Page 17

Chapter Seventeen

Caleb was a little startled that Delia had actually agreed to stay for dinner, but he told himself it was probably because she didn’t have any other plans and figured she might as well get a free meal out of him.

No, that sounded like something he would do, not Delia. Whatever her reasons for hanging around, he wasn’t going to question them too closely.

So they ordered Thai and adjourned to the dining room once it arrived, and had what he thought was a friendly enough meal. She mentioned a few people who could help him make his money do more than just sit around, and even added that she’d keep an eye out for any properties that might be ripe for flipping.

“They don’t come up as often as they used to because the market is so competitive now,” she went on. “But still, every once in a while you can find a unicorn. And if it’s all cosmetic stuff and nothing major, you can sometimes turn things around in a month. People used to do that all the time because they wanted to make sure a place was sold before they had to make a mortgage payment.”

“But I’d be paying cash,” he pointed out, and Delia only smiled.

“I figured,” she said. “Still, you might be able to make fifty or sixty grand in only a month or so.”

Whereas at the gaming tables, he could make that much in a day without breaking a sweat. However, that avenue appeared closed to him…at least for now…so he knew he might as well entertain the idea of flipping a property or two in addition to buying T-bills or starting a stock portfolio or whatever else a financial advisor might instruct him to do. He supposed if he’d paid more attention to what his father did at the bank, he might know more about this sort of stuff.

However, he’d never wanted to work at the bank. His father had been pushing him into it at the end there, after his business in Southern California was concluded, but then they’d all been banished to Hell and that was the end of that discussion.

Silver linings, he supposed.

At the end of their meal, Caleb didn’t try to put a move on Delia — he had a feeling it wouldn’t be very well received — and instead just walked her out to her car and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, watching as she pulled away and then turned the corner, moving out to Pecos Road so she could head for home. Although she’d never told him, he knew exactly where that was, a neighborhood of larger homes that had been built in the late ’90s and which a lot of people were currently in the process of updating. The only photos he’d seen online of her house were the ones from when it had been up for sale, so he guessed it looked quite different now.

Somehow, he didn’t think she would have been too keen on keeping the wall-to-wall carpet or the white tile in the kitchen.

Maybe someday, if he could get her to relax a little more, she might invite him over.

In the meantime, he picked up the leftovers from their meal and put them in the fridge, then cleared away the empty plates and glasses and the bottle of wine. There was still a little bit of pinot left, so he poured the remainder into his glass and headed back to the living room. Outside, the night was utterly clear, the swimming pool a glowing blue-green gem in the darkness, but he knew it was way too cold to go swimming.

No, he just sat down and turned on the TV mounted over the fireplace, feeling oddly deflated. If he hadn’t known that someone or something connected to the casinos was gunning for him, he might have headed out, thinking it would be a good idea to kill some time and refill his coffers at the gaming tables as well.

That particular avenue of amusement had been closed off to him, though.

And if it had been later in the week, he could have at least whiled away the rest of his evening by watching a football game, but that diversion had been denied him as well.

He drank the rest of the wine and went into the kitchen to rinse out his glass. True, he had pretty much every streaming channel known to man available on his Apple TV, and he’d also amassed a decent collection of Blu-Rays during his time in Las Vegas. It really shouldn’t have been that difficult for him to find some way to fill up the next couple of hours.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think he’d be able to concentrate very well, not when he couldn’t make himself stop thinking about Delia Dunne. She was the only person who’d ever been over here to visit him — he couldn’t really count the maid service or the gardeners, since they came to the house to perform work he paid them for — and something about the place felt somehow different now, as though the short amount of time she’d spent in his home had changed its energy in some way he couldn’t quite define.

Well, she’d gone home for the night, and he knew he’d sound like a complete idiot if he tried to call her now. They’d had a good talk at dinner, and he needed to leave it there.

Easier said than done.

You’re obsessing over her because she treats you like a human being, he told himself, although he knew it was probably a little more than that. And sure, she was beautiful, but there were tons of beautiful women in Las Vegas. He should know, since he’d sampled a few of them when he first got here, driven by a need to reaffirm the mortal side of his nature and reconnect with the real world.

Delia Dunne wasn’t the sort of person you just “sampled,” though. She hadn’t made a single mention of a significant other, so he had a feeling she wasn’t seeing anyone. For whatever reason, she seemed content to focus on her work.

Had she scared off any prospective partners with the ghost-whisperer adjunct to her real estate business?

