Speak of the Devil (25 page)

“Likewise,” she said, and I could see the questions gathering in her eyes. To her credit, she refrained from asking any. Her beauty-queen smile was getting on my nerves, but she put it to good use, trying to charm my demon bodyguards. “Why don’t the three of us get acquainted while Morgan and Brian have a little chat?”

Raphael was still fuming, but Saul’s eyes sparked with interest. From the way he was looking at Barbie, I guessed that he, like most demons, swung both ways. I doubted he’d had the chance to do any swinging one way or the other since he’d returned to the Mortal Plain. If hopes of getting laid would keep him distracted, I was all for it.

Heart fluttering in my chest, hands clammy, I finally turned to look at Brian. He was wearing his lawyer face, the one that gave nothing away. It was an improvement over the fury and the coldness, but it wasn’t what I’d hoped to see.

I cleared my throat, afraid my voice would come out froggy if I didn’t. “Come on back,” I said to Brian, jerking my head toward the hallway that led to the guest room I’d appropriated.

He didn’t speak, just followed me like a brooding shadow. I had to rub my hands on my pants legs or I might not have been able to get the door open. Again, Brian followed without speaking, closing the door behind himself, then leaning his back against it.

The only place to sit in this room was the bed, and Brian’s body language told me not to bother asking. I sat down because I wasn’t sure my knees would hold me if I didn’t. Brian waited for me to speak. From the living room, I heard the TV turned on. I’d bet anything
it was Barbie who’d thought of putting the TV on to give Brian and me some extra privacy.

I took a deep breath in a futile attempt to steady my nerves, then forced myself to meet Brian’s eyes. Still nothing.

“You’re still mad at me,” I said. “Even though you know now that I didn’t cheat on you.”

“Yes.”

I expected him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Obviously, he wasn’t going to make this easy for me. “Care to tell me why?”

His shoulders drooped, and he shook his head. “The fact that you even have to ask …” His voice faded out, and he wouldn’t look at me.

I’ve always known I’m a bit dense where interpersonal relations are concerned, but once he said that, I knew exactly what I had done wrong. Again. But it was something I was never going to regret.

“Was it so wrong of me not to want to … burden you with what I’d gone through?” I asked softly.

Brian pushed away from the door, but he only took one step closer to me, and his lawyer face was morphing into his mad face. “It was wrong of you to keep secrets, to lie to me! Or had you forgotten you’d just promised not to do that again?”

My knees felt a little steadier, so I stood up to face him. “I didn’t lie to you.”

He made a grunt of disgust. “A lie by omission is still a lie in my book.”

Brian’s book had always had a hell of a lot more stringent rules than mine. “So that’s it?” I asked, anger making my voice break. “I fail to tell you what I had to do to save your life, and that’s the end of us?”

Brian hid his own anger under the lawyer face again. “You still don’t get it. If this were an isolated incident, sure, I’d get over it. But it’s a pattern
of behavior. Would you like me to list all the times you’ve lied to me or kept me in the dark ‘for my own good’ in the last couple of months? Because if I start ticking them off on my fingers, I’m going to need another set of hands.”

It was true that I’d kept a hell of a lot from him, but I had good cause. “Can you really blame me for trying to protect the man I love?” My voice broke again, but damned if I was going to let myself cry.

“When your idea of protecting me is to treat me as if I’m not able to take care of myself, then yes, I can blame you.”

“But, Brian—”

“And you know what? You may tell yourself you’re being noble by trying to protect me, but what you’re really doing is protecting your own damn self. You didn’t tell me about your deal with Adam because you didn’t trust me not to act like a caveman and treat you like damaged goods if I knew. How could you possibly believe I’d be
mad
at you for what you did? If there’s anyone to be mad at, it’s Adam, not you. But did you give me enough credit to believe I’d act rational? No!”

I gasped, appalled in more ways than I could name. I had never even considered that Brian might have interpreted my silence that way. Unfortunately, he wasn’t finished.

