To take the situation from uncomfortable to nearly unbearable, Raphael was the next of Lugh’s council members to arrive. I think Saul is the only person in the universe who hates Raphael more than Andy does, and that’s saying a lot. The air in the room fairly crackled with tension as the three men sized each other up.
“Is a fight going to break out, or can you behave like civilized beings during a time of crisis?” I asked.
Raphael held up his hands in a gesture of innocence. “I’m on my best behavior. I have no quarrel with anyone here.”
Saul opened his mouth like he was going to make a cutting remark, but I pointed at him sternly. “You be quiet. I know you and Daddy Dearest have issues, but I’m not in the mood to referee.”
Saul’s mouth closed with an audible click, and I could see the muscles working in his cheeks as he ground his teeth. But he didn’t say anything, so it was a moral victory for me.
Andy didn’t look inclined to start anything. On the one hand, that was good, because I didn’t want to deal with it. On the other hand, if he’d started something, it would have given me some evidence that he was still alive inside.
But I forgot all about my brother and my worries when Adam arrived. Because, you see, he’d brought the rest of Lugh’s council with him—including Brian.
CHAPTER 16
I sat there in silent, dumbfounded amazement. Adam and Dominic dragged a pair of dining room chairs into the living room and sat down, pretending they didn’t see my shell-shocked expression. Brian stayed where he was, only a few steps past the door.
He met my eyes when I stared at him, and I didn’t see anything I expected to see in them. Not anger, not hurt, not contrition. Instead, his expression was one of cool neutrality. It was almost his lawyer face, but with an added chill.
My hands clenched into fists in my lap. He had no right to look at me like that. Not when Dominic had gone and told him the truth!
I turned to Adam. “What is he doing here?” I asked. My heart thudded against my breastbone, and I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling. All I knew was it wasn’t good.
“He’s part of Lugh’s council,” Adam said simply.
I glared at him. “He’s only part of Lugh’s council because of me! And, as you can see, we’re not together at the moment.”
Adam was unmoved by my quite reasonable argument. “I already had this conversation with Brian. It doesn’t matter whether you’re dating anymore or not. Once a member of Lugh’s council, always a member of Lugh’s council. He lost his option to fade into the background as an innocent bystander long ago.”
Impatiently, Adam waved for Brian to join our cozy little circle. Brian didn’t look happy about it, but he grabbed a chair and dragged it into the living room.
My nerves buzzed with tension, and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth. I wanted to run away, lock myself in my bedroom, hide.
“I don’t want you here,” I said to Brian in a voice that shook. I don’t know if it was from anger or from pain.
“I don’t want to be here,” he responded. “But I wasn’t given an option.”
I had something else pithy to say, but Raphael shocked me into silence by grabbing my arm in a firm grip. I turned to snarl at him, but of course he didn’t let go.
“If Saul can tolerate my presence, then you can tolerate Brian’s,” he told me, and there was none of his usual sarcasm or mockery in his voice. “I agree with Adam: Brian knows too much already. He’s a member of this council whether we want him or not, and whether he wants to be or not.”
Again, I started to argue, but Raphael squeezed my arm hard enough to make me gasp.
“Who here in this room do you think has an option to walk away?” he demanded.
I swallowed my protests. There was no way I could argue Raphael’s point, though I wished I could. We had all been dragged into this at least somewhat unwillingly. Even Lugh, for that matter. I wasn’t the only one whose choices were limited, and I wasn’t the only one suffering.
I glanced at Andy, with his hollow cheeks and haunted eyes, and it put things in perspective for me. My pain was nothing compared to what he’d gone through, what he was still going through, but though he wanted nothing to do with demons ever again, he had never protested his inclusion in Lugh’s inner circle.
I nodded to indicate my agreement, but I couldn’t find my voice. For a long moment, it seemed like no one else could, either. The silence in the room was thick with tension, dense enough to make the air feel heavy and hard to breathe. If ever there was a group of people as unsuited to working together as this one, I’d never heard of it. But not one of us could live with the consequences of letting Dougal usurp the demon throne. Between Lugh and Raphael, we all had a pretty good picture of what the Mortal Plain would be like if Dougal had his way. Humans would be nothing more than slaves, available to any demon to possess and discard at will.
As long as Dougal sat on the throne only as regent, his powers were severely limited. If he became king, he would have everything he needed to reshape our world into one of his own liking. It was a damn good motivation to keep us all working toward our common goal, no matter how we felt about each other personally.
My thoughts cooled and solidified something inside me, and my emotions stopped rioting. They were still there, buried under the thinnest veneer of calm, but I didn’t have to act on them right this moment.
I sat up straighter in my chair and looked at Adam. “I gather this meeting was your idea. Care to tell us why you felt the need to round up the usual suspects?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the crazed demon who’s out to destroy you? Or maybe it’s the fact that you could be arrested for murder any day now? Or maybe—”
I held up a hand for silence. “All right, I get it. I just don’t know what we can do about any of it.”
“First off,” said Raphael, “you can bring those of us who aren’t quite in the know up to speed on everything that’s going on.”
I didn’t feel up to that, and I was insanely grateful to Adam for taking on the responsibility himself. I let my eyes glaze over as he talked. This morning’s numbness was seeping back into my system, shutting down my emotions—and a lot of my reasoning power.
Do you need me to take over for a while? Lugh asked.
For the briefest moment, the offer actually tempted me. I could let Lugh send me to some secluded place, where I didn’t have to interact with anyone, where I didn’t have to think, where I didn’t have to feel.
The fact that the offer tempted me was enough to shock me out of the creeping numbness. I was a fighter, damn it! I wasn’t going to crawl away and hide.
When I focused my mind on my surroundings once more, it was to find everyone staring at me expectantly.
Adam asked if you have any idea who the demon who’s after you could be, Lugh said.
Thanks for clueing me in, I responded. At least one of us had been paying attention.
“I’ve exorcized probably hundreds of demons. I don’t know why any one of them would hold more of a grudge than any other one.”
“Is there someone who was in a particularly sweet situation when you came around to kick him out?” Raphael asked.
I shook my head. “Keep in mind that by the time I’m called in, the demon is already toast. If I or another exorcist can’t cast him out, he’s either dead or imprisoned for the life of his host. I can’t see any reason why they’d hold me responsible.” I looked up at Saul. “Did you blame me when I exorcized you?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
“Let me rephrase that,” I said, strangely stung by his silence.