Page 18

Chapter Seven

Someone rang the doorbell a little after six, and Delia frowned. She knew she wasn’t expecting anyone, and since her neighborhood had “No Soliciting” signs posted everywhere, she didn’t get many random callers.

Heels clicking, she went to the front door. She’d had a late showing at five and had just gotten home, and hadn’t had time to change out of her work clothes.

Let it be a couple of Girl Scouts and not some Seventh-Day Adventists, she thought. Although she tried not to keep too many sweets in the house, she made an exception for Thin Mints and Samoas.

But it wasn’t girls trying to sell cookies or missionaries attempting to pass out religious tracts. No, that was Caleb Lockwood standing on the doorstep, looking wrung out.

“What happened?” she asked, even as she stepped out of the way to let him inside.

Even though his face was much paler than normal, he still flashed her his usual insouciant grin. “I look that bad, huh?”

Delia couldn’t help smiling in return. “Well, let’s just say that I’ve seen you look better.”

He ran a hand through his shaggy, dark blond hair, mussing it that much more. However, it just made him look rakish rather than rumpled, which she guessed had been the desired effect.

“The brakes on my new Porsche just failed.”

That was about the last thing she’d been expecting him to say. “ What? ”

His smile didn’t fade. “Pretty much my reaction. Somehow, I managed to get through the intersection without smashing into anyone. I suppose if the whole house-flipping thing doesn’t work out, I can always try for a career in NASCAR racing or something.”

Somehow, she doubted the Porsche’s brakes had given out spontaneously…and, if the suddenly sober look Caleb now wore was any indication, he didn’t believe that for a second, either.

“Go ahead and sit down,” she said. “Want a drink?”

“I’d kill for one.”

Now she couldn’t help smiling. “I’m pretty sure murder won’t be necessary.”

While he took a seat on the living room couch, she headed into the kitchen and got down two wine glasses, then pulled the cork out of a bottle of red she’d had open for a day or so and poured the remaining wine into the glasses.

One of them was a little fuller than the other, so she gave that glass to Caleb before she took a seat in the accent chair to his right. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said at once, then swallowed some of his wine.

“I called a tow truck and had the Porsche towed to the dealership. The service department had already closed for the day, but the guy who sold me the car was still there, and he assured me they’d look at it first thing in the morning. ”

Delia drank some wine as well. “Do you really think they’re going to find anything?”

Dark eyes glinted at her. “Are you implying there’s some kind of demonic intervention going on?”

“It was my first thought, yes,” she said.

Caleb eased himself backward on the couch, then pulled in a breath.

“Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. I mean, the car was sitting in the casino parking lot unattended the whole time I was inside playing, so I suppose it wouldn’t have been too hard for someone to come along and mess with the brake lines. ”

Delia couldn’t think of too many people who’d be bold enough to tamper with a car as conspicuous as his Porsche in broad daylight like that, especially in such a public place. Voice dubious, she said, “Doesn’t the casino have any security out in the parking lot?”

“Oh, sure,” Caleb replied, and then gave a derisive chuckle. “But the guy I saw would probably be as useless as a fart in a hurricane if anything really started to go down.”

Despite the gravity of the situation, Delia couldn’t help smiling at that comparison. “Duly noted. But still….”

Caleb swallowed some more wine, then said, “If it was the demons messing with me, then they wouldn’t have had to do anything as obvious as slide under the car with a pair of wire cutters or something. I guess now all I can do is wait to see what the mechanics have to say tomorrow morning.”

She nodded. “Well, I’m glad you’re safe and sound. How’d you get here?”

A grimace. “I took a taxi. I suppose that’s how I’ll have to get around for a while until I can get all this straightened out. Even then….” He let the words trail off, his expression now sour. “Almost a hundred and fifty grand for that car, and I can’t even drive it.”

Privately, Delia thought maybe that was a good thing. It was awfully flashy, and it seemed as though it had already attracted way too much attention.

“Maybe you should get something nice and anonymous, like a silver Honda Accord or something,” she suggested, and Caleb made a face that reminded her of a toddler being force-fed a spoonful of peas.

“I’d rather keep taking taxis,” he said. “An econobox isn’t exactly my style.”

