Page 40 of Speak of the Devil
Oh, boy. Maybe some people would have considered that a compliment, but….
“No prom queen here,” she said. “Just the punk rock chick with screaming red hair and Doc Martens sitting in the back row of your English lit class.”
“We didn’t have too many punk rock chicks in Greencastle,” he said, which she could well believe. She’d looked up the town the night before after she got home…after Pru had dropped all those bombshells at dinner. It looked like a picture-perfect small Midwest town, with its own private liberal arts college and lots of brick buildings and green lawns and big, shady trees. Maybe there had been a few rebels, but she had a feeling that mohawks and combat boots had been few and far between.
Not that she’d ever had a mohawk. Dyeing her hair was one thing, but shaving off huge chunks of it was an entirely different proposition.
“Anyway,” he went on. “Everyone thought I — and the rest of the part demons — were ordinary, upstanding citizens, and we did our best to reinforce that image. The last thing we wanted was anyone paying too much attention to us.”
Beyond being the prom king and quarterback, she supposed. But then, she doubted anyone would suspect the high school hero of being anything more than what he appeared to be on the surface.
“Wise plan,” she said, then decided to let it go. She’d had enough revelations today. The important thing was that they’d done what they could for the victims whose bodies had been hidden in the basement, and now it was just a waiting game until the title on the house cleared and the funds transferred.
Especially since they were technically trespassing right now. True, Paige hadn’t taken down the lockbox, but still, etiquette generally suggested that Delia should have cleared this visit with the listing agent before she and Caleb came over here.
Well, what Paige didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
“Anyway,” Delia added, “I have a client coming to the office at one-thirty, so I should probably get going.”
And thank God they’d come in separate cars. After what Caleb had shown her, she guessed he could just blip himself wherever he needed to go, although it seemed as if he mostly drove around like a regular person.
Just another part of that whole not-attracting-attention thing.
For a second or two, he hesitated, and she wondered if he was going to ask if she wanted to go to lunch, and how she would reply. Yes, they’d had dinner the other night, but that was before she knew about the whole demon thing.
It was obviously going to take quite a while for her brain to adequately wrap itself around that unexpected piece of news.
Then he said, sounding casual, “Sure. I guess just let me know when the title search is done and what I need to do next.”
That part was easy. “Absolutely.”
They headed to the front door, where she returned the key to the lockbox and made sure it was secured before they both went down the front walk to the curb where their cars were parked. Still looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world, he waved at her before he climbed into his shiny black Range Rover — a vehicle she guessed he’d also paid for with his winnings — and drove off down the street.
No concern of hers where he’d gotten the money, she thought as she got into her little hybrid SUV and fastened the seatbelt.
Except….
Robert Hendricks’ face flashed into her mind.
What do you know about demons?
A lot more than she had a half-hour ago. But that wasn’t the point.
No, the real point was that — she realized with a sinking sensation in her stomach — Caleb Lockwood was probably the very demon Mr. Hendricks and his buddies at the various casinos had been looking for all along.
Chapter Thirteen
Hadhe really just confessed all to Delia Dunne?
It sure looked that way.
Why he’d done such a crazy-ass thing, Caleb wasn’t even sure. Maybe he’d decided to take a chance because she was someone who already had plenty of experience with the supernatural…or maybe he’d gotten tired of pretending to be something he wasn’t.
Whatever the reason for unburdening himself, he thought she’d taken it pretty well. She hadn’t freaked out or run away or tried to throw holy water on him — something he knew she could have easily done, since she always seemed to carry some in that little banishing kit she kept in her purse — and instead had asked some fairly sensible questions.
And even though he knew a real estate agent wasn’t the same thing as a lawyer and they didn’t have anything close to a confidentiality clause, he still thought he could trust her to keep his secret.
Probably because no one would believe her if she decided to spill the beans.
