She gave me a long, piercing, probing look before she answered. I suspect she was trying to determine if she could wring anything else out of me. She must have come to the correct conclusion.

“You might say I’m serving as his matchmaker,” she said with a wry twist of her lips that might have been a smile.

“Huh?” I responded intelligently.

Shae stood up, and my hand tightened on the Taser. She held both her hands up, her eyebrows arching. “Now, now,” she said. “Don’t shoot me before I give you the information you want.”

I kept the Taser pointed at her as I eased out of my chair. “You can talk just fine sitting down.”

“If you want the answer to your question, you’ll follow me and I’ll show you. You can keep your Taser handy if I make you that nervous.”

Her condescending tone suggested I was somehow being a coward for insisting on the weapon, but I didn’t feel any particular sense of shame. As far as I was concerned, it was an entirely practical safety measure.

I kept a wide distance between us as Shae walked to the door, her hands still in plain sight. But when she stepped through the door out into the hallway, I followed.

I wasn’t sure where we were going, but I suppose I wasn’t all that surprised when she headed toward the mysterious door at the end of the hall. The door that led to “more offices.” The door opened with a beep when Shae swiped her card. I had to get closer to her than I’d have liked to catch the door before it slammed shut behind her.

There were indeed a couple of other office-like rooms behind that door. However, of far greater importance was the massive, space-age security center that Shae showed off with a flourish.

There were at least a couple dozen screens, each displaying a different image of the club. And not all of them were of the main room. My stomach twisted as my eyes finally focused on one screen and I realized what the two men and the one naked woman were doing. I jerked my gaze away, only to find myself looking at an even more unsettling image—a woman wearing nothing but a black hood that covered her entire head except for her mouth down on her knees with her hands cuffed behind her as she fellated the disgusting no-neck man who’d tried to pick me up the other night. It was all I could do not to hurl.

Shae reached up and tapped her finger on one of the other screens, drawing my eye once again. And there was good old Tommy Brewster, his naked ass pumping as he fucked a pretty young woman who was bound spread-eagled on the bed. The look on her face told me she wasn’t there against her will. If that wasn’t already more than I wanted to know, I could see two more young women, both blond, naked, and eagerlooking, watching the proceedings, apparently waiting their turn.

I’m nowhere near a good enough actress to hide my disgust and embarrassment, so I didn’t bother trying. Instead I focused on Shae’s face and tried to convince myself I had no peripheral vision.

“Isn’t there some kind of law against videotaping people having sex without their knowledge?”

Shae grinned. “How do you know it’s without their knowledge?”

I knew that most people who frequented this club would find me prudish in the extreme. I also knew that there was no way they were all so uninhibited that they didn’t mind being taped in the act. But what was I going to do about it? I sighed as I came to the inevitable conclusion: nothing.

I wanted to cross my arms over my chest, my favorite defensive gesture, but that would mean hindering my Taser hand, and I wasn’t about to do that.

“What does this have to do with anything?” I asked. “I already knew Tommy was into the kinky stuff, and I really don’t give a shit.”

“I told you I was his matchmaker,” Shae said. Once more she tapped a nail against the screen, three times, once for each girl. “I handpicked these for him.”

I shook my head. “Why does he need you to pick his girls?”

“Those girls are all regulars here. Real groupies. They’d do just about anything a demon wants them to do.”

I hate to imagine what kind of face I must have been making. “I still don’t see why this is relevant.”

“As you may have noticed, I’m in the information business. Among other things.”

I gave her a keep talking motion.

“So let’s just say I know a lot about my regulars. Things that they wouldn’t usually share with their one-night stands.”

“Like what?” I asked, still making absolutely no sense out of what she was saying.

“Like, for instance, their family medical history. Tommy’s particularly interested in girls who have a family history of cancer. And he also likes those who put a little too much faith in condoms.”

“What the hell. .?” I muttered. “Why?” I asked out loud.

“Which of these screens turns you on the most?” Shae asked with a sweeping gesture to indicate the bank of monitors that showed the sickening “playrooms” from Hell. “And don’t tell me none of them, because I’ll know that’s a lie.”

I was about to voice an indignant objection, until my brain caught up and realized this was her quid pro quo question. I also realized that I didn’t need her to tell me why Tommy was targeting these particular girls. I bet I could come up with a perfectly good guess myself.

For reasons I yet had no clue about, Tommy was continuing the Houston breeding project. Only he was taking his genes out into the general human population.

I shook my head yet again. I didn’t know exactly what he was up to. I didn’t know what would happen to these chicks if they happened to get pregnant. I didn’t know what would happen to their children. What I did know was that none of this could possibly be good for the human race.

Tearing my eyes away from the monitors, I gave Shae my best sneer. “If I weren’t worried that too many people had seen me come in here, I swear I’d shoot you full of juice and exorcize you so fast. .”

“Sticks and stones, sugar. Now, I think we’ve concluded our business here, don’t you?”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

CHAPTER 20

It was late when I got home, and my body and mind were both complaining that I hadn’t recovered from my sleep deprivation yet. Working almost on autopilot, I checked my answering machine, wondering why I hadn’t heard from Adam yet. Had he chickened out about approaching Dom? Or had he gotten an answer he didn’t like? Right now, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but there was no way I could go to sleep with three unplayed messages on my machine under the circumstances.

The first call was an immediate hang-up. The second call was from a reporter, of all things. He wanted me to call back and talk with him about this afternoon’s exorcism. I couldn’t imagine why he’d be interested. It had been a long time since exorcism had been considered newsworthy. He left a number for me to call, but I just laughed. Like I needed the press in my life!

I thought surely the third call would be from Adam. I really wish I’d been right.

The caller ID told me it was from an unknown number, and at first I thought it was going to be another hang-up. My finger was halfway to the Delete button before a voice started talking. A chill ran down my spine from the first digitally-altered word.

“You’d better pray Jordan Maguire lives,” the message said, the voice so garbled I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. “If he dies, you die, too. This is your only warning.”

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. Once upon a time, a threat like this would have had me. . well, not exactly in a panic, but at the very least in a state of high alarm. Tonight. . it scared me a little, but after all I’d been through since Lugh came into my life, it seemed almost more of an annoyance than a cause for serious concern. Oh, for the days when a death threat on my answering machine was the worst problem in my life!