Speak of the Devil

CHAPTER 6

After the men in blue were called in, I no longer had to worry about how to while away the hours of the day. If I’d called them about the death threats, they might have brushed me off, but it seemed like a hand in the mail made a definite impression.

At this point in my life, I had way too much experience being interviewed by the police. I knew that the questions would get repetitive, and that the repetition would irritate the crap out of me. I would then proceed to irritate the crap out of whoever was interviewing me, which would make the whole thing last longer.

Color me shocked, but the process went just about like I expected. As an extra giggle in this already fun-filled afternoon, I was lectured by some pimple-faced rookie with Dumbo ears about how I should have called the police sooner. I managed to refrain from lecturing him about the wonders of Clearasil.

The cops found a bunch of fingerprints on the bubble wrap, but I had a hunch they would all turn out to be mine. Adam was right—whoever was after me wasn’t stupid or careless enough to leave fingerprints. The cops would check the fingerprints they found anyway. Conveniently, my prints were already on file from when I’d been arrested for illegal exorcism. Lucky me.

It was well past my usual dinnertime, and the cops were just packing up to leave, when Brian showed up. This, of course, meant I couldn’t get away with any delay tactics—I had to tell him right away about the lovely gift I’d received. At least the police were gone by the time I finished giving Brian the details, though they had left plenty of fingerprint powder behind. Yay, an excuse to do some more cleaning!

When I’d finished telling Brian about my day, he leaned back into the cushions of the sofa and let out a heartfelt sigh.

“You’re just unbelievable,” he muttered.

“Hey!” I said, punching him in the shoulder. “It’s not my fault some wacko decided to send me a hand in the mail.”

He smiled faintly as he rubbed his shoulder. “I’m just saying that your life is too eventful to believe. I’m not saying it’s your fault.”

I couldn’t disagree with his assessment.

Since my day was already shot to hell anyway, I decided to add a little more stress and misery to my plate and forge ahead with the conversation I usually would have done my best to put off.

“So, are you still pissed at me?”

Another sigh. “I’m not pissed at you. I never was.”

“Your nose is growing, Pinocchio.”

He propped his elbow on the back of the couch and half turned to face me. “I wish you had told me what was going on before last night. I wish you could be a quarter, or even an eighth as open with me as you are with Lugh.”

I started to say something indignant, but Brian cut me off.

“I know you don’t have a choice with Lugh. But you do have a choice with me.”

“Brian—”

“Let me finish.” He took my hand, giving it a firm squeeze. “You’re probably the most frustrating person I’ve ever met, but I’ve known that for a long time, and I still love you.” His lips quirked in a half smile. “Even though you drive me crazy.” The smile faded. “But I need you to trust me every once in a while.”

“I do!” I responded instantly. I’d loved Brian from the first moment I’d met him, even though logic had insisted—and still continued to insist—that we were all wrong for each other. And I trusted him more than I’d ever trusted anyone else in my life—not that that’s a ringing endorsement.

He quirked an eyebrow at me and looked skeptical.

“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about what Lugh was up to earlier. I just thought things between us were complicated enough without adding that to the mix.”

“And that’s the perfect example of what I mean when I say you don’t trust me enough. What bad thing would have happened if you’d told me as soon as you knew Lugh was interested?”

I crossed my arms and gritted my teeth. “You’d have gone all macho-man on me and gotten jealous.” I had to admit, I was surprised he seemed so much more upset about my failure to communicate than about the thought of Lugh trying to seduce me.

“Okay. I’m a normal guy. I don’t like finding out that some other guy is making moves on my woman.” He suddenly looked me straight in the eye while seeming to look right through me. “You hear me, Lugh? Morgan’s taken, and I’m not willing to share!” His eyes focused on me once more. “So I’m annoyed at Lugh. Big deal. You don’t think I’m going to dump you just because someone else wants you, do you?”

Reluctantly, I shook my head, because he was making way more sense than I liked.

“As long as you didn’t actually sleep with him, there’s only so upset I can get,” he concluded.

There he went with his impeccable logic again. “I still didn’t want to upset you.”

“So you’re never going to tell me anything that might upset me?” He was starting to get all pissed again. “You’re going to keep me in the dark, packed in cotton like some fragile glass ornament you only bring out at Christmas? How would you feel if I treated you that way?”

Once again, he had a point. My internal defense mechanisms wanted me to attack right back—I’m one of those “offense is the best defense” people—but I fought that instinct, taking a deep breath to calm myself down before I spoke.

“You’re right,” I admitted.

Brian looked startled.

“I’d hate it if you did that to me. And I’ll try my best not to do it again.”

His look was one of classic skepticism. “You’re going to stop hiding things from me ‘for my own good’?”

I grimaced. “I’ll try,” I promised. I thought of the big secret I was still keeping about what I’d let Adam do to me. But that was an old secret, and I was only promising not to keep new ones, right? “I’m probably going to screw up now and again, because it’s second nature to me. But I’ll try hard. Can you live with that?”

He regarded me for a long time before he answered, and I got the feeling he was searching every nuance of my expression for hidden clues. Finally, he sighed.

