Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
S taring over the night view of Toronto as Bianca slept, Lucifer did not like the direction his thoughts were taking.
He should be out there hunting for Ashe; instead, he was stuck here serving a blood oath. Blood fucking oath! He snorted. As if a clever hell prince couldn’t make his way around one of those. There was always a loophole—always. But was he looking for one?
No. He was sipping admittedly fine single malt and listening to Bianca’s deep, even breathing. Even more telling, he had no desire to find the loophole.
Two human witches had him tied in knots. The first was understandable. What being could look into the soulful, innocent eyes of eight-year-old Emma and not want to bring back her mother and restore her childish joy?
His entanglement with the second witch was much more perplexing.
Bianca was outspoken, audacious, impertinent, disrespectful and showed an alarming penchant for wearing only black. Even worse were her ugly boots, which would look more appropriate on a steel worker. He had never been tempted to lie with a human, but if he had, it would have been with one of those sophisticated, urbane, witty women who were impeccably groomed and knew not to shoot single malt.
His haglette also had no tendency for self-preservation, acted first and thought later, and seemed to live by the credo “she who dares.” And she dared much.
He couldn’t fathom how a woman such as Bianca had thrown herself away on Weaz-adj. It was inconceivable to him that she’d allowed that oxygen waster near her.
A soft noise from the bedroom made him listen closer.
Raphael would be informing the others about the pendants and how the witches were creating them. Finally, the archangels were taking a more active role in this cluster fuck and had agreed to discover where else the witches had been taken from. If they weren’t aware of the danger already, those covens needed to be warned. And Ashe and his deadly cohorts needed to be cut off from the source of the pendants.
In his long years, he’d seen countless atrocities perpetuated on humans by each other, but what they’d found in that lair was demon against human. In a showdown of human versus demon, the result was predetermined. Hell princes were meant to control demons and prevent such iniquities from taking place. They’d failed—him, the other hell princes, even the archangels.
Guilt was not an emotion he was familiar with. If guilt was what had him twisted up and was muddling his thinking, he didn’t care for it.
Bianca made that distressed noise again and he moved to her open doorway.
She lay on her back, one arm bent at the elbow and flung above her head. She’d eyed the pajamas he’d bought for her from the hotel gift shop with suspicion when he’d presented them to her. Of course she had. They were pale blue and silk, and her system had probably gone into shock about them not being black and cotton.
She whimpered and turned her head. Her eyes shifted beneath her lids, and she moaned.
He took a step closer. Something was disturbing Bianca’s dreams.
Her head lashed to the other side, and she keened a low, “Nooo.”
Lucifer found himself in a quandary. He didn’t, as a rule, hesitate to do exactly what he wanted, when he wanted. He’d wanted to refill her wine, and it hadn’t given him a moment’s pause that she’d been naked and in the bath.
Hindsight being as infuriatingly accurate as it was, he should have thought that action through. Bianca’s dewy, ivory skin peaking above the water had affected him far more than he was comfortable admitting to himself. Scrubbed free of makeup, her face was vulnerable and much younger than her formidable personality suggested.
“No, no, no,” she murmured. Tears tracked from the corners of her eyes into her hairline. Her face contorted in pain.
Decision made, he sat on the edge of the bed and shook her lightly. “Bianca?”
She tensed and came awake instantly. Lingering pain haunted her eyes. “What are you doing?”
Immediately, her barriers tried to sneak past her inner turmoil, but it was a poor effort, which told him all he needed to know about how bad her dreams had been.
Giving in to the urge, Lucifer scooped her into his lap. “I’m comforting you.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to.” He enfolded her against his chest. “And because I know you need it. Now, stop being a pain in my ass and be comforted.”
Bianca snort laughed against his chest, but she relaxed into his hold. “I didn’t think comforting was your thing.”
“Generally, it’s not.” He ran a hand down her back. The knobs of her spine were prominent beneath the silk of her top. He commended his taste in sleepwear—elegant and comfortable. “How am I doing?”
“Good,” she whispered and pressed her face into his neck. Her breath huffed warm and damp against his skin. She took a sniff. “You smell good.”
“Of course I do.” He rested his chin on her head.
She chuckled.
Her silky, sable hair smelled of flowers and herbs. “What were you dreaming about?”
“Unicorns and sparkly rainbows.”
This haglette of his would be the end of him. “Try again.”
“The bodies,” she whispered.
“Ah.” He had guessed as much. “Would you like to tell me about it?”
“No.”
Lucifer understood. He wasn’t one for jawing crap through either. “Would it help if I told you that wasn’t the end for those witches?”
