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Chapter Twenty-One
“I never figured the devil would stop by for tea.” I set a cup in front of Lucifer. I’d picked one of Gran’s favorite teas, with angels across the box—something called ‘good vibes.’
It seemed fitting.
He dropped his gaze to the cup, that same stern look across his features he always had. “I told you already—this is a projection, so there is no need to actually make me tea. I can’t drink it.”
“And I told you that if I ever had anyone over and didn’t offer them tea, Gran would find a way to punish me even from the afterworld.”
He pressed his lips together with an unhappy look, but one with more affection than I would have expected, as though Gran had been, if not a friend, at least a worthy opponent. “Leave it to her to find a way to torture me even after she is gone.”
I chuckled and picked up my own cup, blowing the steam from the top before sipping it. The hot cocoa was divine, and I refused to feel a speck of guilt over drinking it. As it turned out, I hated tea, and I refused to force myself to drink it anymore. “So, the world isn’t going to end?”
“It seems not. All signs show the buildup of spirits in purgatory has started to drain slowly without Lilith there to hold them. We have received new residents in hell, along with the other levels of the afterlife reporting the same.”
I nodded, glancing to the side to see the spirit of an overly friendly multi-level-marketing candle saleswoman waving at me and smiling. She’d been around for about a week, but damn, it was nice to have her there instead of missing.
I’d never thought I’d be happy about seeing spirits, but here we were. “Yeah, it seems like they aren’t getting stuck anymore, either. Freshly minted spirits are bothering me as always. Might have to open some sort of ghost daycare system to give me a break.” Even as I said that, I knew it wasn’t entirely true. I’d started to actually listen to the spirits, to help those that needed it.
I mean, I still wasn’t murdering people for them, but a shoulder for ghost tears now and then was in the realm of possibilities. I’d even started to slip back to purgatory during my sleeping hours to help free some of the trapped spirits, to offer those who needed it a kick to get moving.
I took out the item that I’d held on to, the item which was the real reason I’d called him. After a moment, I dropped it on the table between us.
Lucifer stared down at Lilith’s ring. “Your favor was this. It is yours.” Even as he spoke, a hesitation in his tone told me the truth. He wanted it, but rules were rules.
“I needed it to find her, but I don’t need to keep it.”
He blew out a breath, then shook his head. “It would be inappropriate, like going back on a favor. I have a reputation to uphold.”
I refused to take the ring back. “Look, I want you to have it, and if you don’t take it, I’ll just keep bothering you. If this is a weird rules thing, how about you just give me another favor? I know you want it, and youshouldhave it. It was Lilith’s, so it should go to you.”
He swallowed hard, the action strangely charming, as if his uncertainty made him more…human?
“That is acceptable,” he said, and the ring turned into smoke as it disappeared. “Did she suffer?” he asked quietly.
“I did what I could so she wouldn’t, and I’m pretty sure she’s in a better place now,” I answered as honestly as I could. The reality was that purgatorywassuffering. Still, I hadn’t added to it, had tried to end it. “You knew all along that she wasn’t alive anymore, didn’t you?”
“Yes. When she returned to me, after the fallout with Adam, I knew as soon as I saw her.”
“Is that a trick of the devil?”
“It is the trick of a father,” he answered.
My comment felt unkind, from the censure of his tone.
Sometimes it was easy to see Lilith as the villain, to see Lucifer as the enemy. It was more difficult to remember that Lilith wasa victim in her own right, and Lucifer a grieving father.
“If you knew, why didn’t you do anything about it?”
“What was I to do? If I’d confronted her, she may have become unstuck.”
“Wouldn’t that be good?”
“She would be gone then, outside my ability to even see her. Perhaps it was selfish, but…” He let out a slow sigh. “I couldn’t lose my only access to her.”
As much as I wanted to fault him, I got it. I’d made my father yank Gran from her afterlife just because I missed her only hours after her death. Could I have let her go if she’d been stuck? Could I have worked toward losing her?
“But you never thought the spirits were her doing?”
