She snapped her head up. “Don’t raise your fucking voice at me!” Gali had meant to sound cold and harsh, but instead her voice cracked again, and her eyes went hot with tears.
Lucifer’s face softened instantly. “Galilee, please. Let me hold you.” He sounded ragged. “I’m sorry.”
It would have been easier if he hadn’t been gentle, if he didn’t look contrite, like seeing her cry was a sin he’d never forgive himself for. A sob was trying to break out of her, and Gali fought it and the tears. She could feel Lucifer holding himself back from comforting her, waiting for her permission. Neither of them knew why or enough of what she was to explain how she burned him. All Gali had were empty foundational corners and the knowledge that she was something poisonous enough to hurt the Devil himself. All she had were secrets and power she couldn’teven protect her friends from. The tears spilled over her cheeks, and Gali covered her mouth with one hand, choking back the sobs.
“Beloved,” the Devil whispered. “Let me hold you.”
She was a monster. She was a monster so terrible that her own family couldn’t tell her the truth and show her what she was, couldn’t look her in the eye because they didn’t really wanna see her, and she was so alone, missing them when the truth was that even if they were here, they wouldn’t make things better. Galilee Kincaid was amonster, and so when her sobs finally broke through, she gave in and reached out for the only other monster she knew.
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 onesandshe’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 thearchangels, his brother especially? I did both—the remembering and the hating—because Luciferruinedus, tore our family apart, made schisms where they should never have been, all because he couldn’t beobedient, he had to askquestions. 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 hadher 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 haveknown,” 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?”