“Are you going to give me some religious talk?” She huffed and wriggled in his hold. “Because I should tell you right now that I’m pagan.”
“No.” He wrapped her close to him. “But those religions that include reincarnation are as close to the truth as it gets.”
“Huh.” She settled into his hold.
He didn’t want to let her go yet, so he said, “I telephoned the theatre, and Emma and Ethan are well.”
“You phoned?” She pulled her head back and looked at him.
She had the most fetching mouth, almost too wide and full for her fine features, but somehow it worked. He could also tell from the gleam in her eyes that he was about to get some of her impudence. It was so much better than her nightmares. “You find that strange?”
“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes before tucking herself beneath his chin. “Don’t you have some kind of super mind ju-ju or something?”
And there was that cheek. He struggled not to laugh. “No telepathic powers. At least, not across a distance.”
“But you would if you were closer?” She wound her fingers in the hem of her sleep shorts.
“Not as you would understand them.” He didn’t know why he was explaining his powers to a human, and a witch at that, but he did anyway. “We can sense presences and power signatures. We’ve also been around each other for so long that we can sense what the other will do.”
“Hmm.” Her fingers migrated from her shorts to his shirt. “Telepathy would be better.”
“Absolutely not,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. “I have no desire to know what my fellow hell princes are thinking.” He couldn’t suppress a shudder. “Dear hells, Wrath’s thoughts alone would fry my mind.”
She giggled and pleated his sleeve between her fingers.
It should bother him that she was wrinkling the linen. “I prefer cell phones.”
She peaked at him. “You do?”
“Very efficient,” he said. “One of your better human ideas.”
“I hate technology.” She sniffed. “It puts barriers between people.”
“You don’t hate technology.” He stilled her fiddly fingers by twining them with his. “You hate the way technology has been used.”
Her small hand felt fragile in his, and an inexplicably protective urge swept through him. “Like many of your human inventions, the reasons you created them and their intended purpose were excellent. You could not, however, resist the lure of greed, and they became tarnished.”
“Huh.” She stared down at their joined fingers. “Are you holding my hand?”
He squeezed her fingers. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
* * *
Bianca woke with no Lucifer in sight. Morning light peeked through a gap in the heavy drapes. She had no memory past her sitting on his lap and him holding her hand. Getting used to Lucifer being kind to her was a bad idea, and Lucifer had been kind to her last night. Even the bullying her to eat and busting in on her in the bath could be construed as him taking care of her—in his own, special kind of way.
She sat up in bed and peered through the open door to the lounge. “Lucifer?”
“You should call your coven.” His voice drifted back to her.
What a charmer!
“Good morning.” She put a load of extra chirpy into her greeting. “I hope you slept well.”
“I don’t sleep.” He appeared in the doorway with her phone in his hand.
“Ever?” She was going to overlook how he must have dug through her bag to find her phone.
“Rarely.” He sprawled on the bed beside her and handed her the phone. “We need to find out if they can strengthen the crystal tracking spell.”
The intimacy of his proximity brought back last night, and her cheeks heated. “I remember.”
“You’re blushing.” He stared at her.
What was good for the goose… “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He chuckled and jerked his head at her phone.
“You’re a nag.” She dialed Lynn’s number.
“I’m focused.”
Lynn’s phone went to voicemail. She tried Patty. Same result. That left Christen or Carmen, and she sure as hell wasn’t calling the former.
“Bee?” Carmen sounded subdued. “Where are you?”
“I’m with Lucifer.” And that wasn’t a sentence life prepared you to say. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, Bee.” Carmen sniffled. “It’s Christen.”
If Christen was involved this could be all kinds of bad news. “What’s happened?”
Lucifer edged closer to her.
“He’s gone, Bee.” Carmen wailed.
Lucifer raised a questioning brow.
“What do you mean gone?” If that piece of crap had hurt her little sister, she’d gut him.
“I mean he’s left.” Carmen blew her nose. “I went around to his place yesterday morning and he was gone.”
“Gone?” Dread tightened her belly. Were they looking for another witch now? And she didn’t see Lucifer as being amenable to hunting for Christen. “Did you call Patty and Lynn?”
Despite Christen’s many faults, she wouldn’t wish what she’d seen yesterday on anybody.
Lucifer came to sit beside her and pressed his ear closer to the phone.
She suppressed the desire to lean into him and draw strength.
“Of course I did.” Carmen sniffed and inhaled. “And I wish I hadn’t because Patty said such mean things, I don’t think I’ll ever speak to her again.”
