Page 30 of Speak of the Devil

It still felt strange to wander a casino floor and act as if it was perfectly normal for her to drift from one place to the next, doing her best to reach out with the same psychic sense that helped her make contact with ghosts to see if there was somethingelse here, something not of this earth. A couple of times during this process, the security guards gave her the side-eye, and she paused and popped a couple of quarters into a slot machine so they wouldn’t think she was there for an entirely different purpose.

Not that any of the “escorts” who tended to hang around the casinos and the clubs would let them be seen in public in such boring clothes or so little makeup.

But no matter where she went, she didn’t detect a single thing…until she was in the parking garage at the Bellagio, of all places.

She’d moved her car there after exploring Caesar’s Palace and the Hard Rock and the Venetian, and had to go all the way up to the third floor before she could find a space to park her Kona. Once she got out and began to walk toward the elevator, though, she found herself pausing, her spidey senses tingling all over the place.

Why this particular spot, she wasn’t sure, because there certainly wasn’t anyone or anything here of note except a few oil stains on the concrete and a discarded Starbucks cup.

And yet….

It was a little like walking into a room where someone had smoked a few hours earlier. Something about the smell still seemed to linger in the place, even though there wasn’t anything about this particular location to signal why it might be important.

The sound of an engine came up the ramp, and she stepped out of the way so she wouldn’t block the oncoming vehicle. It was a large Dodge Ram truck with a guy in a baseball cap behind the wheel, a man who didn’t spare a second glance for her as he continued upward in search of a parking space.

Once he was gone, Delia moved back into the middle of the access lane, eyes narrowing. Look as hard as she could, shecouldn’t see a single thing to indicate there was anything unique or special about this spot.

Her psychic senses…or whatever you wanted to call them…told her a different story, however.

What had happened here?

She had no idea. The only thing she did know was that this didn’t feel like a ghost.

Did that mean a demon had once been here?

Maybe. Or maybe she was imagining the whole thing because she desperately wanted to have even a tiny piece of evidence she could present to Robert Hendricks whenever he next made contact. Delia had a feeling he probably wouldn’t reach out until Monday at the earliest, though, just because he hadn’t seemed like the kind of guy who would bug her over the weekend.

She supposed that was a good thing. The more time she had to dig into this, the better the chance she might have something to actually give him.

Although there really wasn’t anything to see, she went ahead and pulled her iPhone out of her purse so she could take a few pictures of the section of the structure where she stood. If nothing else, she could show them to Pru when they met tomorrow evening for drinks. Her friend was a trained private detective, after all, and Delia thought it was possible she might be able to see something that a mere real estate agent couldn’t.

Another car was coming up the ramp, so she took its appearance as a signal that she was done here and needed to head out. As she got into her SUV and pressed the button to start the engine, she couldn’t help wondering if her mind had manufactured those odd sensations out of pure frustration at not being able to find anything when she was wandering through the casinos.

No, that was silly. While she wanted to do a good job for Robert the same way she wanted to make sure all her clientswere happy, she still shouldn’t be desperate enough to make up some kind of story about demonic residue. For one thing, if her brain really had conjured the whole thing, why do it here in the parking garage rather than on a casino floor?

She had no idea.

Which meant she had felt something real…even if she had no idea what it could have been.

Frowning, she backed out of the parking space and headed down to street level.

On the drive home, her phone pinged from inside her purse, and when she was safely stopped at a light, she pulled it out and took a quick look.

A text from Paige Loomis, saying she’d be at Delia’s office at eleven on Monday morning to sign the offer papers and collect Caleb’s proof of funds.

Well, that was something, she supposed. Not that she’d really expected Paige or her client to back out of the deal, not when that lemon of a property had been sitting on the market for almost a year — and not when Delia had come up with a buyer who was willing to do a cash transaction — but still, it felt like progress, and it was a piece of validation she needed right then, especially after experiencing that whatever-it-was in the parking structure at the Bellagio.

She had to wait for another red light to reply, but once that was handled, she returned the phone to her purse and continued the rest of the drive home without incident. After checking on the fish, she decided to do a little research to see if anyone had ever reported any strange phenomena in that location.

It wasn’t the easiest of internet searches, since she kept pulling up all sorts of random information about the casino rather than anything directly connected to the supernatural, and not for the first time, she admired the way her friend Prudence always seemed able to get right to the heart of the matter no matter how arcane the topic might be. For a moment or two, Delia wondered if she should send Pru a text to ask her to check into the Bellagio as well, then pushed the notion aside. Investigating Caleb was more important, especially since she still couldn’t say for sure whether what she’d experienced in the Bellagio’s parking garage had been nerves and nothing more.

After all, being tasked to investigate whether any demons were roaming around in Vegas casinos was probably sufficient to put you on edge.

Annoyed, she closed her laptop and vowed to focus on the mundane for the rest of the weekend. Grocery shopping, housework — she had someone come in to clean into the corners once a month, but she took care of the in-between stuff — maybe going to the Sherwin-Williams store to pick up some paint samples for the continually delayed repainting of her home office.

Anything to keep her mind off demons and casinos…and Caleb Lowe.

By the time Sunday evening rolled around, Delia thought she was feeling a lot more grounded. The house was clean, she’d decided on a gorgeous color for the office — a pale, hazy blue-green named Waterfall — and absolutely nothing weird had happened, much to her relief. She’d chatted with her mother and promised to go over for dinner sometime this coming week, hadmade appointments for two new home listings, and was glad that life in general seemed pretty normal.

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