“Vile stuff,” he said, and I had to agree with him. The look on his face suggested he was thinking of pouring another shot, but he resisted the urge.
I took another swallow of my own drink. The first taste had numbed my tongue a bit, so the second wasn’t quite as repulsive.
“Lugh really means to fight a duel with Dougal, no matter what anyone else thinks, doesn’t he?” Brian asked.
I waited a beat to see if Lugh would answer the question in my head, but he didn’t. I sighed. “Like he said, let’s take this one problem at a time. We have to get Dougal to the Mortal Plain first.”
He gave me an annoyed look. “Don’t brush me off. You know where I’m going with this.”
Yeah, I had a pretty good idea. The rest of the council was worried about whether Lugh would survive a duel. Brian was wondering about me. Truth to tell, so was I. Demons are extremely strong, and their hosts can withstand a great deal of abuse. And the more powerful the demon, the more damage the host could take. But with Lugh and Dougal equally matched, the size and strength of their hosts might be the crucial difference between them. I’m strong, but there were plenty of stronger, bigger people out there in the world, and you can bet Dougal’s host would be one of them.
“What do you expect me to say, Brian?” I asked. “If Lugh really does decide to fight a duel, I’m sure we’ll spend hours in a council meeting listening to everyone trying to talk him out of it. But in the end, he’s the king, and it’ll be his decision.”
A flush rose to Brian’s cheeks, either from the booze or from anger. “But it’s your body.”
Tell Brian that if it does come down to a duel, I won’t fight it in your body.
“Lugh says he won’t necessarily be in my body if he fights a duel,” I repeated, though I’m sure Lugh noticed my equivocation. It was true that using my body for a fight might put him at a disadvantage, but I would have a hard time pushing someone else into the line of fire in my place.
“That’s very comforting,” Brian said sourly. I was beginning to get the feeling he didn’t much like Lugh. I guess I couldn’t blame him.
“Let’s not borrow trouble. Or put the cart before the horse. Or whatever cliché you like best. I’m too tired and generally wrung-out to think about this now. I say some heavy-duty procrastination is in order.”
I’d have liked to procrastinate by taking Brian to bed and burying our powers of higher reasoning beneath physical pleasure, but the look on his face wasn’t what you’d call promising. He dumped the ice out of his glass and poured another shot of crappy rum.
“Come to bed, Brian,” I said, reaching out to cover the glass before he could raise it to his lips. “You still have to go to work in the morning. You don’t want to go in with a hangover, do you?” I bet that wouldn’t go over too well in the offices of Stuffy, Stodgy, and Serious, which was my nickname for Brian’s firm.
Brian made a face, but put the glass down. “It’s hard to care a whole lot about the day job with what I know about the war.”
“Yeah, but we have to hope that someday this will all be behind us, and we’ll get to go on with our lives. Before you got sucked into all this with me, you actually loved your job.” A fact that was completely incomprehensible to me, but different strokes and all that. “You need to make sure that job is still waiting for you when this is all over.”
Brian put his hands around my waist and pulled me closer to him, but it wasn’t a prelude to anything romantic, just the need for a reassuring touch.
“I somehow doubt our lives are going to go back to normal when it’s all over, even if Lugh does end up being the undisputed king. After all, it’s not like anyone is powerful enough to exorcize him and send him back to the Demon Realm. He’ll be with us for the rest of our lives.”
I had to suppress a shiver. No, there was no one strong enough to cast Lugh out; however, it occurred to me that that wasn’t the only way he could get back to the Demon Realm. My death would do the trick quite nicely.
I would never do such a thing! came Lugh’s shocked protest in my mind. Nor would I allow anyone else to do it, he continued, before I could say something about how Raphael wouldn’t have the same scruples. I believed him—after all, he had said he loved me. The fact remained that Brian was right, and my life would never return to what it had been like before Lugh came into it.
I leaned into Brian’s body, putting my arms around him and holding him close. “Let’s go to bed, okay?” I asked.
I knew Brian was far from appeased. But he let me lead him into the bedroom anyway.
twenty-four
I EXPECTED TUESDAY TO BE ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE tense, miserable days of waiting. Brian headed out to work first thing in the morning, looking none the worse for his late night. Andy and I were, once again, stuck with each other. It was beginning to feel a bit like house arrest for both of us. It did seem that Andy had lightened up a bit on the doom-and-gloom crap, but he still wasn’t exactly fun to be around. Frankly, I didn’t know how much longer this whole buddy-system thing was going to work. If I was tired of hanging out with my big brother, I couldn’t imagine how Adam and Dominic were dealing with Raphael and William the Wimpy—whom they had summoned back as promised, only to find him even more hysterical than last time. Surprise, surprise, Dougal hadn’t taken the message well.
The news stations were still buzzing about Adam’s press conference, so watching TV was out, even if the Spirit Society had suspended their recruitment campaign, which I suspected they had. I was glad I didn’t get the paper, because I knew damn well what the lead story would be. Whether this gamble paid off in the end or not, there was still plenty of fallout yet to come.
I was reading a book—well, more like staring at the pages of a book until the type all blurred together—and Andy was doing who-knows-what on the Internet when my phone rang. I expected it to be press, but the number that popped up on caller ID was Adam and Dom’s, so I picked up.
“Hello?” Since Adam was at work today, I assumed the caller was Raphael or Dom. Alarm spiked through me when it was Adam’s voice that answered.
“We’ve got a situation,” he said.
Why was it that Adam never had good news to deliver? “What now?” I asked. “And what are you doing home? I thought you were working today.”
“I was,” he responded, and I could hear the grimace in his voice. “It’s been suggested that now might be a good time to use some of those vacation days I’ve accrued. It wasn’t quite an order, but I think it would have turned into one if I made an issue of it.”
I sighed. “Is this because of the press conference, or because you didn’t cooperate as much as they wanted when they questioned you about the shooting?”
“Both, I suspect. I get the feeling that I’m lucky I haven’t been fired. Yet. But that doesn’t matter. Like I said, we have a situation. I had a visitor at the station before I left for home. You won’t believe this: It was Dougal.”
“What?” I cried, my voice coming out an embarrassing squeak. Andy shut down whatever he was doing on the Internet and turned to me in alarm.
“He just strolled into the station and told them he wanted to speak to me. I assumed it wasn’t really Dougal himself, despite what he’d claimed, but when he came up to the office, he let me check his aura. And unless Lugh or Raphael has changed hosts and is playing an elaborate practical joke, it was Dougal.”
“Holy shit.” It was all I could think of to say.
“What?” Andy demanded, still looking worried.
“Adam’s talked to Dougal,” I said, because if I didn’t answer Andy, he’d never shut up. “Let me talk, and I’ll tell you all about it after I get off the phone.” I waited a second to see if Andy would mutiny, but he didn’t.
“So what did he have to say?” I asked Adam.