The Devil's Playground

  Adam flashed Cooper a feral grin. “What do you think, Brad? Are you going to run around flapping your lips, or would you rather live?”

  Cooper, still gasping and coughing, managed to sputter out a promise that he wouldn’t say a word to anyone about what had happened here tonight. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I believed him. But Adam seemed to think he’d keep his mouth shut, and Raphael, for the second time in one night, was showing something that resembled mercy. I wasn’t going to be the one to start baying for Cooper’s blood, not when I’d been about to make a heroic effort to save him.

  We trooped out of the house together, leaving Cooper sobbing on his love seat. Adam carried a garbage bag that contained Cooper’s bloody clothes, the bag from his vacuum cleaner, the pillow that had served as a makeshift silencer, and the rags they’d used to clean the floor—the hard evidence that we’d been here tonight and done Cooper harm. Adam was going to have to “lose” his Taser somehow. It wouldn’t go over well with the brass—losses like that couldn’t help but be suspicious—but he’d have a hard time explaining why the Taser had been fired not just once, but multiple times, when he was off duty.

  As we closed Cooper’s front door behind us, Raphael turned to me with a little grin and a spark of what looked suspiciously like mischief in his eye.

  “You and I do a very nice good cop, bad cop act. We should do it again sometime.”

  “Fuck off,” I said, with my usual tact and grace. “He could have died before you decided to listen to my good cop.” And I still didn’t understand why he had listened.

  Raphael dismissed that with a wave. “Did you hear the little noises he was making?” he said with a chuckle.

  I curled my lip in a sneer. “You think that’s funny? Why, you despicable—”

  Raphael didn’t let me finish, cutting me off with a glare and a growl that made me take an involuntary step backward. He shook his head at me in what looked like disgust, then ducked into his car, pulling the door shut so hard I was surprised the metal didn’t crumple. I caught a glimpse of his face as he slammed the car into reverse and practically flew out of the driveway. He was seriously pissed, and I hoped he wouldn’t plow down any innocent passersby.

  I shook my head. “Why is he mad at me?” I asked of no one in particular. “He had to know gloating like that would offend me.”

  “He wasn’t gloating,” Adam answered. “He was pointing out that Cooper was making noise, which meant he could breathe. No air, no noise.”

  Adam didn’t glance at me after making me realize what an idiot I’d been, and Barbie didn’t either. So much for my efforts to give Raphael the benefit of the doubt. By the time I’d recovered my poise enough to follow, Adam and Barbie were halfway across the street and I had to run to catch up.

  The ride back into Center City was a quiet one. Barbie was in too much pain to make conversation, and neither Adam nor I was much into small talk. I still didn’t get why Adam and Raphael had let Cooper live. It seemed so … unlike them.

  Any ideas, Lugh? I asked, but apparently we were back to the silent treatment. I didn’t understand what was going on with that, either.

  My stomach still wasn’t happy, and I felt the beginnings of a headache stirring behind my eyes, so I let my questions go, for now. I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the headrest, willing the nausea to recede. At least Adam drove with reasonable care, not screaming around any corners or jackrabbiting when lights turned green. He probably just didn’t want me puking in his car.

  Our first stop was at Saul’s apartment, where we dropped Barbie off. Saul lived in a small, intimate community. You had to buzz to get in, but there were no doormen, and there was no front desk. No one to see Barbie’s obvious injury before Saul swept her behind closed doors to heal her.

  I closed my eyes again as soon as Adam pulled away from the curb. I could hardly wait until Adam dropped me off so I could fall into bed in a dark room and, hopefully, sleep through the remainder of these aftereffects.

  “It was really nice of you to offer to heal Barbie,” I found myself saying without having intended to say a word.

  I didn’t open my eyes, but I could hear Adam’s shrug. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time. She may have saved my life, after all. At least, my host’s life. Cooper’s demon was not rank and file.”

