Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

Zoe

“ Y ou summoned me, Your Grace?”

I poked my head into Lucifer’s mausoleum lounge—as I’d come to call his chilled and darkened room—Vengeance pushing at my back with two of her heads. The third was snapping at her own tail.

He was sprawled across his armchair, that lone candle casting him in flickering light, with shadows battling for dominance. With his head lazily tipped back, his gaze on the ceiling, he motioned me inside with a wave.

I padded closer, and Vengeance trotted past me to plop down at Lucifer’s feet, licking his hand in the process.

“Sit,” Lucifer said, and since Venny had already plonked herself down, he apparently meant me.

I parked my butt on the sofa opposite his chair and looked at him expectantly. “What’s up?”

I’d been in the middle of packing a small bag with a change of clothes for my trip to Earth when I’d received his summons.

“Nothing,” was Lucifer’s perplexing reply.

I raised my brows. “Okay,” I said, drawing out the syllables. “Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll just be?—”

“Sit back down.”

I’d already gotten to my feet, ready to return to my quarters, when his words made me freeze and slowly lower myself onto the couch again.

At my no doubt nonplussed expression, Lucifer waved his hand and said, “I want you to sit with me. Stay here for a while. You aren’t due to go to Earth for a few more hours.”

Yeah, and I’d been looking forward to spending those packing my shit and then burying my nose in a good romance novel in the comfy confines of my half-ruined rooms. Alas, it looked like I was going to sit in these half-ruined rooms instead.

“Was there…something you wanted to talk about?” I ventured.

“No.” His gaze was once more on the ceiling, his throat working as he swallowed. When he spoke again, his voice was as quiet as a whisper in a graveyard. “I can feel the spark of her essence when you’re near. It’s barely a sliver of her energy, yet it is enough to give me comfort.” He took a rasping breath. “Enough to keep the darkness at bay, for a while.”

An ache shot through my heart, making me wince. The sorrow surrounding him was so palpable it felt like I might be able to touch it if I reached out.

“I see,” I murmured.

And I did. I’d be gone again for about three weeks, and he’d be all alone, with the only piece of Lilith that was left once more far away from him. Sure, he’d have the pictures and videos of her to give him some solace, but if he could indeed sense Lilith through that kernel of her power inside me and it soothed him, he’d have to endure without it for the next couple of weeks.

So it made sense that he wanted to feel her energy through me for a few hours before I left.

“Do you mind if I read while we sit?” I summoned my latest romance book and wiggled it.

He gave a negligent wave. “Go ahead.”

Alrighty . I opened the book to the scene where I’d stopped and then realized with mortification that it had been in the middle of a spicy scene. Inhaling through my nostrils, I skimmed forward, trying to find the end of that scene.

I leafed through the pages, my frustration and embarrassment mounting with every second because—dear Lord, was this book all smut? Not that I minded under different circumstances, but holy eggplant emoji, this was definitely the wrong kind of reading material to be perusing in the company of Lucifer.

Snapping the book shut, I smiled tightly and chirped, “On second thought, never mind.”

He eyed me without moving his head from where it rested against the back of the chair. “What were you reading?”

“Nothing of importance,” I rushed to say and then stuffed the damned book underneath my butt for good measure, lest Lucifer try to take it.

The book vanished from underneath me and reappeared in Lucifer’s hand.

God damn those summoning powers!

The heat of a thousand suns rolled through me and up into my face as he peered at the title and cover.

Raising his brows, he shot me a curious look. “Is that an octopus man? With tentacles?”

Grimacing, I summoned the book right out of his hand and back to me again. “An alien. You know, from a different planet. With a different…physique.”

He tilted his head. “And that woman?—”

“You know what? I really think we should return to sitting in silence. That was a good deal. Very quiet. Nonintrusive.” I nodded decisively and sat back with my arms crossed, still holding the book in a death grip.

Only, that death grip didn’t do squat against summoning powers. A moment later, my hand curled around nothing, and that cursed book was back in Lucifer’s grasp.

“Okay, fine!” I growled. “Knock yourself out. Just don’t ask me any questions.”

He was looking at the cover again. “But?—”

“This is not a book club!”

His low laugh was drenched in mischievous amusement as he turned the book over and read the back cover copy.

I remembered that tome on Sumerian legends I’d read in the library the other day, and I summoned it to me with a thought, not wanting to sit here and stare holes in the air while Lucifer explored the depths of my depraved reading tastes.

Fortunately for my nerves and general state of embarrassment, though, Lucifer didn’t actually read the book, instead laying it to the side after a moment and indeed returning to sitting in silence with me, his gaze unfocused as he stared at the wall, apparently deep in thought.

That cloak of sorrow and misery around him had lightened a bit, maybe courtesy of Lilith’s spark being close to him, though there was still a whisper of moroseness about his power. Minutes passed, and I settled into the ancient tales of gods and heroes and kings, to the point where I startled when Lucifer spoke up again.

“Humans think death smells bad,” he said in a toneless voice, his gaze still unfocused on some random point on the wall. “When in reality, it’s not death they smell, but life .”

I lowered my book and blinked at him. “Excuse me, what?”

“Death itself has no scent. What people are smelling on a rotting corpse are actually the bacteria that are part of the decomposition, and those bacteria”—he leveled his enigmatic dark gaze on me—“are alive.”

