The_Demons_Wife_ARC (17 page)

“Samael…” She
took hold of both his arms, grabbing his thin coat above the elbows, and shook
him. “Come on. Out with it.”

At last, he
looked at her, and the cold, hard gleam in his eyes returned. The pupils of his
gold-flecked eyes widened and darkened. They looked like melted chocolate. His
mouth drooped down at both corners.

“If you really
must know,” he said, still acting like a scolded schoolboy, “I did
something…wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Okay,
something evil.”

“What?”  She
looked at him with shocked surprise, but he didn’t speak. When she gasped in
frustration, her breath came out as a huge, white ball of steam.

“Back there—”
He twitched his head in the direction of the jewelry store. “In the jeweler’s.
I did something I shouldn’t have.”

“What did you
do?”

A chill
wrapped its fingers around Claire’s heart, and her first thought was:
If this
is how it’s always going to be with him, then maybe I’m not sure I can take it.

But she didn’t
say anything, and she didn’t turn away. When he tried to break her hold on his
arms, she tightened it. Then, with one hand, she took him by the chin and
turned his head so he had to face her.

“Tell me…right
now.”

“I—”

He stopped
and, instead of using words, he shoved his left hand into his coat pocket and
then withdrew it. His fist was clenched, but when he opened it ever so slowly,
she saw that he was holding several diamond rings and some other unmounted
precious stones.

Claire’s eyes
bugged out in surprise. A sudden rush of heat drove the cold away as her face
flushed. She swallowed, and her throat made a loud gulping sound.

“What did
you—? Are you crazy?”

Samael sighed,
the most heart-wrenching sigh Claire had ever heard in her life.  He looked
genuinely pained, but that didn’t negate Claire’s anger.

“Why did you
do that?” She was struggling to keep her voice down. There were a few people
passing by, and she didn’t want to draw any attention.

Before he
could answer her, she took him by the hand as if he were a small boy and guided
him toward the car. Her boot heels clicked on the frozen pavement, sounding
like a metronome. He fumbled to put the jewelry back into his coat pocket, and
then he took out his key ring and pressed the button for the remote keyless
entry. The car chirped twice as the doors unlocked, and he walked with her to
the passenger’s side and opened the door. She shot him a withering glance
before she sat down in the passenger’s seat and yanked the door closed. He was
grimacing as he walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side and got
in.

 “So,” she
said, crossing her arms and turning to face him.

“So,” he said.

“Explain
yourself,” she said, “because as far as I can see, there’s no good explanation
for what you did.”

Samael licked
his lips as though there was something tasty on them, and he wanted to get
every last bit before he spoke. He sat with both hands on the steering wheel
while staring straight ahead.

“I slipped
up,” he finally said.

“I’ll say you
did,” Claire said, sniffing with sarcastic laughter.

“I know…This
is tough, you know? I mean, giving up a way of life that I’ve followed
for…well, longer than you can imagine.”

Still, Claire
said nothing. She couldn’t stop thinking about how she didn’t want anything he
had to offer her…not if it was stolen.

Was everything
he owned—his house, this car, his fancy clothes, everything he owned—stolen
property?

What did he
intend to do with those rings and stones?

Give them to
her?

Or someone
else?

Maybe he had a
whole stable of girlfriends he was working to corrupt. Regardless, she
certainly wasn’t going to accept anything that was stolen.

“Tell me why
you did it.”

Samael shifted
his gaze back and forth, and then he looked at her. He swallowed hard and then
took a deep breath.

“I wanted to
get that clerk into trouble,” he finally said.

“Oh? And why
is that? And don’t give me any of this ‘it’s what I do’ bullshit.”

Samael’s eyes
blinked rapidly, and Claire couldn’t help but wonder if he was madly concocting
another lie to try to float past her.

“Well, it is
what I do…or what I used to do…what I don’t want to do anymore, but that guy—”
Samael let out a watery snort that sounded remarkably horselike in the close
confines of the car. “That guy was getting on my nerves.”

“He was just
doing his job,” Claire said mildly even as she thought how she hadn’t really
liked the man, either. He had struck her as pretentious and a bit full of
himself, faking an elegance and sophistication that were little more than skin
deep—just to make a big sale. But then, she and Samael were only there to get
an engagement ring. It wasn’t like they wanted to be lifelong friends with him.

“Yeah, but
there was…” Samael sighed deeply, his eyes silently pleading with Claire for
understanding. “You have to admit, he was irritating. I decided to take this
stuff because I knew—I know that he’ll be held responsible, and that he’ll end
up losing his job because of it. I…I’ve met him before, and I’ve been working
to…to—”

“Get him to
damn himself,” Claire finished for him.

Samael nodded
slowly and said in a feeble voice, “It is what I do, dear.”

“Not anymore,
you don’t,” Claire said emphatically.

Samael studied
her, his gold-flecked eyes dark and glistening. She wondered if he was trying
to hypnotize her, to get her to accept that he was what he was, and maybe he
could never change.

“So what do
you want me to do?” he asked, sounding like a schoolboy who’d been caught being
naughty. 

“I want you to
take them back,” she said simply.

“Right now?”

“Of course right
now.”

“I can’t do
that. I’d get arrested.”

“Maybe that
would do you some good.”

Samael shook
his head and said, “You sound like you really mean that.”

“Maybe I do.”

Samael
laughed, and his laugh was loud and booming in the close confines of the car.

“You do
realize that no jail can hold me, right? I could get away or get out anytime I
want to.”

“Oh, yeah?
Then why are you so afraid about going back to the store and returning what you
stole.”

