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“Right.” Eddie stepped back and put some space between her and the Shade slow burn. “He’s looking better. What now?” She looked to Cronus for an answer.
“The master will tell us.” Cronus lay down and lowered his massive head to his dinner-plate paws. “We are his to command.”
“I’m not,” Eddie said, not even in her imagination did she give him control. She stamped down on the erotic images trying to make space in her brain. The dominance fantasy was a whole new playground.
Shade stood, slowly and gingerly, testing out his muscles as he did. “What are you doing here?”
“Well.” Eddie kept it short and sweet. “After stabbing you and tossing you through the hell gate, the guardians weren’t happy with what was going down and locked me up.”
Shade’s head shot up and his gaze skewered her. His voice was a low, menacing whisper, “Locked you up.”
“But Dee came and freed me.” Eddie skipped a few details. “And Uriel and Dee said the best thing to do was send me through the hell gate. One, so I could find you, and secondly, for my own safety.” She remembered the dagger. “Oh, and Uriel gave me a special knife.”
She searched her waistband for the weapon. Strange. It wasn’t tucked into the small of her back where she’d left it. She’d gotten so used to carrying the thing, she hadn’t been aware of it, or now, its absence.
“Uriel gave you a heaven forged weapon?” Shade eased a crick in his lower back. “Forgive my lack of excitement at encountering another one.”
He was looking stronger by the minute. It was hard to believe he’d been lying in a puddle of his own blood, barely breathing. If she hadn’t been standing there, she might have believed she’d dreamt the entire thing. Maybe she was dreaming. And all of this—the rakshasa demon, the frog thing, Shade, Uriel, her being Nephilim—was all part of some detailed dream.
Except she knew it wasn’t, and she turned away from Shade to find the knife. It hadn’t slipped out of her pants. She couldn’t see it anywhere on the cave floor.
She turned to the hounds. “Do you guys have it?”
“No,” Cronus said.
Xerxes narrowed his eyes at her and shook his head.
“Where is it?” The sharpness in Shade’s tone brought her hackles up.
“It’s here somewhere.” Eddie retraced her steps since she’d entered the cave. There was no sign of the shiny dagger. Just because she didn’t remember taking the knife out, didn’t mean she hadn’t done that. She searched the nooks and crannies of the cave, but that didn’t take nearly long enough. A nasty feeling wriggled through her. “It’s not here.”
She remembered distinctly picking it up after her bath in the other cave and tucking it back in her waistband. Now her mind played tricks on her, and half convinced her that she had left a heaven forged blade in a random cave.
“You had it when we were chased,” Cronus said. “You were holding it.”
“I did have it.” Thank God, Cronus had remembered that, because she hadn’t. Reaching for the knife had been instinctual.
Shade’s chin shot out, and he glowered at her. “But it’s not here now? Do you mean you don’t have it?”
“It’s hardly a cryptic fucking statement,” Eddie snapped, done with him and his judgy. Shit, shit, shit. It must have dropped out of her pants. It could be anywhere right now. “It’s not here.”
“You had it when we entered the cave,” Cronus joined the search with his snout to the ground. “I recall you took it out when we first entered.”
“Yes!” She had done that because traipsing into a cave unarmed had seemed like a spectacularly stupid move. “Then it must be here.”
Xerxes shook his head. “The weapon is not here.”
“It must be.” She’d had it in her hand, then she’d seen Shade and crouched beside him. She must have put it down to touch him. The floor beside where Shade had lain was as empty as it had been ten seconds ago. Dread pooled in the pit of Eddie’s gut. She’d lost the heaven forged blade. Uriel would have her head for this. Plus, she now had no way to defend herself, and despite Uriel’s assurances that demons wouldn’t touch the thing, somewhere in this hellscape, some other being could be carrying it around right this minute.
“The imp is also missing,” Xerxes said.
Knowing that nothing had changed in the last few minutes, Eddie still looked around the cave. “He was here when we found Shade, and he can’t have gone because you would have seen him leave.”
Cronus shook his head. “We were not paying attention to him. We had entered a trance state to amplify your emotion.”
“You mean he walked out of here, and none of us saw him go?” Eddie had seen Yesterday almost disappear into thin air at the theatre, but why would he go now? “He wouldn’t leave me. He promised Dee that he would be my guide, take care of me.” She couldn’t believe Yesterday would steal from her.
Except…