Now she allowed herself to chuckle. “My mother has an Accord. It’s actually a really nice car.

But if you want something a little higher-end, then you could still get yourself a Mercedes or a BMW.

There are plenty of those in Vegas, so you’d be a lot harder to track down if you were driving a car like that. ”

His dubious expression told her he wasn’t too thrilled with any of those alternatives, so she decided to let it go for now. It wasn’t really worthwhile to start planning for contingencies like that until they knew for sure what had happened to the brakes on his Porsche.

Thinking it might be a good idea to change the subject, she said, “How was the tournament?”

The familiar glint was back in Caleb’s warm brown eyes. “‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play? ’”

Delia couldn’t quite stop herself from laughing outright. “Okay, you got me,” she replied. “But — ”

“Oh, the tournament was fine,” he cut in. “I’m moving on to the third elimination round tomorrow.”

The words came out sounding almost too casual, so she could tell he was very proud that he’d managed to advance to the next round, especially since he was trying so hard to win without using any of his powers.

“That’s awesome,” she said, then paused delicately. She probably shouldn’t say anything, but she couldn’t quite prevent the thought from circulating in her head.

Had he won fair and square, or had he helped things along a little bit?

“Totally on the up and up,” he told her, correctly gauging the reason for her hesitation. “No hanky-panky. But once again, it sure felt to me like one of the other players was using some sort of magic to manipulate things.”

“Like those shimmery cards you noticed in the first round?” she asked, even as she tried to ignore the sinking sensation in her stomach.

Just how many supernatural beings were hanging around the Desert Paradise casino’s poker tournament, anyway?

Caleb shook his head. “No, this felt different. Almost like some kind of mind control, like the guy — or someone he was working with — was trying to make the rest of us fold even if we had the cards to stay in.”

This was sounding worse and worse. “You think there was more than one of them?”

A shrug, and Caleb swallowed some more of his wine.

“I can’t say for sure. I got this weird feeling that the guy playing was in some kind of mental contact with an older man who was with the rest of the spectators, but I don’t know.

It’s possible we’re dealing with some sort of possession by proxy here or something like that. ”

“Is that even a thing?” Delia said. Although she’d learned way more about demons and their behavior over the past couple of months than she’d ever wanted to know, she still understood that there were huge holes in her knowledge of the subject.

“It can be.” Caleb set his near-empty glass on a coaster, then settled against the back of the couch once again.

“Rather than inhabit a body directly, a demon can cast its influence on the person it wants to control. In a way, it’s sort of an insurance policy for the demon, since when it’s doing something like that, it can’t be exorcised.

Technically, it isn’t possessing anyone, just making them do what it wants. ”

Well, that was just lovely. Delia swallowed some of her wine, thinking they were probably going to need more than the remnants of that one bottle to get them through this conversation. “Does that happen very often?”

“No,” Caleb replied at once, reassuring her somewhat.

“You need a pretty senior demon to do the possessing, and the person it’s trying to control needs to be sufficiently weak-minded to allow that kind of control to even happen.

” He paused there, and a knowing gleam entered his dark eyes.

“If you were wondering whether something like that could happen to you, don’t worry about it.

You’re way too strong for a demon to take command of your brain. ”

Those words made Delia absurdly pleased. Not just because she apparently wouldn’t have to worry about some random demon getting its nasty fingers on her mind, but because Caleb thought she was strong…and obviously didn’t have a problem with it, unlike a few other men she’d dated.

Not that she was dating Caleb. Their relationship was friendly, nothing more.

All the same, she was glad that once again he’d thought to come to her in a moment of crisis.

True, it didn’t seem as if he had many friends he could turn to, but still, after nearly getting in a car accident, he hadn’t gone straight home, had instead dropped by her house, as if he’d known he’d be sure to find a sympathetic ear there.

She gave a neutral nod, then said, “So…what’s next?”

“I wait to see what the mechanics at the Porsche dealership have to say,” he responded at once. “Luckily, they work a half day on Saturdays, because otherwise, I’d be left hanging until Monday morning before I learned anything. And go back to the tournament and see what happens next, of course.”