  I’d gathered that from the extra effort it had taken me to toss it out. It didn’t seem like a good sign. If we had to have more demons than usual flooding the Mortal Plain, why couldn’t they all be weaklings like Mary?

  “Why did you and Raphael let Cooper live?” I asked, my mouth still running on autopilot. My conscious mind would have preferred I not ask, in case talking about it would make Adam change his mind. But being sick to my stomach lowered my inhibitions, and my mouth asked without permission from my brain.

  Again, I could hear Adam’s shrug. “I can’t speak for Raphael. But personally, I didn’t dare kill him. We cleaned up the evidence as best we could, but all it would have taken was one stray hair, or one witness who saw us enter, or who saw the car, to implicate me if we’d left a body behind. And if we didn’t leave the body behind, we’d have to get it out of there somehow, which would have been too risky.”

  I cracked one eye open and glanced at Adam’s profile. “So if you thought you could have gotten away with it, you’d have killed him?”

  He stopped at a red light, but didn’t turn to face me. “Yes. I’m sorry if that offends your moral code, but leaving Cooper alive is dangerous. He may be frightened enough of Raphael to keep his mouth shut. Then again, he might find his courage when we’re not right there in his face.”

  The light turned green. I closed my eye again and didn’t comment. Everything Adam said was true. I didn’t have to like it, or even agree with him. At least I understood him. Raphael’s mercy was much more mysterious, but then I probably never would understand him. His mind was the most complicated maze I’d ever seen, and I would lose my way in a heartbeat trying to solve it.

  I suddenly remembered how unhappy Adam had looked when he left Cooper and returned to his host. He hadn’t told us anything that justified the look on his face, though it wasn’t surprising that he’d decided not to talk too much in front of Cooper.

  “What else did you learn while you were getting to know Cooper up close and personal?” I asked. “There was something bothering you.”

  Adam’s heavy sigh said he was not happy. “We were right about the recruitment campaign not being restricted to Philly. And Cooper thinks about a hundred new demons—some legal, some not—have come to the Mortal Plain in the last six weeks. And that’s just in Cooper’s region.”

  That made me sit up straight and open my eyes. “Shit! That’s a lot of demons.” If we let this go on much longer, Dougal would have a freakin’ army at his disposal.

  “Yes, it is,” Adam agreed, but apparently he had nothing more to add. Which was probably just as well.

  Worry struck me out of the blue while I was riding the elevator to my apartment. If Cooper was a legal, registered demon host, that meant the Spirit Society had seriously lowered their standards. Unfortunately, Cooper wasn’t the only person I knew who’d had hopes of hosting a demon.

  I dove for the phone and called my mom as soon as the door to my apartment closed behind me. We had reached an uneasy truce after my father’s death, but still we hardly ever spoke. I was pretty sure that even the lingering tension between us wouldn’t keep her from calling to let me know if she finally got her wish to become a host, but “pretty sure” wasn’t good enough.

  To my surprisingly intense relief, she assured me that she had no plans to host. “That was a young woman’s dream,” she told me wistfully. “But I’m not a young woman anymore.”

  I managed to keep my opinion of that “dream” to myself, so it turned out to be one of our most civil conversations ever. Afterward, my head and stomach still feeling less than their best, I decided to make an early night of it. Everything
would look rosier tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, I assured myself.

  But I was dead wrong about that.

  twelve

  I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I WAS ASLEEP ASLEEP, BUT IT felt like I had closed my eyes only moments before I opened them to find myself in Lugh’s imaginary bedroom. Last night, I’d willed Lugh to appear to me in my sleep, and he hadn’t done it. Tonight I wanted nothing more than oblivion, and here he was. Contrary bastard. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to him about his unusual reticence. It was just that the headache and queasiness that came with control changes had followed me into my dreams. Also, it was never a good sign when I found myself in Lugh’s bed.

  I was lying on my back, staring up at a cream-colored ceiling. My head lay on a fluffy down pillow, and the sheet that caressed my skin had the luxurious softness of pure silk. It was a fantastically comfortable bed, but I couldn’t help noticing how much of my skin was in contact with that silk sheet. Which was practically every inch. Which meant I was naked beneath.

