Chapter 53
Lionel
“Take off your shirt, Lucy. If you are mowing the lawn, Nelly and I might as well enjoy it,” Tiamat said as she poured me some coffee in a disturbingly floral china cup.
Her housewarming party was coming up, and she had declared that Lucifer was to get the garden into shape, which he had grumbled about all morning. Through his grumbling, he had ignored my protests that I needed to go to the station and have a longer chat with Christine about last night’s events.
Soul sat under the round patio table and was probably happily drooling away. The shallow cut on her back had already scabbed over and really didn’t seem to bother her any. Tiamat had said she wore it like a badge of honor.
Lucifer stopped pushing the mower. “Yes, Dragon Mother.” He pulled his shirt off, and it sort of looked deliberate the way he did it, his abs facing us. Calculated. Maybe I was imagining things. “Hold that for me.”
He tossed the shirt at me with a knowing grin. I caught it easily and tried to fight the urge to rub my face in it and inhale his spice and fire scent. What was wrong with me?
“I like your colleague,” Tiamat said as Lucifer continued with the lawn mowing.
I let the shirt drop to my lap where I could safely ignore it. “She’s the best. In fact, I need to go talk to her. Would you mind—”
“Oh, stop, you silly darling.” Tiamat put a large slice of cherry pie on the creepily floral plate in front of me. “You are not sneaking out of my house while I have Lucy doing his chores. Besides, your Christine was very understanding after I explained everything to her yesterday.”
“You. Explained everything.” I gaped. “Could you do that again? Because I don’t know everything.”
She shrugged. Her green eyes caught the sunlight and her skin looked like polished amber.
“The murderer who enjoyed burning witches will die horribly, because he was cursed. By Soul. He bit off more than he could chew when he decided to abduct you, what with you being a demigod. In addition, the Devil himself decided to put an end to the goings-on and make sure you’re taken care of.
Alcide happily filled in the more detailed account of what happened during his and your captivity.
He’s a wonderful storyteller, that one.”
I’d frozen, a piece of cake skewered on a fork decorated with yet more flowers halfway to my mouth. “Say what?”
“Alcide provided a detailed account and explained how he’d been kidnapped and that one of the other victims is likely his former teacher. He suspects his teacher was forced to do the warding. He said you got the murderer to turn on you when he was ready to kill him first.”
“No, about that…that… Did you say I was a…” I couldn’t even say it. She had to be wrong. “You said half god?”
“The term is demigod, and yes.”
“That can’t be right.” It wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t.
Tiamat put her coffee cup down. “I am the Dragon Mother, boy. I have been around for longer than most, and I know the blood of those who walked the paths to the underworld and back. Why your mother found it necessary to let you grow up thinking you were merely human-born, I do not know. But you aren’t. ”
I drank my own coffee. My head was pounding. Tiamat graciously refilled my cup.
She had to be wrong. Or maybe she was just saying these things because it made sense with the way I’d been able to pull…
something from Mitch. The way I saw it, it had probably been the wards he’d used.
They had to have reversed my magic somehow.
I’d always been more intuitive in the way I used magic than other people, so that made sense.
It made a whole lot more sense than me being some divine offspring parked in an orphanage for no apparent reason.
“If you say so,” I told the Dragon Mother. My head was spinning, and she had to be wrong. I didn’t think she was going to admit she was wrong, though.
“Mmm. I do see what Lucy means, but no matter. Eat your cake and watch him mow the lawn. I got some plants for him to set into the beds later, and maybe I’ll get him started on painting the door and window frames.”
“I heard that, and penance is not slavery, Dragon Mother,” Lucifer called. The sunlight rippled over his alabaster chest, and I wondered if he could get sunburn. His kitty-cat hair looked wild and glossy in the light.
Tiamat leaned toward me. “Stretching the chores out over time means we get to watch him work more frequently. Would you like that?”
The lawnmower was shut off, and before I knew it, Lucifer stood at my side, his head blocking the sun above and casting a shadow over me. His hair was a halo, and I looked up into his blue eyes.
“Do not conspire with my boyfriend. Nelly is still recovering.”
Lucy bent down to kiss me senseless, invading my mouth when I accidentally gasped and gave him access.
“I definitely want to see more of this,” I heard Tiamat say as I drank Lucifer’s breath, as he savored mine.
I had to forget about so many things: how Tiamat thought I was a half god, how Lucifer had decided he was my boyfriend, how I felt every time he touched me.
How painfully good it was when he fucked me.
But all of those things I needed to forget weren’t enough to make me pull away from Lucifer, at least not right at that moment.
And maybe, just maybe, the moment could last a little longer still. Lucy drove me crazy half the time, but when we kissed like this, he wasn’t so bad.
No, he was the Devil, and he wasn’t so bad at all.
Lucy and Nelly will return.