Page 3 of Devil in the Details

“As soon as I’m fully moved in here,” Caleb replied. “The house is furnished, obviously, but I still have to get my stuff out of the other place. The movers are coming tomorrow.”

She shook her head. “Sounds like you didn’t want to waste a moment.”

“I don’t.”

And there really wasn’t much that needed to be moved — his wardrobe, which hadn’t expanded that much since he first got here, since clothes had never been his thing — a few odds and ends, the big TV that was currently hanging in the living room at the other house but would go in the rumpus room downstairs. He hoped to sell that house fully furnished. If not, though, he’d either put everything in storage or hire someone to sell it all off for him.

Either way, it would get handled, and he would have tied off one more loose end.

“I want to get situated as quickly as I can,” he went on, doing his best to sound nonchalant even though he wasn’t sure how successful he was. “I don’t want anything to interfere with the Desert Paradise poker tournament. It starts on Thursday.”

Delia stared at him as if he’d sprouted horns. Not that implausible for someone who was a quarter demon, he supposed, even though he knew he didn’t have enough demon blood in his veins for him to ever display that kind of outward show of his demonic heritage.

“‘Poker tournament’?” she repeated, as if she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard him correctly. Before he could reply, she added, “What happened to keeping a low profile?”

He only grinned back at her before swallowing some of his coffee. “I wouldn’t say that flipping a house like this is very low profile.”

“You’re not flipping it, though,” she pointed out. “You fixed it up so you could move in.”

“Still,” he said, “having dumpsters in the driveway and contractors coming and going for the last eight weeks kind of made me visible, you know? Anyway,” he went on before she could offer any further arguments, “this isn’t one of those big televised tournaments. It’s just a smallish local competition. I’m not stupid enough to get involved in something that would attract a lot of attention.”

Those words seemed to relieve her somewhat, since she shifted on the barstool so she was finally leaning against the backrest. “But why a poker tournament? Wouldn’t it make more sense to take up golf, considering where this house is located?”

Caleb supposed it probably would. Hell, he could probably throw a bag of golf clubs over the back wall of his property and have at it if he wanted to.

Well, except for the part where it was a private course and the greenspeople might have a few words to say about that kind of trespassing.

He actually had considered getting a membership, but something inside had made him balk. If he’d really wanted to analyze his reaction to taking up golf, he probably would have realized that his antipathy to the game was mostly because of the way his father and the other half demons back in Greencastle had played on the weekends whenever the weather allowed that kind of activity. Not because they actually enjoyed the game, but because as the pillars of the community they were pretending to be — bank presidents, high school principals, lawyers — it was the sort of pastime they were expected to indulge in.

“I thought about it,” he said vaguely, then went on, “but I like the idea of poker more.”

Delia tapped her fingers on the black counter in front of her. As always, her nails had a coating of clear polish and were kept fairly short, a contrast to some of the talons he’d seen women around town sporting. “But won’t you have an unfair advantage? I mean, with your powers….”

The words trailed off, but she’d already made her point. When he’d first arrived in Vegas last November and for the several months that followed, he’d accumulated the cash required to buy property and a car and any other necessities of life by using his demonic gifts to influence the cards at the poker tables or the ball on the roulette wheel…or the dice at the craps table. Poker wasn’t necessarily a game of skill for him.

But he wanted it to be. He wanted to prove to himself — and to Delia, to be perfectly honest — that he could win a bunch of money using only his brains and his instincts, and nothing more.

“I want to do it the old-fashioned way,” he said, a comment that made her brows lift again. “I’ve been practicing, and I’ve won a decent chunk without using any of my powers. So I thought it would be a good idea to join a low-stakes tournament to test my skills.”

“How ‘low stakes’?” she asked, that hint of a smile playing around her mouth again.

“The purse is only fifty grand,” he replied.

Now she grinned outright. “Oh, is that all?”

“Well, you know I won a lot more back when I was using my powers.”

Millions, to be accurate. Only about three or four million, just enough to get him started, but it had been sufficient to make the casino owners suspicious…and for casino executive Robert Hendricks to set his demon minions after Caleb. Of course, back then neither he nor Delia — whom Hendricks had hired to see if she could track down the person involved in winning such riches — had realized the man was a little more than he seemed.

And they still had no real idea as to precisely when Calach had taken over Robert Hendricks’ body, or why the demon had made the man his target. There seemed to be some ties to an outfit in California called the Styx Group, but even Delia’s private detective friend Prudence Nelson hadn’t been able to dig up very much about the company.

Maybe it was all a red herring. Then again, Caleb couldn’t deny that he’d been attacked by minion-level demons multiple times, which meant that someone had clearly thought he was a threat.

“So, you want to play in this tournament to prove that you can be a winner even without using your powers,” Delia said, and he nodded.

“That’s kind of a bald way of putting it, but sure. If I fold early on, then I’ll know I can’t hang up my demon powers just yet.”

“I think that might be a good thing,” she said, giving him a meaningful look.

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