  A shadow loomed in the candlelit darkness beside the bed, but I didn’t turn toward it. I knew who it was, and the bedroom combined with the silk sheets and nudity told me just what was on Lugh’s mind tonight.

  The bed dipped beneath his weight. I knew he was about to lean over me, take away my option not to look at him, so I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see what he was wearing—or wasn’t wearing, as the case might be.

  “Let me go back to sleep,” I said, my voice sounding unflatteringly petulant.

  Lugh chuckled, the sound so full of warmth that I felt a flush rising on my face. “You are asleep,” he reminded me.

  I kept my eyes closed, but that didn’t keep me from sensing his presence, his closeness. His breath caressed my face, smelling faintly of coffee and cinnamon. Of course, he didn’t really breathe, and his breath didn’t really have a scent. He just thought I’d find the scent of coffee and cinnamon enticing, and so he crafted it to please me.

  I felt him shift on the bed beside me, then heard the silky slither of his hair as he loosed it from whatever confinement he’d had it under. The strands stroked across the skin of my chest, right above where the silk sheet came to a stop. My traitorous nipples hardened, and desire kindled low in my belly, despite my best efforts to squelch it.

  Would I have better success fending him off if I opened my eyes, or if I kept them closed? I felt sort of silly lying there with my eyes closed like he was some kind of monster under the bed and was about to go away. But if I opened my eyes … Lugh was an expert at pushing my buttons—he probably knew what they were better than I did—and adding visuals might tempt me to do something I’d regret later. So I kept them closed, though I still felt silly.

  “Will you quit with the mind games already?” I snapped. I wanted to try to sit up, but I had a feeling I’d end up flinging myself into his arms if I did. Besides, silk sheets are kind of slippery, and it might be hard to keep this one over my naughty bits if I sat up.

  He laughed again, the sound peppering my skin with goose bumps. “Is that what you think this is?” he asked, sounding terribly amused. The bed shifted under him again, and suddenly I felt the touch of bare skin against my hip.

  Cool, sophisticated grown woman that I am, I let out a little yip of surprise and jerked away. My eyes popped open, and I tried to sit up while clutching the sheet to my chest.

  Lugh was lying on his side beside me on the bed, under the crimson silk sheet. Well, some of him was under the sheet. If he so much as twitched—or if I pulled on the sheet any harder to keep my boobs covered—I’d be unveiling something I didn’t want to see. Or at least, something I didn’t want to want to see.

  Lugh’s head was propped on his hand, his hair draping his chest and shoulders like a shiny black cape, his sensual mouth lifted at the corners in a subtle smile. His skin was golden over his well-defined but not-too-bulky muscles.

  I couldn’t imagine a single thing he could have done to make himself look sexier. It just wasn’t fair!

  Lugh patted the bed beside him with his free hand. “No need to move on my account,” he said, his voice a bass grumble that made my toes curl. I’ve always had a thing for men with really deep voices. But of course, Lugh knew that—had known that from the very beginning when he’d first spoken to me in my dreams.

  “Knock it off!” I said, but my own voice sounded breathy. I wasn’t convincing myself, much less Lugh.

  Lugh sat up. The silk sheet probably slid down, but I didn’t get to see, because before I could even begin to guess what he was up to, he had grabbed me and rolled me under him. The movement should have sent us off the side of the bed, but I guess that wasn’t how Lugh wanted it to work, so it didn’t.

  I put both hands on his chest in a fruitless effort to shove him off me, but I doubt I’d have been able to do it in real life, much less in a dream that he controlled.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I snarled at him. He’d been pushy with me before, but never anything like this. I punctuated my question by banging my fist on his chest, which had zero chance of hurting him.

  To my shock, Lugh sat up a little—just enough to grab my wrists, gather them both together in one of his large hands, and pin them over my head. I was too surprised to struggle. My mouth gaped open, and my heart suddenly hammered from what felt like my throat.

