Chapter Three
The other jurors had reactions similar to Marcus the doorman’s when they saw me.
“This isn’t the Junior League, doll,” one of them told me. “You can’t just sit here and look pretty. This is serious business.” The demon who told me this appeared to be drunk. Considering demons could sober up at will, he was purposely staying inebriated. Serious business indeed.
A few made uncomplimentary remarks about Jerome. One expressed jealousy over not thinking of sending a proxy herself. Most simply ignored me. The only one who treated me in a semi-friendly way was a guy who followed up his greeting with a proposition involving a whip, a waterbed, and peanut butter.
“I only use the organic kind,” he added, as though that would make a difference.
Hoping he referred to the peanut butter, I ignored him and turned my attention to the rest of the room. Blue linen covered small round tables set with pitchers of water and surprisingly cute flower arrangements. I’d left Seth at a table with a bunch of incubi, figuring that would be safest. Most incubi (and succubi) swung both ways, but the incubi would be more interested in hitting on human women. I hoped. I’d mainly wanted to keep Seth away from vampires and imps. The former would go after his blood, the latter his soul.
The jury of thirteen sat at the front, facing the crowd from a long rectangular table. Luis sat at a raised table to our left, looking bored. On the other side of him, another long table held three very unhappy-looking demons. A few empty seats separated them from a demoness and an imp that I believed to be the prosecution.
After scanning the room, my gaze fell back on Luis. He had an elbow propped up on the table, letting his chin rest in one hand as he too studied the room. His chin-length black hair fell forward and shielded his face like a curtain. Seeing him stirred a number of memories, most of which were good. He’d been my archdemon long ago, back when I lived in colonial Massachusetts. I’d gone there because I’d liked the idea of moving to a fledgling group of settlements; it had seemed like an adventure.
Luis had been a good boss, ready with a smile and scrupulously fair. He did not tolerate any slacking, however. That easy smile could turn fierce in the space of a heartbeat, and those who angered him didn’t get second chances. Fortunately, I’d performed my job well.
But in the end, even a cool boss like him couldn’t change my mind on one thing: colonial America was a dive. I’d soon lost interest in it and requested a transfer back to Europe, deciding I’d check back on the New World in a few centuries or so. Luis had been sad to see me go, but he knew a happy employee was a good employee and had expedited my transfer.
Watching him now, I saw that same instant transformation take place. One moment he was slouching and bored; the next he was straight in his chair, banging the gavel and demanding attention.
The hearing started.
I realized then what Jerome had meant when he said I might have something useful to offer. It soon became clear that I was the only juror paying attention. One leafed through a copy of Harper’s Bazaar. Another played sudoku. Two talked in low whispers, falling silent like guilty schoolchildren when Luis barked at them to be quiet. One demon at the end of the table had his eyes open, but I was pretty sure he was actually asleep.
As I had told Seth, this was mostly an opportunity for the prosecution to lay out their suspicions and evidence. The demoness I’d spotted at the end of the table was indeed Noelle, poor Anthony’s supervisor. Beauty among demons meant little since they could change their shape as easily as I could. Nonetheless, Noelle had chosen an especially gorgeous form in which to walk the mortal world, one I paid attention to for future shape-shifting inspiration. Not that I had plans to copy her identically, of course. Demons weren’t big subscribers to imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.
Her face was a perfect oval, framed by tumbles of jet-black ringlets that fell almost to her waist. Her skin was smooth and clear, a coppery tan color that set off the blue-green of her large, long-lashed eyes. She wore an ivory skirt and jacket, stylish yet professional, matched with goldbuckled high heels I very much coveted. After Luis, she was probably the most powerful demon in the room. Something about her reminded me of him, like perhaps she too was eager to smile and laugh. But also like Luis, business came first. She certainly wasn’t smiling now, nor did she seem likely to anytime soon. Those lovely eyes were narrowed with anger as she studied the three suspects. I’d heard that Anthony had been a particularly prized employee of hers.
