“Why would he come after me?” she said, trying to dampen her hope. “I’m nobody.”
Celestial paused for a moment too long, then inhaled sharply. “One day they gon’ have to tell you the truth,” she said. “Soon, by the smell of it.”
Warning clung like sweat on the back of Gali’s neck. Celestial had mentioned this before, hinted about a Kincaid secret that had to do with Gali, but she’d also said she couldn’t tell Gali anything. “Ask your mother,” she’d said. “Shit, ask Nana Darling.” So Gali had tried to ask her mother, but Collette had laid a hand over her daughter’s mouth.
“You are a Kincaid,” she’d hissed with the thunder of an oath behind her trembling voice. “Whatever secrets we keep are to keep youalive, Gali. Don’t ask me again.”
Now, Gali glared at Celestial. “Kincaids don’t lie,” she snapped.
“Don’t mean they telling the truth,” Celestial shot back.
Whatever. Gali changed the subject. “Lucifer won’t come for me.”
There was a slipping disappointment inside her as she said it, but that didn’t make it less true. She probably wouldn’t see him again unless she got Oriak? to take her back to the mansion, and Gali was already too proud for that, to golookingfor him like a lost dog missing its master. This was just two worlds brushing against each other for a moment, then spinning apart.
Her cousin’s nostrils flared at the Devil’s name. “I’ma kill him if he does,” she said flatly.
“Celestial...”
“You think I’m playing? He doesn’t get to have you, Gali.”
But what if I want him to?Gali bit back the words. There was no faster way to convince her cousin that she had indeed been entranced by the Devil than to speak her wanting for him out loud. Celestial would never believe that the desire belonged to Gali, because what would Gali be doing with something so powerful burning in her veins? Frustration and a slow anger rose up the back of her throat.Shehad tempted him. She had brought the Devil to his fucking knees, and yet her family would always see her only as little strange Gali who needed their protection.
Someone started banging at the door, and Gali looked up. “I gotta go, Celestial. Don’t do anything.”
“Youdon’t do anything,” her cousin snapped. “Stay away from him. Otherwise I’ma have to tell Nana Darling.”
Gali went cold even as her anger heated up. “You wouldn’t dare tattle. You better than Zélie.”
“Sorry, Gali. If he tries to get to you, not even all the princes of hell could stop me and every Kincaid on earth from burning this shit down to protect you.” Celestial shrugged. “We family, cuz. It’s what we do.”
The call cut out and Gali’s phone went to black. Her nails bit into her palm as she clenched her fist, trying to control the tide of rage inside her. They would never let her go. Her family would swarm around her just like she’d feared, no matter how far out of the house she moved. Her life wasn’t hers to live, not really. At the end of the day, she was a Kincaid before she was anything else, even herself.
A small voice in the back of her head reminded her that this was what love was, that her cousin was only offering protection because they were up against the Devil himself and that was logically a danger worth the forces Celestial was threatening to raise up, but Gali did not care. Shewantedhim, and it was an ocean storming inside her, washing away any fear.
The banging continued, and Gali growled, throwing off her covers and stalking to her apartment door, throwing it open.“What?”she snarled.
Bonbon and Oriak? stood there, identical murderous glares on their faces.
“Where,” Oriak? bit out, “thefuckhave you been?”
6.
Lucifer
Lucifer had spent the night flying high among the clouds, his black wings merging with the night and a glamour concealing him from human eyes. Ever since this assignment started with his princes, they’d all remained in the cloak of their human forms for most of the time, but the storm currently raging inside him demanded more. It craved the cutting ice of wind and altitude, so Lucifer had taken to the skies, careful not to slip fully into his truest form. It would be too tempting to simplybecomethat monster, disembowel the billionaire they were watching, seize his house with the artifact stored inside, and damn the consequences. Levi had floated that exact idea at the start of the assignment, but Belial had pointed out that it would draw too much attention. This was meant to be quick and easy.
In truth, the artifact was a hellgate and had been one for almost a century, ever since Lucifer had found it tucked away in a vault in the Vatican. There had been so much blood packed into it, so many screams, nightmare after nightmare layered into the ivory inlay with the gold veins. Every face it had been pressed to had become a corpse, the death mask smiling above their stilled flesh. It had been easy for the Devil to borrow it and crack a one-way shortcut straight into Hell, creating a gatethat had remained stable for almost a hundred years, until a few months ago when it passed into Elijah Onyearugbulem’s custody and arrived in Salvation.
Then the gate immediately began to malfunction, its seal compromised. All hellgates were meant to open in only one direction, straight into Hell, but this one was trying to open in theotherdirection, threatening to slash a portal leading to Salvation. At first, Lucifer and his princes had warded it closed in Hell, but when that didn’t stabilize it, he’d sent Belial up to take a look. She’d immediately sent back for them to join her topside because her findings were dire—the hellgate was so compromised that the mask could not be moved. At any moment, the portal could crack open, and Salvation would be eaten alive by demons. It was all incredibly inconvenient.
Fortunately, Onyearugbulem had no idea what the mask really was, only that it was spiritually powerful and very, very old. It had been easy to compel him into accepting the elite security that the artifact needed, and Lucifer had remained in Salvation with his princes ever since. The whole thing was a damned puzzle cut into a shape he disliked. No one could explain which religious figure had smuggled it out of the Vatican in the first place, and Onyearugbulem had been tightlipped about the fence who had helped him procure the piece. Lucifer didn’t give a shit about that part, though—humans traded endlessly, and the gate was still a gate regardless. His problem was that no one should have been strong enough to tamper with a hellgate, let alone change the direction it swung open.
Now, Hell was eager to get out, andthatwas a disaster he couldn’t allow to happen. The world, after all, was still a war that had never really ended. Lucifer had a nasty feeling about the whole thing, an oil-black slithering that kept moving just out of range of his peripheral vision, like there was something he kept missing, and by the time he caught it, it would be too late. If the gate broke, it would be at the very least a localized apocalypse. Itneededto be closed, but it wasn’t responding toa damn thing, not even Lucifer’s power, so they had settled for warding it endlessly while trying to find out who the fuck had tampered with it in the first place.
As if he didn’t have enough problems already, now he had to save Galilee Kincaid’s life and prove to his princes that she had nothing to do with this shitstorm. Lucifer sighed and pulled all six of his wings close to his body, falling into a dive. The wind howled past his face, cutting at his skin. He welcomed it even as he barely felt its sting—it wasn’t Galilee’s fire carving through his marrow, and that was what he needed, that incinerating touch of the strange creature who smelled like a horizon of catastrophe. Lucifer hadn’t decided how to get the truth out of her. Torture was always a solid choice, of course, but there were so many ways to go about it. An image of Galilee naked and tied up flashed through his mind, and Lucifer groaned. She would be so perfect with soft ropes knotted against her dimpled flesh, golden clamps on her dark nipples, more gold forcing her lips apart in an open-mouthed gag.
He pushed himself into an even faster dive, hurtling toward the ground at a near-terminal speed, small cuts opening and instantly closing on the skin of his face. One deal and a few minutes against a wall with Galilee wasn’t enough. He wanted more. He wanted an eternity of burning at her hands, enough time to see if he could get bored, if she was as fascinating as her scent. He wanted her tobelongto him. Lucifer snapped out his wings, breaking his fall with a sudden wrenching as the solution to his problem washed over him like a revelation.
