Chapter 8
Fascinating.
I paced a slow circle around Galilee’s friends as they stood immobilized in her loft, their expressions frozen, their lungs
suspended. The taller girl—Bonbon—was crouched down, her mouth wide in an interrupted scream. She had petal patterns braided
against her scalp, long black tails cascading down her back, and her eyes were dilated with fear. Elijah’s daughter was standing
next to her and baring her teeth, rage and fear sketched clearly over her face, every muscle tense and ready to fight.
I was admittedly impressed—not so much because Galilee could manipulate time, but because she’d used the power against her
loved ones and she’d allowed Lucifer to persuade her to leave them here like this, with the slime of his glamour already on their minds.
How corruptible of her.
She and the Devil were well suited for each other.
I’d known Lucifer for all of existence—and so I knew exactly what his weakness would be.
I had once been it myself, when he was brilliant and not yet twisted by hubris, but while I had watched him for centuries, Lucifer hadn’t seen me since his Fall.
I made sure of it, not that it was difficult—he moved only between Hell and earth, and I was certainly never in the former and only rarely in the latter.
Sometimes I wondered: Did he think of me?
Did he remember? Or did he hate me with the cold rage he bore for the archangels, his brother especially?
I did both—the remembering and the hating—because Lucifer ruined us, tore our family apart, made schisms where they should never have been, all because he couldn’t be obedient, he had to ask questions.
And now he was just a devil walking among the humans, playing foolish games like this glamour he’d left on the girl’s friends.
I had half a mind to rip it off myself, but he might detect me in the residue of my touch, and I needed to stay concealed
from him, at least for now. Galilee would have to be enough.
I was about to leave the humans trapped in their little pocket of time so I could go find out what Lucifer and Galilee were
up to, but then I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, accompanied by a familiar scent: creek water dried against the skin,
warmed by the sun. My lips dragged up in a ghost of a smile. That scent belonged to Celestial Kincaid, and if she was off
Kincaid land, then Darling and the others were with her. Quickly, I drew the air around me into a cloak, concealing my form
from their eyes. The door to Galilee’s home clicked open softly, and Collette Kincaid walked in first, wearing a white linen
dress fastened at her waist and cradling her shotgun.
“Gali?” she called out, looking uncertainly around the loft. “You in here, baby?”
Celestial slipped in behind her, cowries rattling softly from her plaits. “She ain’t here, Aunt Collette, I told you already.
She’s gone with him now. I can show us the way.”
Collette’s face fell. “I was hoping you were wrong.”
Her niece didn’t have to say anything, because even I knew just from spying on the Kincaids for years that Celestial Kincaid
was never wrong.
They both caught sight of Galilee’s friends at the same time, and Collette gasped. “Hello?” She moved cautiously up to the
frozen girls. “Can y’all hear me?”
Celestial joined her with wide eyes. “They’re not breathing, Auntie.”
The other Kincaids were pouring into the loft now: Leah with a crossbow on her back, Zélie with daggers sheathed at her hips.
Shirley had her machete out, and Jesmyn was angling her body to protect her wife, Peony, even as they both tracked Celestial with a combined motherly watchfulness.
Sage had a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun resting on her shoulder.
I could smell the iron shirts they all wore under their clothes, fine blessed links.
They parted like an obedient sea as Darling Kincaid walked forth, her silver hair in straight backs, her sleeves rolled up, and her scythe in her hand.
I inhaled sharply. Oh, I knew Darling very well, in corners the old woman didn’t even have access to anymore, intimate lost and forgotten places. It gave us a certain closeness.
Darling touched the girls’ faces, her brows pulled into a scowl. “It’s trapping work,” she said with disgust. “They’ve been
folded into time and stuck there.”
The other Kincaids recoiled, then Eunice leaned in for a better look. “Who’d do something like that?”
Darling and Celestial exchanged glances, but Collette sighed before either of them could speak. “It was Gali, wasn’t it?”
Her voice held pained resignation.
“She didn’t know she could do this,” Celestial replied hotly. “She would’ve told me if she did.”
Darling gave Celestial a halfway absent look, trailing a question under her breath. “Would she now?”
“I would have known,” Celestial insisted, sounding both indignant and slightly hurt that she was finding out this way.
Jesmyn patted her arm. “Can’t choose what you predict, baby girl. The question is, can any of us get them out of it?”
