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“You do?”
“Yeah, he was over at my house to watch the Super Bowl,” he said, not bothering to hide his grin. “We shared a coupla brewskies. He’s like my best bro!”
I rolled my eyes and headed up the stairs, though I couldn’t help but smile. “Never mind,” I said over my shoulder. “Kiraknikahl obviously means asshole.”
Chapter 5
The cab of the u-haul reeked of cigarette smoke, but since the air conditioner was nonfunctional it meant we had to drive with the windows down anyway. Fortunately, it was a warm night, and the open windows made for an almost pleasant ride.
Kehlirik had been surprisingly willing to be toted like cargo in the back of the truck, apparently looking upon the whole thing as one more unusual experience that he could relate to his demonkind buddies. I knew that experience in other realms helped demons gain status, so I had to guess that riding in a truck counted. In fact, he’d almost looked excited, which for a twelfth-level demon was utterly unheard-of.
Unfortunately, the U-Haul had been the best idea I could come up with for transporting the demon, since, as Ryan had pointed out so cleverly, there was no way in creation that he would fit into my Taurus. I wasn’t even sure he’d fit into an SUV, which I could have probably rented as well. He would have been cramped—especially with his wings—but, more important than that, I really didn’t want to risk anyone seeing that I had a big horking demon riding in the back of my car.
Not that the reyza was a demon-from-hell kind of demon. The creatures I summoned had been named thousands of years ago, long before any of the world’s religions had designated “demons” as agents of evil and residents of hell. I wasn’t enough of a theologian to know how that had all come about, but my demons resided in a different sphere of existence that converged with this one, and they were no more evil than a gun was. Powerful, dangerous, and deadly, yes. Evil incarnate, no.
It was a thirty-minute drive from my secluded house in the sticks to my aunt’s house on the lakefront. St. Long Parish was small and quiet, mostly rural, in comfortable driving distance of New Orleans. Beaulac, the parish seat, was barely big enough to be defined as a city, and the only reason Beaulac had as large a population as it did was because of Lake Pearl. The city curved around the lake as if hugging it possessively, and Beaulac took great pains to make sure that the lake and its environs were clean and attractive. Tourism, hunting, and fishing were the main attractions of Beaulac, but there was also a cadre of über-rich who lived in the area, mostly on the lakefront. These were people who had no need to commute anywhere—either retired from lucrative careers or independently wealthy.
My aunt Tessa had been fortunate enough to inherit her house from a distant great-aunt shortly after my mother died. The inside of her house was beautifully decorated and maintained, and aside from a few modifications that she’d made, it would have fit right in with any of the other museum-quality houses in the area.
Only, very few people ever got the chance to see the inside.
I turned onto the two-lane highway that paralleled the more sedate drive that bordered the lake, then frowned and took my foot off the accelerator as I saw the flashing lights of marked units up ahead. “Shit.”
Ryan flicked a glance at me. “What?”
I grimaced, glancing at my rearview mirror. There was no way to turn around, and even if there was, it would look insanely suspicious. “It’s state police. They must be doing a DWI checkpoint.”
His face etched into a frown as he looked at the distant flashing lights. “Are you sure it’s not some of your guys?”
I continued to slow. “Nope. State police have all blue lights. We have red and blue, as does the sheriff’s office. Shit.” I wiped my hands on my jeans. There was no reason for them to want to look in the back of the truck, but there was also no way to warn Kehlirik to remain quiet and still. This U-Haul didn’t have a window between the cab and the truck. I was just going to have to hope that Kehlirik would wait until I opened the back door to emerge. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if he came out in the middle of about a dozen state troopers.
A wicked grin crossed Ryan’s face. “I dare ya to sic the demon on them.”
I tried not to laugh, but I wasn’t very successful. “Stop that.”
“I double-dog-dare you. I’d love to see them scatter, screaming like little girls.”
“Shut up! I knew it was a mistake to bring you along,” I said, thwacking him on the arm. But the mental image was there, and I couldn’t help but snicker. “Okay, that would be pretty damn funny.” I glanced at him, matching his grin with one of my own and allowing myself to enjoy the brief moment of shared silliness. Then I forced my face into an overly serious expression. “Now, behave yourself,” I ordered, as I slowed to a crawl and joined the short queue of cars going through the checkpoint.
“Yes, ma’am!” he replied, drawing such a dour and stern face that I almost burst out laughing again.
“Why do I put up with you?” I asked in mock despair.
He sighed tragically. “You’re obviously madly in love with me.”
I let out a snort of amusement, even as a silly thrill ran through me. “And you’re obviously on drugs!”
Then we were at the roadblock and I had to school my expression into a less giddy one. I didn’t recognize the trooper who waved me to a stop, but I didn’t have much cause to deal with troopers either. The road we were on was a state highway, which made it the troop’s jurisdiction, though usually the only time anyone gave a crap about that was when there was an accident and we had to decide who would write the report.
“License, registration, proof of insurance,” he recited, tilting his head back to look up at me, which I could tell bugged the crap out of him. I’d worked plenty of checkpoints, and I knew that I liked to be able to see into the person’s car and smell their breath.
I gave him a friendly smile and handed him the rental paperwork, then pulled my license out of my wallet, positioning it to be sure that he caught sight of my badge. I expected him to say something about that, but he didn’t, which only made me more nervous. Not that I was a staunch believer in “badging” one’s way out of tickets or DWIs, but this was one time when it would be seriously nice to just be waved on through. I kept my ears trained on the back of the truck while the trooper looked over my paperwork. Ahead of the truck and to the right, I could see another trooper administering a field sobriety test to a dark-haired young man beside a yellow Mustang. My lips twitched as I watched the man stagger and nearly fall on his face during the walk-and-turn. Yeah, he’d be taking a ride in the back of a car real soon.
I returned my attention to the trooper as he lifted his eyes from the paperwork. He glanced over the truck, mouth drawing down in a slight frown. “Why are you driving a rental truck at midnight?”
I shrugged and smiled. “I worked late today, and this was the only chance I had to get over to my aunt’s house to clean some of the crap out of there.”
The frown stayed on his face. “Have you been drinking tonight?”
