He left without another word, and the guards took me back to my cell. When I woke up in that blinding white room again, I was kind of shocked. I hadn’t thought I’d sleep a wink in that jail cell. It wasn’t exactly the Hilton, and I wasn’t what you’d call relaxed. I blinked a couple of times, and Lugh was standing in front of me. He’d ditched the bomber jacket and wore a skintight black T-shirt instead. The rest of the outfit looked about the same as last time. The clingy shirt showed off a broad, powerful chest tapering into a lean waist that I’d bet anything featured a six-pack in the ab area.
I considered throwing a temper tantrum because this was so not what I needed right now. If I was actually getting some real, honest-to-God sleep, I wanted it to be peaceful like it’s supposed to be. I didn’t want to have a chat with my own personal demon.
I put my hands on my hips and glanced around the empty white room. Then I faced Lugh again.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” I said, faking a nonchalance I certainly didn’t feel.
He smiled, showing movie-star–white teeth. I’m pretty sure smiles like that are against the law in some states. My dream-self got a severe case of jelly-knees, and I had to look away.
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“I thought I’d focus on the important things first,” he said. That got me to raise my eyes back to his. “You mean like yourself?”
The smile widened. I was so glad I amused him. “Yes, I suppose I do. But I think I’m getting better at this, so I’ll try for a little more flourish.”
A sofa, coffee table, and love seat appeared out of nowhere. The sofa and love seat had spare lines and bland, cream-colored upholstery, and the coffee table was a piece of unvarnished lumber on legs. I’d have said I wasn’t impressed, but I can’t make furniture appear out of thin air.
“Shall we have a seat?” Lugh asked, gesturing to the couch. I crossed my arms over my chest. I didn’t like the idea that I might be here long enough to sit down for a cozy chat.
“Sorry, can’t stay,” I said. “I’ve got a bail hearing in the morning, you know.”
He nodded gravely. His hair was unbound today, and I found myself admiring the blue-black shine of it. I rolled my eyes at myself the moment I noticed myself noticing.
“I know about your troubles, Morgan. I may not be able to control you, but I am still with you at all times.”
My dirty little mind conjured up pictures of rolling around in bed with Brian. Had Lugh been a conscious passenger through all that? My cheeks heated and I wished I’d wake up right this moment.
“Please don’t fight me now,” Lugh said, interrupting my spiral into humiliation. “We need to talk, don’t you think?”
I forced away the image of giving Brian a blow job while Lugh rode along. It wasn’t easy, and I had a feeling I’d go back to it later. But Lugh was right, and we needed to talk.
Reluctantly, I dragged my feet toward the sofa and sat down on the middle seat, taking up as much room as I could. I might be willing to talk to Lugh, but I didn’t want him sitting on the same couch as me. My first thought was that he moved with the grace of a dancer as he strode to the love seat. But that image was all wrong for someone who practically radiated danger, so I amended the mental image to one of a martial artist. That worked better. He folded himself into the love seat, stretching long legs out in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. His skin looked almost golden against the creamy fabric, and his long, silky hair was raven’s-wing black. I reminded myself of nice, wholesome Brian 73 / 226
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and told my hormones to get a life.
I leaned back against the sofa cushions, affecting a casual pose, though I was uncomfortable on so many levels I couldn’t count them. “You wanted to talk,” I said in my blandest voice. “So talk.”
For the first time, a hint of uncertainty crept into his expression. He licked his lips like he was nervous. My hormones suddenly noticed how full and sensual his lower lip was. I pulled back the reins and tried to focus. I didn’t have the patience to wait for him to decide what to say, so I decided to hurry him along.
“Tell me again why you decided to move in uninvited.”
His eyes narrowed. “I was not uninvited. You were not in your right mind when you spoke the invitation, but you did speak it. What’s more, you invited me in particular, not just any demon. And you invited me in such a way that I could not refuse the call. Believe me, Morgan, this is not where I wish to be.”