“I can live with that,” he said guardedly, “as long as your attempts meet with some success. Consider yourself on romantic probation and be on your best behavior for a while, okay?”

I didn’t like the way he’d phrased that—it sounded suspiciously like an ultimatum—but he was being pretty reasonable under the circumstances, so I nodded my acceptance.

I was still trying to figure out whether I should ask Brian about staying with him for a little while, just until we discovered who my secret admirer was, when the phone rang. I grabbed the phone and glanced at the caller ID. Jack Hillerman.

The name sounded vaguely familiar, but it took me a moment to place it. Then I remembered that Hillerman was Maguire’s attorney, the one Laura thought was trying to make a name for himself at my expense. Just who I wanted to talk to right now.

“Who is it?” Brian asked as I sat there stupidly staring at the phone.

“Maguire’s lawyer.” The phone rang for a fourth time, and my answering machine picked up. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear whatever Hillerman had to say. I noticed Brian wasn’t bugging me to answer it, so I figured I was making the right decision.

The answering machine beeped, then started to record.

“Ms. Kingsley,” said a deep male voice with an upper-crust accent that immediately made me think “pretentious snob.” “This is Jack Hillerman. I am Jordan Maguire’s attorney. It is my understanding that you made an attempt to contact my client this afternoon.”

Brian raised an eyebrow at me. I held up a hand in a “wait a minute” gesture.

“From now on,” Hillerman continued, “I must insist that any attempts to speak to my client be made through me. If you call him or speak to him again, I will have a restraining order put on you. My client has been through enough trauma without having to be harrassed by the author of his troubles.”

The answering machine beeped again, and I realized Hillerman had hung up. Brian was still giving me the eyebrow arch, so I answered his unspoken question.

“I thought maybe if I talked to Maguire, we could work something out without having to go through all this lawsuit bullshit. I knew it was a long shot, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. I just left a message with his daughter asking him to call. I certainly didn’t harass him.”

“Have you hired an attorney yet?”

I didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

“Morgan, hire an attorney. Tomorrow. I mean it.”

“Okay, okay.”

“These guys are obviously planning to play hardball, and you’ve never exactly been Miss Congeniality.”

I gave him a dirty look.

“Well, you haven’t!” he insisted. “It’s probably a good thing you didn’t reach Maguire or you might have said something he could have used against you.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, all my defensive reflexes coming to life at once. “Your faith in me is just overwhelming.”

He gave me a pointed look, and I pulled back on the reins of my temper.

“I got the message, okay?” I said. “I’ll call a lawyer tomorrow, and I won’t try to talk to Maguire again. Promise.”

Brian didn’t look entirely convinced, but thankfully, he let the subject drop.

Brian stayed the night, so I never got around to asking him if I could stay at his place for a while. Just as well, since I still couldn’t decide whether I wanted to. As always, the longer I could put off a decision, the happier I was.

I’m not sure if you could call our discussion of this afternoon a fight, but the sex that night sure had the feeling of make-up sex. Nothing I was going to complain about, that’s for sure.

Brian was gone by the time I woke up in the morning. Being currently unemployed gave me the leeway to sleep as late as I wanted. Of course, even when I was employed, I pretty much got to make my own hours. I really loved being an exorcist, and I hoped this suspension wouldn’t last much longer. But with the lawsuit hanging over my head, I suspected that was a pretty vain hope.

I did my zombie walk to the kitchen and had grabbed the coffee cannister and a filter before it registered in my sleep-addled mind that a full pot of coffee already awaited me. Have I mentioned how much I love Brian?

The coffee sucked as badly as ever, but I still smiled as I drank it, thinking of Brian thoughtfully setting the pot to brew before he headed home to get ready for work. I wandered out of the kitchen and saw that he had left me a note on the dining room table.

My happy little glow dimmed a bit when I saw that he’d made me an appointment with one of the lawyers he’d recommended. I know I’d been procrastinating about it, but I truly had been planning to make the call today. I guess Brian hadn’t believed me. My contrary nature immediately urged me not to show up for the appointment, but good sense prevailed over irritation.

My appointment wasn’t until two, so I spent the remaining hours of the morning cleaning up fingerprint dust and trying not to speculate too much about the package and its origins.

After a lunch of PB&J with a bad coffee chaser, I headed out to meet with my new lawyer.

As a general rule, I have a pretty low opinion of lawyers, Brian being a big exception. So I was prepared to despise Brandon Cook, Esq., long before I set foot in the offices of Beacham, Carrey, and Cook. And when I stepped into the ritzy, stuffy-looking lobby with its mahogany furniture and cigar-club decor, I mentally docked him another point. You may have noticed I’m not much for pomp and circumstance, and there was a hell of a lot of pomp on display. I was tempted to do an about-face and march right back out, but I resisted the impulse. I needed a lawyer, and this guy was someone Brian respected. The least I could do was give him a test drive.

Being me, I hadn’t dressed up for the occasion. The receptionist tried to be subtle as she took inventory of my outfit—low-rise jeans, my uniform of choice, along with a sleeveless cropped sweater that left my navel and the tattoo on my back on display. No doubt about it, I was underdressed. Ask me if I cared.

