to be aware of the fact that Amber behaved beautifully, Cook. She never left Quentin’s side. And she’s learning so much sign. I’m terribly proud of her.”
“She just lied to me.”
“Yes, and I promise you, she feels worse about it than you do.”
She turned a hopeful gaze on me. “Really?”
“I give it a day. She’ll tell you the truth. She wants to talk to you about what happened so bad, Cook.”
The corners of her mouth crinkled in a relieved half smile.
I got up to leave. “Before I forget, I want you to find out everything you can about the girl in the cable car. Her name was Miranda Nelms. I want to know if they charged her mother and brother with anything.”
“Her brother, too?”
“Long story. You don’t want to know.”
“No,” she said, holding up a hand in lieu of a stop sign, “you’re right. I already know more than I want to. I’ll get on it first thing tomorrow.”
“Perfect. Are you ready for your date?”
And the apprehension was back in full force. “I just don’t know what to wear.” She tossed aside the pair of pants she’d been holding.
“I would definitely suggest keeping the pants, but you do what makes you most comfortable. Besides, your date is gay.”
Surprise lit her face, and the apprehension she’d been feeling dissipated. “That’s great. I don’t have to worry about impressing him. He wouldn’t be into me either way, right?”
“Right. He works for APD dispatch, but I doubt Uncle Bob knows him or the fact that he’s gay.” I snorted. “That would suck. All of our hard work would be down the drain if that were the case.”
“And you’re meeting Robert there, right? To make sure he sees us?”
I checked my watch. “In one hour on the dot. Are you okay with leaving Amber by herself for a while?”
“After what happened? No. I’m leaving the cop Robert sent over with her. And I’ve asked Mrs. Allen to check on her as well.”
“Cook, the last time Mrs. Allen checked on her, Amber ended up in the hospital.”
She nodded before saying, “It wasn’t Mrs. Allen’s fault. She was just trying to check up on Amber.”
“In the dark, with a her hair in curlers and a Scandinavian mud mask on her face. Amber tried to run from her and ran face-first into a doorjamb. I’ll never understand why Mrs. Allen didn’t just turn on a light.”
“It’s okay.” She patted my leg consolingly. “All the swelling is gone now, and I’ve asked Mrs. Allen to just knock and wait for the plainclothes to answer the door.”
“And you think that’ll work, do ya?” I chuckled. It sounded maniacal. It didn’t quite have that refined edge of psychosis that I was going for, but it worked. I pointed to her closet. “Pants? Not that I don’t appreciate a nice pair of pantaloons as much as the next girl, but most restaurants require they be covered.”
I gave Amber a hug before I left and suffered the long trek back to my place. Five steps later, I pried my door open with a hefty nudge from my shoulder, then stumbled inside when it gave. Reyes had patched it temporarily – at least I could open and close it now – but I’d need a new doorframe. That man did not know his own strength. Of course, he hadn’t considered the fact that my door had been unlocked when he decided to crash through it. I righted myself and stopped. Something was different about my apartment. What could it be?
Oh, yeah. My place had been ransacked. Son of a bitch. Every dr
awer I could see had been turned inside out. Every item I owned upended.
I jammed my fists onto my hips. “Mr. Wong! Didn’t we talk about this? You are the worst guard ever.”
The scene was strangely familiar. I went from room to room, but nothing else had been disturbed. Only the living room and kitchen had been upended. The intruder must have found what he wanted and —
Zeus!
I ran to my kitchen and tore through the knife drawer. Carefully, because it was the knife drawer. I figured hiding the dagger in a drawer full of kitchen knives was ingenious. I was wrong. It was gone.
It would seem that one Mr. Dealer of Souls had decided to visit while I was out. The little shit. He’d pay. Literally. I wasn’t cleaning up this mess. I’d hire a service or something, and make him pay for it. Damn it.
I picked up my bag and went to confront a demon in human’s clothing.
After finally getting Artemis to scoot over enough for me to fit in, I started Misery up and summoned Angel. I was headed to the last place I’d seen the Dealer and asked Angel where the Daeva lived. I’d assumed he lived close by where the game had been held. According to Angel, I was right.
Artemis decided my lap looked more appealing than the seat Mr. Andrulis had recently vacated. I was going to miss that man. As a result of Artemis’s fussiness, I drove down Central and up San Mateo with a fully grown Rottweiler on my lap until I reached a residential district off a side street. She caught sight of a cat – the horror! – and bound off me, using my ovaries, Beam Me Up and Scotty, as a launchpad. I had to admit, it hurt.
The Dealer’s house was nothing like what I’d expected. It was kind of nice, for one thing, with xeriscaping in front and rich terra-cotta walls with thick wood trim. I walked up to a carved natural wood door with a patina knocker shaped like a deer skull, but he opened the door before I could use it.
“I want the dagger back.”
A smile that was so pretty, it stunned me flashed across his face. The kid was gorgeous. No doubt about it. He wasn’t wearing the top hat. It sat perched on a wall hook just inside the door. And his long black hair hung just a tad past his shoulders.
He widened the opening. “Come in.” When I stood my ground, he added, “Please.”
Okay, he said please. How dangerous could he be? Conceding, I stepped across the threshold and said, “I mean it. I want that dagger.”
“So you can use it on me?” he asked, closing the door. “So you can sink it into my chest?”
“Duh.”
He strolled into the open living area. It was very plush with lots of beiges highlighted with a soft Mediterranean green.
It was hard to imagine he actually owned this house. While I realized he only looked nineteen, he still looked nineteen. He still looked like a kid who should be flipping burgers at Macho Taco – or, well, burritos – when in truth, he was thousands of years old.
“You own this?” I asked him.
