Speak of the Devil

CHAPTER 19

That night, I slept like the dead. I half expected Lugh to interrupt my sleep for a little strategy meeting or a seduction attempt, but he didn’t. I should have been well rested when I woke up the next morning at around ten, but I still felt almost as exhausted as I had when I’d turned in.

“Lugh, please tell me you weren’t driving my body around during my sleep,” I muttered to the empty air.

My defenses were obviously still down, for I had no trouble hearing his response: I wasn’t driving your body around during your sleep. The exhaustion isn’t physical.

Great. At least physical exhaustion I knew how to fix. This emotional breakdown, or whatever it was, I had no idea what to do with.

I’d slept in my clothes, so I was looking less than my best when I dragged myself out of bed. I took a quick shower, which failed to make me feel any more lively, then pulled on the same outfit and wandered out into the main room.

There was a plaid blanket neatly folded over one arm of the sofa, but that was the only visible evidence that Saul had ever been here. I wondered where he’d gone, but I wasn’t interested enough to call him and find out.

There was also no sign of Raphael, which I couldn’t see as anything but a positive. In the kitchen, a pot of coffee at least an hour old languished on the burner. I helped myself to a cup anyway. Even stale coffee is better than no coffee, and I was too lazy to brew a fresh pot.

I sat on Raphael’s couch for I don’t know how long, sipping coffee and staring off into space, trying not to brood. I was surprisingly successful at it, unless sitting around doing nothing while white noise filled my head could be considered brooding. I might have been able to sit there all day, but the sound of a ringing phone snapped me out of it.

It was my cell phone, which, of course, was in my purse, which was in the bedroom. I had to sprint to get to it in time. Considering the stupor I’d been in, I moved remarkably fast. I hate to admit it, but the only reason I moved so fast was the faint hope that it might be Brian, that he might be ready to talk. I wondered if that spike of hope meant that I’d be able to get over my own irrational anger if Brian would only come back to me.

If my brain had been even marginally functional, I’d have known it wasn’t Brian. I’d assigned him a special ring tone on my cell, and this wasn’t it. When I answered the phone and heard a female voice on the other end of the line, I was so disappointed I felt almost dizzy with it.

“Morgan? Hello?” It was PI Barbie—just the person I wanted to talk to first thing in the morning.

I frowned. First thing in the morning was long gone. It could be afternoon for all I knew. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was eleven-thirty.

“Hello?” Barbie queried again. “Can you hear me?”

I sighed. “Yeah, I can hear you.”

“This is Barbara Paget. I talked to Maguire’s ex-girlfriend, Jessica Miles, this morning, and I found out something very interesting.”

She sounded kind of excited. I couldn’t muster any excitement myself, but I managed to make an encouraging noise that prompted her to continue.

“Your whole … situation started when Jessica accused Maguire of beating her up. But it turns out that wasn’t what really happened.”

This was what she was getting all excited about? “So what? Maguire always claimed it was the new guy in her life who hit her, not him.” I’d even felt sorry for him for a while, until after I’d exorcized the demon and seen the wreckage that was his host. The demon might not have hurt Jessica Miles, but he’d sure done a job on Jordan Maguire Jr.

“Turns out Maguire was right, and it was her new guy who hit her. But get this: It was a setup, on both their parts. The new guy, Tim Simms— great name, huh? — convinced her Maguire had been cheating on her. He even produced photographs for proof.”

Okay, I had to admit my interest was piqued now.

“Simms whipped Jessica into a frenzy about Maguire, the two-timing jerk, and they came up with a plan to get revenge. They waited until after she’d argued with Maguire, then she called Simms over and he gave her a couple of showy bruises. And that was all it took to get Maguire’s demon exorcized.”

I shuddered. The general public thinks demons die when they’re exorcized, which meant Jessica and her boyfriend had committed what they thought was cold-blooded murder.

“And here’s the really weird part,” Barbie said. “Simms disappeared on the day you exorcized Maguire’s demon. He didn’t pack up a bag or anything, and his car’s still in his apartment’s parking lot. But no one has seen or heard from him since.”

I had a sneaking suspicion that Simms would eventually be found, and that he wouldn’t be breathing. Psycho Demon—as I’d now dubbed the demon who had it in for me—seemed to have no qualms about using “disposable” hosts. I frowned, wishing all the information I had would line up and add up to a clear and tangible threat.

It sure seemed like Psycho Demon had possessed Tim Simms. His method of fabricating evidence was too familiar to be coincidence. Then he’d moved to Jack Hillerman after the exorcism, and he’d come after me with every gun in his arsenal. He’d then burned through both Hillerman and the hapless David Keller and was now in yet another host, still aiming to up my misery quotient.

But why? And why would he choose such a bizarre, elaborate scheme for his revenge? Why did he have to induce Jessica to frame Maguire? He couldn’t have known Maguire would be brain-dead at the end, could he?

Too many questions, too few answers.

I settled for asking a question I thought Barbie would be capable of answering. “How the hell did you get Jessica to basically confess to murder?” Barbie had said she was good at her job, but that was downright miraculous.

“I pretended to be Simms’s little sister, desperate to locate him. As Simms had discovered, Jessica’s biggest asset is definitely not her brain. She was pretty easy to, um, mislead.”

“I’ll bet,” I muttered under my breath.

“Does any of this mean anything to you?”