If that was the case, then the men here in Vegas must be a bunch of cowards. Caleb knew it would take a lot more than a few supernatural gifts for him to hit the highway. Rosemary McGuire’s psychic powers hadn’t fazed him…just the opposite, in fact.

But that was never going to happen, and he had to deal with it. Maybe fate worked in mysterious ways. After all, if Rosemary had ignored his demon blood and decided to give things a go, he most likely would never have come to Las Vegas at all.

He would never have met Delia Dunne.

So okay, he should take a deep breath and remind himself that all good things come to those who wait.

That didn’t mean the awkward in-between stages couldn’t be a total pain in the ass.

He was contemplating whether he should open another bottle of wine when the first demon came down the chimney.

It happened so fast that Caleb barely had a chance to blink. One minute he was alone in the house, and the next, the anti-Santa Claus appeared.

Ugly bastard, too, maybe a foot taller than he was, with scaly black skin and glowing yellow eyes and a pair of curved horns that poked up through its oily black hair. The second it was upright, it flung itself across the living room at him, claws out and shredding the long-sleeved T-shirt he wore.

Fuck, that hurt. Demon claws always had some nasty stuff on them, and if he hadn’t possessed demon blood himself, Caleb knew he would’ve had to worry about getting some kind of crappy-ass infection from those slashes.

No real thought, just pure instinct as he kicked out, catching the thing in the gut so it released a shocked whoof of air and staggered back a pace or two.

Unfortunately, Caleb didn’t have a chance to relish that small moment of victory, because a second demon, slightly smaller than the first, also came out of the chimney and hit his legs in a flying tackle that would have done the Raiders’ defensive line proud.

He went down like a ton of bricks, and the larger demon took advantage of his stumble to advance again, claws now reaching for his throat.

At the last second, he rolled, but two of its talons still caught him. Hot blood flowed down his neck. Because it wasn’t spurting, though, he knew the demon had only caught a vein and not the artery that would have spelled almost instant doom.

Still, those fresh wounds hurt just as much as the ones that throbbed on his bicep. The smaller demon’s jaws closed on his leg, but the heavy denim of his jeans protected him from the worst of the bite.

For now. He had a feeling another chomp like that would slash right through the fabric.

He should have borrowed some holy water from Delia. If he’d had even a little on hand, he could have sent these scaly bastards back to Hell where they belonged.

As it was….

Fire flowed down his arms to his hands, and he hurled it against both of them. Because they were higher orders of demons than the imp he’d dispatched in the Bellagio’s parking structure, he knew it wouldn’t be enough to get rid of them entirely.

No, he was just trying to buy some time.

The one that was trying to bite his leg recoiled with a hiss, while the larger of the two also stepped back a pace, its yellow eyes blazing with fury.

That was all the opening he needed.

After all, he who runs away lives to fight another day.

A single blink, and then he appeared on Delia’s front doorstep. He’d wanted to transport himself directly into her house, but because he didn’t know what the interior looked like now, there was too big a chance that he might have appeared in the middle of a wall or some other similarly uncomfortable location.

Whereas the front of her house appeared pretty much the same as the photos he’d seen on the Zillow website when he looked it up, although maybe the front door had been updated.

No biggie. It was still in the same position it had always occupied, and that was the important thing.

Limping, he went over to the doorbell and leaned hard on it. A simple ding-dong sounded somewhere inside the house, and a moment later, the door opened, and a shocked Delia stared out at him.

“Oh, my God! What happened?”

“Demons,” he said briefly.

She opened the door wider. “Hurry.”

Because he had no desire to remain standing in the entrance any longer than necessary, he slipped inside, and she closed the door behind him.

“Kitchen,” she said briefly. “I’ve got a first aid kit in the pantry.”

He should have known she’d be the kind of woman who kept her cool in a crisis.

As best he could, he shuffled into the kitchen and leaned up against the island. Everything in here looked as though it had been replaced over the past couple of years, with white cabinets and black quartz countertops and wood floors in a neutral brown. He had a feeling a few walls had been knocked out as well, which was exactly why he hadn’t tried to teleport directly in here.

Plus, that would have been kind of rude.

Delia pulled a couple of kitchen towels out of a drawer and handed them over. “For your neck. Those wounds seem to be the worst.”

“Only because you can see them,” he said with a weak grin.

Nonetheless, he took the towels — both of them were a cheerful red, probably chosen to contrast with the overall black-and-white color scheme of the kitchen — and pressed them against his throat while she hurried to the pantry and came back with a decent-sized first aid kit, which she set down on the island.

