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She giggled. “So, you prefer Nerissa or him?”
“Apples and oranges. Or should I say, type O and type A. Can’t really compare the two. And I’m not planning on giving up one for the other, nor am I planning on making a playdate with both of them at the same time, Ms. Harem Keeper.” I sat down on the stairs. If she knew, the whole house probably knew. “Did Roz tell you?”
“Not at first.” Camille shook her head. “I could smell sex in the parlor the minute I walked in there. His pheromones are extremely potent, and when Smoky came in, he was positive that Roz had just put the make on me and that I was trying to protect him. It took a lot to convince my hothead that Rozurial had not overstepped his boundaries with me. I finally made him fess up for his own safety.”
Oh good gods. That overgrown lizard jumped to conclusions a lot, as did Chase. Only Smoky was a lot more dangerous than Chase. “Great. I suppose everybody knows by now?”
“Um . . . yeah. The arguing was pretty loud until I convinced Rozurial that to avoid a major pounding, he’d better come clean. He’s very discreet, by the way. I was surprised. But by then, everybody was in the parlor trying to calm Smoky down. Sometimes I think he needs a good dose of elephant tranqs.” But she was laughing as she said it.
“I guess he was just looking out for you,” I said, even though I knew better. Smoky owned Camille. Granted, he’d accepted that he was on a time-share with Morio and Trillian, but that was the extent of his generosity. In Smoky’s eyes, Camille was his, no two ways about it. “Okay, everybody knows we slept together. So nobody should be surprised when I don’t talk about it, right? I’m just not comfortable spouting off about my love life to anybody but you and Kitten. And Iris.”
She was about to answer when there was a commotion from above. We rushed upstairs, pausing to make sure the kitchen was empty before slipping through the entrance to my lair. From the sounds of things, something was going on in the living room.
Vanzir, Roz, Delilah, and Morio were scurrying around, and it looked like they were grabbing weapons. Iris was holding Maggie, and Smoky was nowhere to be seen. As Roz plastered a warm kiss on my forehead, nobody said a word, much to my relief. I gave him a quick kiss in return.
“What’s going on?”
“A group of ghouls is tearing up the Wedgewood Cemetery.” Morio slipped the strap of his bag over his head. “Chase called. He needs our help. Get moving!”
The Wedgewood Cemetery was next to the Salish Ranch Park, where we’d routed two dubba-trolls earlier in the year. It seemed to be a magnet for beasties. There was a gorgeous glassed-in arboretum in the park that was a sitting duck target for destruction.
“Ghouls?” I thought about Wilbur and his ghoul, Martin. “Think our new neighbor has anything to do with this?”
“I dunno,” Delilah said, “but we’d better get moving, because there are picnickers still in the park, and you can just imagine what kind of field day those creatures will have. Not quite like having ants heading toward the basket. Picnic, my ass—a gory, bloody picnic!”
I glanced outside. The sun had set, but it was still light enough for strollers and skateboarders and teenagers to be hanging out. “Well, hell. Let’s get a move on. Where’s Smoky?”
“He took off for his barrow. He’s trying to keep peace with the Triple Threat. Come on, we’ll take your car and mine.” Camille grabbed her keys. “Kitten, you and Roz ride with Menolly and fill her in on what we learned today. Vanzir, you and Morio ride with me.”
“Wait a minute! What about your burns?”
“They’re fine—no open sores, so I’m going.” She gave me that look that told me it was useless to argue.
And so we were off, after I planted a quick kiss on Maggie’s head.
On the way there, Roz sat in back, politely silent to the point of making me want to smack him, while Delilah detailed what they’d found out while I slept.
“Vanzir has Carter checking on other demonic activity. Carter told him to drop by with us tonight. We’ll stop there after we take care of these ghouls.”
Somehow, going to meet our indentured demon’s buddy didn’t sound all that comforting, but I let it pass. Carter was probably no worse than Vanzir, and he was providing us with information.
“What about you? Did you find anything out about Harold’s house?”
She nodded. “The house is well over a hundred years old. It belonged to a Dr. Grout at first, who was a widower. He had a daughter, Lily, and the girl married Trent Young, a moneyed young man fresh over from England. Trent bought the house from the old man, who vanished somewhere. I couldn’t find out anything else about him. As it so happens, Trent belonged to a rather scary lodge while back in England—the Eighth Circle.”
“Eighth Circle,” I said. “Let me guess—the eighth circle as in Dante’s nine circles of hell?”
Delilah nodded. “One and the same. The lodge was said to be steeped in sorcery. Even more interesting, immediately upon settling in the U.S., Trent established a private club that he named Dante’s Hellions.”
“The same Dante’s Hellions that Harold belongs to?”
“It looks that way.”
So Dante’s Hellions was a lot older than we thought. “I take it Trent Young is related to Harold Young?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Trent is Harold’s great-grandfather. Lily and Trent had two sons. One of them—Rutger—took over the house when the couple moved into a smaller place in the early forties. He was in his early twenties.”
“What was going on with the club?”
