The Demon Lover: A Novel by Juliet Dark

Author:Juliet Dark [Dark, Juliet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary, Paranormal, Fiction, Romance, Fantasy, Epic
ISBN: 9780345526274
Google: SwhQQ2tLZdYC
Amazon: B004J4WMWM
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2011-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-THREE

Luckily, I still had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s left over from Phoenix’s stash. I poured us two glasses while Liam lit a fire in the library fireplace.

“What a great room!” he enthused. “I’ve never lived long enough anywhere to have my books in one place.”

“Oh?” I remarked casually, determined not to reveal how much I knew about his peripatetic lifestyle from my Internet searches. “I suppose a writer-in-residence must move around a lot.”

“Yeah, that’s my excuse,” he said, smiling ruefully and saluting me with his glass of bourbon. “But sometimes I wonder if I don’t use the job as an excuse to move on. Like I’m under a curse that keeps me from staying in any one place for too long. Maybe that’s why I’m so touched by Nicky Ballard’s poems. They sound like they’re written by a girl who thinks she’s doomed.”

I stared at him, wondering if he did know something about the Ballard curse, but then I realized that he’d just cleverly deflected the subject from his own history to Nicky’s. Well, talking about Nicky was the reason I’d asked him in. Wasn’t it?

“It is almost like she’s cursed,” I said, carefully navigating around the couch and sitting down in the armchair by the fire. He took the opposite chair and I proceeded to tell him what I’d heard about the Ballard family, avoiding any supernatural elements and focusing instead on the legacy of dwindling fortunes, disappointed women, teenage pregnancy, and alcoholism.

“Poor Nicky,” he said when I’d finished. “I’ve passed by that house. You can guess the family’s blighted from the street. She must feel it’s inevitable that she’s going to wind up like her mother and grandmother. We have to keep her from making their mistakes.”

“We?”

“Don’t you know how much Nicky admires you, Cailleach?” It was the first time he’d said my full first name and it caught me by surprise. Most people didn’t pronounce it right on the first try.

“I think it’s you she admires … Liam. Come on, surely you know that every girl in your class has a crush on you.”

“Now you’re teasing me again, and I’m dead serious. Nicky talks about you all the time. She thinks the sun rises and sets on you. She especially admires how independent you are, being a woman on her own and all.”

“Oh, well … actually, you know, I do have a boyfriend.”

Liam’s mouth twitched and he looked away. The reflection of the firelight flashed across the lenses of his glasses, so I couldn’t see his expression. “No, actually I didn’t know. Brilliant. What’s his name? And where is he?” He looked around the room as if I had a man hiding under the couch.

“Paul. He’s finishing up his doctorate in economics at UCLA. I’m going to California to visit him next week. Hopefully he’ll get a job on the East Coast next year.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

I shrugged. “We’ll figure something out. What about you? It must be hard maintaining a relationship with all the traveling you do.

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