29 Ariuk #3
Dante didn’t rush to reassure me, which somehow made the answer worse before he even gave it. “I don’t know, Ari. Jophiel doesn’t seem interested in bringing you home, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t connected to whatever is happening.”
Raphael picked up from there. “He wanted me to stop asking questions about you. That bothered me more than anything else he said. If you were simply banished and no longer Heaven’s concern, there would be no reason for him to care what I discovered.”
Fantastic. Apparently even getting kicked out didn’t mean I could stop being Heaven’s problem child. I squeezed Nick’s hand and tried not to let the unease crawl any farther into my chest. “And what exactly do you two think is happening up there?”
Dante took a moment before answering. “I think something has been interfering with Heaven and the balance around it for longer than we realized. I don’t know how much control it has or how far the problem reaches, and I’m not going to pretend I do.”
“Great. Wonderful.” I took a slow breath and let it out, staring at the bubbles clustered around my knees. “Next thing you’re going to tell me God doesn’t exist.”
Nobody answered.
My gaze lifted from the water. Luc had gone completely still across from me, and even Zel had stopped fucking around with the food. I looked toward the phone, waiting for Dante to make some smart-ass comment or Raphael to correct me.
Nothing.
“Why is everyone quiet?” I asked, pushing myself a little higher in the bath when the silence stretched long enough to stop being funny.
“Wait. Are you telling me it’s just a bunch of stingy-ass archangels running Heaven?
” The words were already out before I remembered who was on the call. “Sorry, Raphael.”
Raphael laughed and the roughness caught me off guard.
It wasn’t his usual restrained amusement.
It sounded tired and slightly hysterical, like his entire day had been terrible enough that stingy-ass archangels had finally pushed him over the edge.
When the laugh faded, though, the heaviness returned to his voice.
“I think it may be worse than that,” he said when he recovered.
My smile disappeared. “How?”
Raphael hesitated long enough that I could hear Dante shift beside him before he finally answered. “I think an IDEA may be on the throne.”
Every thought I’d been trying to hold onto scattered at once. “Then where the fuck is God?”
Nobody had an answer.
I lasted maybe three seconds before deciding I had reached my limit for impossible revelations tonight. “Nope.”
“Ari—” Dante started, but I was already leaning over the side of the tub.
“I do not want to fucking know.” I grabbed Luc’s phone before anyone could stop me and ended the call, dropping it onto the bathmat safely out of splashing distance before sinking back into the water.
The movement sent bubbles climbing toward my chin, and I closed my eyes as if that might somehow put me back where I had been ten minutes ago. “Excuse me while I finish my bath.”
Another few seconds passed before I started getting antsy and looked at the four demons gathered around me. I shifted beneath the water. “How bad is it if God isn’t on the throne?”
Deus answered without hesitation. “End-of-humanity kind of bad.”
My stomach dropped so quickly that Zel shot him an irritated look.
“The world isn’t going to end,” he said, finally putting his sandwich down.
He wiped his fingers on a napkin before leaning his hip against the counter, far calmer than Deus had managed to sound.
“At least there’s no reason to jump straight to that.
But if God isn’t sitting on Heaven’s throne, then whoever is running things up there is doing it without him.
Their rules. Their decisions. Whatever they want Heaven to become. ”
That was marginally less horrifying. I let out the breath I’d been holding and settled back against the tub. “So it could be okay.”
Nick laughed, and the sound was so immediate that I frowned at him.
“What?”
“No one steals God’s throne because they think they can make Heaven nicer, Ari. Thousands of demons have challenged Dante since he took Hell, and not one of them showed up because they wanted better working conditions and a friendlier fucking afterlife.”
Luc finally dragged his attention away from the phone. “They wanted the throne.”
“Exactly.” Nick glanced toward him before looking back at me. “Power is usually the point.”
I looked from Nick to Luc, hoping one of them might suddenly decide that was an overly pessimistic demon interpretation of the situation.
Five minutes ago, I had been eating sandwiches naked in a bathtub while four demons argued over when I should meet the rest of their ridiculous family.
Now Dante was apparently an IDEA, Raphael was breaking Heaven’s rules to meet with him, something might have taken God’s throne, and my father might not have been a fucking asshole who sold his daughter to the Devil for power.
“Well, fuck.”