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“And Thaddeus can arrange that.”
“Off the record.”
I sighed heavily and dragged my hand down my face. “Fine.”
When Jarrico opened his portal, I had expected it to lead directly to one of the formal halls of Asmodeus’ lavishly indulgent castle. As the King of Lust, all the rooms were richly perfumed with the scents of jasmine, vanilla, and cardamon and decorated with velvet upholstered lounges, flowing drapery in rich burgundies and black hues, with gleaming marble floors and gold accents, reminding me of my earlier days in Rome. But today was very different.
We arrived in a small library where the smells of aged texts, burning wood, and chai tea clung to the air, lending an almost cozy atmosphere to the accompaniment of dark wood paneling. Old tomes and books scattered the chamber in collections, lining bookshelves on every wall and piles littering the floor, with loose papers intermixed haphazardly, some of which were dangerously close to the burning fire set in a stone hearth. For a moment, I thought Asmodeus may have been ransacked. Still, when I noticed him dressed in black jeans and a matching fitted t-shirt, pulling another scroll from a stack across the room, I realized that this must be his private quarters - a place away from prying eyes and the ornamentation he portrayed for the masses.
“You are dismissed.” Beside me, Jarrico bowed and disappeared back through the whirling mass of black and red that had brought us here.
“It’s been awhile since you came to visit me.” the older Archdemon stated, not bothering to raise his head from the stack of scrolls he was rifling through.
“Did I have a reason to visit?”
Asmodeus gave a halfhearted chuckle, but no humor touched his face. He then pulled out a scroll and returned to his desk with it. “Do you need a reason to visit your grandsire?”
I shrugged as he sat at his desk and cleared away papers to make room for the scroll he had just cracked open. Few things about Asmodeus reminded me of his third daughter more than the way he ran his fingers across every scroll before he read it, as if the paper itself would hold a tactile secret that the words upon it never could. Whenever I’d asked my mother why she did it, her eyes would spark with hidden mischief as she tapped the tip of my nose in silent answer.
“Have a seat,” he commanded, as a chair that matched his own shimmied out from beneath a pile of books and slid toward me expectantly.
“Nice spot,” I commented dryly, leaning back in the chair that only reached the middle of my back. Asmodeus looked up at me with one arched eyebrow, the grim line of his lips relaxing.
“Sarcasm does not become you, young one.”
The old man was the only person in Hell besides Lucifer who could make me feel like an obstinate teenager. Even my other grandsire,Sathanas, who was not actually the same person as Lucifer despite what myths may claim but did, in fact, rule over wrath, could not humble me to anywhere near the extent of Asmodeus.
“Lilith is holding court,” Asmodeus stated, waving his hand to reference the state of the room. I understood then when the Queen of Hell played house, all of the Queens were expected to be in attendance. And Asmodeus’ Queen, Sorah, had one single motto in life: a place for everything and everything in its place, which no doubt was why the room was a haphazard mess in her absence.
“So why am I here?” I slouched back farther in my chair, but one look up from his scroll had me straightening, a habit formed from centuries of tutelage.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” the older Archdemon responded, lifting a ruler from beside him and laying it down below the line he was currently reading, moving it down every time his eyes scanned another line. When he reached the end of the document, he made a soft humming noise, picked it up, and turned it back to me.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked as he leaned back in his chair.
While I’d never seen one in the flesh, I immediately knew what it was. “It’s a lost soul record.”
Asmodeus clapped his hands together in one hard strike, his eyes lighting with mischief. “Exactly!”
I scanned down the document, which was just a series of columns. Each column marked a date and time, recorded in the calendar of Hell. It held all the unaccounted-for souls since the time when I arrived on the Earthen plain, which marked the beginning of a new era for Earth.
Very rarely, a soul ended up in a state of limbo, trapped between the destiny of Heaven and Hell. There were numerous ways to bind souls to Earth or another host, all of which were strictly outlawed as souls directly belonged to Heaven or Hell.
I scanned the document until the end, squeezing my lower lip in thought. There was a large gap in time there, where no souls were lost for over five hundred years, resuming for the first time sixteen years ago. Since then, seven souls had been lost that should have belonged in Hell, and in the column noting what had happened to them, there was simply an empty space.
I placed the document back on the table.
“Why wasn’t I informed of this?”
“Now that’s the question, isn’t it?” Asmodeus kicked his feet up on his desk and crossed his arms behind his head.
I released an exaggerated breath through my nose, which did nothing to dissuade his relaxed disposition. He had the annoying habit of answering my questions with his own, making me come up with the answers myself.
But this time, he took pity on me, and rather than answer, he waved his hand, causing another scroll nearly identical to the one I had just been holding to float from under another pile to land in my lap.
“This is Hell’s official lost souls chart - a dynamic copy that updates directly off of Lucifer’s.” I scanned down the scroll, identifying immediately what he was getting at.
“The last seven aren’t here.”
