CHAPTER Twelve THE ART OF LIES
Sixt slept in. It was almost ten o’clock when she imagined that she smelled coffee. After pulling on a robe, brushing teeth, and throwing cold water in her eyes she slouched toward the smell of dark Kona blend.
Deliverance turned his head toward her when she entered. He was sitting in the same spot where she’d left him the night before, wearing the same clothes.
Harm was leaning against a counter, coffee mug in hand, one ankle crossed over the other, having a conversation with the demon, about what she couldn’t begin to imagine, and looking far too comfortable with that scenario.
“You haven’t moved since last night,” she said to Deliverance.
He cocked his head. “How do you know?”
Her eyes drifted down and up. “You’re still wearing the same clothes.”
As smoothly as a desktop background changes designs, Deliverance was wearing different clothes. “How’s that?”
She sighed. “Point taken.” To Harm she said, “I need some of that,” and pointed to the pod coffee maker.
“You going to work today?” Harm asked.
“No. I’m acquiring a new skill. Becoming a walking lie detector.” She looked at Deliverance as the machine began to gurgle. “How long will it take?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never taught it. Guess it depends on what kind of student you are.”
The gauntlet had been cast down.
Sixt turned to Harm. “What are you doing today?”
“Actually, I was going to talk to you about that. Just got confirmation that a trip is on. I’m going to Tibet with some of the guys.”
“By ‘guys’ you mean warlocks you met this past weekend.”
“Yeah. We’re going to do some heliboarding then go to this hot spring pool in a mountain cave. It’s reported to center power and bring it into balance.”
She snorted. “And I have a couple of bottles of snake oil for you to take along. Cures what ails ya.”
He grinned. “The worst thing that can happen is I get an adventure, a new experience, and some camaraderie out of it. The best thing that can happen is that I become a better me.” He nodded. “I know. It’s hard to imagine that being possible.”
“How many are going?”
“I’m not asking permission.”
“I know. Just making conversation.”
“Six.” He paused and looked away. “Others.”
“Seven?!? You’re forming a core coven? Of warlocks?”
“There were six. I make seven.”
“Isn’t that, um, unusual?”
“The times they are a’changin’. Equal rights.”
“Don’t be too quick to trust others, Hans,” Sixt said softly.
“Harm.” He reminded her that his name wasn’t Hans anymore. “I won’t. I don’t. You know, there’s a lot about my history you don’t know. Time passed since I left you in Paris. I can take care of myself.”
“It’s a big step.” His gaze was steady over the top of the mug as he took a drink. She sighed. “When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow early. I have a list of gear to figure out. So that’s what I’m doing today.”
“Dinner tonight?”
“You. Are. On. You buy.”
She chuckled. “Okay.”
Harm poured the last half inch of his coffee into the sink, wiped his hands on a dish towel, and smiled at the demon on his way out of the room. “Later.”
Deliverance gave Harm a respectful chin lift as he went past.
After Harm had withdrawn the room seemed abnormally quiet.
“When do you want to get started?” Sixt asked.
“The sooner you learn, the sooner I’m gone.”
“So I’m guessing the answer to that question is ‘soon’.”
Sixt didn’t regret the new arrangement at all, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit wistful about the demon’s departure. Who knew if she’d ever see him again? And that thought was painful enough to make her want to wrap her arms around her middle. But she wouldn’t delay. She’d done him enough injury, first kept him in a state of discomfort, and then kept him in a state of indenture. She’d learn aura reading as fast as she could. Then she’d let him go.
“I’ll go get dressed,” she said. She grabbed a protein bar and took her coffee cup with her.
Half an hour later she returned in a sweater that brought out the green of her eyes, jeans, shin high flat heeled boots, and a fleece jacket. It was as casual as she ever dressed and the ensemble, all totaled, probably cost fifteen hundred dollars.
“Where to?” she said.
“Someplace close.”
“You’re not telling me where we’re going?” she asked as they stepped out onto the sidewalk.
“It’s only two blocks. You can be patient until then. You’re not a child.”