I shuddered all over, not so much because of the image he painted, but because the way he was saying it and that entire line of thinking was creeping me the fuck out.

“Death,” Lucifer said, “is stillness and silence and the absence of variation. It is the great neutral. It’s life that fucks things up.”

Once again, I snapped my book shut, my eyes fastened on the horrible emo-goth version of Lucifer in front of me. I felt like gifting him with a mixtape featuring Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, and maybe some Ville Valo sprinkled in for good measure.

I leaned forward. “Do you need a mental health intervention?”

He stared at me unblinking, and I swore those eyes were like black holes drawing in energy and matter and devouring everything around them. “Why?”

I flailed in his general direction for a good ten seconds, struck mute by the many things that were currently making me worried for his emotional well-being.

“Are you having a stroke?” he asked calmly.

“Are you ?” I shot back. “This”—I made a sweeping gesture indicating him in all his goth glory and the tomb-like room he preferred to spend his time in—“is concerning. You are concerning. You can’t just drop some creepy musings on death while you look like a barely alive version of yourself, not when I know your mental health is hanging on by a mere thread. Are you okay?” I pinned him with a probing look. “Will you be okay for the next few weeks until I get back?”

He gently waved that away. “I will be fine. I know that you are going to find her, and once she is back with me, all will be well.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, fighting the pressure to voice what had been building inside me the more I’d thought about this whole Locating Lilith thing. Alas, I lost the fight. “I feel like,” I began, “we need to talk about logistics.”

Those obsidian eyes pinned me with a questioning look.

I wrung my hands. “Am I right in the assumption that your intention is to bring Lilith down here as soon as I find her?”

“Yes.”

“What if I find her while she is still a child? Would you bring her down here regardless?”

Lucifer stared at me.

“Your answer,” I gritted out, “cannot be yes.”

His expression darkened. “You are not in a position to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.”

“You’re right. Only Lilith would be. And if she were here, she’d tell you that you are out of your ever-loving mind if you consider dragging a child to Hell with the intention of making her your bride.”

The room shook with his power as he bared his teeth and snarled, “I am no pedophile!”

“No, you’re just a groomer!” I snapped right back.

He blinked at me, his energy hovering like static in the air.

I took a bracing breath and plowed forward. “It doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t touch her until she’s of age and able to consent. If you bring her here to live with you, you’ll put her in a vulnerable position as your ward, and she’ll bond with you as a child will with an adult who takes care of them. She will look up to you and trust you, and all the while, you will know that you intend to one day have a romantic and sexual relationship with her, but she won’t realize that—and she wouldn’t be in a state to even grasp what that means yet—which makes for a horribly creepy, exploitative dynamic where she doesn’t even get a fair chance to grow up on her own terms. Even if you don’t mean to, you’ll be raising her to be your bride.” My heart hammered in my chest, threads of anxiety pulling at my nerves, but I gathered my courage and pushed on. “I will not stand for that.”

My rapid breaths echoed in the quiet of the room, my energy a buzz in my blood.

“You will not stand for that?” Lucifer repeated in a murmur, his eyes black chips of ice.

“That’s right.” I pressed my lips together and inhaled through my nose. “I want your word that, should I find her while she is underage, you will not bring her here until she is a fully grown adult. If you refuse, I will simply not tell you when I locate her. I’ll keep pretending to search for her until she has reached adulthood.”

I’d expected him to yell at me, or hiss some threat. Instead, he stared at me for a long moment, then took a deep breath and flicked his hand. “You have my word. I will leave her to grow up in peace on Earth, albeit protected. Discreetly.”

I sat up straighter in surprise. That had gone shockingly well. I’d braced for a drawn-out argument and negotiations.

“Don’t look so astonished.” One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Your reasoning is sound. I will not rob her of the childhood and youth she deserves, and I will always honor her free will—which she won’t be able to exercise if she has been manipulated beforehand. As great as my yearning to have her near is, her well-being will forever trump my own needs.”

Only weeks ago, I wouldn’t have thought him capable of displaying the kind of selflessness apparent in that statement, but I’d come to realize he had more depth and maturity than I’d given him credit for. At least when it came to Lilith.

“Speaking of her well-being,” I ventured in a small voice. I hadn’t meant to tackle this aspect, but the understanding and empathy he’d shown just now had kicked that particular thought loose. It had been niggling at me for a while now, and I had to try to put it into words.

He raised a brow. “Go on.”

“Well, it’s just…” I clenched and unclenched my hands, my chest tight with worry and uncertainty, about what I wanted to say and his possible reaction. “You do remember that she wasn’t…happy down here?”

The air turned frosty between one breath and the next. Lucifer’s face was a mask of coldness.

“And I don’t mean to say that she wasn’t happy with you ,” I hastened to add. “I think, if anything, you were the one thing that kept her afloat here. She loved you deeply. You were her lifeline. But everything else…” I raised my hands in a helpless gesture to indicate our surroundings and the whole of Hell. “She was dying inside. I think she never got over the transition from living on Earth to living in Hell. It just took millennia for it to catch up with her, but by the time she met me, she’d already been calcified in large parts—her words, not mine.” Again, I lifted my hands, this time in a placating move.

“What are you trying to tell me?” he asked with a note of brokenness to his voice.

My heart splintered a little. “I’m not sure,” I whispered, “that it’s the best idea to bring her back down here. For her sake.”