Read Online Speak of the Devil by Jenna Black - Free Book Online Page A

I’ve seen a lot of corpses. I can make an educated guess, though yeah, the lab guys will have to confirm it. I’m thinking there’s a funeral parlor somewhere that’s misplaced a hand.”
    That was better than thinking someone had been killed specifically for the purpose of sending me this love note. But I still wasn’t exactly basking in relaxation.
    “I’m going to have to call in a team,” Adam said.
    “This bubble wrap should hold a print nicely, though if this is from the same guy who’s been leaving you the phone messages, I doubt he’d be so accommodating as to leave prints.”
    I doubted it, too. My anonymous caller used some kind of voice-altering device when he called, and he seemed to be quite a pro. I couldn’t even say for sure whether it was a man or a woman, though I had automatically assumed man. I’m not sure why.
    “Um, Adam?”
    “Yeah?”
    “If you call in a team, how am I supposed to explain that I didn’t call the police about the death threats?” I’d talked it over with Adam when I’d first started getting the threats, and he’d agreed with me that there wouldn’t be much the police could do. He’d also agreed with me that I was better off keeping a low profile as far as the police were concerned. There’d been a lot of seriously bad shit happening around me in the last couple of months, and more police attention was
not
something I needed.
    “Tell them the truth: that you didn’t think there was anything they could do about the calls.” Adam covered up the hand with the sheet of tissue paper, then tore off his rubber gloves and came to sit on the love seat next to the couch.
    “This isn’t something I can sweep under the rug for you,” he said. “We need to figure out who that hand belongs to and confirm my guess that the victim was already dead and embalmed before the hand was severed. Otherwise, we could have an actual murder here.”
    I leaned back into the cushions of the couch and groaned. He was right, of course. The police weren’t going to be happy with me for not having reportedthe death threats, but I was just going to have to suck it up.
    “You still convinced you wouldn’t be better off with a bodyguard?” Adam asked me.
    For half a second, I wondered if Adam really
had
sent me that hand, hoping to scare me into letting Saul stay in my spare room. But no, that wasn’t Adam’s style. He’d always been remarkably straightforward.
    I guess I was quiet long enough that Adam assumed I hadn’t changed my mind—which I hadn’t.
    “Maybe you should consider staying at Brian’s for a while,” he said. “And no, I’m not saying that because I hope you’ll let Saul stay in your apartment while you’re gone. It’s just that whoever’s threatening you is obviously escalating, and I suspect it’s going to get worse.”
    Great. Just what I needed.
    “I’ll deal with it,” I told Adam. I wasn’t any more likely to ask Brian to let me stay with him than I was to ask him for money at the moment.
    Adam shook his head in disgust. “What is it with you? Why do you have to do every fucking thing on your own? Why can’t you accept help when it’s offered?”
    I’d usually have bitten his head off for a comment like that, but I guess I was feeling rather vulnerable right then, so I answered him.
    “I’ve learned from long, hard experience that the only person I can ever truly count on is myself. I just… don’t dare lean on anyone.”
    He regarded me with cocked head and furrowed brow. I think he was genuinely concerned about my well-being, which was kind of a nice change. Usually, I had the feeling he only cared about Lugh and that he despised me.
    “Is there some reason you can’t accept help and count on yourself at the same time?” he asked. “Just because you went to stay with Brian for a little while wouldn’t mean you were putting your entire life in his hands. You can still defend yourself even if you’re with him.”
    “You wouldn’t