Page 2 of Speak of the Devil

But because she hadn’t touched anything, Caleb figured the clothes he’d left behind would still be here as well. He was under no illusions that the loft where he’d been living ever since he moved out had been just as untouched, mainly because Brooke had never approved of the space and thought he should have bought a nice house the way the other quarter-demons of his generation had done.

Not that she’d known they had demon blood running through their veins. No, those guys were only his friends, part of the popular, well-off group that had dominated their high school and then DePauw, the liberal arts college they’d all attended, mostly because it hadn’t been considered safe for them to leave Greencastle to get their degrees.

Or maybe that was what Caleb and his friends had been told because it was easier for them to stay where the older generation could keep an eye on them.

After all, those diplomas had just been for show. They’d all known they would get work from either their half-demon fathers or their fathers’ half-demon buddies, and wouldn’t ever have to worry about making ends meet.

Expression darkening, Caleb went to the dresser and got out some jeans and underwear, a T-shirt, and a pullover hoodie. He’d left these clothes behind when he moved into his loft because they’d been a little too small, but after being trapped in Hell for two years, he’d lost enough weight that they fit him just fine.

He’d need to do something to get that muscle back on his body. Luckily, the demonic blood in his veins would allow him to build it up without too much work.

The clock on the bedside table told him it was a little past five in the morning. While he briefly considered going to wake up his mother now, he knew she wouldn’t appreciate being roused before her usual time for getting out of bed, which had always been eight-thirty for as long as he could remember. When he was younger, they’d had a live-in nanny who drove him to school and made sure he had breakfast, and once he was old enough, his parents both told him he was responsible for getting to school on time.

Nurturing they were not.

Rather than put on one of the old pairs of sneakers he found in the closet, he went over to the bed and climbed on top, even though he didn’t bother to pull up the covers. No, he’d just wait here and rest his eyes for a bit, and soon enough, it would be eight-thirty, and he could go downstairs and reveal that he wasn’t quite as dead as everyone had thought.

He must have been more tired than he wanted to admit, because when Caleb opened his eyes again, it was now past nine o’clock, much later than he’d wanted to sleep.

Well, Hell could definitely suck the strength right out of you.

Those few hours of sleep had helped, though. He already felt stronger and more awake.

And was that the scent of coffee seeping under the closed bedroom door?

No, he was probably imagining it. Not because he didn’t remember that his mother always made coffee as soon as she came downstairs, but just because the house was too big for any smells like that to find their way up to his room on the second floor.

Sunlight slipped past the blinds, and after he got out of bed and tied on his tennis shoes, he went to the window so he could look outside. The sky was half covered in clouds, and all the trees were now bare, the lawn yellow from frost, but Caleb thought the bleak, late autumn landscape was still the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

He took a quick detour into the bathroom to splash some water on his face and run damp fingers through his hair. Even though he did his best not to look in the mirror, he couldn’t quite avoid catching a glimpse of his face anyway — cheekbones sharper than he remembered, dark eyes shadowed despite those hours of sleep he’d just enjoyed, sandy blond hair a mess.

Hell could definitely do a number on a person.

Scowling a little, he left the bathroom and headed downstairs to the kitchen. Because his father and the rest of that generation had known they might disappear at any time if Belial decidedto call them all back to Hell, they’d cooked up several different cover stories to explain such a mass vanishing. The problem was, Caleb didn’t know which one Daniel might have left in place with his attorney to cover such a contingency, so he’d have to play this by ear. Even so, he had a feeling there wasn’t much he could say to adequately explain where he’d been for the past two years — or where his father had disappeared to.

Unlike his son, Daniel Lockwood appeared to be stuck in Hell permanently.

Good riddance.

Down here, Caleb could definitely smell coffee, although there were no other scents of food being prepared, no eggs or bacon or pancakes or even toast. Brooke Lockwood ate half a grapefruit every damn morning no matter what, and rarely if ever allowed a complex carb or a piece of red meat to pass her lips.

Too bad, because he was damn hungry.

When he entered the kitchen, he saw that she stood with her back to him as she sipped from a china coffee cup and stared out into their backyard, where the pool was covered for the winter and everything looked bare and dead.

No big mugs for her, that was for sure. He recalled the time when he was in third grade and still trying to pretend his family was normal, and he’d bought her a pretty coffee mug painted with roses.

Maybe she’d said thank you. But that mug had disappeared into the cupboard, never to be used a single time.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

Brooke Lockwood turned and stared at him. Some women might have dropped the cup they held out of pure shock, but she was far too disciplined for that.

Very slowly, she set the cup down on the table in the nook.

“You’ve come back.”

Against all odds. However, as much as Caleb might have liked to up-end her carefully ordered world, he knew this wasn’t the time for the truth. He’d come here to get what he needed and then disappear again.

---