Chapter 6 #2
Giggling the way he imagined she must have done when she was a girl, she locked the door, then gave him a becoming pout. “I hate to leave now. I want to sit in there and sip coffee while playing with my new board.”
Those words sent an extremely vivid image through his mind. Inappropriate and very hot. “There’s something else I’d love for you to play with.”
Rolling her eyes, she headed for his garage. “Keep it in your pants, big guy. We have work to do.” She paused to scowl at him. “Do we have an HR agent?”
“Why? You planning to report me?”
“Probably should, but I doubt it’d help. Knowing what little I do about you, you’d probably hire someone to take the class for you.”
Spinning his keys on his finger, he wagged his brows at her. “You’re learning me. Beware. Next thing you know, you’ll be offering me your soul and nowadays I’d have to turn you down.”
“Did you really barter souls?”
“My primary function…aside from lazing about.” He bent down to open the garage. “I would say I regretted it, but I never took the soul of anyone who would miss it. Besides, you’d be amazed at how many people can’t be tempted.”
That was surprising. Most of the people she’d known wouldn’t hesitate to trade their soul for a winning lottery ticket. “Really?”
“Yeah. Those who usually barter with us have dark secrets. Never ceases to shock me the cruelty that lies in the hearts of those who look so harmless. Others look vicious and wouldn’t harm anyone.
But the ones we take… You’d never know the depravity in such an innocuous vessel.
Sadly, people make the wrong judgment calls all the time.
I really feel sorry for your kind. In many ways, this is the real Hell. My home is more of a sauna.”
“Because you weren’t being tortured there.”
“True. But remember the ones who are, deserve it for the people they hurt and the deeds they chose to do of their own free will. Hell’s a maximum-security prison, not a halfway house.”
She paused as he opened the garage door. “You really never feel sorry for them?”
“Hell no. Just desserts. Those on the fence are given chances for redemption. We only get the ones who are vicious and unrepentant. The ones who more than earned punishment.”
He saw the darkness that shadowed her eyes and it actually made him feel bad for her, as he felt that pain inside himself. She was thinking about her sister.
Strange how that finally popped into his mind, and he knew instantly that the two of them were twins.
And how much her sister’s death tormented her.
Luke winced as he felt her grief like it was his own. Like most sets of twins, they’d been unbelievably close. An image of them lying in bed and laughing together went through his head.
One of a thousand memories that tortured Sorcha.
Damn. Empathy wasn’t something he normally struggled with. It’d mostly been a foreign emotion for him. But right now…
“I’m sorry your sister’s not here with you.”
She actually burst into tears.
“Oh wow…what the hell?”
Covering her face with her hands, she drew a ragged breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m really not an emotional person. You just have no idea how much I worry about her. Worried that…”
Before he could stop himself, he pulled her in for a hug to comfort her. Something he’d never done before, but he didn’t like seeing his partner in pain. It made his own body ache in response and that stunned him.
Why do you care?
He shouldn’t. He never had before. Yet Luke couldn’t deny these new feelings that broke loose inside him. Emotions he couldn’t afford to feel. In Hell, pity and empathy were a weakness that could get someone buried in a pit he didn’t want to think about.
Luke winced at memories he wished he didn’t have. Mistakes he never should have made.
Now, he was making another one by comforting someone he should shove away.
If only it was that easy.
“It’s okay, Sorcha. Just breathe. Everything’s okay, even if it’s not right.”
For several minutes, she stood in the circle of his arms, shaking.
Finally, she pulled back to stare up at him and offer a smile that almost warmed his freezing body. “Do you know who killed her?”
“I wish I could give you that answer. It’s amazing and humbling what I don’t know. Such as what happened to our college student or why I was banished from home.” Who had betrayed him. And what happened to her twin.
He’d love to be able to answer that for her.
“We will find out. I promise.”
Sorcha nodded as she pulled her emotions into check. He wasn’t omniscient. She’d figured that much out. And it surprised her that he didn’t know why he’d been banished. “No one told you what you did?”
He shook his head. “My father doesn’t explain himself to anyone. Least of all me.”
That made sense.
She supposed the devil didn’t need to. He was too used to ruling. Why would he explain himself to anyone? Even his own son.
Putting it out of her mind, she went to his car to find Helly sleeping on the backseat underneath a bright pink Hello Kitty blanket.
“Should I ask?”
