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heard.”
    “You should visit,” she said. “I’d love to show you around. It’s very nice.”
    I exchanged astonished looks with Peter, Cody, and Hugh. Simone’s bland demeanor hadn’t lit up exactly, but she’d suddenly become 2 percent more interesting. She wasn’t infatuated with Carter the way Cody was with Gabrielle. She was just trying to bag an angel. Good luck with that, I thought. That was ballsy for any succubus. Certainly angels fell because of love and sex—Jerome was living proof—and I’d even witnessed it once. But Carter? If ever there was a staunchly resistant being, it was him. Except when it came to chain-smoking and hard liquor, of course. Yes, things with Simone had definitely gotten more interesting.
    “Sure,” said Carter. “I bet you could show me all sorts of places off the beaten path.”
    “Absolutely,” she replied. “You know, there’s an inn there that George Washington had dinner at once.”
    I rolled my eyes. I doubted there was any part of Charleston she could show Carter that he didn’t know about. Carter had been around to watch cities like Babylon and Troy rise and fall. For all I knew, he’d personally helped take down Sodom and Gomorrah.
    “So what kind of action did you have in mind?” I asked Carter. As entertaining as Simone’s pathetic flirtation might be, I wasn’t sure I was up to American History 101 tonight. “I am not playing ‘Have You Ever’ again.”
    “Better,” he said. Out of nowhere, Carter produced Pictionary. And when I say out of nowhere, I meant it.
    “No,” said Hugh. “I spent years perfecting my illegible doctor’s signature. I’ve totally lost any artistic aptitude whatsoever.”
    “I love Pictionary,” said Simone.
    “I think I have some things to do,” I added. I felt a shove on my shoulder and glanced around in surprise, seeing nothing. Then, I knew. Roman apparently still wanted me to entertain him. I sighed. “But I can stay for a little while.”
    “Great. That settles it,” said Carter. He turned to Peter. “You got an easel?”
    Of course Peter did. Why, I had no clue, but after he’d bought a Roomba and a Betamax player, I’d learned not to ask questions. We split into teams: me, Cody, and Hugh against the others.
    I went first. The card I drew was “Watergate.” “Oh, come on, ” I said. “This is ridiculous.”
    “Don’t whine,” said Carter, his grin annoyingly smug. “We all take a random chance here.”
    They started the timer. I drew some remedial waves that immediately got a “Water!” from Cody. That was promising. Then, I drew what I hoped looked like a wall with a door in it. Apparently, I did too good a job.
    “Wall,” said Hugh.
    “Door,” said Cody.
    I added some vertical lines to the door to emphasize the gate aspect. After a moment’s thought, I drew a plus sign between the water and wall to show their connection.
    “Aqueduct,” said Cody.
    “A bridge over troubled water,” guessed Hugh.
    “Oh my God, ” I groaned.
    Unsurprisingly, my time ran out before my teammates could figure it out, though not before they guessed “Hoover Dam” and “Hans Brinker.” With a groan, I flounced onto the couch. The other team then got a shot at it.
    “Watergate,” said Carter right away.
    Hugh turned on me, face incredulous. “Why didn’t you just draw a gate?”
    Simone went after me, and I hoped she’d get “Cuban Missile Crisis” or “Bohr’s Law.” The timer started, and she drew a circle with lines radiating out from it.
    “Sun,” said Peter immediately.
    “Right!” she said.
    I glared at Carter. “You. Are. Cheating.”
    “And you’re a bad loser,” he replied.
    We played for another hour, but after my team got “Oncology,” “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” and “War of 1812,” and theirs got “Heart,” “Flower,” and “Smile,” I decided to go home. At the door, I heard a wistful sigh in my ear.
    “You’re on your own,” I growled to Roman in an