Chapter 6
Chapter Six
B ianca had herself a tiger by the tail. She gripped Patty’s security stick tighter and suppressed the urge to run after the others and ask them to stay.
Outside the cabin, car doors opened and closed. Lights illuminated the driveway as an engine started. Tires crunched over the dirt.
And Lucifer sat there like the devil he was and grinned at her. “You know there’s not a fucking chance I’m going to help you.”
She finished her wine and debated the wisdom of another glass but did it on the way to the wine bottle, so it was a foregone conclusion once she got there. “You haven’t heard what I want yet.”
“Let me give you a history lesson.” He chuckled, making the hair on her nape salute.
“Must you?” She winced into her wine. She’d never been much good at history, and a premonition whispered she wasn’t going to enjoy his lesson.
“Morgan Le Fey,” he said. “She summoned me.”
Hang on, here. Bianca wasn’t that shit at history. “Morgan Le Fey is a myth.”
“Is she?” He gave her that nasty grin of his.
Bianca was speaking to a being who might actually know. Or he was fucking with her, but curiosity propelled her. “She isn’t?”
“She wanted youth and beauty.” He shrugged. “And immortality.”
Trying to play it cool, Bianca snorted. “Legend has it that didn’t work out so well for her.”
“No, it didn’t.”
His chuckle freaked her out, and there might be a hole in the bottom of her glass.
“Mother Shipton,” he said.
“Beauty and immortality?” She was a reader. That seemed like a safe guess.
“Predictions.” He stared at her with those midnight dark, furious eyes. “She wanted me to lift the veil for her and show her the future.”
“Did you?”
He nodded at her glass. “You going to share that?”
“It isn’t very good.” But she poured him a glass and took it to him. “What happened to Mother Shipton?”
“She missed seeing her own death.”
He was freaking her out now, but she refused to show it. Now she knew she didn’t want to hear the rest of his historical meanderings.
“La Voisin.” He sipped his wine and grimaced. “How do you drink this crap?”
“Same way you are.” She lifted her glass in a toast. No way she was asking one more question and prolonging this.
Lucifer smirked. “She wanted the power to make people fall in love with her.”
That seemed like a bad idea all round. “Dead?” Dammit! She’d asked another question, but she was also sensing a theme here.
He nodded. “Aradia.”
Bianca took a seat.
“Was desperate to unlock the secrets to all magic.”
“And dead?”
“Agnes Sampson.”
Bianca drank because now she knew what was coming.
“Wanted to heal her children.”
That didn’t sound so bad and hardly deserving of a death sentence.
Lucifer took a leisurely sip. “Also not a big fan of her husband and offered his soul in exchange.” He leaned back on the sofa. “To be fair, the man was a total prick.”
Wind shushed through the maples outside.
“Merga Bien,” he said. “Wanted to be as powerful as the pharaohs.”
“I get it.” If this went on much longer, he’d talk her to death. “All those witches summoned you, and now they’re dead. Very subtle.”
“Precisely.” He held up his wine glass. “More wine.”
“Say please.” Lucifer was rude. So was Shade when he’d first met Eddie, and Wrath was no picnic, and Eddie had survived those two. Of course Shade was in love with Eddie and Wrath was her father, but she had Lucifer bound.
“Please,” he snapped.
See there. You just had to be firm with these hell princes. It took every ounce of her rapidly waning courage, but she held the death glare she was getting. “Why you?”
“What?” He blinked.
“Why do they summon you?”
“Ah.” He sipped his wine and shrugged. “Name recognition. Prince of hell. Blah, blah, blah.”
“Right.” That made sense, and at some point, she was going to have to broach her reason for summoning him. She was probably being way too optimistic, but if he heard her out, maybe she could get him to help them. The key lay in the approach. Start carefully, lay some subtle groundwork, build to the big finish—like she’d done with the play selection meeting. Lead someone carefully over to her point of view. Those unnerving abyss eyes drilled into her. “Our coven is being hunted.”
Shit! Fuck! Damn!
Oh, well, pivot and adapt. “I summoned you to help me stop it.”
“No.” He smirked.
Well, if he was going to take that strategy. “And if you don’t, I’ll never release your power from the amulet.”
Fury flashed across his handsome face. “I will rip you into little pieces and incinerate you. I will chain your soul to your rotting carcass for eternity.”
And above all else in negotiation, show no fear. “Not stuck on that sofa, you won’t.”
He absorbed her comeback with the preternatural quiet of a hurricane’s eye. “What makes you think this trinket around my neck will hold me for longer than tonight?”
“What makes you think it won’t?” She returned his smirk. “I created that trinket. I know exactly how it works and what it does.” Kind of and in the broader sense of knowing, but she didn’t have to tell him that. “That trinket, as you call it, is part of an ancient set of spells we have in our coven grimoire. It’s also the reason my coven members are disappearing.” She added a bit of dramatic flair with a heavy pause. “So you could say, I’m an expert on that trinket.”
“You’re lying,” he said.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“How?” Damnit, he was sharp. “Why do you think I’m lying?”
“Because your lips are moving.”
It took a hot minute for his insult to sink it. “You know what?” Retreat to fight another day. Any more time with him, and she’d start begging and blubbering. Eddie hadn’t mentioned how intimidating these hell princes were when you were up close and personal with them. Not that Eddie spoke to her, but if she had, she might have mentioned it. Bianca stood and gathered the tatters of her dignity around her. “I’m not going to sit here and trade insults with you. I’m tired, and you’re being unreasonable.”
