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Chapter Twenty-Three

Caleb was glad to see Delia hadn’t been so rattled by their encounter with the demon that she wasn’t willing to listen to his advice as to what they should do next.

“The security cameras would have seen you come in here,” he said, and she flicked a worried glance toward the double doors that led into Hendricks’ office. “So you need to go back out the same way.”

“Isn’t the Dunes’ security team going to have a few questions when they discover I was the last person to see their main man alive?”

She’d looked calm enough as she made that query, but he could see the way her hand shook as she lifted it to push back a stray lock of coppery hair.

“Probably,” he admitted. “But there’s nothing to show what actually went down in here, and I have a feeling it’s going to be a little while before they even realize Hendricks is missing.”

Her gaze moved past him to take in their surroundings. While there were a couple of wet blotches here and there on the floor from all the holy water that had been thrown around, that would dry soon enough, and because none of the furniture had gotten knocked over or even moved, you couldn’t tell that they’d had an altercation with a demon in the office just a few minutes earlier.

There wasn’t a body, either, making it that much harder to figure out exactly what had happened to the erstwhile Mr. Hendricks.

“All right,” Delia said. “And then what…meet you in that same hallway where we first materialized?”

Caleb had already thought about that. Although there were cameras everywhere, they couldn’t pick up on every single person who came and went in the casino. It had been important for them to not be seen arriving together, but he didn’t think there would be a problem with her heading out the front door and grabbing a taxi.

When he explained this to her, though, she only frowned.

“You think someone isn’t going to ask why I didn’t take my own car?”

“They might,” he replied. “But you can just say it wouldn’t start or something, and that you took a taxi here because you didn’t want to miss your meeting. Unlike an Uber, you can’t be tracked in a taxi as long as you pay cash.”

“All right,” Delia said. She still looked a little reluctant, but she didn’t seem willing to argue the point any further. “And then what?”

“Then we have the post-mortem,” he said, and smiled. “Your place or mine?”

In the end, they decided it was smarter to have the taxi drop Delia off at her house, just because that was the logical place she would have headed after she met with Robert Hendricks. To make everything look on the up and up, Caleb blinked himself home first so he could get his Range Rover and drive to her place.

Nothing in the house had been disturbed…and he had a feeling he wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore, not with Calach banished. He’d been a higher order of demon than the ones he’d summoned to stick a crowbar into the safe existence Caleb had created for himself, so there wasn’t much chance of any further demonic interference now that the lead guy had been sent back to Hell where he belonged.

Well, no more demonic interference for now, anyway.

When he arrived at Delia’s house and knocked at the door, she answered wearing the same black leggings and big black sweatshirt she’d worn the night before, signaling that she’d been in a hurry to get out of the outfit she’d worn during the confrontation with the demon.

He couldn’t really blame her for that. Most likely, it would take a couple of dry cleanings to get all the stink out of those clothes.

An open bottle of a red blend from Trader Joe’s sat on the kitchen counter. “Want some?” she asked as he followed her inside.

“Hell, yeah.”

She grinned, then went over to the cupboard to fetch another wine glass. After pouring him a healthy measure of the red, she said, “Let’s go sit down.”

As he’d done the other times he’d visited her house, Caleb made sure to seat himself in one of the club chairs rather than next to Delia on the couch. While she’d been much friendlier these past couple of days, he knew he couldn’t push it…even if he also couldn’t quite forget the way it had felt to embrace her in that corridor off the kitchens at the Dunes.

Too bad that embrace had been all pretend.

At least on her part.

“How’re you doing?” he asked, and she grimaced.

“I’ll probably have a stiff neck and nightmares for a couple of days, but I’ll get over it.”

Caleb had no doubt of that. For all her outward prettiness, she was tough as nails.

“Do you think they’ll question me?” she said next.

“The cops?”

She nodded.

“At some point, probably. But there’s nothing to connect you to Robert Hendricks’ disappearance, and my being over here right now will only help you with your alibi.”

One eyebrow arched as she sipped some wine. “How so?”