Noelle did little talking, however. She left that to her imp, a shrewd-faced little woman named Margo. Imps were the administrative assistants of the demonic world, and I was willing to wager good money that Margo had been a real estate agent when she was human. She had the look of someone willing to say—and do—anything to get you to buy that haunted fixer-upper on the fault line.
Margo called up the first suspect, a demon slimmer than Luis but every bit as ripped. He had a shaved head and skin so dark there was no way he could walk out among humans without getting double-takes. Definitely not natural. Still, he made a striking, handsome figure, and I was a bit disappointed to learn his name was Clyde. It didn’t fit. I wanted him to be named Nicodemus or Shark or something cool like that.
“So, Clyde,” began Margo, “do you know why you’re here?” She spoke in a voice of utter boredom, like he was so beneath her as to barely deserve notice. I raised an eyebrow at this. She might technically be in the position of power here in the courtroom, but at the end of the day, he was a demon and she was an imp. There was no question about who sat at the top of the universe’s food chain.
From the look on Clyde’s face, I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the condescension. The look he gave Margo would have sent me running.
“Yeah,” he said in a rumbling baritone. “I’m here because you guys have no clue who took out Anthony and need a scapegoat.”
Margo’s smile was thin and utterly fake. “Oh, I see. So, you’re here for no reason at all. It’s completely unfair. You have no connection whatsoever to Anthony that would make you a possible suspect. No reason at all that you would have wanted to kill him. You were just plucked out of your everyday life and dropped into this room because the world is cruel and unjust. Poor, poor Clyde.”
“Margo,” said Luis, his smooth voice sliding through the room like a blade. He didn’t even need the gavel to get attention. She jumped. “Stop your posturing and get on with this. If you want to get melodramatic, you can go join the community theater’s production of Our Town.”
I heard a few snickers, and Margo blushed. She turned back to Clyde, face sober as she became brisk and businesslike.
“You work here in Los Angeles?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Noelle’s been your archdemoness for almost a century?”
“Yes.”
“Which is about the same time Anthony worked for her?”
“Yes.”
“So,” she continued, a bit of that swagger returning, “when Noelle needed to appoint a new lieutenant, it was pretty clear to everyone that it’d be either you or him, based on seniority.”
The set of Clyde’s face turned hard. “Yes.”
“And when the time for her decision came and she picked him, that must have been terribly disappointing.”
He didn’t answer.
“Particularly since, by all accounts, you are—were—much, much more powerful than him. Am I right?”
Clyde remained silent, and I didn’t blame him. An acknowledgment of how much stronger he was than Anthony just proved how easily Clyde could have destroyed his rival.
“Answer the question,” said Luis in a firm voice.
Clyde grimaced. “Yes.”
Margo made a great show of flipping through some papers, but I had no doubt she already had everything in them memorized.
“So…let’s see.” More paper flipping. Down the table, the juror I’d suspected was sleeping began snoring. The demon beside him hit him in the arm, jolting him awake. “Okay,”
said Margo. “According to what I have here, you had nearly double Anthony’s power. That would have been a neat, easy kill. Over before anyone noticed it—which, from what we can tell, was exactly what happened.”
“I wouldn’t have destroyed him for that,” growled Clyde, his temper clearly rising.
“Noelle made her decision. That was that.”
“Not exactly.” Noelle spoke for the first time, and heads turned. She had a sweet, lilting voice. Like music. Even some of the other jurors started paying attention. “You came to me after I appointed him, and you were not happy. In fact, I recall you saying some very…ugly things to me.” She spoke crisply, all business-like. Even in the heat of an event like this, it was clear professionalism and calm were important to her. I admired that.