He tracked her as she took the glasses back to the kitchen. “Where are you going?”
“To bed.” She rinsed the glasses and put them in her ancient dishwasher. The thing was almost as old as Lucifer and just as unpredictable. She yawned and made like she had every intention of trotting to bed and drifting into dreamland with a pissed off hell prince plotting and fuming in her living room.
He growled. “You’re not leaving me like this.”
“Yes, I am.” She wiped her hands slowly and methodically on a dishtowel. “I don’t see that I have a choice.” Keeping her movements calm and controlled despite her jack rabbiting pulse, she wiped the counters. “Thanks to your history lesson, you’ve let me know in no uncertain terms what will happen if I unbind you.” She shrugged and met his scowl. “So, I’m going to give that a pass. I’m sure you understand.”
“Haglette.” He snarled. “I’ll kill you if you don’t release me.”
“Yeah.” She made a regretful face, and what had he called her? “Either way, you kill me. So I’m going to take my chances on the amulet.” She stopped walking as she drew level with the sofa. “By the way, this killing me if I release you and killing me if I don’t is not the compelling argument you think it is.”
Keeping it at a stroll, she made it into her bedroom. Her legs were shaking so badly, she had to perch on the edge of her bed as soon as she was out of sight.
“Witch!” Lucifer bellowed. “Hag!”
Faking it until she made it, Bianca unlaced her boots and slipped them off. Her tired, hot feet gave a throb of relief. She padded through to her attached bathroom and turned the shower on. As the water heated, moist steam filled the bathroom. As much as she’d love to wash the grime off and let the hot water soothe her tense muscles, she wasn’t actually going to take a shower and put herself in such a vulnerable position. But Lucifer didn’t know that. What he also didn’t know is that she had no idea how long the amulet would hold him. None of the coven did, and the grimoire had been short on detail. The plan had always been to bind him with the amulet for as long as it took to get a blood oath out of him. A blood oath would hold him forever. She’d planned to explain and get him to agree to help but that had gone out the window. Bluffing it would have to be.
“Bianca!” He roared.
She brushed her teeth as the shower ran. When she judged she’d left the water going long enough, she turned it off and changed into trackpants and a T-shirt. It was a relief to wash the makeup off her face, although it might not be the best strategic move. Without her thick cat’s-eye eyeliner and signature scarlet lips, her face looked younger and more vulnerable. This was the version of herself she kept carefully hidden from others. Those who saw you as weaker were quick to take advantage. It was a picture she’d like to have kept away from the hell prince in her living room. Then again, he already saw her as lower than shark shit, so not much to lose there.
Those other witches—the dead ones—had summoned him because they all wanted something from him. That was the only thing they had in common. She wanted her friends safe and the missing witches found. If her coven could have managed it themselves, they would have done so.
But nobody else was listening, and if she and Patty were right, what they were dealing with was way outside the RCMP’s jurisdiction. No, they needed supernatural powers—a hell prince. So they’d summoned one. Now, she had to be smart enough to get him to play on their team.
“Bianca.” His tone had softened. “I will allow you to tell me more.”
A small bubble of hope floated in her chest, but she forced herself to stay silent and let him simmer before she replied. “I’m tired. We can talk in the morning.”
“Fuck!” He exploded, his voice echoing through her small home. “I will fucking?—”
Even from the next room, she heard the deep draw of the calming breath he took.
Like a cheap cut of meat, he needed to stew a bit longer to soften him up.
Throwing back her covers, she rolled hard enough to get a decent bed spring creak.
“I need a piss,” he called.
That might get messy, if she believed him.
“Oh, dear,” she called back. “Patty’s gone home. Good night.”
She prayed for her upholstery’s sake that she’d read him right.
From the little she’d seen of Shade and Wrath, they seemed to have human biological functions. Not that she’d followed either hell prince to the bathroom to verify that particular detail. Come to think on it, she hadn’t seen either of those two eat. Maybe they didn’t have human biological functions. Then again, Lucifer had drunk her wine.
He might really need to pee.
She was about to get up and find out, when he spoke again. “I’m calm now. Let’s talk.”
Giving it a hefty pause, she eventually said, “Are you calm?”
“Yes.” He sounded like he’d forced the word out through a clenched jaw. Given that she had summoned and then abducted him, she could cut him a bit of slack. That would be galling for any powerful being, and doubly so for the hell prince who embodied pride. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Climbing out of bed, she drew a couple of bracing breaths. Strategy. It was all about clever strategy.
“Any more wine?” Lucifer asked.
At this stage, she might handle him better when she was drunk. “Yup.”
“Good.”
When she walked into the living room, he was still where she’d left him, propped up on the sofa. Of course he was, she’d near enough paralyzed him in place. The look in his eyes had downgraded from imminent incineration to carefully blank. The latter scared her more. “Do you need the bathroom?”
“No.” He smirked. “Keen to get a good grope like Patty?”
“No.”
He studied her as if she’d surprised him. Then he nodded. “You will be. All the witches are.”
Rather than smack him, she fetched more wine and filled his glass before taking a seat in the armchair across from him.
“Tell me about your missing coven members,” he said.
If they were going to talk, she needed to get her head straight. “Let me get you a shirt.”