“No,” I lied, but no amount of practice was going to turn me into a good liar. I should have followed that monosyllabic answer with a little speculation about what the real story was, but my mind went completely blank.

Neither Barbie nor I spoke for what felt like about five minutes but was probably only thirty seconds or so.

“You know,” Barbie said when she finally deigned to break the awkward silence, “at this point, I’m in this up to my neck. It really wouldn’t hurt you to level with me.”

I made a sound between a snort and a laugh. “I’m not as easy to mislead as Jessica Miles.”

“Think about it a minute, Morgan. I knew before the police did that you had an excellent motive to kill Jack Hillerman. I could have gone to the police with that, but I didn’t.”

“Yeah, because Adam put the fear of God into you, so to speak.”

“I wasn’t going to talk to them anyway, but that’s beside the point. My career is history if my recent activities come to light. I’m in this with you till the end, and I’ll be able to do better work if you tell me what you and Adam think is going on.”

“So you have no problem helping out someone who may have murdered your former employer?”

It was her turn to snort. “I’m confident you didn’t kill him.”

I raised my eyebrows, though of course she couldn’t see that. “What makes you so sure?”

“Gut instinct, for one. But it’s also that I can’t see you being stupid enough to openly waltz into his office during regular business hours and shoot him. The fact that the shooter used a gun with a silencer is pretty clear evidence that it was premeditated murder, but if it was premeditated, it hardly made sense for you to do it in such a way as to make yourself the prime suspect.”

Very true. I wondered how the prosecutor would explain my reasoning. But I was getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I’d never be formally charged with Hillerman’s death. Yeah, and perhaps even now, pigs were flying over the frozen plains of Hell.

Barbie’s reasoning made perfect sense, and she was probably telling the truth about her current commitment to the cause. However, there was no way in hell I was going to level with her. I’d have to reveal too much of my hard-earned, forbidden knowledge to even begin to explain.

“Have you had any success finding out who created the photographs?” I asked. I wasn’t going to tell Barbie the whole story, but I decided not to rub her face in the fact, either.

She paused, and I felt sure she was going to press me to give her the juicy details. But she didn’t, and I let go of a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

“Not yet. But I’m going to work on the assumption that Hillerman and Simms used the same source, and that gives me a few more bread crumbs to follow.”

“Great. Let me know if you find anything.” I meant that to be a dismissal, but Barbie either didn’t get it, or she chose to ignore it.

“So I hear Hillerman’s intern met with an untimely end sometime last night.”

Internally, I cringed. Considering Psycho Demon was gunning for me, there were sure a lot of other people getting hurt in his wake.

“Yeah, I heard that, too.”

“And is it a coincidence that I haven’t been able to reach you at your home number?”

“Is there a point you’re trying to make, or are you just jabbing pins in me for shits and grins?”

“My point is you can use all the help you can get.”

“Oh, we’re back on that, are we?”

“I don’t give up easily. I’ll figure out whatever it is you’re hiding, and then I’ll help you whether you want me to or not.”

The sound that left my throat now was almost a growl. “What the fuck do you care? I’m not even a paying client, and if I were a paying client, I’d fire you for sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

Barbie was silent so long I thought she might have hung up. But she’d been telling nothing but the truth when she said she didn’t give up easily.

“The things I did for Jack Hillerman…” She sighed. “It wasn’t the first time I’d compromised my professional ethics on a case, but always before, it was for a good cause. I did more than just compromise my ethics this time, and I did it for money. I can’t even hide behind a good cause. That’s not the kind of person I want to be. So if I can help you, it’ll help me feel a little less like a scum-sucking bottom feeder.”

“You were just trying to protect your sister,” I said, then was surprised at myself for coming to Barbie’s defense. By all rights, I should hate this woman.

“That’s what I told myself,” Barbie agreed. “But now I think I was looking for an easy way out. For years, I’ve busted my ass to keep Blair at The Healing Circle, and I couldn’t resist the lure of easy money. I should have just kept busting my ass like always.”

Maybe if I hadn’t sacrificed Tommy Brewster to save my brother, I wouldn’t have been able to identify with Barbie at all. I’m certain I wouldn’t have been able to forgive her. I’m not the most forgiving of people under the best of circumstances. But honestly, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing had our roles been reversed, so I was having a hard time throwing stones.

“Believe me, Barbie, I know exactly what it’s like to make bad decisions when people you love are involved.”

“Very intriguing, but I’ll resist my urge to pry. One thing, though: please don’t call me Barbie. My name’s Barbara.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “If you don’t want me calling you Barbie, then you need to either change your name, or gain twenty pounds and dye your hair.”

“Fine. But remember, two can play that game, Morgie.”

We both laughed at that. It felt kind of surreal, trading quips with the woman who’d wreaked such havoc on my life. But it also felt kind of … good. Once upon a time, before Lugh came into my life, I’d had a friend I could banter with. I’d never been big on the whole “girl talk” thing, but Val and I had on occasion indulged, discussing our romantic woes over pints of chocolate chip ice cream. I missed those days. I missed Val, at least the woman I’d thought Val was.

I think Barbie caught the vibe of my thoughts even over the phone line, because she followed up with, “If you ever decide you need to spill those secrets of yours, just give me a call. I think you might find me a useful asset, especially now that you can’t lean on Adam as much.”

It was my turn to sigh. “Don’t get your hopes up,” I warned. “But thanks. I appreciate the offer.”

There was nothing more to say after that, so we hung up.