Jenna Black - The Devil Inside

“Uh-huh.” How someone could know that was beyond me, since as far as I knew it was impossible for a human being to remain human when possessed. “And what else could it mean?”

The look he gave me was very grim. “It could mean that they summoned me here to kill me.”

I didn’t like the sound of that at all, because I suspected baddies of that caliber wouldn’t do it by just exorcizing him-they’d do it by burning me at the stake.

Lugh met my eyes and some of the grimness left his face. “But that’s probably not the case,” he said gently. “Otherwise, they would have killed me that first night.”

I thought about Val and about the masked men who’d broken into my house. “Maybe they were happy to let you live as long as I was in control. But when I showed Val that letter and they knew you were communicating with me, they shifted to Plan B.” Plan B, which probably involved him being burned to death in my body. Oh, joy.

I tried to imagine Val being party to a plan to kill me, and my mind balked at it. She was my best friend, goddammit! She wouldn’t hurt me.

Except she had hurt me, and she’d tried to Taser me, and her explanation for why just didn’t ring true, no matter how much I wanted it to.

My throat tightened and for a moment I thought I might cry. I rarely let myself cry, and when I do, it’s not in front of other people. Certainly not in front of sexy, terrifying demons who just happened to be cohabiting with me in my body.

“That does seem like a very real possibility,” Lugh said.

He’d moved over to sit next to me on the couch. I hadn’t seen him do it, so I supposed he just poofed from one place to the next. I jumped about a mile into the air and scrambled away from him. His hand closed around my arm to keep me still.

“You have nothing to fear from me, Morgan. I am not your enemy, and I couldn’t harm you even if I wanted to.”

Yeah, that was real reassuring.

“Let go of me.” I said it in a very calm, steady voice, even though my heart was jackhammering. It wasn’t all fear, either. His hand felt wonderfully warm and solid on my arm, and his body seemed to radiate a comforting heat. His hair spilled over his shoulder and brushed against the skin of my arm, and it was like a brush of warm silk. Up close, I could smell the leather, along with an exotic, musky scent I couldn’t put a name to.

He did as I asked, but he still crowded my personal space on the couch.

“Give me some room, will you?” I asked, a hint of desperation in my voice.

To my intense relief, he moved away. My hormones put up a feeble protest, but I shut them up with a mental snarl.

“What should I do?” I asked, because I frankly was clueless.

“Find the strongest exorcist you can and have him try to exorcize me.”

My jaw dropped open in shock.

My expression seemed to amuse him for a moment, then he sobered and put that grim face back on. I didn’t like his grim face.

“I’m a reformer for human rights, Morgan. One of my most important causes is to prevent my kind from possessing unwilling hosts. I think whoever has done this to me has a cruel sense of humor. And he also knows that I will not willingly be party to such a plan.”

He leaned forward and took my hand. For reasons I didn’t want to examine, I let him. “I won’t lie to you,” he said. “I suspect even your strongest exorcist won’t be able to cast me out. I’m very powerful among my kind, or my reform efforts would not have worried anyone. But you have to try it anyway, or you risk losing your own life in a most unpleasant manner.”

A lump formed in my throat. As much as I hated demons, I wasn’t sure I wanted this particular one to die in a heroic sacrifice to save my life. And having seen what happens to most hosts when their demons are exorcized, the idea didn’t seem too appealing. Of course, if the alternative was him dying because I was burned alive, I’d take Door Number One.

“I’ll see what I can do. Of course, I have to get out of jail first.”

“I suspect that will happen rather quickly.”

He flickered, and I realized I was waking up when I still had lots more questions I could ask. I opened my mouth to blurt one out, but the next thing I knew I was sitting bolt upright in my bed. That is, my prison cot.

A guard was standing outside my cell, looking impatient. “Lady, you sleep like the dead,” she said.

I really didn’t like that particular phrase at the moment.

The cell door opened. “Your lawyer’s here,” the guard said, unclipping her handcuffs from her belt.

Hoping that was good news, I peacefully held out my hands to be cuffed and tried not to think too much about my dwindling hopes that Lugh was just a figment of my imagination.

I made bail, which was a relief. It didn’t mean the murder charge would go away, of course. I trusted the justice system to some extent, but not enough to just sit back and let them handle the whole thing.

I’d been mulling over the question of who might hate me enough to frame me for murder, and a name had finally risen to the top of the list: Dominic Castello. He hadn’t been very happy with me on the day I’d cast out his demon. And if Dominic was involved, that would explain Adam’s mysterious interest in the case.

My first priority when I got out of jail was to get cleaned up and change into fresh clothes. I momentarily regretted that I’d chosen to live out in the suburbs instead of in Center City, because this little jaunt was going to cost me around three hours. Still, I felt too grungy to skip it.

I wasn’t surprised to find my house had been thoroughly tossed by the police. It didn’t look like they’d made any particular effort to be messy about it — it wasn’t like on TV where they sweep the contents of bookshelves on the floor and leave them in a heap — but lots of things weren’t where they belonged. But I was just going to have to live with it, because this wasn’t the time for housekeeping.

They had, of course, confiscated my Taser. Normally, I wouldn’t have minded so much. There were times I carried the Taser when going into the city, but it wasn’t like it was glued to my hip. Right now, though, I kind of minded because I was about to do something that might be a tad on the stupid side. I was going to pay a visit to my good friend Dominic.

Since he wasn’t demon-possessed anymore, you might think I didn’t need the Taser for self-defense. However, he was still considerably larger than me, and if he blew a fuse, I’d be at a distinct disadvantage. But that wasn’t going to stop me.

I looked him up in the phone book, and, sure enough, he was listed. He’d made it real tough for God’s Wrath to find him. He lived in South Philly, in a largely Italian neighborhood. I wondered if he had Family connections, in which case visiting him might be even stupider than I’d originally thought.

I took the train into the city, then took a cab to the address. I stood on the front stoop for a moment, gathering my wits. On the stoop next to Dominic’s house, an old man wearing an undershirt sat on the steps smoking a cigarette and eyeing every woman under the age of fifty who passed by. When I felt his attention lock onto me, I decided it was time to get moving.

I rang the doorbell, keeping a watch on the geezer out of the corner of my eye. He was definitely giving me the once-over. As long as he was just looking, I was fine with that. I wasn’t dressed particularly sexy today, thank goodness.

I had just decided Dominic wasn’t home when his door opened. He didn’t look happy to see me.

“What do you want?” he asked. It wasn’t quite a snarl, but it wasn’t much friendlier. Oh yeah, this guy was holding a grudge, all right.