Demon Night

was anything a demon might appreciate. “I figured you’d know better than I would. And why they aren’t waiting any longer.”
    “I know Lucifer’s demons. Those who used to follow Belial are a bit more individual.” She grimaced around the last word.
    Jake grinned. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
    “It is when you’re trying to predict their behavior, puppy.” She speared him with a dark look before returning her attention to the file. “Cerberus’s balls, this girl is a fucking mess. Overdrafts, maxed-out credit cards, late payments.”
    “ Was a mess,” Ethan said with an edge of impatience, not moving from his position by the painting. With his Guardian eyesight, he could easily read the page she was holding. “Those are the financials from three years ago.”
    Lilith darted a glance up at him. “So they are.”
    Ethan’s jaw clenched, and his skin heated slightly. Of course she hadn’t missed the date; she’d been trying to draw a response from him, and she’d gotten one. No longer a demon, but still manipulative. Still looking for a man’s weaknesses.
    Charlie wasn’t his. He liked her well enough, but he’d be a damned fool to let a woman like that depend on him or get under his skin.
    Apparently oblivious to the smirk that tilted Lilith’s lips, Jake leaned forward and tapped his finger against a line item. “A lot of it was this payment—she made it a year after she got out of Mission Creek.”
    “A five-thousand-dollar fine?” Lilith’s brows arched. “And a year at a state correction facility? Was the DUI her first offense?”
    Jake nodded. “No other DUIs, but she’d checked herself in and out of alcohol rehab for a couple of years, so the judge took that as a sign that she wasn’t capable of rehabilitating herself. And she totaled her rental car, driving into the side of that restaurant, so there were a few other charges thrown on top of it. She was lucky no one else was injured, or she might not have gotten off as easy as she did.”
    Ethan didn’t know it had been all that easy, but he didn’t respond. He was hardly one to determine suitable punishments.
    “Did you check out the inmates who were in with her? Any hits with Legion?” Lilith asked.
    “We ran the names,” Ethan said. “There were none.”
    “Her financials are clean now, though she doesn’t have anything extra,” she noted as she hit the end of the file. “Certainly nothing to tempt a demon. Who gave her the money?”
    Jake slid his toothpick between his lips again, leaned back. “Her sister, a little over two years ago. The loan got her out of the hole. That’s also when Charlie stopped the careless spending and finally got a steady job.”
    “At…Cole’s? Hold on.” Lilith glanced back at a page. “She’s drunk and drives her car through the window of his restaurant, and six years later he offers her a position as bartender ?”
    Another folder appeared in Jake’s hand. “Old Matthew Cole. Sentenced thirty-seven years ago for rape and double murder, then had his conviction overturned a quarter century later when DNA evidence showed he was innocent. Legally changed his name to ‘Old Matthew’ because he said that’s what he was when he got out—what the courts did to him, he just wanted to make official. Most of his staff has served time for minor offenses.”
    “An ex-con turned Mother Hen, with a grudge against the law,” Lilith murmured, shaking her head in amusement, then turned back to the first page in Charlie’s file and studied her picture.
    “We looked at all of Cole’s and the staff’s associates as well,” Ethan said.
    “She’s attractive, I suppose, if one goes for those blond, sloe-eyed, rock-and-roll, just-fell-out-of-bed types. Don’t you think so, puppy?”
    “I’d do her,” Jake said.
    “You’d screw a goat if it looked at you crosswise.” Ethan ignored Jake’s rueful grin of agreement and stared down at Lilith. Was she trying to rile him again, suggesting such a thing? Demons didn’t have a sexual drive; they could perform the act, but couldn’t feel physical desire. “A demon ain’t likely to lust after her, and it wouldn’t make no difference if she looked as she does now or if she were the bearded lady in a traveling wagon.”
    “No, but they recognize and enjoy beauty. It doesn’t take much for appreciation to become envy, which might explain the change. I don’t know that her face is so remarkable it’d inspire that much