Page 5

“Change of plans,” he said.

“No lunch?” Delia asked, looking resigned.

“Oh, we’ll get lunch,” Caleb promised. “It’s just going to be a late one.”

Delia understood why he wanted to move things out quietly and avoid tipping his hand. If she’d learned that demons had been creeping around her property while she was asleep, she probably would have wanted to bail as soon as possible, too.

Caleb opened the garage so she could back in, and then they proceeded to load their two vehicles with everything he appeared to deem valuable — his TV and Blu-Ray player and discs, clothing and toiletries, a few pieces of art.

In a way, it was interesting to see what he wanted to save and what he was okay with leaving behind, just because it gave her a little extra insight into his character.

The art surprised her, since she hadn’t thought he was the type to care about that sort of thing.

Or maybe it was just that he’d invested a lot in those modern, semi-abstract paintings and wasn’t about to leave them to the wolves.

She left first, and he followed about five minutes later. They’d already agreed to take a circuitous route to the house on Pueblo Street, even though Caleb had told her this wasn’t exactly like trying to avoid the CIA and that there was a good chance no one was watching at all.

“Better safe than sorry, though,” he’d said as he closed the Range Rover’s hatch, and she was inclined to believe him on that.

The entire drive over here, though, she hadn’t noticed any vehicles following her. Everyone had been busy running their Saturday errands, whether to Costco or soccer practice or the local garden center, and no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to her.

Then again, would demons even be driving?

She reminded herself that a demon had pretended to be an Uber driver and had done its best to kill off Caleb in an intentional car accident back in January, but she had a feeling that had been a special circumstance.

After all, if you had the power to teleport, why would you waste time getting stuck in traffic?

But a demon still had to know where it was going, and if they didn’t have any idea that he planned to move into the newly remodeled house, then his disappearance from his current residence might stump them, at least for a little while.

Hopefully.

And there was Caleb, pulling up to the three-car garage of the new house and backing in.

He rolled down one window and waved a hand in her general direction, which seemed to be the signal that he wanted her to do the same.

That made sense. It would have been kind of stupid to drag all the stuff from the back of her little Hyundai SUV — mostly clothing and a few other odds and ends — into the house from her spot at the curb rather than simply going through the garage.

Once they were both situated and he’d closed the garage doors, they spent another half hour or so unloading everything.

“Now we can have lunch,” he said as he leaned one of the paintings up against the side of the leather sofa in the living room.

The wall above was conspicuously bare, telling Delia that he’d obviously intended that piece of art for that space all along.

By then it was past two, and she was famished. “Sounds good.”

They headed back to the garage, and he pulled out into the driveway, pausing for just a moment to press the button for the remote.

“In the mood for anything in particular?” he asked as they drove away.

“A cheeseburger as big as my head,” she replied. Most of the time, she tried to be careful about what she ate, but she figured all the manual labor she’d just performed had used up a decent amount of calories.

He grinned. “I think I can manage that.”

They went to a sports bar kind of place, not too crowded since the lunch hour was now long past. Sure, there were guys glued to the various TVs mounted all around, watching several different basketball and soccer games, but they weren’t so noisy that she and Caleb couldn’t hear each other speak.

All the same, they were careful to talk about neutral topics…at least until they were done with their meal and back out in their Range Rover.

“No sign of any demons,” he said cheerfully. “I think we gave them the slip.”

From your mouth to God’s ears, Delia thought. But she only said, “You don’t think they’ll be able to find your new house?”

“Oh, eventually,” he replied, still sounding way too peppy for the circumstances as he pulled out of the restaurant’s parking lot.

“But now I know — or at least, now that I think I know — they’re surveilling me again, it’ll be easy to keep them out.

A few squirts of holy water on the doors and windows will make them want to stay far, far away. ”

Although on the surface that sounded much too easy, Delia knew Caleb wasn’t being overconfident.

She’d seen how Calach’s face had begun to melt after getting hit with a couple of blasts of the blessed water, and she also knew that the demons who’d been harassing him had pretty much disappeared from the scene once she and Caleb had spritzed holy water all over his house.

Speaking of which….

“Do you think they came back because the holy water we sprayed everywhere finally wore off?”

His shoulders lifted. “Hard to say. To tell the truth, I’m not really sure how long the effects last. I suppose I just thought I was safe because there hadn’t been any disturbances since then. Getting sloppy, I guess.”

Was he being too hard on himself? Delia didn’t know for sure, so she only made a noncommittal sound.

“Anyway,” Caleb continued, “now that I’m safely out of there, it’s even more important to get the house listed as soon as we can. Once they realize it’s for sale and there’s no sign of me, their pointy little heads are going to explode.”

That comment created a mental image that Delia wasn’t sure she’d be able to get rid of any time soon.

Pushing it away as best she could, she said, “Well, I already went through the photos and dumped the ones I knew weren’t any good, so putting the listing together should go fairly quickly. What do you want to ask for the place?”

“Seven-fifty,” he replied promptly.

A decent price. Maybe a little high — she’d need to run some comps to be sure — but the house was in a very good area and had been completely remodeled within the last couple of years, so it would already be at a level above many of the other homes in the neighborhood.

“That should probably work,” she said, knowing her tone sounded too carefully neutral.

Caleb didn’t take offense, though, and only said, “I’m open to adjusting the price if you think it’s too out of whack. But I’ve been paying attention to what other homes in the area are going for, and I think it’s pretty inline.”

Then he’d done more research than she had. Her focus had been on the neighborhood where the Pueblo Street house was located, since she’d thought he’d be selling that one instead.

“In fact,” he went on, “I think you should go over there and stick a big ol’ ‘For Sale’ sign in the front yard even before you go home and post the listing. If anyone’s watching the place, it’s going to really stick in their craw.”

She supposed she could see that. “You’re the client,” she said with a smile.

No real lingering at Caleb’s new house — he pulled into the garage, she thanked him for lunch, and then she got in her Kona and headed over to the old place.

Lucky for him, she almost always had at least one or two Dunne & Dunne Realty signs floating around the back of her SUV, so it wasn’t that big a deal to put up the sign before the house was even officially for sale.

The street was quiet enough when she got there, the group of middle-schoolers on their bikes long gone. She got out of the car and went around to the back to retrieve one of the signs, along with the mallet she always kept there as well.

Unlike newer homes in Las Vegas, which either had artificial turf or drought-tolerant native plants, the house had a lawn with real grass, grandfathered in after laws had been passed to protect the area’s water supply.

While Delia understood those restrictions, she was always sort of glad when she could put up one of her signs in actual grass.

Even with a mallet, pounding those things into gravel or turf was a massive pain in the ass.

But this sign went in easily, telling her the lawn had probably been watered the night before, or maybe even this morning.

A pause to adjust it ever so slightly so it sat perfectly straight, and she figured her job was done…

or at least, mostly done. She still had to go home and put together the actual listing.

As she was getting back into her SUV, though, a flicker of movement caught the corner of her eye. She quickly turned in that direction, and could have sworn she saw someone disappearing behind a large clump of Mexican honeysuckle planted on the side of a house two doors down.

Probably one of those kids, she told herself. Now they’re playing hide and seek, or whatever.

Did kids that age even play hide and seek?

Whoever it was, though, they were long gone, and standing here and staring at the luxuriant plant with its cheery sprays of yellow and orange-red flowers wasn’t going to make them come back.

No, she needed to get back to her house and put that listing together.

All the same, she kept looking over her shoulder the entire drive home.