“Because we’ve already decided your story is that you had to take a taxi to the hotel because your car wouldn’t start. You can tell them I came over to help you out with jump-starting it or whatever.”

Apparently, she thought that particular detail was a decent addition to the alibi they’d already concocted, because she nodded and helped herself to another swallow of wine.

Caleb thought that looked like a good idea and sipped some of his red blend as well. It wasn’t top-tier stuff by any stretch of the imagination, but he still thought it would do the trick.

“Okay, so hopefully we’ve got that part figured out,” she said. “But what about the demons? Are they going to keep attacking you?”

“I doubt it,” Caleb replied, since he’d already pondered that question on the drive over here. “I think Robert Hendricks summoned Calach, for whatever reason, and then once it had taken over his appearance and his life, it was the one calling the lesser demons to try to kick my ass — or get rid of me permanently. I still haven’t muddled my way through that part. But my gut instinct is that he was mostly trying to scare me off from visiting any casinos.”

Delia’s greenish eyes glinted with amusement. “Did he?”

“For now,” he said, and thought he saw a flicker of approval cross her face. “Sure, Calach has been sent back to Hell…but I don’t know for sure whether there are any other demons hanging around here and watching to make sure I toe the line. I haven’t sensed them, although that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Now that they know I’m here — even if they haven’t been able to puzzle out exactly who I am beyond not being completely human — they could be taking measures to disguise their demon natures.”

It wasn’t a prospect he much enjoyed contemplating, and since Delia frowned slightly before she sipped some more of her wine, Caleb could tell she wasn’t exactly thrilled, either.

“Or it could be that Calach was the only demon here,” he added, since he didn’t want their conversation to turn into a shit spiral. After all, they’d gotten rid of the creature who’d usurped Robert Hendrick’s existence, and that was a pretty big accomplishment. At some point, they’d need to figure out why Hendricks had summoned a demon in the first place…and probably try to do a little more digging about The Styx Group, because he couldn’t shake the feeling that the mysterious company was involved in all this somehow. For now, though, Caleb was okay with resting on his laurels. “And if Calach was the only demon in Las Vegas, then I suppose I have carte blanche to do what I want. But it just seems smarter to me to do what we already talked about — invest my money in other ventures and stay away from the casinos for a while.”

“But what will you do for fun?” she asked next, mouth quirking into a half-smile, and he couldn’t help but shake his head.

“Maybe I’ll get a boat or something. Then again, I have a feeling I’m going to be pretty occupied with the reno on Pueblo Street for the next few months. That should keep me out of trouble for a while.”

“A little while,” Delia commented, amused expression not budging in the slightest.

She probably had a point. Still, even though winning at the casinos had both helped him fill his empty days and plump up his bank accounts quite nicely, he knew he was sitting on enough cash that he wouldn’t need to replenish those funds for quite some time.

“Or maybe,” he said, as a sudden idea occurred to him, “I should work on getting my real estate license. Then I would have more leverage when looking for investment properties.”

“Seriously?” she responded. Judging by the way her mouth had pursed slightly, Caleb could tell she wasn’t totally thrilled by the idea.

All the more reason to pursue it. He liked Delia…he probably didn’t want to admit to himself exactly how much he liked her…but he also liked to mess with her head just the littlest bit.

Getting to do so on an ongoing basis seemed like a pleasing prospect.

“Maybe we’ll even go into business together,” he said, and now she actually chuckled.

“Isn’t that kind of what we were doing already, considering you want me to basically design the Pueblo Street house for you?”

He supposed one could look at their arrangement that way.

“Sure,” he said easily. “But this would be more like a real partnership…if you’re interested. I just think we work pretty well together.”

For a long moment, she didn’t say anything, and instead gazed down into her half-drunk glass of wine as though she was hoping to discover the mysteries of the ages in there.

Then she looked up and gave him a lopsided smile.

“Sure,” she replied, then added, “I think this might be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

In answer to that comment, he clinked his glass against hers.

They could start with friendship…and then see where things led from there.

He thought he might be all right with that.

Vegas Slayers continues with Devil in the Details, releasing in June 2025!