And although her eyes were full of questions, she got out gauze and antiseptic and a roll of first aid tape and a variety of bandages, and proceeded to get him cleaned up and all his wounds covered. To his relief, most of them appeared superficial, not much worse than he would have gotten if a neighbor’s dog had attacked him.

Except the ones in his throat, but those should heal soon enough. He was mostly mortal, and yet he still recovered from injuries much faster than any regular human being could.

“Can you walk?” Delia asked after she was done. “You’ll be more comfortable sitting down in the living room.”

“I don’t want to bleed all over your furniture.”

“You won’t,” she said crisply. “You’re all patched up now.”

True enough, but….

“There’s blood on my clothes.”

Her mouth pursed. For the first time, he realized she’d changed out of her slim skirt and teal jacket, and now wore a pair of Uggs, black leggings, and an oversized black sweatshirt with a glittery “Las Vegas” logo on it. He’d never seen her this casual before, and he liked it.

Even though every inch of his body hurt like a son of a bitch.

“Let me get you something to change into,” she said. “Can you make it to the powder room?”

“Sure,” he replied, even though he didn’t know for sure where it was located. Yes, he’d seen photos of the house from the time when it had been up for sale, but the listing hadn’t included a floor plan.

But the powder room turned out to be just on the other side of the great room, so he leaned up against the vanity and waited while Delia disappeared down a hallway he assumed led to the bedrooms. A moment later, she reappeared holding some dark gray sweats, with the shirt bearing the UNLV logo.

“There were jeans, too, but I thought these would be more comfortable.”

Yes, easing his battered body into some sweats seemed infinitely preferable to trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans that might or might not be his size.

“Thanks,” he said, and managed to smile. “Just give me a minute, and I’ll meet you in the living room.”

Worried green eyes met his. “Okay.”

She closed the door, and he commenced the laborious process of peeling himself out of his bloodstained clothing and into the sweats she’d provided. Both pieces were a size large and a little loose on him — and would have been much too big for Delia.

Whose were they?

A mystery he’d clear up later, he supposed. For now, it just felt good to get into something clean and soft, and which didn’t press too hard on his battered body.

The one thing she hadn’t provided was a pair of replacement socks or any kind of footwear, so after he’d rolled his socks up with the rest of his bloody clothes, he padded out to the living room in his bare feet. A fire danced in the gas hearth, and she’d set a bottle of cognac and a couple of shot glasses on the wood and glass coffee table.

A woman after his own heart.

“I figured you could use a drink,” she said. “I don’t have much hard stuff on hand, but someone left this behind after a Christmas party and — ”

“It’s perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”

She poured a shot glass nearly full of cognac for him, then gave herself about half that much. “So…what happened?”

“A couple of demons got the jump on me,” he replied. “So much for my theory that they’d leave me alone if I just stayed away from the goddamn casinos.”

Her mouth compressed, but she lifted her shot glass and said, “Here’s to getting away.”

“Yeah, I don’t think they guessed I was going to jump…or maybe they weren’t sure whether I could. A lot of demons still don’t know all that much about part demons and their abilities.”

And they also didn’t always communicate with one another, often holding on to information they thought they could use for leverage later on.

That was something he could only be thankful for. Otherwise, he might be in much worse shape than he already was.

The cognac was a welcome warmth in his wounded throat, a comforting heat in his belly. He swallowed some more, glad that the throbbing pain from the wounds the demons had delivered was already beginning to retreat. A good night’s sleep, and, while he wouldn’t have completely recovered, he knew his injuries would be at least half healed when he woke up.

Of course, that begged the question of where exactly he planned to sleep. No way he was going back to his house tonight. He supposed he could blink himself into the parking lot of a hotel — one preferably not attached to a casino, no easy task in Las Vegas — get a room, and hole up there until he decided what he should do next.

“Is there a way to keep the demons out of your house?” Delia asked.

“Holy water,” Caleb said briefly, and drank some more cognac. “Lots and lots of holy water.”

Her brows creased. “And that won’t bother you?”

She sounded genuinely worried…which cheered him up immensely.

“No,” he replied. “It generally doesn’t have any real effect on those of us with human blood. So it’s a cheap and easy way to make sure I don’t have any more of those bastards coming down the chimney.”

“That’s how they got in?”

Was that a hint of amusement in her expression?

Not at his expense, he guessed, but only at the absurdity of a bunch of demons playing Santa Claus.

