I swallowed an almost absurd need to laugh. I guess my Tom, Dick, and Harry suspicion hadn’t been misplaced. “But Dick is Tommy’s father, so how can they be the same generation?”

“He’s not Tommy’s father. I suspect that Devon Brewster is dead and that Dick—or actually, Dick’s demon—used the ability I just showed you to mimic his appearance.”

I shook my head, still unable to make all the pieces add up. “So Claudia’s been living with an imposter and didn’t notice? I mean, I know Dick is the spitting image of Devon at the moment, but. .”

“I don’t know how it was done. Tommy didn’t even know Devon was an imposter, so he can’t clue us in, either.”

Something in his voice told me there was more. “But. .?”

Raphael was suddenly fascinated by his coffee cup. “But I can tell you how I would have pulled the trick.”

“Not that you’d ever do something like that yourself,” I muttered, and Raphael’s lips twitched, either with a suppressed retort or a smile.

“If I wanted to have a possessed superhost impersonate someone, I’d have the demon possess the person to be replaced for a little while. Just long enough to rummage through his mind, get enough of a feel for him—and enough of his memories—to do a good impersonation.”

“But then why bother with this whole replacement bit? The demon could have just stayed in Devon if he wanted to play the ultimate inside man.”

Raphael gave me a look that said I was an idiot. “Let’s see, I could be stuck in the body of a normal, middle-aged human being—or I could possess a super-host.” He tapped his chin as if thinking deeply.

“I’m glad you’re finding this amusing,” I growled, but Raphael merely shrugged. I wished my stomach would settle down so I could have a cup of coffee. “How much of this did you know from the very beginning?”

“I don’t really know anything even now. It’s all conjecture.”

I opened my mouth to say something scathing, then let it snap closed. Lecturing Raphael on morality just wasn’t worth the effort. Strangely enough, he looked defensive anyway. Perhaps he did have a small, stunted conscience somewhere in his cold, black heart.

“If I’d thought it was important information to help us put Lugh back on the throne, I’d have told the truth.” He looked back and forth between me and Dominic, I guess hoping he’d find someone who’d sympathize. He was out of luck.

“How are any of us supposed to trust you when you’ve lied yet again?” I asked, surprised at how calm I sounded. I felt more like I should be jumping up and down and throwing things. But somehow I was just too tired, too wrung out. And too sick. My stomach was getting increasingly unhappy again, and I suspected I’d be making a run for the bathroom in a few minutes.

Raphael picked up his coffee cup and stared into its depths. “Do I get any credit for helping you save those kids? I didn’t have to do that, you know. I already had what I wanted. I already had Tommy.”

Raphael’s really a piece of work! This was exactly why he’d helped me save the children—so he could use it as evidence of what an upstanding citizen he was when he was forced to give up his current batch of secrets. I laughed a bit at the realization, though Raphael and Dominic both looked puzzled. I guess they couldn’t see the humor in it.

Yes, Raphael’s morality would always be in question, and I could never be sure anything he told me was the truth. But he was a powerful demon of the royal line, he was now in possession of one of his lab-bred superhosts who clearly had properties that we might find useful, and he was loyal to Lugh. For all his faults, we were stuck with him.

Sometimes, life just sucks.

CHAPTER 30

I was still sick as a dog the next day, and would have liked nothing more than to stay curled up in bed for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to answer the phone when Claudia called—I’d forgotten her insistence that we would “talk tomorrow.” Somehow, I ended up agreeing to meet her for lunch, although I doubted I’d be up to eating by then.

I had to bring Raphael—with his nose now shifted back to normal—to lunch with me, because I knew I’d never be able to feed Claudia the pack of lies we’d concocted. I say “we,” but naturally it was Raphael who came up with the story. Although we assumed Devon was dead, we had no idea where the demons had hidden the body, so we had to let Claudia go on thinking he was on the loose somewhere, possessed by a hostile demon. I’d have preferred to have given her closure, but I honestly couldn’t think of a good alternative.

I liked the story about Tommy even less. We told Claudia that when Raphael had tried to leave Tommy and transfer back to his original host, Tommy’s brain had shut down, just like Jordan Maguire’s. Raphael—the hero! — had quickly gone back into Tommy to save his life. And so, despite the fact that I had exorcized the demon who had originally possessed Tommy, Tommy was doomed to host a demon for the rest of his life.

“I’m so sorry,” I blurted to Claudia when Raphael finished talking.

Her eyes were red-rimmed and glimmered with tears, but she managed a fragile smile. “Don’t be,” she said. “You did everything you could, and I’m sure Tommy’s in much better hands now with your friend.”

I still hadn’t recovered from last night’s nausea, and I almost gagged at the thought of Raphael’s hands being better than anyone’s.

“If it weren’t for you,” Claudia continued, “that horrible demon would still be in Tommy, and the girls and I would probably all be dead. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us!”

I wished the floor would swallow me. Here she was thanking me, when I had willingly sacrificed her son to save my brother. I sat there choking on guilt, unable to say anything, unable to meet her eyes.

“Ease up on the self-flagellation,” Raphael told me when we got back into Tommy’s POS car. “I didn’t tell you this earlier, because I figured you wouldn’t believe me, and you probably still won’t. But there are a lot of cancer genes bred into this strain, and all hell would break loose in Tommy’s body if he didn’t have a demon in residence to keep the cancer contained. He already had a couple of tumors beginning. Too small to give him any trouble yet, but a few months down the road. .”

I stared straight ahead through the windshield. “You’re right. I don’t believe you.”

One week later, Lugh’s council on the Mortal Plain gathered in the basement of Adam and Dominic’s house. That council consisted of me, Adam, Dominic, Raphael, Andy. . and Brian.

He and I had had a bit of a fight about my completely leaving him out of the loop when Raphael and I went on our dangerous rescue mission. Having been at the time still sick with the aftereffects of Lugh’s control, I was in a weakened condition and readily agreed that I should have told Brian all. I then in a fit of recklessness invited him to be part of this royal council, or whatever the hell we really were.

I realized having him as part of the council was inevitable if he and I were going to stay together. And it seemed that, despite a whole lot of obstacles and problems that weren’t going away anytime soon, we weren’t ready to give up on each other yet.

A lot had happened in the week since we’d rescued the Brewster girls. The U.S. Exorcism Board had suspended me, pending an investigation into my potential mishandling of the Jordan Maguire exorcism. It was bullshit, and they knew it, but Jordan Maguire Sr. had enough money to make them dance to his twisted little song. Besides, my name had already been associated with an illegal exorcism in the past, and though the charges had been dropped, I’m sure they raised a few of the Board members’ eyebrows. They were operating on the “better safe than sorry” theory.