Luke laughed as he gently nudged Helly. “Why are you out here, Imp?”
“Your mom told me to watch Delilah. I’m watching Delilah.”
He scoffed. “You’re sleeping.”
“Was and intend to return to it.” She rolled over, clutched her stuffed dragon pillow under her head and sighed as she closed her eyes.
“Does she always do what your mother tells her?”
“We all do what my mother tells us. Including the devil. No one wants to cross my mother. She holds on to a grudge like a lover.”
That was an interesting thought. “She that scary or that powerful?”
“That vindictive.” He opened the car door and got in.
Sorcha pondered the new information as she joined him.
With an evil laugh, Luke tried to start the car.
It sputtered with what honestly sounded like anger.
Luke tsked. “I know, D. Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey.”
The car engine didn’t even attempt to turn over this time.
Luke let out an elongated breath. “Don’t piss me off, Delilah. I’m not anymore of a morning demon than you are. Now, wake up…time for work.”
“I hate you!”
Sorcha arched a brow at the angry growl from the car speakers before the engine sputtered to life.
“Know you do.” He pulled out of the garage, then left the car to close the door.
As he did so, Sorcha scowled. “Why don’t you have a garage door opener?”
“Delilah’s a petty creature. If I use one, she sabotages it just for spite. It’s easier to open and close it manually than give her a way to piss me off.”
Okay, there was definitely something up with the car. “So, the car is possessed?”
“What?” he asked as he returned.
“The car. She is like Christine.”
He laughed. “Nothing like Christine. Delilah wasn’t born on an assembly line. And she’s not really the car. She likes hanging out in it to get under my skin because she knows I love the car and she’s determined to suck all my joy out of it.”
“Yes, I do.”
Bug-eyed, Sorcha cut a glance to the car radio that spoke to them. “Hello?”
“Whatever. Tell the human to leave me alone. It’s too early in the morning to conversate.”
He passed a droll stare toward Sorcha as he pulled out on the street. “It’s too early in the morning to conversate with the car,” he repeated.
“You do everything she says?” Sorcha couldn’t help asking.
“Rarely do I do anything anyone says. I’m vicious that way.”
He was definitely something, but she wouldn’t say vicious, per se. At least not to her. He’d actually been exceptionally nice and even kind.
The last thing she expected, which was why she was beginning to look forward to being with him. In spite of his hellish origins, he was a lot of fun.
Trying to distract herself from his…je ne sais quois, she pulled her electronic tablet from her crossbody bag.
Luke glanced over to it as they stopped at a light. “What’s that thing you keep using?”
“It’s where I keep my notes and case files.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a laptop.”
Turning it on, she smiled at him. “Remarkable tablet.” She pulled the magnetic stylus from the side of it.
“I can handwrite my notes, and it’ll convert them to text files when I’m done so that I can import them into my reports.
And now I can import them onto to my amazing smart board in my beautiful office, thank you very much. ”
“And they say I’m the one who does magic. That sounds like all kinds of evil to me.”
“Only when a gremlin strikes. Maybe lightning.”
He laughed. “I’ll try and keep the gremlins from your equipment.”
For some reason, that sounded almost like a come-on line. Then again, most of what he said sounded that way. With that deep, gravelly voice, he could turn the most innocuous comment into something sexual. She would say it should be a sin, but with his parentage, it most likely was.
She’d heard the word incorrigible her entire life. It wasn’t until meeting this man that she understood the real meaning of that word.
He was the epitome of incorrigible. And he reveled in it.
Putting his sexiness out of her mind, she opened her tablet and started taking notes. “So…how long have you known this Raven Mocker?”
“Not sure. Probably a hundred years or so.”
Shocked by his words, she paused her stylus. “One hundred human years or dog years?”
He growled at her. “Hellhounds have the same years as a human and I’m a lot older than I look.”
Apparently. He looked around the age of thirty. “Does that make you immortal?”
“Makes me something.” He clicked his tongue. “True fact, only God is immortal. The rest of us have a guaranteed off switch of some kind.”
“Including your father?”
“Including my father.”
That was fascinating to know. “For real?”
He nodded. “No matter how omnipotent they seem, there’s always a way to kill something. Even things that don’t bleed.”
That was very interesting. “Good to know.” And it was.
Everything has a kill switch.
That meant that whatever took her sister could pay. She made a mental note of that.