Speak of the Devil by Jenna Black

ultraconservative brown, blue, and gray that everyone else wore. Then again, Cook was a partner, so he could get away with a little eccentricity.
    He smiled when he saw me, holding out his hand for me to shake and greeting me without once seeming to notice my outfit. I’d guess his age at around forty-five, though he wore his years well. His salt and pepper hair was neatly cropped, and his gray-blue eyes looked disproportionately large behind his thick glasses.
    “Come on back to my office,” he said, gesturing me to follow him as he headed down a long hallway to an impressive corner office.
    “Nice view,” I said when I stepped inside, though I was thinking something more along the lines of “So this is the kind of office you get when you charge more than three hundred dollars for an hour of your time.”
    The twinkle in his eye suggested he’d read my thought, but he refrained from commenting. I sat in one of the twin mahogany chairs that faced his desk and clasped my hands in my lap, not knowing where to begin.
    “Brian has given me the basics about your case,” Cook said, “but I’d like to hear it all in your own words.”
    I frowned. “So you and Brian know each otherpersonally? I thought he was just making a recommendation based on your reputation.”
    Cook shrugged. “I can’t say we know each other well, but you’re hardly the first client he’s sent my way.”
    The fact that Brian knew him personally made me feel a little better, though I don’t know why. “Before I start telling you about my case, can we talk money? As in, I haven’t got any, but according to Brian I desperately need an attorney anyway.”
    It was Cook’s turn to look surprised. “Brian instructed me to send the bills to him. I suppose he neglected to mention the fact to you?”
    I wasn’t sure whether to feel amused, annoyed, or absurdly grateful. I settled for a mix of all three and spent the next hour explaining my situation and answering a dizzying array of questions. At least, I tried to answer them. Sometimes, all I could say was “I don’t know,” though I felt like I was failing some kind of test every time I did.
    Most of the questions I couldn’t answer had something to do with statistical averages on exorcisms— the same kinds of questions Brian had asked when he’d browbeaten me into admitting I needed a lawyer. By the end of the hour, I was exhausted and well past the point of being ready to leave.
    “I took the liberty of researching some of the questions I asked you before I met with you today,” Cook said just when I was starting to hope he was planning to let me go.
    “Huh?”
    “Brian told me he’d asked about exorcism statistics, so I went ahead and looked them up.”
    I glared at him. “If you looked them up, then why did you bother asking me?”
    “I was curious to see whether
you’d
looked them up after Brian asked you, but apparently not.”
    Any suggestion of warm, fuzzy feelings I’d started to get over this guy vanished, and I seriously considered doing a Donald Trump “You’re fired!” Luckily, my temper isn’t quite that bad. And I
did
get the “You’re not taking this seriously enough” message.
    “On average, twenty-one percent of exorcisms result positively with the host in full possession of his or her faculties,” Cook said. “Fifty-eight percent result in permanent catatonia, twenty percent result in temporary catatonia, and one percent in brain-death.”
    From the tone of his voice and the expression on his face, I knew my statistics weren’t going to compare favorably. I gritted my teeth.
    “And
my
averages?” I asked, even though I didn’t want to.
    Cook glanced down at a piece of paper. “According to the U.S. Exorcism Board, they are seventeen, sixty, twenty-one, and two.” He glanced back up at me. “I haven’t had a chance to have a statistician look at the numbers yet to tell me whether the variation is statistically significant, but even if it isn’t,