William acknowledged my point with a nod. “I make no claim that Lugh’s troubles are over. Merely that Dougal’s foothold is not as strong as it once was. The throne will not be secure until Dougal is dead.”
“Dougal and all his followers,” I said.
It was Raphael who answered me. “No, only Dougal has to die. Unless they have Dougal to put on the throne in my place, they have nothing to gain by attacking me. If Dougal’s dead and they kill me, then the throne would go to Raphael. And no one wants that.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you sure no one wants that? What about Raphael? Maybe he thinks the throne looks comfy.” Okay, so maybe this wasn’t the best time to stick pins in Raphael. Still, he was making me very uncomfortable right now, and I didn’t understand why he was pretending to be Lugh.
Raphael met my eyes steadily. But then, he’s never had any trouble lying to someone to their face.
“Raphael can hardly be bothered to care for a single human host. Do you really think he’s interested in caring for all of demonkind? There’s a lot of power that comes with the throne, but there’s a lot of responsibility as well.”
He has a point, Lugh said in my mind. I honestly can’t imagine Raphael wanting the throne.
I held up my hands in surrender. “Just thought I’d ask.”
“Was Dougal right to suspect you?” Raphael asked William. “Would you support me above him?”
“I would be a fool not to say yes, even if I didn’t mean it. But yes, I will support you. I swear to you I didn’t know what Dougal had planned when I started helping him.” He held his head up high. “I can’t expect you to trust me under the circumstances, but I’ll do whatever I can to earn that trust.”
Raphael nodded sagely. “You can start by telling me a little more about this team of yours. Mary said she was supposed to report to a handler once a week, and that he might have jobs for her.”
“Dougal’s trying to make the best of a bad situation,” William replied. “He figured if he was getting pressured to send all these demons to the Mortal Plain, he might as well use them.” He looked up at Adam. “When he first started sending them, he was thinking small. You know, coerce some undesirables to risk their lives to take out some of Lugh’s known supporters, like you. If they got themselves killed along the way, it wouldn’t matter a bit to him. Knowing him, he probably grew that small idea into a bigger plan, but since he doesn’t trust me anymore, I can’t say for sure.”
Up until recently, this “war” had been so covert that Lugh was convinced only Dougal’s inner circle even knew it was going on. But it was beginning to sound like the conflict was mushrooming. If it came down to open warfare, what would happen to the human race? Nothing good, that’s for sure.
Raphael stood up in one fluid, lithe movement. Adam did the same, though William wisely remained where he was.
“I need to consult with my council on the Mortal Plain,” Raphael said. “I’m going to ask you to stay right where you are. If you make any attempt to escape, I’m afraid I’m going to have to kill you. It isn’t something I want to do, but now that you know who’s hosting me, you are far too dangerous to be allowed to go free. You’re either with me or you’re dead. Understand?”
The fear was back in William’s eyes, and he nodded. “I understand. And I’m with you, I swear it.”
“Only time will tell.”
I’m pretty sure Raphael was the only one even marginally comfortable leaving William alone in that room, but that didn’t stop the rest of us from following him out.
We didn’t go far. We gathered in the hallway outside the Black Room and conversed in low, urgent voices. Dominic, Adam, Saul, and I all asked some version of “What the hell are you doing?” at approximately the same time. We didn’t consciously coordinate our movements, but we ended up forming a semicircle around Raphael, with his back pressed to the wall. Hostility rode the air like a static charge, and I hoped a fight wasn’t about to break out.
Raphael held up his hands for silence, and to my surprise, we all obeyed, though the tension ratcheted up another notch.
“I made an executive decision based on the information at hand,” Raphael said. “If Dougal’s back is to the wall as William suggests, then he’ll be actively hunting for Lugh again.” He looked at me. “Dougal and his agents might not be able to tell that you’re possessed right now, but they do know you were Lugh’s original host, which puts a target on your back.”
I had a few choice words I wanted to share about that, but Raphael turned his attention to Adam and continued talking before I could interrupt.
“You’re one of Lugh’s most high-profile supporters on the Mortal Plain, and it would take only the smallest amount of poking around to find out you’ve been spending time with Morgan. That’s makes you—and, by association, Dominic—a target, too.” He stood up a little straighter. “But if Dougal and company believe they already know who’s hosting Lugh …”
A metaphorical lightbulb turned on over my head. “You’re taking a page from William’s book. Making yourself into Lugh’s stalking horse.” Suspicious, nasty person that I am, I immediately noticed the convenient coincidence that the only person outside of Lugh’s council who knew Raphael’s true identity—Shae—was dead. Could it have been Raphael who killed her, rather than William’s team?
But no, surely Raphael hadn’t foreseen that he would be impersonating Lugh.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
“That’s not the kind of decision you should have made on your own,” Saul growled, and he looked mad enough to put his fist through the wall. Or through Raphael’s head, for that matter.
Raphael laughed, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “If you expect me to be a good little soldier and do what I’m told, then you’re obviously suffering from severe delusions. Lugh might have been too noble to let me put myself in the line of fire, so I took the decision out of his hands.” Raphael always made “noble”
sound like a bad thing. Perhaps to him, it was.
“It’s not too late to turn back,” Adam said. “If we do away with William, then no one will be the wiser.” He said that with such a patent disregard for both human and demon life that I winced.
“That would be foolish,” Raphael countered. “You heard what William said. Dougal’s starting to lose control. That means he’ll be getting desperate. That makes him even more dangerous than before. And it could also give us some leverage.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“All his troubles go away if Lugh dies. Our king is completely above the law, so even if everyone in the Demon Realm knew Dougal had murdered Lugh, there would be nothing they could do.”
“That’s a monumentally stupid method of government,” Dominic muttered.
Raphael shook his head. “You don’t understand. It isn’t how we choose to run things. It just is. There is nothing on the Mortal Plain analogous to the power of the demon throne. No one can stand against it. Not for long, anyway.”
“At least, not in the Demon Realm,” Adam amended. “We’d have had Lugh back on the throne in no time if he’d been able to wield his power here on the Mortal Plain.”
I sensed more bickering was about to ensue, so I intervened before it could get started. “So how does your claiming to be Lugh give us any leverage?” I asked Raphael.
“It helps us because, with his back against the wall, Dougal would do just about anything to eliminate Lugh as fast as possible.” His lips curled into what could only be described as an evil smile. “Maybe even come to the Mortal Plain in person.”
eighteen
THIS DISCUSSION WAS TOO BIG—AND TOO IMPORTANT—to have in a hallway. So I called the remaining members of Lugh’s council—Andy, Brian, and Barbie—to come join us for yet another meeting. We’d met more often in the last week than we had all of last month.