The Devil's Playground (25 page)

He held up his hand in a gesture that was either an agreement, a sign to shut the hell up, or the finger—I couldn’t tell which in the darkness.

    While I’d been witnessing William’s exorcism, Brian had been at his apartment, packing a suitcase so he’d have everything he needed for an extended stay at my place. I arrived back at my apartment building to find him waiting for me in the lobby. He already had a key to my apartment, and he was already on my very short list of people who were allowed to come up without the front desk calling to ask my permission first. Now it was time for me to register him as a resident of my apartment, even if it was only on a temporary basis. His resident status would earn him a parking pass, and would mean he didn’t have to sign in at the front desk every time he came in without me.

We rode the slow, cranky elevator up to my floor in silence, and it wasn’t an entirely comfortable silence. The issue of Lugh still lay between us, and I, for one, didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if Lugh’s earlier intervention had made things better, or worse.

The silence followed us into my apartment, and I felt so awkward I was tempted to offer Brian the guest room, even though that room would be Andy’s when he moved in tomorrow morning. Brian put down his suitcase, then pulled me into a hug. I wrapped my arms around his waist and gratefully leaned the side of my
head onto his shoulder. Brian’s amazingly good at knowing when I need a hug. I’m not what you’d call a touchy-feely type, so these moments were few and far between.

“Do you still love me?” I asked. I guess I was feeling needy at the moment.

Brian’s arms tightened around me. “Of course I do. Even during our worst moments, I never stopped loving you.”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “And what about Lugh?”

I felt him shrug, even though he didn’t let go. “I’ll learn to live with him.” He pushed me away slightly, then cupped my face in his hands, tilting my head up toward his as his thumbs stroked over my cheeks. “After what he said to me earlier, I can’t in good conscience ask you to get rid of him. Not when he can keep you from ever getting sick or hurt. When I asked you to pass him off to someone else, I didn’t fully think about what I was asking.”

The lump in my throat ached. Something told me living with Lugh wasn’t going to be as easy as Brian was suggesting. Sure, he might logically admit that Lugh was good for me, and he might logically want me to have all the protections that came with being possessed. But emotions, damn them, aren’t logical. Jealousy would rear its ugly head again; I knew it.

Brian bent and brushed his lips over mine. “Yes, I’m still jealous,” he said against my mouth, but it was hard to get too upset by the declaration when he was teasing
me with butterfly kisses. “But one way or another, I’ll deal with it.”

“I think it’s time to stop talking now,” I said, then pulled his head down to mine for a firmer, deeper kiss.

“How’s your head?” he asked when we came up for air.

As soon as he mentioned it, I noticed the lingering traces of the headache that had started when Lugh took control. It wasn’t bad anymore, just a minor discomfort.

I stuck my lower lip out in an exaggerated pout. “It was fine until you made me start thinking about it.”

Brian smiled at me, his eyes dark with desire. He pressed his hips firmly against me, letting me know how happy he was to have me in his arms at the moment. “Do you think maybe I can find some way to distract you?”

I answered his lustful smile with one of my own. “There’s only one way to find out.”

And wouldn’t you know it, I felt no pain for the rest of the night.

    I went to sleep cuddled in Brian’s arms, and woke up in Lugh’s living room. I considered complaining about it, but there wasn’t a whole lot of point to it, since my complaints never seemed to affect Lugh much.

“What’s up?” I asked, feeling a bit wary, wondering if Lugh was distracting me with this dream so he could have a little private time with Brian.

He smiled at me. “No, I’m going to butt out of the Brian situation for the time being.”

Color me shocked! Lugh didn’t butt out often. As in
ever
.

The smile turned to a mischievous grin. “I said
for now
, not
forever
. I have an idea what our next step should be, but right now, the two of you are doing just fine.” He gave a happy little sigh.

I blushed a bit, knowing he’d enjoyed this evening’s romp with Brian as much as I had, but I think I was finally getting a bit desensitized, because I didn’t feel like I wanted to melt through my seat in humiliation.

“If you’re not planning to play Dr. Phil, then why
have
you brought me here?”

All signs of satisfaction faded from his face. “You asked me a question this evening—a question I told you I would answer later.”

