Page 72 of Devil in the Details

“Maybe we are,” Caleb replied. “Then again, the door was open. We might be operating in a sort of gray area here.” He glanced over at Delia. “I think the H20 might come in handy right about now.”

For a second, she just looked at him blankly. Then she realized what he was trying to say.

A splash of the holy water she carried might be enough to break the hold the sigil had over Paul Reeve, if only temporarily. And that might buy them enough time to get some useful information out of the guy.

She didn’t reply out loud, only gave a small tilt of her head in Caleb’s direction so he’d know she understood what he was trying to say.

“There’s nothing ‘gray’ about it,” Paul Reeves retorted. “And if you two don’t get out of here now, I’m going to call the cops.”

While he was speaking, he’d been focused on Caleb, apparently dismissing her because she’d been silent this whole time and didn’t appear to be much of a threat.

Boy, was he wrong about that.

Her hand was already inside her purse. One of the little vials of holy water touched her fingertips, and she popped the cap and pulled it out, then rushed at Paul Reeves and splashed at least half the vial’s contents on his arm.

“What the fuck are you doing, you bitch?” he snarled.

“Whatever I have to,” she said sweetly as she backed out of the way.

In that same moment, though, the expression on Paul Reeves’ meaty features turned almost puzzled, as if he couldn’t quite figure out what he was supposed to do next.

“Who are you?” he asked, eyes blank, confused.

“A couple of friends,” Caleb said casually. “And we’ll get out of your hair just as soon as you answer a couple of questions.”

“I don’t know anything,” Paul Reeves responded, but again, he looked more perplexed than anything else.

“Well, I guess we can find out for sure soon enough.” Caleb paused there — not, Delia guessed, because he didn’t know which questions to ask, but more because he wanted to make sure she didn’t have anything she needed to interject.

Because she was more than happy to continue to let him do the talking, she shook her head very slightly.

“It’s pretty simple,” he said, his gaze fixed firmly on the other man, whose eyes looked blurry and muddy behind his thick-lensed glasses. “What’s Aegis’s stake in all this? What are they really up to?”

Paul Reeves’ features twisted then, and Delia wondered if she needed to splash some more holy water on that sigil, just to make sure it was effectively blocked. But then his face went almost blank, and he said, “Some kind of ritual. I don’t know much about it.”

Somehow, Delia guessed that whatever “ritual” Aegis was cooking up didn’t involve anything benign like making sure they had a nice, wet spring or raising enough funds to sponsor a food bank or something.

And since Caleb’s jaw had tightened upon hearing Paul Reeves’ words, she guessed he’d been thinking just about the same thing.

“Well, tell me what you do know.”

More perspiration dripped down the man’s forehead. His nostrils flared, but then he responded, “They plan to use the tournament’s final round to activate a network of supernatural energy collection points. I don’t know how, and I don’t know where any of those points are. I was just in the tournament to see if there was anyone playing who might cause some trouble.”

“Like me?” Caleb inquired, expression amused.

“Yeah, like you. They don’t know for sure what to do about you, so the word came down to watch what you were doing but not interfere.”

Well, Delia supposed that was encouraging. It also explained why they hadn’t worked harder to make sure Caleb was knocked out in the first round.

He crossed his arms. “Do you know who broke into my house?”

Paul Reeves frowned. “What house?”

Undeterred, Caleb pressed, “What about the brakes on my Porsche?”

The older man’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know about any Porsche.”

Of course he didn’t. As far as Delia could tell, the man didn’t seem to know much about anything.

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