“Every time you’ve chosen not to tell me something, it’s because you’ve believed that if you told me, I’d do the worst possible thing. I’d dump you, or fly into a jealous rage, or throw myself in front of a speeding truck. So you’ve never once trusted me to look out for your best interests, or to agree with your plans, or to act like an intelligent adult. I can’t keep living like that.”

Despite my best intentions, my eyes were starting
to sting. I blinked frantically, wishing I could tell him he was completely off base, and knowing I couldn’t. Time and again, he’d proven that he was someone I could trust. And time and again, I’d failed to fully trust him. How could I blame him for not wanting to be with someone who always expected the worst of him? My throat ached so much I couldn’t even talk.

There was no missing the pain in Brian’s eyes. There was also no missing the implacability. “I still love you, and probably always will. I wish things could be different between us. But I’m tired of fighting the uphill battle, and I’ve had enough. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t wait for me to regain my voice, just turned from me and slipped out the door, closing it behind him. I wanted to run after him, maybe throw myself at his feet and beg. But I knew there was nothing I could say that would change his mind.

The tears came, and I plopped down onto the floor, my back against the bed, my knees drawn up to my chest, and sobbed my heart out.

Eventually, I
managed to fight off the tears, though it wasn’t easy when my heart ached so badly. Even after the flow of tears had stopped, I couldn’t seem to find the willpower to get up off the floor.

After a few minutes, there was a soft tap on my door. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, so I didn’t answer. I should have known better than to expect anyone in this house to respect my need for time to lick my wounds.

Barbie stuck her head in tentatively; then when she saw me in my little pocket of misery, she invited herself in.

“Why aren’t you driving Brian home?” I asked.

Since she apparently didn’t need an invitation to make herself right at home, she came to sit beside me on the floor. “He said he’d take a taxi. I’d told him about my role in getting the blood sample, so I’m not his favorite person right now.”

I bit my lip, my own misery momentarily forgotten. “That was a bad idea. He’s a bit of a … stickler.” I’d thought of him as a Goody Two-shoes once, though he’d shown a little more moral flexibility than I’d expected.
But I wouldn’t put it past him to sic the police on Barbie.

A hint of worry flickered in her eyes, but she dismissed it with a shrug. “It’s too late now.” She pulled her legs up to her chest, mirroring my pose. “I guess things didn’t go so well, huh?”

I laughed bitterly. “That’s one way to describe it.”

“But he knows all the evidence was phony, right?”

“He knows.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

I turned to give her a steely look. “That’s not really any of your business.”

She smiled, not at all intimidated by the obvious “back off” signals I was shooting her. “I’m congenitally nosy. It’s part of the reason I became a PI. I can’t help noticing your entire circle of friends is male, and it’s my experience that even the best male friends are pretty much useless when a woman is having man trouble.” She shrugged. “So, if you need someone to talk to …”

My first impulse was to laugh uproariously at the idea. I managed to swallow that impulse, because I was pretty sure she was being sincere. “Thanks, but my inability to talk is one of the reasons—” My voice choked off. I couldn’t finish that sentence without a return of the tears.

“Okay, so talk is out. I noticed there was a convenience store about a block away. Is an inability to consume large quantities of ice cream one of your problems?”

This time, I did laugh, but that had been her intention. “A pint of Ben and Jerry’s might go down pretty easily right now,” I admitted, then sighed. “But I don’t have time to wallow at the moment.” The clock on the nightstand announced it was eight-thirty, and Raphael and I had planned to arrive at The Seven
Deadlies right around its nine o’clock opening time. We were already running late, thanks to me.

“Going somewhere?” Barbie asked, and the curiosity—or was it cunning?—was back in her eyes.

“Don’t even think about following me.” Maybe that hadn’t been one of her plans, but she’d been on my tail often enough that I wouldn’t put it past her. “You know that old saying about curiosity and the cat.”

She grinned at me. “As enjoyable a pastime as it is, I only tail people when I’m being paid to do it. But let me give you some professional advice.”

My whole body went on red alert. Barbie rolled her eyes.

“Relax, I don’t mean anything ominous.” She scooted back and regarded me with a critical eye. “The dye job helps, but the best way to avoid unwanted attention is to look inconspicuous.”

