Raphael grinned, apparently enjoying the memory of one of his more badass moments. We’d been interrogating a demon, and we all knew Adam was planning to torture him if he didn’t talk of his own free will. But Raphael came up with his own plan, which was to Taser Adam so he wouldn’t interfere, then douse the demon with gasoline and threaten to light him. The demon had started talking real, real fast.

“This one’s all yours,” Raphael said. “Unless it turns out you need help.”

Adam gave him a long stare, then turned his attention to Foreman. Foreman cringed slightly, reminding me of the pathetic Mary. This was the ringleader for the illegal recruitment campaign? I’d have said Cooper was lying to us, but since Adam had plucked the information straight from his mind, that wasn’t possible.

Adam stalked closer to Foreman, his eyes glowing slightly with demonic light, his body lithe and predatory. Foreman swallowed hard and looked like he might pass out. Adam stopped just out of reach, looming over what looked like one very frightened demon.

“Care to tell me why you tried to shoot me?” he asked. His voice wasn’t particularly sharp or loud, but he still managed to make the question drip with menace.

Foreman swallowed hard again. “I thought you were coming to arrest me,” he said. His voice was thin and whispery, but at least it didn’t shake.

Adam cocked his head. “Why would you think that?”

“You’re Adam White,” Foreman said. “I recognize you from TV. They said they’d report me as a rogue if I didn’t cooperate. When I saw you at the door, I figured I hadn’t cooperated enough.”

Adam had only asked two questions, and already Foreman had raised about a million more with his answers. I had to bite my tongue to keep from butting in. Patience has never been my strong suit. But Adam did this kind of thing for a living, so I figured he’d do a better job than I would at picking the right questions to ask.

“Who are ‘they’?” Adam asked.

Foreman hugged his knees tighter. “If I tell you, will you protect me from them?”

“You say ‘if’ as though you think you have a choice.”

“They’ll kill me,” Foreman said, shaking his head. “I don’t mean they’ll just kill my host, they’ll kill me.”

“Would it be more to your liking if we killed you instead?” Raphael asked. We all should have known better than to expect him to keep quiet.

Dominic and Saul were still standing guard, though Dom had lowered his Taser to his side. I could hardly blame him—I couldn’t imagine Foreman making a break for it.

Adam glanced at Saul. Some kind of silent communication must have passed between them, because Saul suddenly grinned and turned his Taser toward Raphael.

“You said you’d let Adam handle this,” Saul said. “I suggest you keep your word. You have no idea how much I want to shoot you.”

Raphael crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall as if it didn’t bother him in the least that his own son was threatening to Taser him. I knew it did bother him—I’d been around him too long not to know that—but he sure didn’t let it show on his face. He feigned a bored look and kept his mouth shut.

Adam turned his attention back to Foreman. “I’m going to be brutally honest with you,” he said. “I can’t promise you protection. Not when I don’t know who I’d be promising to protect you from. What I can promise you is that this will be a very long night for you if you don’t start talking before I lose patience. So, tell me who you think is going to kill you.”

There was a sheen of tears in Foreman’s eyes, and if he’d been any more scared, he’d probably have wet his pants, but he started talking.

“The recruitment team I’m supposed to be running,” Foreman said, looking at the floor instead of at Adam. “We’ve been picking up street people and, er, persuading them to summon demons.”

This time I was the one who had trouble keeping my mouth shut, but I bit my tongue and resisted the urge to say something indignant.

“Now why would you be doing that?” Adam asked.

Foreman looked around as if hoping to find an ally in the room. He was out of luck. He seemed to shrink in on himself as flop sweat made dark circles under his arms.

“Answer the question!” Adam demanded.

Foreman squirmed. “Um …” He cleared his throat. “We’re trying to shorten the waiting list for demons who want to walk the Mortal Plain. The Spirit Society has been recruiting hard, but they haven’t been able to provide enough willing hosts. So we were trying to … make more hosts available.”

“You do understand that that’s against the law,” Adam said in a suspiciously mild voice.

Foreman shuddered. “I know. But I didn’t have much choice.”

“Oh? I thought you said this was your recruitment team.”

“No, I said it was supposed to be.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning I’m not really running it. I’m just the stalking horse. Anyone who isn’t one hundred percent trustworthy thinks I’m in charge. Only I’m not.”

“So Bradley Cooper wasn’t one hundred percent trustworthy?”

Foreman started at the mention of Cooper’s name. “I wouldn’t have expected him even to know my name. Humans, by definition, aren’t trustworthy.”

This time, I couldn’t suppress my outrage. “Gee, could that be because you’re pulling an Invasion of the Body Snatchers on us and trying to make us into your handy-dandy puppets?”

Adam made a growling sound from deep in his throat. “Shut up!” he snarled at me. “If one more person butts in, I’m going to kick you all out of the room.”

Raphael snickered, and for once I got his humor. With three members of the royal family present, Adam wasn’t kicking anyone out unless they wanted to go.

I shut up, but that didn’t stop me from giving Foreman a death glare, which he ignored. I guess with Adam looming over him like that, the rest of us didn’t seem all that threatening.

“So if you’re not really in charge, who is?”

Foreman took a deep breath and let it out slowly before he answered. “His name is Julius. He’s not a royal, but he’s definitely of the elite. And his host was a football player in college. He’s about three hundred pounds of pure muscle.”

Adam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter how big he is. A Taser will stop him like anyone else.”

“You’d have to find him first. He didn’t trust me anymore, so I’m sure he’s been having me watched. Now that I’ve been captured, he’ll assume I’ve told you everything I know and will take evasive action. That was the whole point of making me the leader in name only. Besides, even if you could track him down, stopping Julius won’t do you any good.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “Why not? Generally, when you chop off the head, the monster dies.”

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but suddenly Foreman looked even more scared. His thinning hair was plastered to his scalp by sweat, and his eyes were practically bugging out of his head. Call it a hunch, but I think he was regretting his last words.

Adam nodded in understanding, though Foreman hadn’t answered him. “Julius isn’t really the head, is he?”

Foreman closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Dougal’s the one who’s really in charge,” Adam said. He hadn’t made it a question, but Foreman nodded anyway.

“If you manage to track down Julius and take him out, Dougal will just send someone else. He’s gotten so many people sucked into …” Foreman’s voice died, and he stared at the floor.

“Sucked into his conspiracy to take the throne,” Adam finished for him.

Foreman flinched, but again he nodded. “The only way to stop it,” he said softly, “is to stop Dougal. And the only way to stop Dougal is to kill him.”

Adam cast a quick glance back at the rest of us. “It’s on our to-do list. But you’re working with Dougal, so why do you sound like you think killing him would be a good thing?”