Page 66 of Speak of the Devil

And demon summoning left its own traces behind. It was the very darkest kind of magic, something that should show up as toxic sludge against the overall psychic energy of the city.

“Can you reach out to your friend Pru again?” he asked, and Delia blinked.

“I doubt she’s awake yet,” she replied. “But I can send her a text anyway, and she’ll see it when she gets up. What did you have in mind?”

Maybe it was a crazy idea. On the other hand, a psychic — a real one — might be their only hope of tracking down the person who’d summoned those demons.

“I need her to find us a psychic,” he said.

Delia, to his relief, didn’t find his suggestion quite as crazy as he’d feared. In fact, she immediately said, “To find our demon summoner? Isn’t that the kind of thing you should be able to do?”

Should he be annoyed with her for thinking he possessed a whole lot more talents than he actually did…or a little flattered that she believed he was so powerful?

Caleb decided to go with the latter. “No,” he replied. “I have demon blood, but I’m not psychic. And while I can sometimes sense when they’re nearby, there’s no way I can trace those demons back to their source. Summoning them takes a lot of psychic energy, though, so I’m hoping someone who really is talented and isn’t just trying to bilk tourists out of a few bucks might be able to help us.”

Delia absorbed that comment, then nodded. “Okay, I guess I can understand that. Too bad my own talents seem to be mostly restricted to ghosts.”

Since he’d already thought pretty much the same thing, he only lifted his shoulders. “I think you might eventually get there, since you’ve already picked up hints of the wrongness our demon friends have left behind. But in this case, we don’t really have the time to sit around and wait for that to happen. I don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”

All right, he’d partially resigned himself to such a prospect, just because he’d come here with an assumed identity and had done his best to leave his former life behind. Even so, he’d been expecting some kind of ordinary trouble, like the DMV suddenly deciding his birth certificate wasn’t valid, or his bank discovering that his credit history was a total house of cards.

With Belial dead and the rest of the Greencastle gang trapped in Hell, he honestly hadn’t thought he’d be dealing with demons again.

“Of course not,” Delia said at once. “We’ll get this figured out one way or another.”

She looked utterly determined, like a warrior queen about to head into battle.

Not for the first time, Caleb found himself very glad he’d spotted her in that casino last week. What would have happened if he didn’t have her to help him through this?

He supposed he would have muddled through somehow. There was also the possibility…even though he didn’t want to admit it to himself…that he might not have gotten dragged into this at all if their paths hadn’t crossed.

Impossible to say. The only thing he could do now was make sure they found a way to make it out to the other side.

Delia got out her phone, unlocked it, and then sent off a quick text, her fingers flying across the screen. “Okay, that’s done,” she said, then returned the phone to her hip pocket. “Pru’s a serious night owl, so we probably won’t hear back until at least eleven, maybe later. What’s the plan until then?”

Even though they’d thoroughly doused his home with holy water and it was probably fine, Caleb still didn’t like the idea of hanging around here. Besides, he thought they’d better check on his other property, just to make sure the demons hadn’t decided to go over there and wreak havoc.

If they even knew he owned the place. He was still a little hazy on how much information they’d gathered on him, or whether they’d mostly paid attention to his comings and goings from the casinos and didn’t give a rat’s ass what he did with the rest of his time.

Also, it had only been a couple of days since the property had changed hands, so there was no way it had hit the county recorder’s database yet.

“Let’s go over to the Pueblo Street house,” he said.

Delia didn’t ask why, only replied, “All right. Let me get my purse.”

When they got there, everything seemed to be in order. Or rather, the place was just as much of a wreck as the last time he’d swung by. Although he’d gotten things set up with Raul Martinez, the general contractor, work wasn’t scheduled to start until next Monday, and the house was utterly deserted.

“Well, at least the demons didn’t come over here and trash the place,” Caleb remarked as they walked through the living room, where pallets of drywall still sat everywhere.

Delia grinned. “How would you be able to tell?”

About all he could do was return the smile, since she definitely had a point there. “This is why I don’t think they’ve been tracking my every movement, or they would have learned I’ve been coming and going from here even if they wouldn’t have been able to tell I bought it.”

“How muchdodemons know, anyway?” she asked, pausing by the pantry after they’d crossed into the kitchen.

“Depends on the demon,” Caleb said. “The ones who’ve been attacking me — they’re lower orders of the creatures, powerfulenough to do some damage, but they’re nowhere close to omniscient. The farther up the rung you go, the stronger demons get…and they get smarter and wiser, too. The princes of Hell were once the highest order of angels, so they pretty much know everything going back to the dawn of time.”

Or at least, that was the general impression he’d gotten from his time in Hell. Before they’d all been banished, he probably wouldn’t have even known that much. His father hadn’t wanted to talk about their demon heritage, except to explain some of the powers that had come down to his son along with his demon blood, and Caleb had sometimes wondered if that was because his father hadn’t known everything, either. Yes, Daniel Lockwood was half demon, but he’d been born on this plane to a mortal woman and didn’t have any firsthand experience of the underworld.

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