Enough had happened this evening that I almost forgot what the question was, but it came back to me fast. I’d asked Lugh if he’d really put Raphael in prison if he ended up back on the throne. Based on the look on his face, I didn’t think I wanted to hear the answer.

“My brother has committed many, many crimes,” Lugh said regretfully. “I highly doubt I even know about all of them. I would be honor-bound to punish him.”

“Even though he’s saved your life? Even if he’s instrumental in putting you back on the throne?” There was a hint of outrage in my voice. In case you haven’t noticed, I really despise Raphael. But there were moments—fleeting, but there nonetheless—where I saw shadows of myself in him. And that made it hard to hate him quite as much as I should.

“Even so,” Lugh said. “I wouldn’t
want
to. For all his
faults, I do love my brother. But I refuse to be the kind of king who alters the rules to suit his friends and family. Raphael has broken the law, and therefore he must be punished.”

I could hear in his voice how much the idea hurt Lugh. When he said he didn’t want to, he meant it. But in his own way, he was as much of a stickler as Brian.

“What exactly does it mean to be imprisoned in the Demon Realm? Raphael has described it as a fate worse than death, but I can’t say I understand.”

Lugh shook his head. “No, you can’t. Imprisonment for us is to be shut away in what equates to a sensory deprivation chamber. Without bodies, we don’t feel physical sensations, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have senses. We can ‘see’ each other, we can ‘hear’ each other. We can interact. But in prison, we can do none of these things. The isolation is … extreme.” He met my eyes. “And we are nearly immortal beings. A life sentence …”

I gasped at the horror of the idea.

“I would not give Raphael a life sentence, although many would argue he deserves it. I can commute his sentence in light of the help he’s given me, but I can’t do away with it entirely without showing blatant favoritism. Even with a commuted sentence, he would … suffer.”

Lugh’s explanation shone a whole new light on just how much Raphael was giving up by trying to restore him to the throne. I had to admit a grudging admiration. No matter what his faults, Raphael was as loyal a creature as I could imagine.

“Do you think ill of me for my decision?” Lugh asked, although he had to know how I felt. It wasn’t like there were any secrets between us, at least not when the secrets were mine. But sometimes he liked me to articulate things, even when he knew what I was going to say.

“I don’t think less of you,” I admitted. “You’re trying to be fair, which is a good thing. But I have to admit, I think more of Raphael right now than I did before.”

Lugh closed his eyes, as if in pain. “So do I,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “So do I.”

And the dream slipped away.

    Wednesday was the dawn of William’s first day stirring up trouble in the Demon Realm, but we didn’t expect to feel any ripple effects yet. Which was a good thing, because Wednesday night was the private training dinner at Dom’s restaurant. He’d invited all of Lugh’s council, and he’d also invited his family, which seemed to include approximately one third of the population of South Philly.

Despite his conservative family’s disapproval of Dominic’s lifestyle, just about everyone showed up. Even his wicked stepmother, who looked like she couldn’t wait to get out of there the moment she set foot inside. My guess was that Dom’s father had bullied her into coming.

Dom had put place cards on the tables, so we all knew where we were supposed to sit. Of course, that did make the few empty seats with place cards in front of them very conspicuous, but it wasn’t as bad as Dom had
feared. He’d been afraid Wicked Stepmom would convince a bunch of the older women not to show.

The only no-show among Lugh’s council was Raphael, but that was by plan.
Someone
had to stay at Adam’s place and take care of William’s host, who so far had been so busy frothing at the mouth—figuratively speaking, for the most part—that he could barely be considered a functional human being.

Lugh and I didn’t much like the idea of leaving Raphael alone. Not because we didn’t trust him—for once—but because he’d painted such a big target on his back. To my intense surprise, Andy had volunteered to stay behind with him. I guess his hero instincts were trying to come out of hiding. Maybe my stern talking-to had more effect than I thought, though perhaps I was flattering myself to think so. But Raphael had dismissed Andy’s offer with a careless wave of his hand.

“I’ll only be alone three hours, tops,” Raphael had said. “I’ll phone in an SOS at the slightest sign of trouble, and the restaurant’s less than four blocks from here. Besides,” he’d added with a feral grin, “I’m not that easy to kill.”