“Nah.” He tossed a throw pillow aside and gestured for me to sit. “I killed the owners and ate their souls for breakfast.” When I deadpanned, he shrugged and said, “It’s a rental.”
“The knife.”
“What makes you think I have it?”
“Please,” I said, scoffing at him. “What if I promise not to use it on you?”
He sat in a wingback chair across from the sofa, stretching one leg out and hitching it on the bottom of a beautiful iron coffee table.
“I would offer you something to drink —”
“I would just decline it.” I sank onto the sofa.
“Figured as much. That knife could be very dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“Like yours? Is it dangerous in your hands?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he studied me, a curious gleam in his eyes, and it reminded me he had a certain power. He was charismatic and charming, no doubt, but he also had a magnetism that went beyond the average supernatural being. The other demons I’d encountered were nothing like him. For starters, he didn’t have slick black scales or razor-sharp teeth.
“You can stop now.”
“What?” I asked, surprised when he pulled me out of my musings.
“Trying to figure me out.”
“I was just contemplating the fact that you don’t have scales and pointy teeth.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he said, accompanying his statement with a dimple.
“How were you able to get the knife? Demons can’t even touch it without it infecting them.”
“Good thing I’m not a demon.”
Right. I knew that. Technically, he wasn’t a demon. “So, it won’t kill you?”
He lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
So, he could touch it, but it could still kill him. The same thing could be said about my relationship with knives. Or pretty much anything. Or anyone. “You said the knife had a glow to it. What does it look like in your eyes?”
“I don’t know. It just has this soft sheen that I could see even through your pants. Kind of what a human soul looks like.”
“Like an aura?” I asked.
“Well, yeah, but more like the soul itself.”
“Oh.”
When it didn’t sink in, he asked, “Can’t you see them? Human souls?”
“Not really. Not like you. Not until they’ve passed. Then I can see the dickens out of them.”
He straightened in his chair. “Surely you can see your own light. It’s blinding.”
I shook my head. “Not so much.”
“How can you mark souls if you can’t see them?”
That threw me. “Um, I didn’t know I was supposed to.”
His surprise turned to anger. “You’re kidding me.”
I reached down and waited for Artemis to appear by my side. She rose up from the floor into my hand. I scratched her head absently as the Dealer took her in.
“What is your name?” I asked, changing the subject. “I only know you as the Dealer.”
“Is that what you told her, Rey’aziel? That I was a Dealer?”
Only after he said that did I feel Reyes. He materialized more fully, and his heat rushed over me in a scorching wave. Naturally, he was angry.
He stood in his hooded cloak directly between the Dealer and me. “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice cold and hard like marble.
I rose to my feet, but Reyes still towered over me, his robes undulating around us. I couldn’t see his face within the folds of unending darkness that enshrouded him. “The Dealer took the dagger. I was trying to get it back.”
“You would come here, you would face this thing, alone? After everything we talked about?”
“Apparently.”
My humor did not amuse him.
I sighed. “Believe it or not, you are not helping this situation. I knew I’d have a better chance of getting it back without you here.”
“You have a better chance of losing your soul to him, that’s for certain.”
“Can you just have a little faith in me, Reyes? I’m not stupid.”
His cloak disappeared, falling around him in a cascade of smoke and fog to reveal his requisite jeans and a navy button-down with the sleeves rolled up, exposing his sinewy forearms. He looked really good. He walked up to me until we stood a couple of feet apart, coming dangerously close to invading my personal space. “That, my dear, remains to be seen.”
He continued forward, and just as we were about to touch, he dematerialized in a burst of smoke, his essence enveloping me for just a moment.
But I went from flirty to furious instantly. I looked at the Dealer. “He did not just say that.” I knew Reyes was still there. He hadn’t left. He wouldn’t, I knew. But he was giving me as much privacy as possible.
One corner of the Dealer’s mouth tilted up. “He has a point, you know.”
I sat down, my back stiff. “You’re on his side?”
“On this, yes, I am. You take your role to
o lightly.”
A sigh slipped past my lips. “My role in what? Taking down the monsters in the basement?”
“No. The only monster that matters. It’s imperative that you live.”
“It’s imperative that you give me back the dagger.”
“What will you give me in return?”
Uh-oh. “This is the bargaining part, right? Where you try to steal my soul?”
“If I wanted your soul, I’d have it.”
“I have to give it over willingly.”
“Oh, you would.” The grin that spread over his face was a little disturbing. “Quite willingly. It would be easy. Too easy. And that’s what makes me nervous.”
No one had any faith in me whatsoever. What would it take to convince them I was competent? Maybe if I stopped getting tortured and beaten up every few days. That would be a good start, anyway. I made a promise to myself. No more getting tortured for – I counted on my fingers – two, no three months.
“Why are you so invested in this?” I asked him. “What do you have against Lucifer?”
“The fact that he enslaved me isn’t enough of a reason?”
“Okay, that’s a pretty good one, but I’ve come up against his slaves before.”
“The mindless creatures who came after you? Do I seem mindless?”
“Not especially. Or you didn’t until you broke into my apartment. You’re paying to have it cleaned up, by the way.”
He lifted an acquiescent shoulder. “If I give you back the dagger, you have to do something for me.”
“And what would that be?”
“You have to let me be a part of this. A part of the fall of Satan.”
Sounded easy enough. “Look. You seem to know a lot about all of this. It’s been kind of like hands-on training for me. I just… what am I supposed to be doing? Reyes wants me to figure it out as I go, but —”
“Rey’aziel is afraid of you,” he said. “That’s why he doesn’t want you to know everything. That’s why he wants to put off your knowing everything as long as he can.”