Glad to know I was such a wonderful prize. “So what you’re saying is that you were forced to possess me. I’ve never heard of such a thing.” The subtext was I don’t believe a word of it, but though I didn’t actually say it, I could see in his eyes that he understood.
“It’s not something that is supposed to happen,” Lugh said slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “It requires the host to summon me by my True Name, which is known to only my closest family.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So Lugh isn’t your real name?”
His smile was somehow softer this time, but my hormones liked it just as much as his other smiles. “It is my real name, but not my True Name. A True Name has power, and a great deal of ceremonial significance. Not everyone has earned one, but for those who have, it is their most closely guarded secret.”
I salted that little tidbit away for later digestion. There were more important questions before me right now. “So you claim someone called you by name and forced you to possess me against my will. Why the hell would anyone do that?”
The smile disappeared as if it had never existed. The lines of his face seemed to harden and sharpen as I watched, and his eyes glowed brighter. I was guessing this was anger, and it scared the crap out of me. I swallowed hard and pressed myself deeper into the sofa cushions, thinking now might 74 / 226
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be a good time to wake the hell up.
Lugh saw my reaction and visibly calmed himself. When he spoke, his voice was mild, though the glow in his eyes hadn’t diminished.
“It isn’t you I’m angry with,” he said. “It’s…whoever’s done this.”
That slight hesitation made me think he knew exactly who had done it, but I didn’t want to piss him off by insisting he tell me. I didn’t know if he could actually harm me, but I didn’t want to find out.
“As I told you before, I am a reformer among my people,” he continued.
“Reformers are often unpopular. I believe I was called to you to silence me. Which means someone close to me betrayed me by telling my True Name, and which may also mean that someone knew you’d be able to suppress me.”
“Uh-huh.” How someone could know that was beyond me, since as far as I knew it was impossible for a human being to remain human when possessed. “And what else could it mean?”
The look he gave me was very grim. “It could mean that they summoned me here to kill me.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all, because I suspected baddies of that caliber wouldn’t do it by just exorcizing him—they’d do it by burning me at the stake.
Lugh met my eyes and some of the grimness left his face. “But that’s probably not the case,” he said gently. “Otherwise, they would have killed me that first night.”
I thought about Val and about the masked men who’d broken into my house. “Maybe they were happy to let you live as long as I was in control. But when I showed Val that letter and they knew you were communicating with me, they shifted to Plan B.” Plan B, which probably involved him being burned to death in my body. Oh, joy.
I tried to imagine Val being party to a plan to kill me, and my mind balked at it. She was my best friend, goddammit! She wouldn’t hurt me. Except she had hurt me, and she’d tried to Taser me, and her explanation for why just didn’t ring true, no matter how much I wanted it to. My throat tightened and for a moment I thought I might cry. I rarely let myself cry, and when I do, it’s not in front of other people. Certainly not in front of sexy, terrifying demons who just happened to be cohabiting with me in my body.
“That does seem like a very real possibility,” Lugh said. 75 / 226
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He’d moved over to sit next to me on the couch. I hadn’t seen him do it, so I supposed he just poofed from one place to the next. I jumped about a mile into the air and scrambled away from him. His hand closed around my arm to keep me still.
“You have nothing to fear from me, Morgan. I am not your enemy, and I couldn’t harm you even if I wanted to.”
Yeah, that was real reassuring.
“Let go of me.” I said it in a very calm, steady voice, even though my heart was jackhammering. It wasn’t all fear, either. His hand felt wonderfully warm and solid on my arm, and his body seemed to radiate a comforting heat. His hair spilled over his shoulder and brushed against the skin of my arm, and it was like a brush of warm silk. Up close, I could smell the leather, along with an exotic, musky scent I couldn’t put a name to. He did as I asked, but he still crowded my personal space on the couch.
“Give me some room, will you?” I asked, a hint of desperation in my voice.
