Free The Devil Is a Gentleman by J. L. Murray Page A

don’t mean you gotta clean up after him. Just stop arguing with me. I’m going with you all the way, and ain’t no way to stop me. ‘Sides, you might need me.”
    “A Caster might come in handy,” I said.
    “So what’s the problem?”
    “No problem.”
    “Good,” he said.
    “Well, isn’t this cozy,” Sam said, and I looked over as he sat down next to me. He slid another drink in front of me. “Thought you might need this, given the events of the morning.”
    “Thanks,” I said. I took a small sip. “Is it still morning?” I said.
    “Only just,” said Sam. “You have been busy, though, haven’t you?”
    “You weren’t here earlier,” I said. “I looked. Deep Blue Sea wasn’t here.”
    “Yes, well, I’m here now. I’m very busy, though, so I may have to pop out soon.”
    “Of course you do,” I said.
    “Robert,” said Sam. “Would you be so kind as to give us a moment alone?”
    “Course,” said Gage. He lumbered across the room over to the bar and sat down.
    “Niki,” said Sam.
    “Look, I know what you’re going to say,” I said.
    “Do you?” he said. It was disconcerting being this close to him. He was giving off heat like a radiator and I had a hard time meeting his eyes. For a moment it felt like I had helium in my belly. I frowned and shook my head. It was just the hold Sam had on me. Some kind of trick.
    “You’re going to say that I shouldn’t have killed those men. It was stupid. I should have walked away and let them live.”
    “You’re wrong,” said Sam.
    “What?”
    “It wasn’t stupidity that led you to kill those men,” he said. “You were right to kill them. They would have tried to kill you later.”
    “How could you know that?” I said.
    He smiled. “It’s quite obvious. Tell me, why do the disappearances bother you so much?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. I turned the glass of whiskey in front of me, watching the liquid catch the light. “I just think about people that I love. I think about how I would feel if they just stopped existing. Gone without a trace. And no one having any idea what happened to them. It’s a horrible feeling just thinking about it. I wouldn’t want to put them through that.” I took a slow drink.
    “Your empathy is admirable,” he said.
    “Didn’t stop me from killing them.”
    “And tell me,” said Sam, “how did they look before they died? Were they monsters?”
    “No,” I said, shifting nervously. Their faces flashed in my mind. “No, they were boys. Just kids with big guns.”
    “Anything else?” he said.
    I hesitated. “For a second,” I said, “I saw that boy. That janitor who died when we took the Dark. The one I killed. I saw his face for a second.”
    “The janitor,” said Sam. He was looking at me, I could feel his eyes on my face. Slowly, I looked up and held them. “But you still killed them,” he said in a low voice, almost a whisper. “You did what needed to be done even though it hurt.” I felt I couldn’t look away from those eyes. There was something that held me there.
    “Yes,” I said. “I couldn’t let them do what they were doing. It wasn’t right.”
    “There’s something in you, Niki,” he said, his face as close as the first night I met him. “Something noble, but also primal. Sometimes I think you could fix everything if I let you.”
    “What are you talking about?” I said.
    “This world, this city, you could take them if you wanted,” he said, his face so close to mine we were almost touching. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. “You always could. You’re a Slobodian. You could have anything you wanted. People would come to you, follow you, you could live like a queen. Why don’t you?”
    “I don’t want any of those things,” I said. “Not the way my father got them.” It was hard to breathe. As though if Sam kept staring into me I would get sucked up into those dark, endless eyes. Finally he blinked and looked away. I felt slightly breathless,