“I suppose they thought it would be funny.” He shrugged and sipped some more cognac. Now more than two-thirds of the glass was empty, although he had a feeling Delia would refill it without him even asking.

Sure enough, she murmured, “Let me get you some more of that,” and lifted the bottle of cognac and poured another healthy measure into his glass.

Once she was done with that task, she sipped some of her own cognac before she spoke again.

“You’re staying here.”

Her tone was so firm that he could tell she didn’t want any arguments.

Still, Caleb thought he should make at least a token protest.

“There are hundreds of hotels in this town.”

“True,” she replied. “But I’ve got a whole cabinet of holy water, since I use it to help spirits move on. Can you think of a safer place to be?”

Most likely not. His teleportation couldn’t be tracked, so he knew there was no way for the demons to know he was here.

Or at least, he didn’t think there was. If they’d been watching him for a while, they might have figured out his connection to Delia Dunne, but unless they were just as good at digging around on the internet as he was, they would have had a hard time discovering her home address.

“I don’t want to impose — ”

“You’re not,” she said. “I’m the one who offered, remember? Anyway, this house has four bedrooms, and one of them is already set up as a guest space. I’ll be glad to have someone use it, actually.”

A lot of room for a woman living on her own, but he supposed she’d bought a bigger house because it was a better investment.

Anyway, it wasn’t any of his business…although he’d certainly like it to be.

“Then thank you,” he replied. “Tomorrow I’ll get the situation at my house straightened out.”

“As long as it’s safe,” she said.

Was that her oblique way of hinting that she’d be just fine if he stayed here more than one night? Probably not; she’d already made it clear enough that their relationship was a professional one and nothing more.

“Oh, sure,” he said easily. “No point in making the great escape, only to get clobbered the second I let my guard down.”

Delia smiled then, but there was still something strained about her expression, as if she’d only done so because she thought he expected it and not because she was genuinely amused.

He finished the rest of his cognac, feeling the slightest bit swimmy when he set the glass down. In general, alcohol didn’t affect him as strongly as it would a person who didn’t have any demon DNA in their veins, but that had been a lot of cognac.

And he’d lost a lot of blood.

So he was just fine with having Delia lead him down the hallway and show him the guest room and its attached bathroom, both of which were nicely appointed and didn’t appear to have been used much, if ever. She even had a spare toothbrush still in its package and an accompanying tube of toothpaste, along with some other toiletries.

“You never know when someone’s going to forget something,” she explained as she shut the medicine cabinet after showing him all the supplies. “So I like to stock a few things.”

“You have a lot of guests?” he asked.

Now her expression was genuinely amused. “Not as many as I’d thought when I got all this set up. My dad’s family is still back in Chicago, and I suppose I figured they’d want to come out here to visit during the winter to get away from the snow. But the couple of times they’ve come, they wanted to stay in a hotel so they could use the swimming pool.”

Caleb was a little surprised she didn’t have one — a majority of the houses in Las Vegas seemed to have their own swimming pools — but possibly part of the reason she’d gotten a deal on the house was that she would have had to put one in herself.

“Your parents wouldn’t host them at their place?”

She grinned. “My dad is one of four brothers. There are a lot of relatives, so I was trying to be the overflow. I guess I underestimated the draw of a resort pool in February.”

Her expression was so infectious, he just had to smile back. It was good to hear about normal families doing normal things, so unlike his own experiences. Because his mother was also an only child, he didn’t have any aunts or uncles.

No, all he’d had were the other part demons in his father’s circle, and they weren’t exactly known for being cuddly and “Kumbaya.”

“Well, I appreciate the guest room, so thanks.”

Delia’s smile faded a bit. “You’re welcome. I suppose I’ll leave you to it.”

The words ended with an upward inflection, indicating that she wasn’t quite sure whether he was ready to go to bed.

On most nights, he wouldn’t have been, since he rarely hit the sack before midnight. However, after that demon attack — and all that cognac — he thought he’d probably pass out the minute his head hit the pillow.

“Yeah, I’m going to try to sleep all this off. You have a good night.”

“You, too.”

He went into the bedroom and shut the door, glad that it was set up as a secondary main suite so he wouldn’t have to wander down the hall to brush his teeth and splash some water on his face before he went to bed.

As he headed into the bathroom, though, he couldn’t help wondering whether Delia intended to go to bed right away, too. It was kind of weird to think of her sleeping just down the hall.

No, it felt…intimate.

But it wasn’t. She was offering him a helping hand, nothing more.

Still, he knew he needed to be grateful for it.