Although it was impossible to tell, I got the impression Clyde was blushing now. “I…was out of line, Noelle. I shouldn’t have said what I said, and I apologize for it. I apologized then, after the fact.” The words came out stiffly, but I got the impression they were sincere. Demons apologized. Who knew? “Although…not to place blame, but you were already upset when I walked in. You were in a bad mood, and it fed mine…and made what I said far worse than it might otherwise have been. Made me angrier than I normally would have been.”
“You admit you were angry.” Margo seized on this, a mongrel with a bone in her mouth.
“Angry enough to insult and talk back to your archdemoness. Angry enough—according to witnesses—to ‘exchange words’ with Anthony too.”
I could see Clyde’s chest rise and fall as he took a few deep breaths before speaking. There was a temper there behind those dark eyes—again, not surprising for a demon—but he was working hard to stay calm.
“Yes. I had a few…confrontations with Anthony. He wasn’t exactly humble about the promotion. We got into a few arguments.”
“Because you were angry,” reiterated Margo. “Angry enough to explode. Angry enough to kill him. You probably couldn’t blow him apart fast enough, could you? Or maybe you ripped him up…tore him limb from limb or something before incinerating him. Anything to sate the bloodlust inside of you, right?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Honestly? It’s been centuries since I had any bloodlust to sate. Funny thing, though…” He gave her a cold smile. “You’re inspiring me to maybe rip something apart after all.”
Luis sighed heavily and gestured to Margo. “Do you have anything else to add?”
The imp smiled smugly. “I think I’ve proven my point.”
Luis glanced over at us. “Does the jury have any questions for the suspect?”
We all sort of sat there a moment, squirming under the room’s attention. Then the demoness beside me raised her hand. Luis gave her permission to speak.
“So, did you call Noelle a bunch of names or something? What were they?”
“Yeah,” piped up another demon. “Did you call her a ladder-climbing, self-serving cunt?
That’d be a good one.” While I admired Noelle’s professional demeanor, it was obvious that others among us did not. I had the distinct impression my fellow jurors wanted to get a rise out of her.
Clyde’s angry face registered momentary surprise. Luis snorted.
“Don’t answer that,” said Noelle, nodding to Clyde. Her face was still composed.
“Ooh,” said my neighboring juror. “Then he must have called you a cunt, if you don’t want us to know.”
“I don’t care if you know what he said,” explained Noelle in exasperation. “But I’d rather you ask questions that are actually useful. This isn’t The Jerry Springer Show.”
“I agree,” said Luis, giving my neighbor a censuring look. “Does anyone have any questions that will actually facilitate this matter?”
Silence. I have to admit, I felt kind of appalled. Demons were demons, evil by nature. But they also tended to be very efficient and business-like. The apathy around me was disheartening, even among our ranks. Whoever had thrown together this jury had picked low-ranking demons, ones who were completely self-absorbed and would never rise up in the ranks. They weren’t shrewd like Jerome or commanding like Luis. They were bottom-feeders who’d be doing crappy jobs in Hell for the rest of eternity. They didn’t care about this case. They were probably only here for the free food.
Tentatively, I raised my hand, needing to ask a couple of things that I honestly couldn’t believe hadn’t come up yet.
I thought I saw amusement in Luis’ eyes when he noticed me. “Go ahead, Georgina.”
The silence in the room grew even heavier. I don’t think many of them had noticed there was a succubus on the jury until now. Even the center stagers—Noelle, Margo, and Clyde—seemed surprised to see me.
I put on my customer service face, hoping I looked as calm and confident as Noelle.
“Where were you when Anthony was killed?”
Clyde didn’t answer right way, and I could tell from his gaze that he was appraising me in a new way. I don’t think he’d expected any sort of reasonable questioning in this courtroom. I don’t think anyone had.
“I was at home, watching a movie.”
“Was anyone with you?”
“No.”
“No alibi,” said Margo happily.
She was right, which didn’t help his case. On the other hand, I felt pretty confident a demon like Clyde could have gotten some low-ranking vampire or imp to lie for him and play alibi.
