Page 68 of Devil in the Details

Her brows drew together, and she set down the egg roll she’d been holding so she could reach for her glass of wine. “I’m not sure if you can get much more sinister than taking away someone’s life force.”

Caleb, however, had spent several years in Hell…and had been raised by a half demon…so he knew there was a whole world of sinister out there that she should never have to explore.

“What worries me is that it sure feels as if Hank has known all along that I was part demon,” he said.

If possible, Delia appeared even more troubled by that additional wrinkle in the situation. “Is he a demon, too?”

Probably better to ignore the whole “too” thing. Caleb could tell she hadn’t meant it in a derogatory way, only that it was easier to lump all demons together rather than trying to put a fine point on her comment.

Anyway, he didn’t think he could answer her question with any degree of certainty.

“I don’t know,” he said. “He doesn’t feel that way to me, but not all demons do. It’s possible that part of his game was to let me know I wasn’t hiding my identity quite as well as I thought I was.”

“To put you off balance?” she asked.

“That could have been part of it,” Caleb replied. “The problem is, since I don’t know what their overarching plan is, it’s hard for me to say anything about their motivations.”

Honestly, the only thing he knew for certain right now was that he’d somehow made it into the semifinals…even if his appetite for playing in the competition seemed to diminish with every passing moment.

“I wonder what they’d do if I walked away,” he commented next, and Delia’s eyes widened slightly.

“You mean…just bail out of the tournament?”

“Yep,” he said as he reached for the container of chicken fried rice and spooned some more onto his plate. “I mean, what’s it even getting me at this point? I’ve made it to the semifinals, so it’s pretty clear that I can hold my own at a poker table without using my powers. And with this whole thing with Hank Bowers….”

Not much point in going on, since Delia already knew the whole sordid story.

Rather than appear sympathetic, though, her chin lifted slightly, and her blue-gray eyes seemed positively steely.

“Isn’t that letting them win?”

“Maybe it is,” he responded, even as he thought they’d gone way beyond worrying about who was winning and who was losing. “I guess I just don’t see the point in putting myself in harm’s way when I don’t have to.”

“But Hank already knows what you are,” she pointed out.

All right, that much was true. However, it didn’t seem as if Hank Bowers — or whatever it was that was hiding inside him — intended to do much with the information. By walking away, Caleb hoped he would send a signal that he wasn’t going to interfere…and that he expected the same courtesy from Bowers in return.

The coward’s way out, possibly, but he thought he’d much rather live to fight another day.

“Maybe so, but I get the feeling he’d leave me alone if I bailed on the whole thing.”

More a hope than a gut feeling, and yet the more he thought about it, the more Caleb liked the idea of bowing out of the tournament. It wouldn’t be such a big deal, after all. They’d just call in one of the people who were eliminated from the quarterfinals and put them in his place. No harm, no foul.

Delia, on the other hand, looked anything but thrilled with him for even toying with the idea of backing out. “What about Ty Carter?”

“What about him?” Caleb asked.

Her eyes narrowed again. “Don’t be disingenuous.”

He didn’t bother to argue with that assessment, not when he knew that was exactly what he’d been doing with his response. “Okay, I think he was doing his best to intervene…him and those two other guys who were with him. I’m still trying to figure out whether Bowers noticed, though.”

“I don’t think he did,” Delia said at once. “I was trying to keep an eye on him the whole time, and I have to believe that if he’d sensed what Ty and his two buddies were doing, he would have shown some sign of it and might have done what he could to stop them. And if they were trying to keep things from getting completely out of hand, then that means we’re not in this entirely alone.”

Possibly, she had a point there. “But what’s their endgame?”

She only shook her head, then broke the end off one of her egg rolls and put the morsel in her mouth. After she was done chewing, she said, “If they’re really angels or part angels or whatever, maybe they don’t have an endgame beyond doing their best to ensure that people don’t get hurt.”

As much as Caleb would have liked to tell her she was being hopelessly naïve, he was forced to admit he didn’t know all that much about angels or their motivations. Maybe they were involved solely to reduce whatever damage Hank Bowers and whoever else was in his cabal might be inflicting on innocent bystanders.

---