The Devil's Playground (7 page)

“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.

T
HERE 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 He was quiet and withdrawn, almost listless.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 Snatchers.”

“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?”

He nodded. “Dougal is not a big fan of subtlety. If he wants more demons on the Mortal Plain, then he wants
lots
more demons on the Mortal Plain, not just a handful.”

“Do we even want to speculate about why?” Dominic asked.

I shuddered to think of the possibilities.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves again
, Lugh told me.
First, we have to confirm that our guesses are correct
. Then
we worry about what it means
.

I conveyed his message to the council, and no one argued the point.

“So, how do we confirm our guesses?” I asked of no
one in particular, though I had a feeling I already knew the answer.

Raphael grinned at me. “Sounds like another visit to The Seven Deadlies is in order.”

This was yet another one of those times when I really hated being right.

    Considering how much I loathed The Seven Deadlies, it was amazing how many times I’d set foot in the place. Enough that the bouncer at the door recognized me and let me in, even though I wasn’t a member. Adam
was
a member, and he claimed Barbie as his guest. Raphael wasn’t technically a member himself, but Tommy Brewster, his host, had a membership card from back when he’d been possessed by a different demon.

I always thought of The Seven Deadlies as a sex club, and it is, in part. But when you first go in, it looks and sounds just like any other nightclub, complete with ear-splitting music, dim lighting, and a floor that vibrates with every bass note. There’s also the standard bar and dance floor.

But once your eyes adjust to the light, you start to notice the differences. The first thing you notice is that bunches of people in the crowd are wearing cheesy halos or cheesy devil horns, which they picked up from a table near the entrance. Adam had explained to me that one wore a halo if one was shopping for a partner for some vanilla sex, and one wore the horns if shopping for something more … exotic.

There was a sign above the dance floor that labeled it “Purgatory,” and I’d always thought that an apt description. There were rooms to rent on the second floor for the halo crowd. The balcony of the second floor looked down onto the dance floor, and was labeled “Heaven.” And then there was The Door, as I’d come to think of it. The Door led into a section of the club called “Hell,” and it was where the S&M crowd hung out … and played. I’d only been down there once before, but the things I’d seen remained burned on my retinas, and you couldn’t pay me enough to go down there again.

I’d have been repulsed enough if what happened down there were human S&M, which Dominic assured me was about mutual pleasure, even if that pleasure was obtained in unconventional ways. But unlike humans, the demons loved the pain itself. They are incorporeal in the Demon Realm, and many of them find physical sensation—
all
physical sensation—fascinating. Add that to the fact that they can heal wounds that would kill a human being, and you have a scene from your worst nightmare and scariest horror movie all wrapped up into one.

“I’ll go get a room,” Adam shouted into my ear.

I didn’t feel like screaming myself hoarse, so I merely nodded. Raphael, Barbie, and I hovered in an especially dark alcove near the entrance, trying not to attract attention. It wasn’t that hard. People were mostly occupied with their prospective partners, or so drunk they didn’t care what was going on around them.

Adam returned shortly with a magnetized key card. He and Raphael went upstairs to unlock the room, then
Adam came back down and handed the key card to Barbie, who tucked it in the back pocket of her jeans.

“Happy hunting!” Adam yelled with a lascivious lift of his brows. Barbie laughed, but I just scowled at him.

Barbie snagged one of the halos and put it on, looking positively ridiculous, in my opinion, then headed toward the bar with me in her wake. Raphael, the author of our nasty little plan, had been very specific on the criteria for our mark. It had to be a demon who wasn’t into pain, for one thing. Even the demons who liked pain had their limits, but interrogating one of them would be … especially unpleasant. Which was why Barbie had donned the halo. It also had to be a demon who fit Shae’s description of these new illegals, with the look of someone who wasn’t far removed from a street person.

And that’s where I came in. Because these demons wouldn’t look like the stereotypical drop-dead gorgeous specimens, it would be hard for Barbie to tell the difference between a nouveau demon and a skanky human. I would have to discreetly slip into my exorcist’s trance and check the aura of anyone she was considering taking upstairs for the glow of demon red.

I wasn’t entirely sure I could get myself into the trance state under these circumstances. I don’t need the whole dog-and-pony show many exorcists require to induce the trances, but I feared the music and crowd might be a tad distracting, even for me. Still, I’d managed to induce the trance in less-than-ideal circumstances before, so I hoped I could manage it here.

The reason I still insist on calling Barbara “Barbie,” despite her repeated attempts to get me to stop, is that she looks so much like a Barbie doll. She’s petite and blond, with a curvaceous figure and a china-doll face. Yes, I hate her, even though I actually like her against all my expectations.

Her delicate good looks made her the perfect bait, and we hadn’t even swallowed the first sips of our drinks before we had a candidate sniffing at her skirts. I shouldn’t have been surprised that said candidate was female. This was a demon club after all, and I’ve already mentioned their lack of gender preferences.

Barbie’s admirer fit our profile perfectly. She was way too skinny to be wearing a spaghetti-strap camisole, which showed off her bony shoulders and jutting collarbone. Her cheekbones were dagger-sharp slashes across her face, and there were hollows under her eyes. Her hair was a brittle, frizzy bottle-blond, with a stripe of brown roots showing at the part. She might have looked pretty enough at a healthy weight and with a decent dye job, but as she was, she was an eyesore. Definitely not the kind of person the Spirit Society would approve as a legal demon host.