“Any other questions?” asked Luis.
“What movie did you watch?” asked the drunk juror.
Luis glared at him, then flicked his gaze back to me. “Any other questions?”
I thought about it. “When was the last time you saw Anthony?”
“That morning. He was leaving Noelle’s office while I was coming in.”
“Did you talk?”
“No. Well, cursory greetings…and even that seemed to piss him off. He was angry and in a hurry. Was kind of an asshole.” I had a feeling he might have elaborated, but Clyde probably realized trash-talking the guy he was accused of killing wasn’t too smart.
I nodded and looked back at Luis. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“Why did no one ask those questions right away?” Seth asked me later, back in our room. There’d been a little more procedure, and then the court had recessed for the day. “Those are, like, the most basic courtroom questions ever. ‘Where were you when this happened,’ etc., etc.”
I shrugged. “I know. None of them care.”
“Yeah, but there’s a five-century disembowelment on the line.”
“They’re demons,” I told them. There wasn’t more I could offer by way of explanation, and Seth seemed to understand.
“So, what about the other suspects?” he asked. “When will they be examined?”
“Tomorrow and the next day. Nobody wants to work too hard at these things, so they spread it out. In fact, most of the people watching are only here for the social aspect. It’s the party of the century.”
“Literally,” muttered Seth.
I laughed and brushed my lips against his cheek. “Well, speaking of parties, there’s one right now up in the penthouse. Wine and appetizers for dinner.”
A wary look crossed his face. “And you want to go.”
“It’s a party. And not everybody here sucks. Luis is cool.”
Seth was silent a moment, and I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. “Luis was…nice.”
“So, you want to come with me?” I asked. “It’ll be fun. I saw you packed your Moon Patrol shirt, so you can even dress up.”
He gave me a wry look at the shirt joke. “You know how I feel about parties and groups of immortals. This would be like…”
“A five-century flaying?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Coward.”
He caught me in his arms, pulling me to his chest. “Around this sort of thing? Yes. I make no pretense to bravery.”
“What are you going to do instead?” Like I didn’t know the answer.
“Are you kidding? There are five coffee shops around the corner with free wi-fi. I’ll have a new novel done by the time you get back from the party.”
I didn’t doubt it. And honestly, I couldn’t believe Seth had gone this whole day without getting any sort of writing done. It was truly a sign of his love for me.
But then, a wistful look appeared in his eyes, one that indicated that maybe writing wasn’t the only thing on his mind. “But I’d much rather spend time with you,” he said.
A pang of guilt thudded in my chest, and suddenly, I felt bad. This was supposed to be our getaway, and here I was, blowing him off for a party. But I did want to get a feel for this case and knew there’d be other opportunities for us to hang out.
So, I let him go on his way, with promises to get in touch later tonight. As for me, I set about figuring out what to wear to this shindig. I might not respect most of the demons here, but I wanted to be respected. I wanted to look like I could actually add some value to that jury. And, yeah, I just also wanted people to think I was hot. Demons are selfish. Succubi are vain.
I’d packed lightly on this trip so I wouldn’t have to check luggage, figuring I could just shape-shift on whatever I needed. Standing in front of the mirror, I conducted my own fashion show, trying on and dismissing a dozen different combinations. As much as I would have liked for Seth to go to the party with me, I was kind of glad he wasn’t here to see me trying on more outfits than a teenage girl.
Finally, I decided on a white charmeuse trapeze dress, the kind of dress that looks like a bag on anyone except a model. I had a model’s body but still cinched the dress with a wide, black leather belt that better defined my waist. Part of my light brown hair I pulled up into a high bun, the rest I let hang down my back. I was admiring the effect of black stilettos when I decided the white was too stark. I shifted the dress red, decided that was overkill, then settled on a pale gold shade that complimented the hazel-green of my eyes.
“You should have stuck with the white one,” a gravelly voice suddenly said behind me.
“It made you look angelic.”