It was a good question, one I was quite curious to see the answer to. The Kincaids had always been an entertaining bag of
tricks, touched in different directions, and over the years, I’d enjoyed seeing the paltry reaches of their power. It was
nothing compared with mine, or Michael’s, or even Lucifer’s. It was certainly nothing compared with Galilee’s, but Darling
had the hunter’s advantage of age and experience. That gave a particular finesse that could hold its own against brute power
any day.
“Not any of us,” Darling replied. “But all of us, certainly.”
I watched with interest as the Kincaids linked with one another, hand on shoulder over and over again, a human chain culminating
in Darling, with Celestial right behind her. They closed their eyes and chanted softly, words I could not pick up, as if they
weren’t meant for my ears. That unnerved me more than I wanted to admit—I hadn’t known humans could tune me away like that.
Darling dragged in a harsh breath, then reached out and clamped her hands to the girls’ shoulders, her eyes closed and her
eyelids fluttering wildly. A wave of tension built in the room, then it snapped, whipped outward and back with an audible
crack, and then Galilee’s friends were gasping for air and staggering back, their pupils dilated with shock. Bonbon fell over
from the crouch she’d been in, her legs undoubtedly numb. Oriak? spun around, on the verge of panic, until she saw Darling
and recognition steadied her in a rushed deep breath.
“You’re Gali’s grandma,” she said, her voice gathering strength. “Nana Darling, right?”
“I am,” the old woman replied. “Y’all remember how you got here?”
Oriak? frowned, looking very much like her father for a moment. “I think . . . we were . . .” She glanced around the loft.
“We’re at Gali’s place?”
Leah was helping Bonbon to her feet, and the writer looked even more confused than Oriak?. “When did we get here?” she asked.
“Where’s Gali? We haven’t seen her since last night.”
Oriak? pressed her fingers to her temples like a migraine was spiking through her skull. I could feel how she was instinctively
bucking against Lucifer’s glamour in an endearing but useless attempt to reclaim her mind. The Devil was good at tricks, but
he was always better at cages.
“We came to find Gali, but she wasn’t here,” she said. There was a slightly wooden note lurking in her voice, and several
of the Kincaids homed in on it like it was a speck of blood on the floor leading to a trail. They exchanged looks, and Collette
stepped forward.
“Do you have a key too?” she asked, her voice as soothing as water. It made you want to give her everything, all thanks to that persuasive resonance. “Is that how you got in?”
“Yeah,” Bonbon answered, but her eyes held just a hint of a glaze. “We had a key and that’s how we got in.”
It was a decent glamour for something Lucifer had tossed out casually while holding a conversation with Galilee, distracted
by his arousal. I loved that he wouldn’t understand it—that attraction to Galilee, that pull. Not yet.
The glamour he’d created was one that picked up on suggestion and adapted to it, meaning to smooth the conversation away from
any deeper questioning. Unfortunately, despite Collette’s gentle tone, this was actually an interrogation.
“Maybe you broke in,” she said. “You must have been very worried about Gali.”
Oriak? sighed. “We were. I didn’t mean to damage the lock, but Gali will understand.”
Collette’s mouth tightened. “I’m sure she will. Why don’t y’all sit down for a bit and drink some water, okay?” She watched
as the girls were pulled away by Galilee’s cousins, then Collette turned to Darling and Celestial. “Someone’s tampered with
their minds,” she said grimly. “I don’t think even Gali is strong enough to do that.”
Celestial growled. “Then it was him.”
“Most likely.” Collette’s hands were clenched into bloodless fists. “He could be doing anything with my baby. He could’ve
taken over her mind by now, put her on puppet strings for all we know.” She looked at her mother, distraught. “Mama, what
do we do?”
Darling Kincaid adjusted the folded cuffs of her sleeves. “No devil could take over Galilee’s mind,” she stated firmly. “The
girl is a Kincaid. But these her friends? We gotta get their minds back.”
Celestial stepped forward. “If y’all amplify me like you just did for Nana Darling, I think I could unravel it.”
All the Kincaids fell silent, staring at her with wide eyes. Sage whistled slowly.
“Damn, niece,” Shirley said, resting the tip of her machete on the floor. “You got it like that?”
Celestial bared her teeth. “Let’s find out.”
I left them there. A glamour is difficult to remove only if it’s been set with great intention, with power carefully poured
into it, and Lucifer had barely been paying attention when he slapped that one on. Celestial Kincaid would find it to be a