  Lugh’s head lowered toward mine, and I realized he meant to kiss me. I quickly turned my head away.

  “Haven’t you ever heard that no means no?” I demanded. I couldn’t figure out what I was feeling right at that moment. I should have felt helpless, and scared, and maybe even betrayed. He could control this dream, effortlessly destroy my every defense, do whatever he wanted to me. And even though it was a dream, anything he did to me, I would feel. I might lust after him in theory, and might have let him take certain, er, liberties in the past. But I didn’t want to have sex with him, despite the temptation he offered.

  So why couldn’t I help noticing how good his body felt against mine, how warm, how strong? And why couldn’t I help noticing his unique, spicy, musky scent? When his lips feathered over my cheek, it was all I could do to keep my face turned away.

  What the hell was the matter with me?

  Lugh’s breath was a flush of warmth as his kisses trailed over my face down to my jawbone, then up to my ear, which he nipped very gently. “What’s wrong with you is that you trust me,” he whispered in my ear.

  His words were startling enough that I turned my head toward him after all. He pulled back enough for our eyes to meet comfortably, though he didn’t get off me or release my wrists.

  I swallowed hard, part of me trying not to believe what he’d just said. Trusting was something I sucked at. I didn’t trust anyone, not deep down inside. I was always on the lookout, afraid of wounding words or actions, braced to defend myself. I’d known that about myself for a long time, and although I didn’t like it, it was just the way I was. I’d made progress at trusting Brian. But I’d had no idea I’d made this much progress at trusting Lugh.

  And yet, I did.

  Whatever he was up to at the moment, I knew with unnerving certainty that he wasn’t going to rape me, wasn’t going to hurt me, despite the evidence of naked skin on naked skin, or his dominant position, or his hold on my wrists.

  “You bastard,” I said, but it came out in a whisper.

  He smiled softly and stroked a finger down the cheek he had kissed. “Telling you things never seems to work. Showing works better.”

  “If you had real balls, I’d be putting my knee in them right now,” I informed him. He had positioned himself in such a way as to give me a clear shot, but how do you hurt a dream?

  He planted a chaste kiss on my forehead, then let go of my wrists and rolled off me. The sheet went with him, and I gave a little squeak of alarm as I grabbed for it. But suddenly, I was wearing a pair of silk pajamas in a midnight blue that looked almost black against the crimson sheets.

/>   I sat up slowly, keeping a wary eye on Lugh. He’d put pajamas on me, but as far as I could tell, he was still naked himself, the sheet draping across his hips artfully. I tried not to imagine what lay beneath that sheet.

  His head was propped on his hand again, and his smile was sin and temptation rolled together. “You don’t have to imagine,” he murmured. “All you have to do is give the sheet a little tug.”

  Lugh had been trying to seduce me from the moment we first “met,” and he’d never been subtle about it. But as aggressive as he’d been at times, he’d never been like this before. The strangeness of it helped me fight off some of the temptation.

  “What’s gotten into you tonight?” I asked, keeping my eyes firmly focused on his face. “And what was with the silent treatment?” I couldn’t have said exactly why, but I was sure now he’d been silent of his own accord, that it hadn’t been my subconscious blocking him out after all.

  “Brian wants you to get rid of me,” he said. “I wanted to remind you what you’d be missing if you did—just in case the idea started to sound appealing to you.”

  Anger, hot and sweet, swelled in my chest, and my hands curled into white-knuckled fists. I was so furious, I couldn’t even speak.

  He’d put me through all that anxiety and discomfort just to prove a point. A point he could have made just fine by letting me know he was still there, even if he refused to talk to me.

  “It wouldn’t have been the same,” he said. “If you’d known for sure I’d be back, the silence wouldn’t have bothered you. But if I take a different host, then I won’t be back.”

  My eyes prickled and burned with angry tears—tears I absolutely refused to shed. Lugh, who knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling, regarded me with an expression of mild regret.