Divine Evil

wondering.” She shook her head and managed a smile. “I warned you I'd lean.” She linked her fingers with his, then brought his knuckles to her cheek.
    “Any better?”
    “Yeah. Thanks.” Tilting her head, she touched her lips to his. “Really.” “Anytime. Really.”
    “Let's go downstairs.” She started out ahead of him but put a hand out when he would have closed the door. “No, leave it open.” Feeling foolish, she went too quickly down the steps. “Want a beer, Rafferty?”
    “Actually, I was going to see how you felt about going into town for dinner, maybe a movie, then going back to my place and letting me make love with you for the rest of the night.”
    “Well.” She ran her tongue over her lips. “It sounds pretty nice, all in all. One thing, I'm having guests next week, so I have to buy a couple of beds-and a chair, and a lamp or two, some sheets, food-”
    He held up a hand. “You want to skip the movie and join the horde at the mall?”
    “Well, the mall-and there's this flea market.” She gave him a hopeful smile.
    He would have done quite a bit to keep that smile on her face. “I'll call Bud and see if I can borrow his pickup.”
    “God, what a man.” She threw her arms around him and kissed him, hard, then dodged before he could make the grab. “I'll go up and change.” The phone rang as she headed for the stairs. “Get that, will you? Tell whoever it is
    I'll call back.”
    Cam picked up the phone. “Hello.” There was a minute of humming silence, then a click. “They hung up,” he shouted, then dialed Bud.
    When Clare came down again, he was standing in the garage, studying the work she had done that day. Nervous, she stuck her hands in the pockets of the long gray skirt she wore.
    “What do you think?”
    “I think you're incredible.” He rubbed a hand over the polished curve of wood. “These are all so different.” He glanced from the completed metal sculptures to the fisted arm of clay. “And yet they're so unmistakably your work.”
    “I guess I should apologize for jumping all over you this morning for having the good taste to buy one of my pieces.”
    “I figured you'd get around to it.” Idly, he paged through her sketchbook. “Oh, by the way, I got you that burl.”
    “You-the burl?”
    “You did want it, didn't you?”
    “Yes, yes, very much. I didn't think you remembered. How did you do it?”
    “I just mentioned it to the mayor. He was so flattered, he'd have paid you to cut it down.”
    She rewrapped the clay in its dampened cloth. “You're being awfully nice to me, Rafferty.”
    He set her sketchbook aside. “Yeah, I am.” He turned, studied her. “You clean up good, Slim. I hope to hell you're not a finicky shopper.”
    “I'll break the county record.” She held out a hand. “And I'll pop for the champagne we're going to have with dinner.”
    “Are we celebrating?”
    “I got some news today. I'll tell you about it over dinner.” She started to get into his car, spotted Ernie across the street, and waved. “Hey, Ernie.”
    He merely watched her, keeping one hand closed over the pentagram around his neck.

P art T wo

_____
    And the Lord said to Satan
, “Whence do you come?”
Then Satan answered the Lord and said,
“From roaming the earth and patrolling it.”
—The Book of Job

Chapter 13
    “W HAT IS THAT SMELL? ”
    “That,
ma belle
, is a sweet, pastoral bouquet.” Jean-Paul's grin split his face from ear to ear as he sucked air in through his elegant nose. “Ah, c'est
incroyable.”
    “I'll say it's incredible,” Angie muttered and scowled out of the car window. “It smells like horse shit.”
    “And when, my own true love, have you ever smelled the shit of a horse?”
    “January 17, 1987, in a freezing carriage clopping around Central Park, the first time you proposed to me. Or maybe it was the second time.”
    He laughed and kissed her hand. “Then it should bring back beautiful memories.”
    Actually, it did, but she took out her purse bottle of Chanel spray and spritzed it in the air anyway.
    Angie crossed her long legs and wondered why her husband got such a charge out of looking at grass and rocks and fat, fly-swishing cows. If this was pastoral bliss, give her Forty-second Street.
    It wasn't that she didn't like scenery-the view ofCancun from a hotel balcony, the streets of Paris from a sidewalk cafè, the swell of the Atlantic from a deck chair. But this, while it had a kind of rough, rural charm best