Page 14 of Catnapped

Darian smirked. “You can’t go into a deep lounging tub unless you can swim.”

I snorted my amusement that he thought I even owned a tub. I pointed in the general direction of my bathroom. “Go into my bathroom, Darian. Tell me what you see.”

His eyes widened. “You’re one of those?”

“Those?”

“Those people who only take showers.”

“I frantically scrub and get as clean as possible as quickly as possible to reduce the risk of drowning. When a hurricane is scheduled to blow through, I am among the first to evacuate, because I do not wish to drown.” I lifted my chin, as I refused to be ashamed of my fear of the water. “My cat does not like baths, either.”

“Well, yes. He’s a cat. They typically don’t.”

“Well, I’m a human, and I don’t like baths.”

“But they’re baths, Diana. Baths!”

The Devil turned around and bowed his head, and his shaking shoulders exposed his silent laughter. Would Darlene miss him if I did my best to murder him? “You’re an asshole, Lucifer.”

“You’re a delight.” Turning to face me, the Devil cast a grin my way. “You’re marvelously resilient to the divine. I wonder if you’ll be one of those pesky mortals who learns to see through the shroud. Some do.”

“And live to talk about it? I don’t have any desire to be wiped out of existence, Lucy. That’s what the CDC’s files say on it. To pierce the shroud is to die.”

“It depends,” he admitted, and he gestured to Darian. “He would survive if I were to remove the shroud masking my true nature. Belial does not need a shroud because of his nature. Raguel does. This mixture of genetics has given Darian an advantage. But a lot of his more troublesome abilities come from his mother, who has divine ancestry from prior emergences. His fathers have woken those tendencies. Most children of triads are limited; they’re as close to vanilla humans as humans get nowadays, although their children tend to come into their powers young. It’s not the children of the triads that tend to change the world, but it’s their children that take the reins and bring more power and magic to the mortal coil. Really, I should be praised for my hard work. Because I encourage triads, magic will last for a long time and blossom fully in this age. If I can get enough angels to tango with my demons and devils, this emergence might last for centuries. Most don’t.”

Sometimes, the Devil annoyed the hell right out of me, but others, he reminded me of the one thing I thirsted for above all else: knowledge. “What heinous things are you going to force me to do if I want you to elaborate on that?”

“You will allow Darian to purchase a swimsuit for you, and you will learn how to swim. I will give you a period of five years to learn how to swim, and I expect you to pursue making use of a bathtub for soaking purposes.”

What a complete and total asshole. “I’m terrified of water, Lucifer. Do you know what happened the last time someone tried to make me go near a pond?”

“You fainted from fright.”

I nodded, wondering if the Devil had learned that gem from rummaging in my thoughts or if he’d poked his nose in my business at some other time. “I had a panic attack, and I fainted. I think I’m lucky I didn’t have a heart attack. And if I’d been near that pond, I would have drowned.” I forced myself to take deep breaths. “I have a bad relationship with water.”

“And you don’t even know why. Perhaps that might help you overcome your phobia.” The Devil patted my head. “Darian will take excellent care of you. And he won’t mind catching you when you inevitably faint from getting too close to the water. I’m sure he’ll be fine with teaching you to enjoy the wonders of a nice bathtub as part of your new therapy plan. It’s a decent deal. You get what you want, and I prevent Darian from having a string of anxiety attacks when he worries about your inability to swim. The children of triads tend to be anxious little creatures. It’s their conflicted natures. It’s also part of what makes them so fun to have around. They’re like overexcited little puppies who try so hard to please. When one parent is an angel, one parent is a demon or a devil, and the other parent is human, it’s hard for the little puppy to please everybody.”

Darian nodded. “It’s absolutely true. If I tried to make my father happy, the archangel one that is, my dad, the devilish general, would just ooze disappointment. How can I possibly become a bringer of ruin if I am always trying to make the feathered menace happy with me?”

How had Darian survived to adulthood? Had I called an archangel a feathered menace, I’d be dead. Or at least scheduled to be sent to the Devil as a plaything in one of his many hells. “Did you just call an archangel a feathered menace?”

“Well, they really are. Once I was old enough to trip and fall without doing any real harm to myself, if my father caught me in the act, he’d just smack me with a wing. Those wings are no joke. Half the time, I never needed a spanking because my father would smack me with his wing, and that would put an end to whatever he disliked in a hurry.”

“That sounds rather painful.”

“Pain is an excellent teacher, and my father’s general approach to raising a child involves making sure said child, me, survives to adulthood. After I survived to adulthood, his general plans involved me not being a useless layabout. He doesn’t like useless layabouts. My dad doesn’t either, as useless layabouts only ruin their general health, their finances, and little else. Just don’t ask about my mother. We’d be here for years if I tried to explain that mess.”

I bet. “Your mother seems like a very interesting woman.”

“That’s one way to put it. Hey, Lucifer? My mother is going to change her mind within an hour if we aren’t out of here. She will convince herself she is a terrible parent and start crying to my fathers, and I can’t stand when my mother starts crying because I tried to skip town. And don’t get me started on how far my fathers will go to get my mother to stop crying. The reason I visit most days of the week is not because I want to. It’s because both of them will get pretty pissy with me if I make my mother cry because it doesn’t look like I love her enough. Frankly, I’ll bargain with you to make sure I have a brother or sister on the way soon solely so I can escape from their clutches.”

While I sometimes thought my life growing up had been tough dealing with a pair of controlling but loving parents, I worried the taste of freedom might do Darian in.

Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who needed a life outside of work—or in his case, his family and work. Maybe, assuming time allowed and I found my cat sooner rather than later, I’d take Darian home with me and expose him to normal parents. Well, as normal as my parents got, who leaned more towards embracing everything normal in a world of magic, which made them a little eccentric on a good day. They attended church, but they didn’t believe in magic. They limited their faith to praying because it was part of their religion, but they couldn’t quite fathom the reality of the divine and the magic surrounding them.

They would not approve if they learned the realities of being a secretary for the CDC.

I found it ironic they attended church loyally but struggled with the idea that religious figureheads weren’t just figureheads, but actual beings with personalities, opinions, and a general lack of care for most mortals.