Page 27 of Speak of the Devil

Out of nowhere, his mind conjured an image of Delia Dunne’s face, of how shocked and pale she’d been after he caught hold of her and yanked her back from the edge of the empty pool.

Of how she’d gathered herself and gone inside and done her ritual anyway, when he guessed a lot of women would have run screaming for the door.

Suddenly, the blonde with her bleached hair and too-tight dress didn’t seem nearly as appealing.

“Gotta cash out,” he told her after he signaled the dealer that he was done and began to collect his chips.

The blonde sent him a lascivious smile. “That’s okay,” she said. “Maybe you can buy me a drink with all that money you just won.”

It was a lot — almost sixty thousand, way more than he’d planned. But the rolls had kept going his way…of course they had…and he knew he’d allowed the game to string out longer than he’d intended because when he was watching the dice, he wasn’t thinking about his dinner with Delia, the way her hazel-green eyes would light up with amusement at a comment he’d made or how her wide, friendly mouth would curve as she smiled.

Even in her business attire, she’d been a million times sexier than this fake blonde could ever be.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’ve got somewhere I need to go.”

The woman’s eyes — their color indistinguishable in the dark casino, and shadowed further by heavy fake lashes — narrowed.

“Asshole,” she snapped, and flounced away from the craps table, presumably heading off to find more cooperative prey.

Well, he’d clearly dodged a bullet there.

He went and cashed out his winnings, which were a little over eighty thousand between what he’d won at blackjack and craps. Although the woman working in the cage was professional enough, he could tell from her vaguely hostile air as she handed over the money that she wasn’t too thrilled with him for making the casino take such a hit.

Time to move on.

From there, he drove over to the Bellagio, won another ten grand, and then wandered down the strip to Caesar’s Palace, where he allowed himself a drink as he gambled, figuring this would be the last place he visited before heading home. By the time he was done, he knew he’d have won at least a hundredthousand, getting him to a place where he had begun to put a dent in the cost of his new house.

Except….

He’d gone to play roulette, thinking he might as well change things up a bit. This time, he wore the face and form of a chubby man with thinning hair who might have been in his late fifties or early sixties, not the sort of person who would attract hangers-on like the blonde at The Strat.

Well, unless he won another fifty or sixty thousand, something he wasn’t planning on doing. No, he would pull in maybe a couple of thousand bucks at best, certainly nothing that would cause anyone to even lift an eyebrow.

And at first, it was fine. He’d win a spin and then lose one, knowing he could influence the wheel anytime he liked but was letting it roll on pure chance for the moment, hoping to lull the croupier into a false sense of security. The woman overseeing the spins looked like she might be around ten years older than he, with dark hair pulled back into a severe ponytail and her expression indicating that she could think of a whole lot of other places where she would prefer to be.

Although Caleb could sympathize — he didn’t love hanging out in casinos, even as he understood they were the best way for him to put some quick money in his pocket — he also guessed that someone like her might not be paying as much attention to her work as she should.

Two spins in a row went his way, thanks to a subtle mental nudge, and the chips began to stack up in front of him.

Sounding bored, the dealer said, “Place your bets,” and he pushed one of the stacks onto black seven.

Which of course was where the ball bounced a few seconds later.

Winning was a hell of a drug, though, and he let himself win the next three as well, only stopping because he realized he wasinching toward another ten grand and that was over the limit he’d set for himself.

Another cashier’s cage, another stack of bills pushed toward him. As always, he had his messenger bag secured around his neck and over one shoulder, and he shoved the money inside to join his winnings from earlier that night.

Definitely time to go home now. The people around him looked as though they planned to keep gambling and drinking until the wee hours, but he’d won more than expected and just wanted to get the hell out of there.

The first tingle of odd energy came as he was leaving Caesar’s. While it was kind of a hike to get back to the parking garage at the Bellagio where he’d left his Range Rover, he hadn’t felt like summoning an Uber or a taxi, figuring the streets were still plenty crowded and that he should be safe enough walking, despite the massive amount of money he carried in the messenger bag.

But something made the hair on the back of his neck stand up almost as soon as he was outside, and he looked all around him, wondering what the hell it was.

If he hadn’t known better, he would have said he’d sensed another demon somewhere nearby.

Well, a full-on demon, since Caleb knew he was the only quarter-demon currently walking the face of the planet. Likewise for the cambions, the half-demons, his father among them. They were all stuck in Hell, thanks to not being quite nimble enough when the opportune moment came.

He sped up his pace, not enough to make anyone watching really notice a shift in his gait, but enough that he would probably shave a couple of precious minutes off his trek to the parking garage where his SUV waited. No point in trying to glance around again, not when he knew a demon could perfectly mimic a human appearance when it needed to.

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