To my intense relief, he moved away. My hormones put up a feeble protest, but I shut them up with a mental snarl.
“What should I do?” I asked, because I frankly was clueless.
“Find the strongest exorcist you can and have him try to exorcize me.”
My jaw dropped open in shock.
My expression seemed to amuse him for a moment, then he sobered and put that grim face back on. I didn’t like his grim face.
“I’m a reformer for human rights, Morgan. One of my most important causes is to prevent my kind from possessing unwilling hosts. I think whoever has done this to me has a cruel sense of humor. And he also knows that I will not willingly be party to such a plan.”
He leaned forward and took my hand. For reasons I didn’t want to examine, I let him. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “I suspect even your strongest exorcist won’t be able to cast me out. I’m very powerful among my kind, or my reform efforts would not have worried anyone. But you have to try it anyway, or you risk losing your own life in a most unpleasant manner.”
A lump formed in my throat. As much as I hated demons, I wasn’t sure I wanted this particular one to die in a heroic sacrifice to save my life. And having seen what happens to most hosts when their demons are exorcized, the idea didn’t seem too appealing. Of course, if the alternative was him 76 / 226
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dying because I was burned alive, I’d take Door Number One.
“I’ll see what I can do. Of course, I have to get out of jail first.”
“I suspect that will happen rather quickly.”
He flickered, and I realized I was waking up when I still had lots more questions I could ask. I opened my mouth to blurt one out, but the next thing I knew I was sitting bolt upright in my bed. That is, my prison cot. A guard was standing outside my cell, looking impatient. “Lady, you sleep like the dead,” she said.
I really didn’t like that particular phrase at the moment. The cell door opened. “Your lawyer’s here,” the guard said, unclipping her handcuffs from her belt.
Hoping that was good news, I peacefully held out my hands to be cuffed and tried not to think too much about my dwindling hopes that Lugh was just a figment of my imagination.
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I made bail, which was a relief. It didn’t mean the murder charge would go away, of course. I trusted the justice system to some extent, but not enough to just sit back and let them handle the whole thing. I’d been mulling over the question of who might hate me enough to frame me for murder, and a name had finally risen to the top of the list: Dominic Castello. He hadn’t been very happy with me on the day I’d cast out his demon. And if Dominic was involved, that would explain Adam’s mysterious interest in the case.
My first priority when I got out of jail was to get cleaned up and change into fresh clothes. I momentarily regretted that I’d chosen to live out in the suburbs instead of in Center City, because this little jaunt was going to cost me around three hours. Still, I felt too grungy to skip it. I wasn’t surprised to find my house had been thoroughly tossed by the police. It didn’t look like they’d made any particular effort to be messy about it—it wasn’t like on TV where they sweep the contents of bookshelves on the floor and leave them in a heap—but lots of things weren’t where they belonged. But I was just going to have to live with it, because this wasn’t the time for housekeeping.
They had, of course, confiscated my Taser. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded so much. There were times I carried the Taser when going into the city, but it wasn’t like it was glued to my hip. Right now, though, I kind of minded because I was about to do something that might be a tad on the stupid side. I was going to pay a visit to my good friend Dominic. Since he wasn’t demon-possessed anymore, you might think I didn’t need the Taser for self-defense. However, he was still considerably larger than me, and if he blew a fuse, I’d be at a distinct disadvantage. But that wasn’t going to stop me.
I looked him up in the phone book, and, sure enough, he was listed. He’d made it real tough for God’s Wrath to find him. He lived in South Philly, in a largely Italian neighborhood. I wondered if he had Family connections, in which case visiting him might be even stupider than I’d 78 / 226
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originally thought.
I took the train into the city, then took a cab to the address. I stood on the front stoop for a moment, gathering my wits. On the stoop next to Dominic’s house, an old man wearing an undershirt sat on the steps smoking a cigarette and eyeing every woman under the age of fifty who passed by. When I felt his attention lock onto me, I decided it was time to get moving.