The Devil's Due by Jenna Black

to ensconce myself in this apartment and spend the rest of my life cackling evilly?”
    I wished I could think of a brilliant plan to remove this bloodsucking leech from my brother’s body. Unfortunately, since he was a member of the royal family, he was an unusually strong demon. Too strong for me to exorcize. Lugh might be able to overpower him, but I’d have to let him be in control to try it, and we’d already established that I couldn’t.
    “I really hate you, you know,” I said petulantly.
    Raphael sighed like I’d hurt his feelings. “I gave you my word I’d take better care of Andrew this time around.”
    “And you expect me to believe you?”
    He shook his head. “I suppose not. But I’ll tell you anyway that Andrew is fine. We will never like one another, but we have reached something approximating a truce.” He laughed suddenly, though I couldn’t imagine why.
    “What’s so funny?”
    “He’s testing the limits of our truce. He wants me to tell you that he’s all right. He also wants me to tell you, and I quote, ‘Get this fucking asshole out of my body.’”
    I had no idea whether the message was really from Andy, or whether Raphael somehow thought this would disarm me. “I’m working on it, bro,” I said, just in case it really was my brother. Of course, I wasn’t working on it all that hard. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I had no idea how I was going to manage it.
    To my surprise, Raphael reached out and patted my shoulder. “If you and I can ever reach our own truce, and if you can find someone else to host me, I will leave him. You have my word on that, for whatever you think my word is worth.”
    I stifled my immediate desire to tell him exactly what I thought his word was worth, but no doubt my opinion showed on my face. Raphael looked disappointed in me.
    “Why are you here?” he asked. “It’s obviously not for the pleasure of my company.”
    Probably I should be nicer to him when I was here looking for information—particularly information he wasn’t overly eager to give me. But I just didn’t have it in me to be nice to Raphael, who was the author of so many of my troubles.
    Instead of answering, I invited myself to take a seat on his living room couch. Since he was pretending to be my brother, the slob, I had to move aside a pile of junk mail and discarded newspapers to clear a seat for myself. I was glad I was wearing one of my more conservative outfits so that my skin didn’t come in contact with the stained upholstery.
    “Make yourself at home,” Raphael muttered, then took his own seat in the similarly disreputable-looking recliner.
    I decided we’d had more than enough preliminaries, so I got right to the point. “Was The Healing Circle the only site where you and Dougal played God?”
    Raphael blinked, the question obviously not one he expected. He thought about it a long time before he finally got around to answering. “No.”
    He didn’t say anything else, and I had to quell a surge of impatience. “Care to elaborate?”
    “Is there something specific you want to know, or are you just on a fishing expedition?”
    “You said you wanted a truce with me, right? So why don’t you just talk to me without looking for what’s in it for you?”
    He closed his eyes and scrubbed at his scalp, once again looking strangely human, even to me, who should know better. “I know it’s completely out of character for you, but if you can see your way clear to giving me a break, I’d really appreciate it. Some of this stuff is really hard for me to talk about.”
    “My heart bleeds for you.”
    His eyes opened, and there was a flash of something dark and inhuman in them before he managed to control himself. I had to suppress a shiver. I was pretty sure Raphael hated me almost as much as I hated him, and he was not a good enemy to have.
    He released his tension on a deep breath, and his voice when he spoke showed none of the anger that still lurked just