Page 67 of Devil in the Details

“Oh, I don’t think there’s any reason for me to enter another tournament,” he said. “That first round was just to give me a sense of how these things worked. My real task is something very different.” If possible, his stare grew even sharper. “But I think you already knew that.”

Right then, Delia wasn’t quite sure what she knew, except that if it hadn’t been for Caleb playing a few yards away from where she stood, she would have found an excuse to get the hell out of there as quickly as she could.

“So…something weird is going on here.”

Ty didn’t even blink. “You’re perceptive,” he said. “I thought you would be able to sense the undercurrents in this room, especially now.”

Delia thought she knew exactly what he was referring to. “Something I might not have been able to do a few days ago. But now that part of my mind is awake, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Ty replied. “And it will continue to awaken further…if you let it.”

“Why did you do that to me?” she asked, even as she realized her tone sounded way too plaintive. “What if I don’t want it?”

He smiled. “Your gifts would have come to the forefront even without my intervention. It just would have taken a while longer.”

What was that supposed to mean? That Caleb had been right, and exposure to his demonic nature would have eventually jolted her psychic abilities out of hibernation, even without Ty Carter’s meddling?”

“Are you…?” Delia let the words trail off, then told herself she needed to grow a spine and ask the damn question now that the man was standing in front of her. “Are you an angel?”

His smile didn’t waver for a single second. “It’s perhaps a bit more complicated than that.”

Applause erupted from the people watching the competition, and Delia shifted to see what they were clapping about.

A group of people stood in the center of the gaming area, all of them smiling.

One of them was Caleb.

“I told you he would advance to the next round,” Ty said.

“Yes, you did,” Delia replied. But even as she opened her mouth to ask how exactly he’d known that, he disappeared.

No, he hadn’t turned away from her and walked into the crowd. He’d just vanished into thin air…and no one standing near them seemed to have noticed a damn thing.

Nice trick.

So, did that mean Ty Carter really was an angel…or another demon? They all seemed able to teleport. However, since Delia had never seen Caleb do that sort of thing when anyone else was around, she didn’t know whether he had the ability to make anyone nearby completely ignore the way he was bending all the rules of physics.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio.

A shake of her head, and then she sipped her white wine spritzer and waited for Caleb to be done with his official business so he could come over and meet her.

They definitely had a whole lot they needed to talk about.

Chapter Seventeen

“They were sucking the energy out of the players?” Delia asked, expression aghast.

“That’s what it sure looked like,” Caleb said.

They’d gone back to his house, mostly because, while a celebratory meal felt in order, they both knew they had way too many things to talk about that they didn’t dare have overheard by any regular bystanders. The casino was slightly closer to his place than it was to Delia’s, which was why they’d ended up there.

Also, he liked the Chinese restaurant just a few blocks away better than the one near her house.

Now they were drinking pinot noir and passing around various plates of noshables, and some of the jangliness from the tournament was beginning to recede. Not completely, because Caleb didn’t think he’d ever be able to forget the way Hank had put his hand on the other players’ shoulders or how it had felt like energy was being sucked out of them as if through a straw, but it still was much better to be home.

“So…the whole tournament was a setup to rob people of their life force or something?” Delia asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, which was only the truth. “Maybe the energy-stealing is just a handy side benefit, and their real motives are even more sinister.”

---