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I hissed at the burn when I went to tell him he was wrong. It was like a warning not to let the lie leave my lips. So, instead, I swallowed then clenched my fist. “What are your questions?”
“Right to it, then?” He leaned back on the couch and put his arm not holding the drink over the back of the couch. “What are you?”
I didn’t answer right away, the burning of the bracelet enough to make me wary. “What if I don’t know the answer?”
“Then say you don’t know, and so long as that is truthful, it still takes one of my questions.” When I didn’t speak, he lifted an eyebrow. “I play these games better than you do, mortal. You didn’t actually answer.”
That was when I realized that Hunter hadn’t been kidding. Lucifer might just be more difficult to deal with than I’d thought.
I went to tell him I didn’t know what I was, but a burning in my wrist said that wasn’t an honest answer. So it seemed time for the entire truth… “I don’t know what I am, exactly. My parents abandoned me when I was a kid, and I don’t who they were. I’ve never met anyone quite like me, and no one has been able to tell me what I am.” The burn remained at that low level, telling me the answer was acceptable.
Lucifer took a sip of his drink, staring at me carefully. “That was less helpful than I had hoped.”
“I’m so sorry.” The words flew from my mouth at the speed of sass, and right away, a stabbing pain burrowed into my arm, making me feel as if flames licked across the skin, as if it seared down to the bone.
I bent forward, gasping at the pain until it finally faded, leaving me sweating and shaking.
The entire time, Lucifer hadn’t moved, watching impassively. “The bracelet doesn’t speak sarcasm.”
I kept myself from speaking again, from adding anything else because I wasn’t sure what would come out of my mouth. Instead, I narrowed my eyes. “Three more questions.”
Lucifer quirked his lips into a smile, as if that charmed him. “Question two—where are the spirits that haven’t arrived in hell?”
The memory of the pain, the way my hand still felt as if an electrical charge ran through it, made me answer carefully. “I don’t know where they are, only that they aren’t in the afterworld, and that they were torn free of the tether that connected them to the body.”
The liquid in Lucifer’s glass swirled as he twisted his wrist. “So the spirits are taken before they would naturally move on. Interesting.” He crossed one ankle over the opposite knee, making me notice just how shiny his black shoes were. “Question three. Who is behind it?”
“A shadow.”
He gestured for me to go on. “That is not a full answer.”
“Well, it is all I have for you. I don’t know who or what the shadow is. I don’t know how it is doing any of it.” I blew out a breath, still shaky from the last shock, and leaned forward. “Someone was driving immortals crazy, making them kill. I felt the presence of this shadow. It attacked me once in a dream of mine.” I lifted my arm to show the scar that still sat there. “It also showed up in a pocket universe with the elder ones, when they were looking for the spirits.”
“But no idea who that shadow actually is?”
I shook my head. “It smelled of brimstone, so honestly, I thought it was you…”
He made a soft sound but didn’t say it wasn’t.
“You get one more question,” I told him.
He didn’t ask it right away, pausing as if reading me while he decided. Finally, he leaned forward. “What is it you really want?”
I frowned. “What sort of question is that?”
“An important one. There is no better way to size up an enemy than to understand what they truly want. That truth is at the core of everything they do. If all I get is one last question, that will tell me more than anything else could.”
“What doyoureally want?” I asked with a snarky tone.
“I am wise enough to know better than to answer that one, at least not without a price, and I doubt it is one you would care to pay. You, however, owe me the answer.”
I procrastinated by taking a drink of water, holding it in my mouth for a long moment before swallowing. What did I really want?
I wanted to find the missing spirits. I wanted to know who was behind this. I wanted to keep Troy, Kase, Hunter and Grunt safe. I wanted to be normal.
My arm burned, a warning that perhaps that last one wasn’t true.
But wasn’t that what I’d always wanted? To be normal, to fit in, to be like everyone else?