When he ducked into a building that faced Park Avenue, she followed into the elevator and watched him push the button for the seventeenth floor.
When the doors opened, they were facing a giant company logo.
“Make A Wish Foundation?” she asked.
He nodded and proceeded to the glass doors that separated the suite from the bank of elevators.
Sixt noticed that the receptionist didn’t look up.
“They can’t see us or hear us,” the demon said. “Can you see auras?”
“Well, a little. If I, um, concentrate on it. Let my vision go slightly out of focus.”
“Okay. Pick out somebody to read.”
Walking past the reception area, Sixt noticed there was a meeting in session in the conference room. Eleven people were gathered around the table.
She stopped outside the room. “You sure they can’t see us or hear us?”
“Positive.”
“Okay, then. Here goes.” She walked into the room and took a post at the far end.
“Which one are you reading?”
“The one standing up. Doing the talking.”
“Good choice. What do you see?”
“His aura is bright and swirling around his body, not fast, just steady constant movement. The colors are consistent. Stable.”
“What do you get from that?”
“Pale yellow. More silver than usual. A lot of bright orange.” She smiled. “Violet.”
“Why did violet make you smile?”
“He dreams about changing the world. Making it a better place.”
“But what kind of person is he?”
“Spiritual. Likes his job. His life. There’s some loss, but overall he’s happy.”
They spent the next forty five minutes walking through the building randomly picking out employees to analyze. Deliverance didn’t say so, but he was pleased with Sixt’s ability to read. Teaching her to pick up lies was going to be easier than he’d thought.
“Do you have motion sickness?” he asked.
“No. Why?”
In an instant she learned why he’d asked. He took out a pair of fuzzy handcuffs, snapped one of the pair on Sixt, the other on himself and pulled her into the passes. Fear quickly turned to fascination.
So this is how he gets from one place to another.
With a suddenness that rivals slamming on the brakes, they waded into and out of the murk of the passes and were standing in the corner of a room full of desks and young people, mostly guys.
“What…?” she began.
“Can you guess where we are?”
She looked back at the scene. After a couple of seconds of tuning into one-sided phone conversations, she said, “It’s a stock brokerage boiler room.”
“That’s right.”
“You brought me to a concentrated cluster of professional liars.”
The demon chuckled. “Right again.” After letting her observe for another minute, he said, “Pick somebody to read.”
She quickly scanned and pointed at a twenty-something dapper guy with a two-slick haircut, sleeves rolled up his forearms to show off the giant blue watch face of a Tag Heuer.
“What is it with men and expensive watches? The cheapest drugstore watch works just as good.”
“Status. You know this.”
“Yeah.” She pointed. “He’s the one.”
Deliverance nodded. “You know the drill.”
“Grays. Browns.”
“Look at the dark pink.”
“I see it. What does it mean?”
“Somebody who is immature and lies regularly. But this lesson is about recognizing chronic liars. It’s about knowing when someone, anyone, is telling a lie. Watch him closely. Let me know the instant you detect a lie.”
She concentrated on the colors and movement, which was almost static. “There!”
“What happened?”
“A dark spot. Kind of like a bulge pushing outward.”
“That’s right. Pushing outward. Because lies are not a natural state. People lie when they feel afraid or threatened in some way. The feeling the lie causes is actually trying to escape and get away from him. You can see it. Look at the struggle.”
“Amazing.”
“But remember, this only works when people know they’re lying. There are psychological aberrations that cause people to convert the truth in their minds to an alternate version of reality, what they want to believe. Auras react to belief, not truth. So the aura of a person who is what some call a sociopath would not reflect any change.”
“I see.”
“Also, big lies are easier to detect than small lies.”
Sixt shook her head. “Is there a guide somewhere? These are big lies. These are small lies.”
The demon smiled. “Good question. Big or small is entirely in the mind of the person you’re reading. If they think it’s a big lie, their aura will agree. If they think it’s irrelevant or unimportant, the aura will comply with that, too.”
