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Chapter Four

At times like this, she wondered if she might have been doing this for too long. Things were getting way too predictable.

No wonder she liked hanging out with Caleb Lockwood. He was sort of the monkey in the wrench…but in a good way.

“Hi, Evan,” she said as she came down the front walkway to meet him. “Any trouble finding the house?”

“None at all,” he replied, then reached out so he could shake her hand. “This is an easily accessible neighborhood, which makes the house even better suited for a vacation rental.”

“Then let me show you the interior and the backyard,” she said. “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

“I’m sure I will.”

They went into the house, where Delia described all the recent renovations and how the home had been featured on an episode of Flip or Flop Las Vegas, which she thought would be an additional selling point.

Evan Matthews appeared to be of a similar mind, because he nodded and looked pleased after hearing that bit of information.

“People do like to stay in places that have a bit of notoriety,” he said. “It’s something our marketing people can play up in the listing — if we decide that the house suits, of course. Let’s take a look at the upstairs.”

Dutifully, Delia led him to the second level, where he seemed to be happy with the size of the bedrooms and the number of bathrooms. True, it wasn’t like a lot of newer houses, where each bedroom had its own en suite bath, but there was the powder room downstairs and then the bathroom in the main suite and one in the hall for the remaining bedrooms, so that would probably be enough to accommodate everyone.

Well, unless they were like her college friend Madison, who could easily spend an hour and a half blow-drying and then straightening her hair.

Delia had never been sure whether the task truly required that much effort, but Madison wouldn’t step foot outside unless she was absolutely sure she’d vanquished the last of the frizzies.

And Evan seemed equally happy with the backyard, which, in addition to the pool, had an outdoor kitchen built into the covered patio.

It probably wasn’t quite as over-the-top as the one Caleb had put in at his new house, since that kitchen also had an Ooni pizza oven and a Big Green Egg in addition to the built-in barbecue, but still, this should be more than enough to satisfy any vacationers who chose to stay here.

“I think it could work,” Evan told her after they’d gone back inside and she’d closed and locked the French door that opened onto the patio — and double-checked it, since she didn’t want a repeat of whatever might have happened here a few days earlier.

“I’ll need to present the property to the board before we can make an offer, of course.

But I should know something by the end of the week. ”

In her mind, she’d had fantasies of him whipping out a checkbook and writing a huge check right then and there, but that wasn’t really how these things worked.

For one thing, no way in the world would she accept a personal check that big. Cashier’s check or wire transfer for this sort of thing, thank you very much.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m having a broker’s open house on Thursday, though, and I expect the property to generate a lot of interest.”

“I expect it would,” Evan replied smoothly, not much put off by the subtle threat that someone might come along and scoop up the property before the board of directors at Aegis Holdings had a chance to decide whether the Pinon Drive house was suitable for their purposes.

“But we have our way of doing things, and I need to stick with that. However, please let me know if you get any serious offers so we can direct our search elsewhere.”

“Not a problem,” Delia replied. She’d done what she could, so at this point, the outcome was mostly up to fate. “Let me walk you to your car.”

She went with him down to the curb, where he thanked her for her time before climbing into the BMW and driving away.

For some reason, she lingered there for a moment, wondering if her impression that there had been something off about the whole exchange was valid, or whether she was seeing things that weren’t there because of hers and Caleb’s discovery that demons appeared to be active in Las Vegas once again.

But Evan Matthews wasn’t a demon…or was he?

Now you’re thinking everyone’s a goddamn demon, she scolded herself. Okay, you had a bad experience with Robert Hendricks, but that doesn’t make every successful man on the planet some kind of hellspawn in disguise.

This all seemed to make an inordinate amount of sense. Even so, she had to hold back a shiver as she made a minute adjustment to the “For Sale” sign in the front yard before she headed up to the house to make sure everything was locked.

Maybe one day she’d stop jumping at shadows.

Caleb got a text from Delia saying she’d shown the house to a potential buyer but that she wasn’t sure whether anything was going to come of it.

Those words made a stab of disappointment go through him, but after she sent another text explaining that she would be doing a broker open house on Thursday, it seemed clear that she was working hard to make sure the property sold as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, he had other things to keep him occupied.

“It’s a very good choice, sir,” the salesman told him as he circled the vehicle, taking in the sleek lines and the unusual pale green color, a shade Caleb wasn’t sure he’d liked at first but was now growing on him by the minute.

Sure, something white or gray would probably be less distinctive, but on the other hand, the metallic sage was about as different from his black Range Rover as you could get. “Only one in Nevada in this color.”

Maybe that was true, maybe it wasn’t. What mattered was that the car was on the lot now, which meant he could buy the thing and drive off in a vehicle the demons who’d been surveilling him wouldn’t recognize.

His sleep the night before had been utterly undisturbed, so either the holy water was working or there was another perfectly logical explanation for those print-less smudges on the French door at his old house, and all this worry about demons had been in his head and nothing more.

He’d taken a taxi to the Porsche dealership, figuring that if he did end up buying something, he wouldn’t want to be stuck with two cars there at the lot.

Ever since that scare with the demon Uber driver who’d deliberately attempted to get him killed, he’d been wary of the ride-share service and had opted to call a cab on those rare occasions when he didn’t want to drive, for whatever reason.

Luckily, Vegas still had plenty of taxis.

“She’s a beauty,” he agreed. “Let’s go inside and take care of the paperwork, shall we?”

Delia hadn’t heard anything from Evan Matthews yet, but it was only Tuesday afternoon.

Even an individual buyer would probably take at least that long before they decided to jump into something as life-changing as buying a house, and that was without having to run the purchase past a board of directors.

Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t do a little research while she was waiting.

Things had been busy enough at the office so far this week that she’d barely had a chance to catch her breath, what with covering for her mother and taking on three new clients.

That felt like a lot, but she knew a good number of people tried to set the house-buying wheels in motion around this time of year so they could get moved before the real heat of summer set in.

But her next client wasn’t coming to the office until four-thirty, which meant she had a bit of free time.

Not that she’d been able to find much so far.

Aegis Holdings was based in Santa Monica and appeared to have been in business for around ten years.

The company specialized in residential property management and acquisitions, and seemed to have branched into vacation rentals about five years ago.

The members of the board of directors were listed on the company’s website, although there weren’t any photos attached to their names.

The regular staff members each had their own page, though, and there was Evan Matthews, listed as vice president of acquisitions. It seemed a little odd to Delia that a VP would deign to tour houses in person, but maybe he was a more hands-on kind of executive.

At any rate, the operation seemed on the up-and-up, as far as she could tell.

It didn’t surprise her too much that a corporation based in California would be scouting Las Vegas for properties, not when houses were cheaper here and the gambling mecca was the sort of place that attracted visitors from all over the world at all times of the year.

In a way, she was a little disappointed. It would have been nice to find some kind of smoking gun, something to show the company was nothing more than a front for a bunch of demons, just as she and Caleb still suspected The Styx Group was, despite their lack of any real evidence on that front.

But, just as Sigmund Freud had once famously — and perhaps apocryphally — said, sometimes a cigar was just a cigar.

At least she had a showing of the house scheduled tomorrow, and then there would be the broker’s open house on Thursday.

Delia hadn’t yet decided when to have another open house, one that was intended for the public and not other real estate agents, but she figured she’d wait and see how it went on Thursday.

While it was always optimal to be both the listing and the selling agent so she wouldn’t have to split her commission, she was just fine with another realtor bringing in a buyer. Whatever it took to get the house sold.