Despite her thinly veiled disapproval of my attire, the receptionist told me Mr. Cook would be right with me and asked me to take a seat in the waiting room.

Cook didn’t keep me waiting long, which was a good thing, or I might have bolted. I was relieved to see he wasn’t quite as stodgy as I expected. Yes, like everyone else in my field of vision, he was wearing a suit, but his tie was a cheery red with white polka dots instead of the ultraconservative brown, blue, and gray that everyone else wore. Then again, Cook was a partner, so he could get away with a little eccentricity.

He smiled when he saw me, holding out his hand for me to shake and greeting me without once seeming to notice my outfit. I’d guess his age at around forty-five, though he wore his years well. His salt and pepper hair was neatly cropped, and his gray-blue eyes looked disproportionately large behind his thick glasses.

“Come on back to my office,” he said, gesturing me to follow him as he headed down a long hallway to an impressive corner office.

“Nice view,” I said when I stepped inside, though I was thinking something more along the lines of “So this is the kind of office you get when you charge more than three hundred dollars for an hour of your time.”

The twinkle in his eye suggested he’d read my thought, but he refrained from commenting. I sat in one of the twin mahogany chairs that faced his desk and clasped my hands in my lap, not knowing where to begin.

“Brian has given me the basics about your case,” Cook said, “but I’d like to hear it all in your own words.”

I frowned. “So you and Brian know each other personally? I thought he was just making a recommendation based on your reputation.”

Cook shrugged. “I can’t say we know each other well, but you’re hardly the first client he’s sent my way.”

The fact that Brian knew him personally made me feel a little better, though I don’t know why. “Before I start telling you about my case, can we talk money? As in, I haven’t got any, but according to Brian I desperately need an attorney anyway.”

It was Cook’s turn to look surprised. “Brian instructed me to send the bills to him. I suppose he neglected to mention the fact to you?”

I wasn’t sure whether to feel amused, annoyed, or absurdly grateful. I settled for a mix of all three and spent the next hour explaining my situation and answering a dizzying array of questions. At least, I tried to answer them. Sometimes, all I could say was “I don’t know,” though I felt like I was failing some kind of test every time I did.

Most of the questions I couldn’t answer had something to do with statistical averages on exorcisms— the same kinds of questions Brian had asked when he’d browbeaten me into admitting I needed a lawyer. By the end of the hour, I was exhausted and well past the point of being ready to leave.

“I took the liberty of researching some of the questions I asked you before I met with you today,” Cook said just when I was starting to hope he was planning to let me go.

“Huh?”

“Brian told me he’d asked about exorcism statistics, so I went ahead and looked them up.”

I glared at him. “If you looked them up, then why did you bother asking me?”

“I was curious to see whether you’d looked them up after Brian asked you, but apparently not.”

Any suggestion of warm, fuzzy feelings I’d started to get over this guy vanished, and I seriously considered doing a Donald Trump “You’re fired!” Luckily, my temper isn’t quite that bad. And I did get the “You’re not taking this seriously enough” message.

“On average, twenty-one percent of exorcisms result positively with the host in full possession of his or her faculties,” Cook said. “Fifty-eight percent result in permanent catatonia, twenty percent result in temporary catatonia, and one percent in brain-death.”

From the tone of his voice and the expression on his face, I knew my statistics weren’t going to compare favorably. I gritted my teeth.

“And my averages?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to.

Cook glanced down at a piece of paper. “According to the U.S. Exorcism Board, they are seventeen, sixty, twenty-one, and two.” He glanced back up at me. “I haven’t had a chance to have a statistician look at the numbers yet to tell me whether the variation is statistically significant, but even if it isn’t, it’s not going to sound very good in court.”

A depressing thought, to be sure, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it now. Maybe I should start leaning on Dom to open his own restaurant so I could get a job waiting tables for him when I lost everything.

“It’s not a cause for despair,” Cook assured me. “It just means that there could be hard times to come. I’ll contact Mr. Maguire’s attorney and see if there’s any hope of convincing them to drop the suit. Considering your financial situation, Mr. Maguire will no doubt spend far more money pursuing the case than he can ever hope to recoup by winning it.”

“Good luck with that,” I murmured. I’d have liked to believe there was an easy way out, but I thought it was about as likely as me winning the lottery without buying a ticket.

Cook was escorting me down the hall toward the front door when something struck me, and I came to a halt with a frown.

“You work fast,” I said as a suspicion took form in my head. “You found out all those statistics in the time since Brian made the appointment?”

Cook looked surprised. “Four days was more than enough time. I certainly don’t consider that to be working particularly fast.”

I bit down on my tongue to stop myself from saying something I would regret. I’d save that for when I next saw Brian. I’d been somewhat annoyed to discover he’d made the appointment for me this morning. Finding out he’d made it four days ago and only got around to telling me about it this morning did not sit well at all.

Preferring to think about being angry with Brian than about what the outcome of this lawsuit might be, I left Cook’s office and began plotting my verbal smack-down.