Everyone had accepted that as adequate reassurance, but Lugh and I were both still worried. I understood why Lugh was worried—Raphael was his brother, after all—but I wouldn’t have expected it from myself. I suppose my attitude toward Raphael had softened even more than I’d realized.

Even Lugh and I had to admit, though, that the evening was a lot more pleasant without Raphael present. For one thing, Saul acted far more civilized when
his father wasn’t around. For another, we didn’t have to listen to the subtle, but nasty, digs that Raphael invariably managed to interject into any conversation.

To my surprise, the evening ended up being fun. It wasn’t that I’d expected a dinner at Dom’s restaurant to be a chore. It was just that it’s hard to relax and really enjoy anything when you’re a key player in a covert war and the fate of the human race rests on your shoulders. I was habitually on guard, and about the only time I allowed myself to let any of that guard down was in bed. Now don’t get me wrong; letting down my guard in bed was fun. It just wasn’t the same kind of fun.

Without Raphael around to jab pins in anyone, all the members of Lugh’s council were more … relaxed. Even Andy seemed to shake out of his stupor for a while. He still didn’t do a lot of talking, but I didn’t get the sense he was tuning the rest of us out, either. And every once in a while, I caught him smiling at something. Like when Adam took advantage of a momentary lapse in Dominic’s attention to pinch him on the ass. Dom jumped and gave a little yelp, but the restaurant was noisy enough to cover the sound, and his family members, at least, were engrossed in their food and their conversations. Dom turned to glare at Adam, who made innocent eyes at him.

“You promised you’d be on your best behavior,” Dominic scolded, and Adam gave him a wicked grin.

“This
is
my best behavior.”

Dominic rolled his eyes dramatically and heaved an exasperated sigh. Afterward, he was careful never to turn his back on Adam again.

The dinner went off without a hitch. But Dom and the rest of us had underestimated his family’s … staying power. The restaurant didn’t have its liquor license yet—that took forever in Philly—but patrons were allowed to bring their own, and Dom’s family had brought enough wine to inebriate half of Philadelphia. They were having a jolly old time trying to drink each other under the table, and I started to get antsy again about leaving Raphael unprotected for so long, no matter how hard he was to kill, and no matter how unlikely it was that anyone was gunning for him yet.

Adam and Dom tried engaging in a slightly more obvious public display of affection, hoping Dom’s relatives would get uncomfortable and leave, but most of them were too drunk to care.

It was after eleven when Brian, Andy, and I excused ourselves from the festivities to go keep watch on Raphael. Dom was going to be stuck at the restaurant until the wee hours, and there was no way Adam was going to leave him there alone. It would be asking for trouble to send Saul and Barbie, which is why the three of us got the short straw.

My life had been so unpleasantly eventful lately that it was almost anticlimactic to arrive at Adam and Dom’s house and find no enemies waiting to spring out at us. We explained to Raphael what we were doing there, and he kindly fixed us a pot of coffee to help us stay awake until we could go to our own apartment. I guess I was pretty tired, because I fell asleep on the sofa before the coffee was even ready.

I
NCONVENIENTLY, RAPHAEL HAD PROMISED TO SUMMON
William back to his host on the Mortal Plain three days after sending him to the Demon Realm. Which meant we had to summon him back on the night of the actual grand opening of Dominic’s restaurant. We’d debated whether to do the summoning before or after the opening, then finally decided on after. Dom was nervous enough without getting any worrisome news from the Demon Realm—and it was hard to believe the news wouldn’t be worrisome.

Just as we’d done on Wednesday night, all the members of Lugh’s council except for Raphael went out to dinner at Dom’s. It wasn’t the joyous, rowdy occasion that the practice dinner had been, but I was pleased to see that he got a pretty good crowd. And that the crowd seemed happy. Dom was a constant blur of motion, flitting from table to table to check on his customers’ satisfaction, then darting back into the kitchen to keep an eye on the cooking. I had to suppress a smile when I noticed more than one female customer trying her best to flirt with him. Although he was no longer a host, he still had the typical demon-host good looks. He was also
modest enough not to realize it, which only added to his appeal.