Something she couldn’t quite read and was better off remaining illiterate to.
Flapping a hand at him, Delaney turned and backed out of the living room. “Nah. Go watch TV or something. It’s just boring paperwork,” she offered dismissively, turning toward the storefront. “I’ll try to be quiet if you crash on the couch. But be warned,” she called over her shoulder, “tomorrow—we go digging around your life and death.” Because you have to go—soon—if not sooner. He was too appealing on too many levels to be ignored, and that just couldn’t be.
End of.
“Clyyyyyyve . . . How’s it goin’, brother?”
The voice from behind Clyde, gravelly and harsh, crackled in his right ear as he sat on the couch, watching some inane program about a chef attacking unsuspecting women in a grocery store and taking them home to teach them how to cook. He didn’t turn around, keeping his face impassive and his tone cool. Whoever it was, it was someone who’d come to check up on him, and they expected to find that psycho Clyve, not the tame, unassuming, nonconfrontational Clyde. So this would be where he could rely on all those movies he’d watched when he was so sick. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said, dry and disinterested, cracking his knuckles.
“My job, asshole, which is checking up on your sorry behind.”
Clyde’s jaw clenched while he ground his teeth together. It was crucial he remember he was pretending to be a sociopath. “Fuck you. I don’t need a goddamned babysitter.” Niice, he commended himself. Nice snarly quality to his tone with just enough affront in it to make it sound like he was really that freak Clyve.
The voice hopped over the couch, slouching down next to Clyde, his greasy stench, like dead, rotting flesh, putrefying in his nostrils. “Don’t you think I fucking know that? I’m just doin’ what I’m supposed to do to get by. That psychopath Pauley sent me to check up on you because I was in the area. So here I am. Nice cover, by the way. You never woulda gotten within a hundred yards of this chick looking the way you did before you left Hell. What made you pick a guy who looks like a reject in a Calvin Klein underwear ad?”
He grunted, jamming his fingers under his armpits. He hadn’t picked anything. This really was what he looked like. But he remembered what Delaney’d said when he’d been duct-taped to the radiator and how some demons chose other forms to appear in. Clyde shrugged indifferently. “Saw it on the subway, and it wasn’t Klein, it was Kors somebody. You know, like the beer?”
The demon beside him cackled, revealing missing teeth and breath that smelled like a Dumpster. “Good thing, too. You were one ugly son of a bitch.”
Yeahhh. “Okay, so you’ve checked on me. Now get the fuck out.”
The demon screwed up his ugly, bony face, his skin mottled with pockmarks. “Christ. Don’t be such a fuckhead. You know what Pauley’s like. Since he made level boss, he’s up in our shit all the time. If he says check up on you—I’m doin’ it, motherfucker.” He craned his neck around, eyeballing the living room, the stretched skin of his face shiny under the lamp. “Where is she, anyway? Shouldn’t you be banging the shit out of her by now? It’s almost eleven o’clock.”
It was all he could do to keep from ramming his fist up this dick’s ass and leave it tangled somewhere in his esophagus. “Walking those stupid mutts,” he muttered. “But she’ll be back.” He gave the demon a sly grin, punching his fist into his hand. “You better get the hell out of here before she gets back. Her damned dogs can sniff out demons.”
“And they didn’t sniff out you?”
Clyde shot him another smug smile, adding a touch of lascivious and sneaky. “I’m that good. Don’t forget it.”
The demon slapped Clyde on the back. “She’s pretty fuckin’ hot. But I gotta tell ya, for the time she made my damned eyes feel like they were on fire, I can’t wait to see her dead. But just before she bites it, I wanna give it to her good.” He bent his arms at the elbows and made a lewd gesture with his hips.
Dead. The idea that Delaney’d miss out on all those things she wanted so much because she was dead made him want to heave. Clyde rolled his head on his neck, fighting the sudden burst of total rage at even just the hint this prick would come anywhere near Delaney—let alone touch her. It made his stomach roil, but he had to play along or he’d be fucked. He held his tongue instead. He’d never been one to rush into anything; keeping his head was more crucial than it’d ever been before.
“So we’re cool, man?” he held out the top of his fist to Clyde.
With a sneer, Clyde ignored the dirt embedded under his fingernails and dropped his fist down on the demon’s—hard.
He snapped his hand back, shaking it out. “Ow! What’s your hard-on?”