Page 9 of Speak of the Devil

Right now, he was holding a straight flush, while he knew that the woman to his left — blonde and Botoxed within an inch of her life — only had two of a kind. The man to his right was the real problem. He wasn’t some tourist here to play a few games of poker before he headed off to a show, but someone Caleb recognized, a man he’d seen around town and knew was very good at what he did. Under normal circumstances, Caleb doubted he would have been able to beat him.

These weren’t normal circumstances, though…not when his demon powers were involved.

It was so very easy to ensure the correct cards gravitated to his hand. Not in any way that could be traced or even arouse suspicion, but still, he knew when he sat down to play, he was going to win.

Unless, of course, he wanted to lose so his winning streaks wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

He’d lost the last hand, though, so there was no way he would let this one go, not when there was almost ten grand in chips sitting in the middle of the table.

“I’ll raise one thousand,” he said, pushing a small stack of chips toward the others.

The blonde’s eyes widened, but she picked up her rum and Coke and took a sip before announcing, “And I’ll see you.”

Bad move, although Caleb wouldn’t bother to tell her that. While not exactly drunk, she clearly wasn’t operating with all her regular faculties, either.

Then again, someone who had that many rocks on her fingers — and around her neck and hanging from her ears — could probably lose much more than the current pot and still not batan eye. Thanks to his attuned demonic senses, he knew those diamonds were genuine.

No partner in evidence, so he couldn’t be sure whether she’d gotten lucky in a divorce or was a self-made woman.

It didn’t matter to him one way or another. He wasn’t here to worry about her personal life, but to liberate her of some funds she obviously would never miss.

“Call,” said the other man, the one Caleb had guessed was a professional. He looked vaguely annoyed, as if he wished he was playing against people more worthy of his mettle.

Well, the joke was on him.

“Straight flush,” he said as he placed his cards on the table.

“Oh, shit,” the woman sighed, laying down her two eights.

The professional sent Caleb a steely look. “Three aces.”

Which should have been enough. But with a straight flush running from an eight to a queen, Caleb had emerged victorious this round.

“Good game,” he said, keeping his tone utterly neutral.

Then he pulled the chips toward him and placed them in the chip rack he had sitting next to his elbow. He’d already won a grand, but that was peanuts compared to the eleven thousand and some change his straight flush had earned him.

He tilted his head toward his erstwhile poker partners and headed toward the cashier. It wasn’t very late — just a little past ten o’clock — but he thought he’d won enough tonight. As it was, he’d probably need to start looking for another bank to deposit his winnings. Four were already maxed out to their FDIC limits, and the one remaining was getting there. Sure, he also had some more cash hidden away in safe deposit boxes, but getting to it wasn’t as easy as simply using a Visa debit card.

Anyway, the more places he stashed his money, the less chance of anyone being able to track down where everything was hidden.

The cashier took the chips, checked his fake I.D. — he always made sure to use his powers to alter it so it matched his shapeshifted identity — and handed over his cash in neat bundles, which he slipped into the messenger bag he always carried with him when he went on these gaming forays. He liked the bag because he could slip it over his neck and forget about it, while his father’s old briefcase would have required a lot more tending.

Caleb already had his phone out as he stepped away from the cashier’s cage so he could summon a Lyft to come pick him up. Although he alternated between ride services, he never had them take him to his house, but rather to a neutral location like a strip mall or a bus stop just distant enough that it would be difficult to trace him to his home base. From there, he would simply find a shadowy spot he could teleport from and get home that way.

Maybe no one was watching him at all, and these maneuvers were nothing more than his way of making himself feel more important than he really was. As far as he could tell, even when he went around wearing his real face — which was most of the time, actually, whether going to the bank or the grocery store or the gym — no one seemed to pay any particular attention to him.

Why would they? According to the world, Caleb Lockwood had been dead for two years…and he’d never hung out in Vegas. In fact, the first time he’d even left Indiana had been when his father sent him to California to try to track down theProject Demon Huntersfootage so the hometown demons could make sure they were able to release it to further their own ends…namely, to create confusion and disbelief in the general population, to make people realize Hell was real and that the foundation their shallow lives were built on amounted to very little.

In the end, though, it had turned out to be little more than an internet phenomenon, with thousands of talking heads onYouTube explaining how the footage had been faked and that of course Hell — and the demons who dwelled there — didn’t exist.

But even though those plans had turned out to be a lot of sound and fury and not much more, the situation had still been an utter shitshow. Sure, he’d done as he was told and had found the hard drive containing the files, but still, the last thing he’d expected was to fall hard for the very woman he’d been trying to con.

Rosemary McGuire.

He still found himself thinking about her way too much. It would have been easy to say the not-quite obsession had everything to do with a bruised ego and nothing more — she’d dumped him before she’d even found out he was part demon and had taken up with a frigging Episcopalian priest, of all people — but Caleb wasn’t so sure about that. In the beginning when they’d been working together to find the footage, he’d realized he enjoyed being around her way more than he should have, and was all too glad to spend time with someone who seemed all right with taking him at face value.

Well, until the angelic blood she’d inherited from her father asserted itself and made it clear there weren’t going to be any dalliances with men who had demon blood running in their veins.

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