“This is complicated.”
He wiggled his head. “Just takes practice. And that’s what we’re going to do.”
He took her wrist and snapped the cuff on again.
“Why are you doing that?”
“So I don’t lose you.”
She paled a little. “Lose me? In there?”
“It happens. Well, it has. So now I take precautions.”
“Wait! Take me someplace with food.”
They plunged into the gray cloud of the passes. Sixt thought there were more swirling maroon ribbons than there had been on her first exposure, but she might have been too freaked out to notice.
They emerged behind a large statue. Deliverance uncuffed the witch and pointed to a truck. “There you go. Get what you want.”
“Yumpling. Taiwanese.” She smiled at the demon. “Perfect.”
He hated that he felt a little burst of pride and pleasure that she approved of his guess. And he told himself that he could care less whether Sixt liked her lunch or not.
She handed a bottled water to Deliverance to carry for her so that she could devote both hands to the warm wrapped goodness that smelled like nirvana.
“Ummm,” she said. “This is so good. It’s a shame you don’t eat, demon. You’re missing some of the best of what life has to offer.”
“I eat when I feel like it. Which isn’t often. And eating is not all good.”
“You mean sometimes things don’t taste great.”
“No. I mean every revolution that ever disrupted an institution in power was related to hunger. It’s the one thing humans won’t tolerate. They can be cold, dirty, oppressed, diseased, and they’ll adapt, even if unhappily. But they will not accept a lack of food.”
“You make a good point. I’m lucky that I’ve always had access.” He grunted in response. “Where are we going?”
“We’re just making the loop.”
“You mean walking through the Park?”
“Yes. What else would I mean?”
“I don’t know. Forget it.” She took another bite, followed by another moan of approval that went straight to the demon’s nether regions.
“Must you do that?”
“What?”
“Make those sounds.”
“What sounds? You mean nummy sounds?”
“I’m not going to dignify that question with the appearance of knowing what you mean. But yes. Do me the courtesy of keeping your vocal review of lunch to yourself.”
She chuckled. “So it bothers you when I hum about food.”
He raised his chin. “Yes. It does.”
So, of course, she began making nonstop orgasmic moaning noises, while clearly enjoying herself way too much.
The last half of lunch instantly disappeared from her hand. She gaped at her hands, where lunch had been a second before and narrowed her eyes at Deliverance, who simply smiled and handed her the water bottle.
She said nothing more about the exchange.
Neither did he.
They continued to walk in silence for a couple of minutes until Deliverance said. “When you see two or more people that you want to read, stop and point them out.”
“Okay.” She pouted.
He laughed. “There’s no point in being mad.”
“Yes, there is. It makes me feel better.”
“Brought it on yourself.”
“I’m still hungry.”
“Be a good little witch, finish this up, then we’ll both be free to do whatever we want.”
She opened the water bottle, took a sip, screwed the cap back on and said, “Alright.”
After another minute she spied a couple who were stopped and talking. “Them.” She pointed.
Deliverance nodded.
“He’s lying to her. Not big. Not little. In between.” She paused and corrected. “I mean in between to him.”
“That’s right. You want to know what he said?”
“You can hear that?”
He shrugged. “I hear what I want.”
Sixt immediately began running through the time since Deliverance had been bound to her when she thought he was out of earshot. She couldn’t recall every time she’d said something to Harm that she wouldn’t have wanted Deliverance to hear, but she realized that, in order to pick up her calling out in sleep because of nightmares, when she was behind closed doors, from Graydon’s rooms on the other side of the penthouse, the demon would have to have extraordinary hearing. Dog-worthy hearing.
“Um. Sure. What did he say?”
“He says he was sure he’d mentioned that his co-worker, Amy, was going along on the trip to Washington.”
“Okay. On second thought, I don’t want to know what people are saying when they lie.”
He sneered. “Why not? Burst your bubble?”
“Yes. Exactly. I’d rather be in denial.”
“Up to you.” He said it in a calculatedly offhand way, but he actually admired Sixt’s desire to want to believe in better natures of humans, whether that was a myth or not.