“I’m not
afraid.”

“You seem it
to me.”

“I’m not, it’s
just that it’s…complicated.” His demeanor softened.

“It isn’t
yours, and I sure as Hell don’t want it.”

“It isn’t his,
either.” Samael grit his teeth and shook his head in frustration. “Like I said,
I know that guy. He’s been lifting merchandise from that store on a regular
basis. He’s got a system worked out that he thinks is foolproof, that he’ll
never get caught, but with this much going missing all at once, the owner’s
bound to pin it on him. It’s not really any of your concern.”

Claire didn’t
like the way he was trying so hard to justify what he had done. He was wrong,
plain and simple, and it frustrated her that he couldn’t see or admit it.

“It kind of
is, if I want to walk in there in a couple of days and pick up that ring for
you,” Claire said, fuming.

Samael reached
out and took both of her hands into his, squeezing them so hard it almost hurt.
Even through her gloves, Claire could feel the heat radiating from him. His
brow was slick with sweat.

“I’ll tell you
what I’ll do,” he finally said, breaking the tense silence that made the air in
the car seem too thick to breathe. “In a couple of days—maybe when we go to
pick up the ring, I’ll put this stuff into a bag and mail it—or maybe just
bring it into the store and leave it on the counter where that clerk will find
it. That will get him off the hook.”

Still less
than one hundred percent convinced, Claire nailed him with a level, steady gaze
and waited for a long time before she finally nodded her agreement.

“Can I trust
you on this?”

“I swear to—”

His voice cut
off so abruptly, and his eyes bulged so much Claire thought he might be having
a heart attack or stroke.

Can a demon
have a heart attack?

Does a demon
even have a heart?

“What is it?”
she asked anxiously.

“I almost
said…”

He snorted and
then started to laugh so hard it seemed he was going to lose his breath. His
laughter rose so loud Claire was concerned someone passing by might stop to see
what was going on.

“I was…Without
even thinking, I almost…”

For a while
longer, he still couldn’t get a good enough grip on himself to catch his breath
and say what he wanted to say. Claire’s initial concern that he was suffering a
stroke or something soon passed, but she still couldn’t see what had struck him
as so damned funny.

“Are you sure
you’re all right?”

His eyes were
glistening, and tears sliced oily tracks down his red-flushed face as Samael
nodded.

“I am…just
lemme…catch my breath.”

Finally, once
he had control of himself, he looked at her and said, “I can’t believe I almost
said that I swear to…you know who…”

Claire was
confused, but only for a moment.

“You mean,
‘God’?”

Samael visibly
winced when she said the name, but he maintained his smile and nodded.

“Yeah. I
haven’t said His name in so long, it caught me by surprise. But you see?”

Claire
shrugged. She wasn’t quite sure she did see.

“I’m changing,
and before you know it, I may even be able to say that name out loud and not
feel like there are ants crawling around under my skin…at least I hope so.”

Claire grunted
and, easing her hands out from his tight grip, said, “Yeah…I hope so, too.”

~ * ~

“So, what do
you think?”

Claire’s eyes
were wide as she leaned forward, her hands on the dashboard and stared up the
driveway toward the house…

No…This wasn’t
a house…It’s a mansion.

The first
thing she thought of was the palatial homes on the Cliff Walk, in Newport,
Rhode Island. When she had been looking for colleges after high school, she had
checked out Salve Regina University but had decided against both that school
and Roger Williams University because she was concerned that there were too
many distractions in the area. The schools were wicked expensive, too, but then
again, so was Ithaca where she ended up.

But Samael’s
home was amazing…like something out of a picture book.

“And you live
here…alone?”

“Until now,”
he said, and there was an unusual tone in his voice that made her shift her
gaze to him for a second or two before she looked back at the house. “But not
really alone. I have a staff that keeps the place going.”

“I can imagine,”
Claire said, and she was about to ask if his staff was human or demonic but
remained silent on that point as they drove closer to the house. Samael drove
up the gentle curving sweep of the driveway toward a huge portico made of
granite blocks and a wooden overhang. Snow and debris had been swept clear, and
even on a cold, March morning, the entryway to the house—as big as it
was—looked warm and inviting. Claire could imagine rows of fancy, expensive
cars lined up, and hordes of elegant guests arriving for summer parties and
formal dinners.

“It’s…absolutely…amazing,”
she whispered, and Samael smiled proudly.

But
then—unexpectedly—a thought hit her like a dash of ice water in her face.

But he got all
of this from doing evil.

Not just bad
things…from doing Evil—with a capital “E.”

A sudden wave
of discomfort swept through her, and she involuntarily looked over her shoulder
out the rear window at the receding driveway. The entrance from the road was
lost behind a screen of pine trees. She could imagine a huge iron gate swinging
shut behind her…and armed guards—or a host of demons—making sure she never
escaped.

What she did
see behind them was even worse.

Following them
up the driveway was a police cruiser and an unmarked car. Samael and she seemed
to notice the cars at the same time. His expression flinched, but only for an
instant. Then the features of his face hardened. His jaw muscle flexed and
unflexed, making it look like he had large walnuts packed between his teeth and
lips.

“Do you—?”

“Just don’t
say anything,” he said, his voice sharp with command. “I’ll handle it.”

Claire nodded
and, sitting with shoulders hunched, she clasped her hands tightly together. 
Samael pulled to a stop at the foot of the granite stairs, killed the engine,
and opened the car door. Before he got out, he glanced back at Claire and said,
“It’s nothing serious. You can get out of the car, too.”