Page 57 of Housesitter

Shepherd glanced around the kitchen. He could see Easy’s influence as it sank into the walls. The hint of mold in the corners, the smell of something off-putting from the sink. Demonic ideas around home design and human ones were pretty opposed.

“The car goes with the house,” Shepherd said. “Hell loves a job lot.”

Easy’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. It barely reached his mouth.

“No, I knew that,” he said. “What I didn’t know was that…Albert had a motorbike.”

He said that with the aggrieved air of someone who’d been cheated on a radio pop quiz.

Shepherd looked down to hide his smile. He watched as he picked off the beer label with his thumbnail.

“He beat you in a race,” he said.

There was a pause, and Easy had to allow it. “He…did…get to the end first,” he said. “But only because I thought he was a weedy little loser who drove at the speed limit.”

“...but not because you underestimated him?” Shepherd asked.

Easy’s hand tightened around the bottle, and something in the depths of his chocolate-button eyes flickered red and hot.

“He cheated,” he said through clenched teeth. “He wasn’t meant to win.”

That was the definition in Hell’s dictionary, Shepherd supposed. He rolled a wet strip of label, its back sticky with old glue, into a ball between finger and thumb.

“I can see that.”

Easy exhaled in satisfaction and leaned forward, one long arm stretched over the table so he could grab Kel’s shoulder.

“But the gateway was never meant to be in human hands,” Easy said. “It seduces, it corrupts, it makes them over into what it wants by giving them everything they want and nothing they need. It’s why Kel turned on you. It’s why he nearly killed my poor Ruby.”

He paused to take a steadying breath at that thought and squeezed Kel’s shoulder. Shepherd waited politely. He could see where Kel had gotten it from. Easy was a smooth liar, but not a good one. Demons tended not to be.

It wasn’t like they needed to be. People would do the heavy lifting for them. Believing was easier than facing the truth.

After the appropriate pause, Shepherd cleared his throat. “I get the backstory,” Shepherd said. “But why are you in the HOA?”

Easy let go of Kel’s shoulder with one last pat. He stood up and stepped away from the table, taking his beer with him. He took a swig as he prowled over to the window to look out, one hand braced on the sink. “I didn’t want what happened to Albert to happen to anyone else,” he said. “Since he wouldn’t return what was rightfully mine willingly, or accept the offer of ‘double or nothing,’ I had to take a more human approach. So I built the neighborhood around him, started an HOA, and eventually moved in myself and became the president.”

“Talk about a long con,” Kel said.

Easy turned around. He looked like he was enjoying himself. There probably weren’t that many opportunities to boast about what he’d done.

“Not that long, for a demon,” he said. Then he glanced down at his hand and grimaced, the corners of his mouth turning down. He flexed his fingers out here. “Although time does weigh heavier out here.”

Shepherd leaned back as he thought about that. “And under the terms of the HOA, if the house wasn’t kept up to code, it could be seized.”

Easy gave a quick toast with the bottle. “Exactly,” he said. “Not exactly ownership, but possession is nine-tenths of the law, and Hell loves to round up. Of course, it turns out I didn’t need to bother. Kel managed to get it back in the family. A legal claim, a false heart, and my blood…how could the house resist?”

He took another drink as he looked around fondly.

“I guess it missed me,” he said.

Shepherd glanced from Easy to Kel, who avoided his eyes. He wished Easy were a better liar. Then he could just accept he’d acted like a lovestru…like a gullible idiot, wasted gas, and he wasn’t needed here. If he didn’t stop for more shitty roadside coffee, he could be back in Alan’s underground lair before the rat-things got in.

“It sounds like all’s well that ends well,” he said.

Kel rocked onto the back legs of his chair and crossed his arms. “Not quite,” he said. “I’m still on the hook to the house.”

“Which is easily fixed,” Easy hurried to add. “Humans can’t own the house. They can only hold the stewardship of it granted by me. All I need to do is take the deeds to head office, so to speak, and assert the primacy of my claim.”