Page 6 of The Devil Went Down to Laughlin
One of Caleb’s eyebrows lifted ever so slightly, which seemed to signal that this information, while interesting, hadn’t surprised him very much. Was that a byproduct of being possessed by a demon? That your memory would be completely erased?
In a way, Delia believed that might be a blessing. She didn’t think she’d want to recall anything of a time when her body wasn’t her own, when some horrible supernatural being was basically making her its puppet.
“What happened after those four days?” Caleb asked.
“I woke up in my condo,” Aaron replied. “I was lying on the couch, fully dressed. I think they might have been the clothes I wore to the tournament finals, but since I don’t remember anything about that day, I can’t say for sure. All I do know is that I felt like I had the mother of all hangovers.”
Not too surprising, if he’d been blacked out for days. Maybe this wasn’t about demons at all. Maybe he’d just gone on a massive bender. After all, she had no idea about his relationship with alcohol. Yes, he’d had two beers when they met for drinks at the bar at the Hard Rock, and that wasn’t exactly what you could call excessive drinking, but he could have been putting on a public face for her when, in actuality, he hit the hard stuff on a regular basis.
Then again, he’d just looked as if the mere thought of drinking champagne was enough to make him sick, which wasn’t the kind of behavior you’d usually see in someone desperate for some hair of the dog.
“It might be good that you don’t really remember,” Caleb remarked, although it seemed clear he wasn’t going to elaborate, not when it appeared that Aaron didn’t recall anything about his possession or the demons who’d done their best to hijack the Desert Paradise poker tournament for their own purposes. “What happened after that?”
“I slept for a couple more days.” He paused there, looking shamefaced. “And then I woke up to a message that I’d missed a bunch of appointments and Keller Williams was letting me go. That’s the real estate agency where I worked,” he added, obviously for Caleb’s benefit, since Delia knew very well which agency Aaron worked for.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and his shoulders hunched.
“Whatever. I deserved it. I mean, I was out of it, but I should have been able to muster enough energy to call in sick.”
Delia wasn’t so sure about that. Although she’d be the first to admit that she was far from an expert on such things, it sure sounded to her as if Aaron Sanchez had suffered some major psychic blowback from his possession, and that his mind had shut down for a bit to help him recover.
Also, right then she heard the briefest whisper of his thoughts in her mind, just enough to catch a few words.
I fucked up. I really fucked up.
Everything about those two brief sentences resonated with contrition and despair. She might have been very new to this latest facet of her talent, the one she originally had thought helped her communicate with ghosts and nothing else, but she refused to believe what she’d heard was anything but genuine.
“They still should have given you a second chance,” she said gently. “You were ill. But you’re a good agent. I’m sure you’ll find another agency that will take you.”
Aaron only shook his head. “I’m done with Las Vegas.”
His tone was flat, and Delia sent a quick, sideways look at Caleb, who only shrugged ever so slightly.
“I don’t know — ” she began, but Aaron immediately interrupted her.
“Well, I know. Losing my job was bad enough, but then I had my condo pulled out from under me, too.”
Once again, Delia darted a glance at Caleb. The situation with Aaron’s condo had been sketchy from the start, since they both knew Aegis Holdings owned the property. They’d thought maybe the condo had been a bribe to get Aaron to cooperate with the demons running the company, although she still hadn’t caught the smallest hint that he’d had any idea what they were really up to.
“What happened with your condo?” Caleb asked.
Aaron picked up his glass of water and gulped some of it down. Not looking directly at either one of them, he said, “It was a rental. I guess the owners were in default and I didn’t even know about it…not until I woke up to an eviction notice yesterday.”
Ouch. It was a sad story that happened all too often, although most of the time, the bank took back its properties because the owners had stopped making their mortgage payments due to insolvency or simple negligence, rather than having their entire organization collapse and its employees either depossessed or sent back to Hell. Still, she was a little surprised that Aegis hadn’t paid cash for the place and instead obviously had some sort of mortgage on the condo.
Had they really been that leveraged?
“I’m so sorry,” Delia said, even as she wondered what Aaron really needed from her and Caleb. He might have gotten fired, but he was still a real estate agent and could have gathered his resources to find himself another place.
She also hadn’t missed how he’d carefully avoided any mention of his connection to Aegis Holdings, although she wasn’t sure whether that was because he actually was trying to hide something or because he’d blacked out so severely following the incident at the Desert Paradise casino that he didn’t even remember the way Aegis had been bankrolling him.
Allegedly, she reminded herself. All she and Caleb had had to go on was a bunch of suspicions and some somewhat sketchy information that her private detective friend Prudence had dug up. There still might have been an entirely logical reason for the way Aaron had suddenly paid off his student loans and bought a brand-new BMW.
However, since Caleb’s expression managed to be both skeptical and sympathetic at the same time, she guessed he was also having a hard time trying to decide how much of any of this he was supposed to believe.
“But I found an Airbnb where I can crash for now,” Aaron went on quickly, as if to reassure her and Caleb that he wasn’t asking to sleep on their couch or something. “And I’ll figure something out. What I really want your help with is my grandmother’s house.”
Delia had a feeling she looked genuinely confused by that non sequitur, and Caleb seemed puzzled as well, brows knitting together as he appeared to process the other man’s comment.
