Jenna Black - The Devil You Know

Andy was still asleep when I got up, so I made myself a pot of coffee and sat at the table, examining my options for the day. It was Saturday, but Adam was on duty today so he couldn’t stand guard over Andy. That left me in something of a quandary, because Saturday was meeting day for the Spirit Society, which meant there was a good chance my parents’ house would be unoccupied for at least an hour and a half this afternoon. It seemed unlikely I would have a better chance to take another shot at my dad’s study than that.

I was about halfway through the pot of coffee when Andy staggered out of bed. I was glad to see he’d gained enough strength to get from the bedroom to the dining room without leaning on me, though when he plopped into the chair, I could see that the effort had exhausted him.

Wordlessly, I slipped into the kitchen and poured him a mug of coffee, black with a teaspoon of sugar, just the way he liked it. I felt positively domestic. We sipped our coffee in companionable silence for about ten minutes, and I watched the caffeine banish the remnants of sleep from his face.

“What’s the plan for today?” he asked when he was fully awake.

“Good question,” I mumbled into my coffee cup.

“Are you going to go by Mom and Dad’s place while they’re at the meeting?”

I had told him last night about my adventure. He still maintained that he didn’t remember anything unusual or suspicious about my hospitalization, but he had agreed that it might be a good idea to get a look at the rest of the files.

“The idea has possibilities,” I admitted.

He nodded sagely. “But you’re afraid to leave me alone, and Adam has to work today.”

“There’s also the fact that I’m not real good at breaking and entering,” I said, trying to deflect any guilt he might feel about slowing me down.

He laughed. “It’s not that hard. Especially when I have a key to the house.”

I almost slapped myself in the forehead for that one. Of course Andy, as the favored son, would have a key to our parents’ house. He was always welcome there, unlike me. So we were back to the problem of how to keep Andy safe.

“Just give me a Taser and lock the door behind you when you leave,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

“Not if Raphael breaks the door down,” I said gloomily.

“If he does, I shoot him with the Taser and then call the police. Besides, he’s not likely to attack in broad daylight. He may be a demon prince, but he’d die as easily as a commoner if he’s convicted of going rogue.”

That made a certain amount of sense, but I still hated the idea of leaving Andy alone and undefended when he was so weak. What if he ran out of energy and fell asleep? Raphael could be in the apartment and on him before he ever woke up. Not to mention that giving Andy my Taser would leave me Taserless myself. I wished I had more than one.

Andy saw my uncertainty and reached across the table to pat my hand. “Look, if I were going to tell you all kinds of crap Raphael doesn’t want me to say, I would have done it by now. He knows that.”

“Yeah, but he’s under orders to kill you anyway.”

Andy shrugged. “You may have noticed he’s not too good at following orders.” He smiled at me. “You two have that in common.”

I couldn’t think of a good comeback, so I just reached out and cuffed him on the side of the head. “Jerk.”

“So are you going to go be a girl detective, or are you going to sit around the apartment being useless all day?”

I gave him a dirty look, but we both knew he’d won the argument. Fighting my reluctance, reminding myself that Andy was far more vulnerable than I, I handed over the Taser. I just hoped he was right about Raphael. If I came home from my little adventure and found out Andy’d been killed in my absence, I didn’t know if I’d ever get over the guilt.

The Spirit Society meeting starts at three-thirty and usually lasts until about five. Many of the faithful go out to dinner together afterward, but I wasn’t going to count on my parents spending the extra time.

The house was in one of the more heavily residential areas of the city, but there was a tiny grocery store across the street. I slipped inside for surveillance duty shortly after three o’clock—it would be pretty embarrassing to break into my parents’ house and discover that they’d decided to play hooky this week!

I browsed aimlessly through the shelves, keeping an eye on my parents’ house through the front window. I’d dressed in a conservative—for me—pair of jeans, with a light windbreaker that I kept zipped to cover the hint of belly that showed between the jeans and my blouse. I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, but at five foot nine and with spiky red hair, it was kind of hard to miss me. I saw the geezer at the cash register watching my every move. The store was so small, it was hard to keep up the illusion that I was shopping for more than about five minutes.

Sensing that the guy at the cash register was getting more and more antsy, I snatched up a bottle of Tylenol, then went to the register.

“Will there be anything else?” he asked, still giving me the hairy eyeball.

“Nope, that’ll do it,” I replied cheerfully.

I watched my parents’ front door out of the corner of my eye while he rang up my purchase. Then I made a big deal out of rooting through my purse looking for exact change. I was almost completely out of reasons to stall when the door finally opened and my parents stepped out. Mom locked up behind them, and they began walking briskly down the street in the opposite direction from my vantage point.

Sighing in relief, I pulled out a twenty and handed it to the cashier. He opened his mouth to say something, then shook his head and took the money. He shorted me on the change, but I figured I owed him the extra buck for rent.

I tried not to look furtive and sneaky as I climbed the three steps up to the door and slipped Andy’s key into the lock. I’d been half-afraid the key wouldn’t work, but the door opened easily, and soon I was inside.

The first thing I noticed was the way-too-strong floral air freshener. I sneezed three times in rapid succession.

What was that all about? My mom usually kept small bowls of potpourri sitting around, but they wouldn’t have this strong a scent. Then I ventured another sniff, stifling my need to sneeze again.

Under that cloying fragrance of pasteurized, processed flower product, there was something else. Smoke.

I had a bad feeling about this.

Ignoring Dad’s study for the moment, I made my way to the den at the back of the house. The focal point of the den was an oversized fireplace. Sure enough, there was an impressive pile of ashes in there. When I got close enough, I noticed the air around the fireplace was still warm, and when I pulled aside the curtain, I saw a glowing ember or two.

Having a sneaking suspicion what I would find, I went to Dad’s study.

Outwardly, it looked exactly as it had yesterday. But I wasn’t a bit surprised when I pulled open my drawer and saw that it was empty. I slammed it closed and recited as many curses as I could think of. Then I gave the drawer a swift kick for good measure.

I supposed the only reasonable thing to do was to search through the rest of the files, hoping to find something Dad missed. However, I wasn’t optimistic about my chances of success.

I was just bending to open Andy’s file when I heard the front door open and close. I froze. Now what?

Footsteps moved down the hall, and I realized at once that whoever this was, it wasn’t my mom or my dad. When they went to Spirit Society meetings, they went dressed in their Sunday best, which meant high-heeled pumps for my mom and leather-soled dress shoes for my dad. Whoever was in the house was wearing squeaky rubber soles.