“For a couple of years,” he said. “Through no fault of my own, I’d like to point out. I just got caught in the blowback when my father and his half-demon buddies decided to summon Belial to this plane. It didn’t go so well for them.”
“No,” Ty said, “it didn’t. And the only reason Caleb made it back was because he was able to piggyback on a recently dead soul who’d been sacrificed to Belial. Those were very special circumstances, though, so I don’t think any of them are going to be repeated any time soon.”
Pru didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Instead, she stood there with her hands still planted on her hips, red-lacquered lips pressed together as she tried to digest everything she’d just heard.
“All right,” she said at length. “So now we’re dealing with both angels and demons. What’s next?”
The park had turned out to be a dead end, and that meant they only had one lead they could follow while they were here in Laughlin.
“We talk to Aaron Sanchez,” Caleb replied.
Chapter Eight
Aaron wasn’t picking up his phone, though, and texts didn’t seem to be getting through, either.
However, Caleb refused to be discouraged.
“It sounds like the house is a digital sinkhole,” he said. “But I have the address. I say we just drive over there and see if he’s still around.”
“Okay,” Pru replied. They were still standing just behind Delia’s little SUV, and Prudence glanced back at it before adding, “What should we do with her car? Leave it here?”
“No, we’ll take it,” Caleb said. “It’s obvious she isn’t here, and all the signs say that vehicles will be towed if they’re left here after the park closes. Whatever’s going on with her, I doubt she wants her car to end up in an impound lot.”
“Caleb’s right,” Ty said. “You can drive Delia’s car, and I’ll ride with you. Caleb, you can lead us over to Aaron’s grandmother’s house.”
That sounded reasonable enough. True, he supposed Ty could have ridden with him, but it made sense for Prudence to have the protection of someone who wasn’t quite human, considering all the weirdness that seemed to be going on around here.
And if Ty had an ulterior motive for preferring to stick by Pru’s side, well, Caleb didn’t want to get in the man’s way.
He told them the address, adding, “It sounded like it’s just a few minutes from here.”
“What if Aaron isn’t there?” Pru asked.
“Then we’ll find a place to talk and regroup,” Caleb responded at once. “It’s not like there aren’t plenty of bars and restaurants in this town.”
That was for sure. Oh, not with the density you saw in Las Vegas, but still, he guessed they’d be able to find a quiet corner in a bar or lounge or something and plan what they should do next.
In the meantime, they needed to get over to the house that had once belonged to Aaron’s grandmother.
Just as Aaron had said, the place wasn’t very far. Incongruously, the property was set down in the middle of a bunch of RV parks, although Caleb guessed the house had been here first and the commercial properties had grown up around it.
And there, thank God, was a black BMW that had to be Aaron’s parked in front of the detached garage. Luckily, the driveway was long enough that all of their vehicles could easily fit, with Caleb parking his Range Rover next to the Beemer and Pru pulling up right behind him.
She and Ty got out of Delia’s SUV and then met up with Caleb so the three of them could head up the porch steps. The house looked as if it was fairly large, probably at least two thousand square feet or more, but even from the outside, he could tell it needed a lot of work. He spied wood rot along the porch ceiling and a couple of the pillars that held it up, and the brickwork needed to be repointed as well.
To be honest, he was kind of surprised that the place had sold at all, even though it had supposedly fallen out of escrow because of its resident ghost and not because of any physical issues with the house.
The other two hung behind a little so he could knock on the front door. A moment passed, and then another.
“Maybe he’s on the phone,” Pru suggested.
“Or upstairs,” Ty added.
Okay, the house was big, but it didn’t seem big enough to prevent anyone inside from hearing someone knocking on the door.
“Or maybe he realizes it’s us and doesn’t want to talk,” Caleb responded, which seemed a much more likely scenario to him. Call it jealousy if you want, but the guy had never struck him as someone with a whole lot of strength of character.
An assessment that some people might have found amusing, coming as it did from someone who could trace his lineage to a demon straight out of Hell, but whatever.
