“We’re leaving without your personal effects,” I pointed out.
“I don’t care,” he said tightly. “Just get me the hell out of here.”
I was happy to oblige.
CHAPTER 5
By the time I got Andy properly installed in my spare bedroom, I wasn’t only late for the exorcism, I’d missed it entirely. I’d called the courthouse to let them know that a family emergency had come up. The judge kindly refrained from slapping me with a contempt of court charge, but she assured me I’d used up my one and only get-out-of-jail-free card. I was very polite and professional—don’t laugh! — and rescheduled for mid-afternoon.
My parents weren’t so easy to defuse. They were furious with me for taking Andy away from them—I think they were hoping that they could brainwash him into hosting again if they got to spend lots of “quality time” with him. My mom demanded I allow her to speak with him, but he communicated to me with a shake of the head that he didn’t want to. I told her he was sleeping.
After the phone call from hell, I made lunch for Andy and me. I’m not much of a cook, so this elegant lunch consisted of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches washed down with skim milk, but Andy didn’t complain, and I figured PB&J counted as comfort food. Something we both needed.
Afterward, I helped Andy drag himself to the living room couch. I should have set out for the courthouse, but instead I sat beside him on the couch. He looked at me warily, and I cleared my throat.
“I was wondering,” I started, then almost talked myself out of the question. But the fact was that Lugh’s comments last night continued to ricochet across my brain and I wouldn’t rest easy unless I asked. Of course, I wasn’t likely to rest easy even if I did.
Andy raised his eyebrows, but otherwise waited patiently for me to continue.
“You remember when I was thirteen, and I spent a week at The Healing Circle?” I asked. Andy was three years older than me, so I figured there was a chance he might know something I didn’t.
“Yeah,” he said cautiously. His caution immediately triggered my suspicious nature.
“Did anything…weird happen while I was there?”
He frowned at me. “You mean other than you almost dying?”
Don’t ask me why, but something about the look in his eyes or the expression on his face made me think he knew exactly what I was talking about. My first impulse was to go into overdrive and demand he tell me whatever it was he knew. But though I’d always thought of Andy as a strong, tough guy, the man sitting in my apartment was not the big brother I’d once known. There was something distinctly fragile about him, and it wasn’t just his gaunt frame. I did my best to rein myself in and be gentle.
“I mean I don’t remember a thing about my stay,” I said, and I think I managed not to sound impatient. “Lugh says there’s something hinky about that. He says that he can’t access those memories, and that it has nothing to do with me having been drugged to the gills.”
Andy shrugged and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. “Every time I saw you, you were too out of it to even recognize me,” he said, his gaze fixed on the floor. “I don’t think it’s surprising that you don’t remember.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but since he was so fascinated with my exciting beige carpet, he didn’t notice. “Lugh thinks it’s surprising.”
Another shrug, and still he didn’t look at me. “Maybe it is. Or maybe he’s got some hidden agenda.” He finally raised his eyes to mine. “Once upon a time, I trusted the demons. Now I know better.”
The haunted look in his eyes made me long for the opportunity to beat the crap out of Raphael.
“What did he do to you, Andy?” I found myself asking, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “He seemed pretty convinced he was one of the good guys.”
Andy laughed bitterly. “Yeah, right.” He shook his head. “He knows exactly what he is, and he doesn’t give a damn. Never make the mistake of trusting him, even when he seems to be on the same side.”
“Do you have to talk in riddles? Can’t you just tell me what the hell happened?”
Andy shook his head again, and his chin took on a stubborn set with which I was intimately familiar. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
It took a lot of tongue-biting, but I managed to let the subject drop, reminding myself that he’d been through ten years of hell and maybe he needed me to give him a break for the time being. Besides, I’d told Lugh I didn’t want to know if anything fishy took place while I was at the hospital.
Too bad just knowing that my memory was fucked up in a way even a demon couldn’t understand made me too uneasy to let the questions go.
I managed to be late to the rescheduled exorcism, which didn’t exactly endear me to the judge. I held my breath, fearing I was about to be fined to within an inch of my life, but she let it slide. It was my lucky day.
The exorcism went smoothly, my power easily forcing the demon out of its unwilling human host. And to top it off, the host was one of the lucky twenty percent whose mind remained intact after the exorcism. Traumatized as all hell, probably needing some serious therapy, but alive and sane. I wished I didn’t know the truth about demons, wished I didn’t know that exorcism didn’t actually kill them, just sent them back to the Demon Realm. It meant the son of a bitch who’d possessed this poor guy could come back to the Mortal Plain for fresh meat anytime he felt like it.
One of the many unpalatable truths I’d learned from Lugh was that, while possessing a human host against his or her will was most definitely illegal in our world, it wasn’t in the Demon Realm. That was the status quo Lugh had vowed to change when he’d ascended to the throne, and it was the reason Dougal and his supporters had staged their palace coup. I might not feel like much of a hero, but I truly believed that in helping Lugh, I served a worthy cause. Of course, I was also in it for self-preservation, seeing as Lugh’s enemies wanted him dead.
I made a couple of stops on my way home, to pick up Andy’s things from the hospital, and to stop by his apartment to pack up some clothes and other essentials. I rushed through everything, feeling edgy even as I told myself Raphael couldn’t have found Andy this fast, even if he was on the Mortal Plain.
When I let myself into my apartment, I was not what you’d call pleased to discover that, while I was right and Raphael hadn’t killed my brother while I was gone, Andy did have a visitor.
I let the door slam closed behind me, tossing my keys onto a side table and counting backward slowly from a hundred. I took another look at Adam and decided to start at a thousand instead.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, ever the gracious hostess. Habit and longing made me glance quickly at the answering machine, my baser nature hoping Brian had called no matter how much I told myself I didn’t want him to. But there were no messages.
Adam had made himself at home, settling into the couch, helping himself to one of my bottles of expensive birch beer, and propping his feet on my coffee table. Andy, tension radiating from his every pore, sat on the love seat with his arms crossed over his chest and his gaze fixed on the carpet.
At least Adam hadn’t shot him again, I thought sourly as I once again fantasized about Tasering the hell out of Adam. He liked pain, but he felt it was far better to give than receive, and I was sure he wouldn’t enjoy the Taser. Certainly he hadn’t seemed to the last time I’d used it on him.
Adam swung his feet off the coffee table and sat up straight, but he drained the remains of the birch beer before answering. He sighed in satisfaction as he put the empty bottle down. “Almost as good as a real beer.”
I started counting backward again, this time from a million. I figured I could go all the way down to zero without feeling much less irritated.