I gave her a droll look. “I’m five-nine. I don’t do inconspicuous well.”

“If I promise not to follow you, will you tell me where you’re going?”

“Why?”

“So I can decide the best way to make you look
relatively
inconspicuous. I’d pick a different look for, say, South Street, than for around here.”

I’m sure my usual poker face made its appearance. “Why would you think I’d be going to South Street?”

She gave me a knowing look. “I told you once that I was good at my job. Well, part of my job is drawing conclusions based on the evidence at hand. The evidence says you have some kind of relationship with Adam White, though I have yet to make sense of what that relationship is.”

You and me both
, I thought.

“You also have a mysterious relationship with
Tommy Brewster, one that’s close enough for you to hide out at his house. This after you’d been hired by Tommy’s mother to exorcize him, which would generally create a hostile relationship, if any at all. So why would an exorcist spend so much time with demons? Especially one like Tommy, who any sensible person would suspect is an illegal despite whatever papers he may have signed? Perhaps that exorcist is a demon herself?”

I didn’t answer her, too stunned by her conclusion to speak. That probably cemented her assumption, but I was pretty sure anything I said would only make it worse.

“I’m going to go out on a real limb here,” Barbie continued, “and speculate that you used to be Jordan Maguire’s demon. That somehow during the exorcism, Morgan made the mistake of touching Maguire, and you moved in.”

I was painfully conscious of the way her eyes bored into me, studying my responses. I didn’t know what she would make of my response to this particular theory.

I tried to imitate Brian’s lawyer face. “If you think I’m Jordan Maguire’s demon, why are you interested in helping me? I’m a violent rogue who has to be destroyed, remember?”

“And I say that’s bullshit. Knowing that beating someone up is an automatic death sentence for a demon in this state, the only way you would have hit Jessica Miles is if you were completely out of control. And if you were out of control, she’d be dead.”

I had no idea whether I should try to encourage Barbie to believe this theory of hers or not. So instead of talking about my supposed identity, I nudged the subject back to my original question.

“I still don’t get why you’d think I was going to South Street tonight.”

“Well, it’s something of an open secret that The Seven Deadlies doesn’t discriminate against illegal or rogue demons. It’s a slightly less open secret that if you want information about the demon underworld, that’s the place to get it. With Adam off your case because of the potential conflict of interest, and with the rest of the police force ignorant about the demon angle, if any good investigating is going to be done, you’re the one who has to do it. Ergo, you’re going to South Street.”

Amazing how many facts she could have wrong and still come to the correct conclusion about my destination and purpose tonight. My mind was wheeling around frantically, trying to figure out what I should say. I finally decided that, being such a lousy liar, it wasn’t worth the trouble to deny that I was going to The Seven Deadlies.

“I’ll neither confirm nor deny any of the guesses you made tonight,” I said, hoping I wasn’t making a big mistake, “except for the one about The Seven Deadlies. That
is
where I’m going, and if you have any tips on how to make a five-foot-nine woman less conspicuous, bring them on.”

There was no full-length mirror in Raphael’s house, so I had to make do with the bathroom mirror to examine the end result of Barbie’s makeover. She stood leaning against the doorjamb awaiting my verdict. All I could do was shake my head and give her a doubtful look.

“You call
this
inconspicuous?” I asked. My newly black hair was parted to one side—a neat trick, considering how short it was at the top—and plastered to
my head with hair gel. And instead of my usual jeans and T-shirt, I was wearing a dark blue pinstriped pantsuit I’d borrowed, reluctantly, from Raphael. Tommy Brewster and I had remarkably similar builds, though we’d had to take in the waistband of the pants with safety pins. Beneath the suit jacket was a crisp white men’s shirt, and a conservative striped silk tie. Barbie had even insisted I stuff my feet into Tommy’s only pair of respectable dress shoes, which were at least a half size too small for me. I figured this had to have been Tommy’s interview outfit, because every other piece of clothing he owned was faded, ragged, and ultracasual. Also, he was an inch taller than me, but the cuffs of his pants were just the right length. He obviously hadn’t worn this suit in a while.