It didn’t sound like Christen had been taken. “When you say gone, Carmen, do you mean he left or…something else?”
“Something awful has happened to him. I’m sure of it.” Carmen sobbed. “He would never leave like that.”
Lucifer looked dubious.
She shared his skepticism, but she did need to establish the facts. “Were all his things still at his house?”
Part of her hoped Carmen would say she didn’t know because she wasn’t familiar with Christen’s house. They’d been getting close, but Bianca didn’t think it had progressed to sleepovers. She didn’t want to think it had gone that far.
“His car was gone.” Carmen sounded defensive. “And his sitar and that drum he got in Mozambique, but that doesn’t mean anything. They could have taken those things when they took him.”
As Bianca had endured more than one evening of Christen’s musical “expressions,” if they had abducted Christen with his sitar and drum, there was a good chance they’d be bringing him back shortly. “Wait! Wasn’t he using your car?”
“The things you own end up owning you,” Carmen quoted with a sniff.
Lucifer growled.
The sound vibrated through her skin in a not entirely unpleasant way. “But he was using your car?”
“I don’t believe?—”
“Carmen!”
“Okay, yes. My name is on the paperwork,” Carmen said.
Bianca reached deep for her patience. Losing her temper with Carmen would only drive her sister in the opposite direction. “Your name is on the paperwork because you paid for the car.”
“I told him he could use it.” Carmen sounded sulky.
It took everything in Bianca not to yell. “What did Patty say?”
“She called him a wanker.” Outrage vibrated down the line. “And then she tried to get me to call the police and report the car stolen.”
She could have kissed Patty. Christen’s disappearance didn’t sound anything like the kidnappings, which begged the question of why. Had he been freaked out by everything that was happening and run? Bianca couldn’t entirely judge him for the urge. She experienced it herself, a lot.
What she couldn’t excuse was how much this had upset Carmen. “He didn’t text you or call you?”
“No.” Carmen sniffed. “I can’t believe he would leave me like that.”
Unfortunately, Bianca could believe it only too well. “I’m so sorry, sweetie.”
“He said he loved me.” Carmen sobbed.
Christen liked to throw the word love around like glitter at a pride parade. Bianca had tried to subtly warn Carmen about him, but her hands had been tied, and Christen kept tightening the knot. Every time she’d tried to speak to Carmen, Christen had explained it away as her being jealous. She felt like a rotten liar as she said, “This doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.”
Lucifer gave her a hard look.
She totally deserved it, but she waved him off with a hand flap. Carmen didn’t need to hear I told you so right now.
“Bee?” Carmen’s voice wobbled. “There’s something else.”
“About Christen?”
“Yes.”
Why was there always something else with that fucktard? “Tell me, sweetie.”
“It’s bad,” Carmen whispered. “Patty said she’d like to shrivel his dick when she found out.”
Avoiding Lucifer’s oh-too-interested stare, Bianca braced. “Tell me.”
Carmen muttered something.
Bianca’s brain decoded the mumble and then immediately tossed the meaning out as impossible. “Say that again, sweetie.”
“Patty thinks Christen took the grimoire.” Carmen’s tone grew more certain. “I told her it was impossible. Christen would never take the coven’s grimoire. He loves the coven. He would never do anything to damage our magic.”
Her head spun, and Bianca was glad she was already sitting down. Her gaze was drawn to Lucifer.
Eyes blazing—and not in the sexy way they’d blazed last night—he straightened.
Barely cognizant of what she was saying, Bianca murmured a few more reassurances to Carmen before she hung up.
Lucifer’s voice was silky with menace. “Tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it does.”
Swallowing to relieve her suddenly dry mouth, Bianca said, “Christen might have stolen the coven grimoire.”
“I heard that much,” he drawled.
Hair rose on her nape as prey recognized an apex predator in the room. “He took our magic.”
Lucifer’s wings whooshed from his back. The draft fanning her hair back.
Despite her nerves, Bianca had to suppress the need to ogle. His wings rose three feet higher than his head and were at least twice his width on either side. Glossy black with silver and verdigris filaments, they brushed the floor. He’d never looked more terrifying or more beautiful. Spending time with him had made it easy to anthropomorphize Lucifer. The being standing before her now was alien, infinitely powerful, and enraged.
Ancient anger resonated through his voice. “He has stolen your magic?”
“Yes.” Her spine softened as if it wanted to pay physical homage in a bow. “And everything we know about the amulets.”
“He must be found,” Lucifer thundered.
Bianca lowered her head and said the only thing she could, “Yes.”