“There.” She pointed to a young woman talking to a preschooler who was perhaps four or five.
“She’s telling the kid something she believes to be a small lie.” Deliverance nodded. Sixt stopped and looked at him. “Okay. Tell me what she said.”
He grinned. “You remember the two police officers who’d just passed by?”
“Yes.”
“She was telling the child that police are our friends and instructed her to always look for them if she gets lost or is in trouble because they can be trusted and will take care of her. She doesn’t believe police are trustworthy one hundred percent of the time, but feels like odds are in her favor that her child would be taken under their protection in an emergency.” He paused. “It really was a small lie. And you found it. You need a lot of practice, but you can do that as easily with me as without.”
Not waiting for a response, he snapped the cuff back on Sixt and, before her mind had time to fully register what was happening, they were in and out of the passes, standing in her kitchen. Deliverance released her handcuff and handed her a pen.
She looked at the demon, looked at the pen, and glanced at the contract still spread out on the island. There was nothing left to do but sign.
She wondered how many seconds, if any, he would linger after it was done. Probably not enough for her to accomplish what she’d set out to do in the first place.
“I’m signing, but first there’s something I have to tell you. The curse was a mistake. I was young and stupid and jealous. A few minutes after it was done I looked for you, but couldn’t find you. I couldn’t summon you in particular because I didn’t know your name.” She glanced away, obviously nervous. “It’s a good name, by the way. Anyhow, I wanted to take it back. I’m sorry. And I hope you will forgive me.”
He rolled up the scroll, held it in the air, and watched as it disappeared. “Practice your aura reading.”
“On you?” she asked.
“Who else is here?” he said with undisguised belligerence.
She looked a little confused, but decided to comply. Her vision went out of focus and she was stunned to see the brilliant swirling colors in the demon’s aura.
Once he knew she was studying his aura, he said, “Forgive you?” He smiled broadly and nodded slightly. “Of course.”
When Sixt saw the large puddle of sludge form in his aura and begin trying to push outward, she heard a sharp intake of breath. It took another second for her to realize she’d gasped and then stopped breathing.
“You’re lying.”
“Oh yes.” He seemed delighted to admit that.
“But we have a deal.”
“Indeed we do.”
“And demons are bound by the deals they make.”
“Unless the deal was made under duress. And captivity definitely constitutes duress. Nonetheless, I am bound by the deal you just signed.” His grin spread slowly and there was no mistaking the malicious intent behind it. “It’s just not the same as the one I gave you in Aspen. The one you read on the plane. The one you left here in the kitchen.”
Lines formed between her brows. “What do you mean?”
“I mean I substituted another contract with terms more to my liking and sent the first to the nether realms.” His tsking dripped with gloating. “You should have read before you signed.”
The demon’s manner had changed and she recognized it as identical to the way he was when he’d first appeared in her office. Cold. Distant. Hurtful.
“I’m free from you and your ground rules, precious. I’malso free to punish you in any way that balances the wrong you’ve done me.”
Her eyes went wide when she realized she’d made a fatal error. She’d allowed herself to grow comfortable with the demon. She’d even fooled herself into believing that he liked her, was, perhaps, even attracted to her.
She was wrong.
“What are you going to do?” she whispered.
Incredibly his smile grew even more menacing. “You’ll see. I’ve had a lot of time to plan the perfect revenge.”
He grabbed her and pulled her into a kiss. When she tried to pull away, he took her face firmly between his hands and plundered her mouth with his lips and tongue until she was helpless to do anything but surrender. He continued until her breaths turned quick and shallow, then pushed her away. She probably would have fallen on her ass if there hadn’t been a wall within a couple of feet behind her.
Her lungs released air in a rush when her back hit the wall.
“Just so you know what you’ve been missing,” he said.
For the tiniest fraction of an instant, his resolve wavered. Seeing tears run down her face almost undid him and his mission. Then he thought about Rosie Pottinger. And he hardened his heart.