“My mother was a … friend of Lugh’s, although she was of a much lesser rank and was much less powerful. Lugh is egalitarian enough to care about the lower-ranked demons as much as about the royals and elite, and he and Raphael fought about it. Raphael thought Lugh should ‘stick to his own kind.’ When Lugh didn’t agree, Raphael struck out at him through my mother. He convinced her to have a child with him. He promised to contribute the lion’s share of the energy and to protect her from the drain. But, as usual, he lied. He put in as little as possible and let my mother pour her … life force into me.
“My mother was destroyed, and I was born a royal without a royal’s power.” He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“It’s not unheard-of for demons of such wildly disparate power to have children,” Adam said softly when it seemed that was all Saul had to say. “But it is unusual. When it happens, it is usually the more powerful parent who is most … depleted. They return to full strength eventually, but it can take centuries for them to regenerate all the energy they lost. If Delilah had known Raphael better, she’d have realized he’d never put himself in such a position. But she didn’t, and the lure of having a royal child was too much for her to resist.
“We are something of an elitist society, I’m afraid, and had Raphael followed through on his promise, her rank would have been greatly elevated.”
I rolled all that information around inside my head, wondering what to make of it. I’d never really speculated on demon reproduction before, but I guessed I understood Saul’s explanation—except for one thing.
“Why did Raphael do it?” I asked. Yes, I hated him. Yes, he was ruthless, and selfish, and at least borderline evil. He was even capable of being petty. But for all of that, there was a reason behind everything he did. Not a good reason, mind you, at least not from my point of view, but a reason nonetheless.
“I told you,” Saul said with a little snarl. “To piss Lugh off. And because he could.”
My every instinct told me there was more to it than that. I glanced at Adam and raised an eyebrow. He shrugged and shook his head, which I took to mean he shared my opinion but didn’t know Raphael’s motivation, either.
I wasn’t about to approach Raphael to ask him about it. But surely Lugh knew exactly what his brother had been up to. I sent him a mental message to talk to me in my dreams tonight. I was pretty sure he’d grant my request.
CHAPTER 3
I was in quite the pensive mood when I left Adam’s place. I could clearly see that the current housing arrangements weren’t optimal, but I felt no more inclined to offer Saul my spare room than I had before. I like to think I’m a pretty decent human being, but I’m not all that altruistic by nature.
I decided that instead of brooding on my inadequacies, I’d brood on what Adam had told me this afternoon about Reporter Barbie. Although I’d known I hadn’t seen the last of her, I’d sort of allowed myself to forget about her for a while. Out of sight, out of mind, you know? But now that she was back in the forefront…
I was halfway to my car, which I’d parked by the curb a little more than a block from Adam’s house, when it occurred to me that if Barbie really was bent on investigating me, she might well be following me around, trying to dig up dirt. So instead of just getting in my car and driving away, I took a moment to regard my surroundings.
When you grow up female in a big city like Philadelphia, you learn to always be aware of who’s around you. But you also learn to ignore people who don’t register on your threat radar. Sometimes when you see people walking down the street, it looks almost as if each one believes he or she is the only human being around.
No one had tweaked my threat radar, but then, Barbie wouldn’t. Scanning the pedestrians who were within my line of sight, I searched for any sign of her. No dice. I almost convinced myself to just forget it, but my paranoia was in high gear, so I began examining the parked cars by the sides of the street.
There were enough streetlights to more than illuminate the streets and sidewalks, but car roofs made great shadows, and if I hadn’t been looking so closely, I never would have seen her. She was nothing more than a patch of deeper darkness in the shadowed interior of a nondescript little sedan, and I might almost have missed her even in my careful sweep if the headlights of another car hadn’t momentarily shone on her face.
Clenching my teeth, I strode toward the car. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do—after all, as far as I knew, she wasn’t doing anything illegal—but I was determined to get her off my back one way or another.
It didn’t take her long to realize she’d been made, and I halfway expected her to start her car and zoom on out of there. Instead, she opened the door and stepped out to wait for me.
I thought of her as “Barbie” because she was petite, blond, and curvy, and her sweetly pretty face still reminded me of some stereotypical vapid cheerleader. However, today she seemed to be going for the Cat-burglar Barbie look: tight black pants, a snug black T-shirt that clung in a way that would make guys’ tongues hang out, and a light black jacket. Her usually ostentatious blond hair was pulled back into a pony-tail at the nape of her neck, the stray wisps held back from her face by a black velvet headband. All the better to hide in the shadows, I guess, though with her pale skin she probably needed camouflage makeup— or a ski mask—to stay truly hidden.
I came to a stop in front of her, close enough to make the most of our disparate heights. Of course, this was a woman who’d been willing to go toe-to-toe with a demon, so I wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t intimidated. She was also probably armed—it was a little warm for that jacket tonight, unless she was wearing it to hide her shoulder holster.
“You look like an extra from MissionImpossible,” I informed her, but instead of being insulted, she smiled and shrugged.
“So it’s a bit of a clichéd outfit. But black works best for nighttime surveillance.”
“I guess that means you’re not pretending to be a reporter anymore.”
“I’m sure you’ve already shot that cover story full of holes, so I see no need to insult your intelligence by keeping it up.”
“Considerate of you,” I said, then wondered what to say next. What did I hope to accomplish by confronting her? I didn’t know, and now I wished I’d thought it out beforehand.
“For an exorcist, you seem to spend an awful lot of time in the company of demons,” she commented.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I decided to keep my mouth shut.
“Especially Adam White,” she continued. “I’ve canvased the neighbors, and I know you’ve spent the night there at least once.”
I’ve never been any good at keeping a poker face, and I’m sure my shock and dismay were obvious. This was the city! People weren’t supposed to pay any attention to their neighbors here. I couldn’t think of any reason why my spending time with Adam would be harmful to me in the lawsuit, but Barbie could definitely make my life … uncomfortable if she decided to share that information.
Brian knew, of course, that I spent a lot of time with Adam. We were, after all, both members of Lugh’s council. But he didn’t know about my overnight stays. Not that I’d stayed overnight anytime recently, and I’d been a prisoner both times, but I didn’t want Brian to know anything about that. I had made a pretty sickening sacrifice, allowing Adam to “play” with me in return for his help in rescuing Brian when he’d been kidnapped by Dougal’s supporters. Adam’s idea of “playing” was to whip me until my back was reduced to bloody shreds—damage that Lugh was able to heal over the course of a few hours. And that Brian would never know about, because knowing would damage him.