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“Well, we were lucky,” Casey replied quietly.
He went about putting the lab in order, and I fought the urge to help him. I used to love to clean. That sounds stupid, but it’s true. I enjoyed taking a space and making it sparkle, and it wasn’t about magic. Magic could only put a mask on a thing, to make you think it was clean. For something to be clean, hard work was required.
They made fun of me for not using magic to clean my room at the Coven House. Their rooms were covered in magic spells. They looked perfectly clean, but I knew what was beneath them. Rot. Dirt. Mold.
“I heard something about a party,” Casey said as he pushed the big tray that held the cat’s carcass back into the wall of lockers. “Some of the servants were talking about it. Are we throwing a party? I don’t think that’s a great idea.”
It was good to know something he didn’t know for once. “Nope. Lucifer is.”
Casey huffed. “Of course he is. I suppose this means Kelsey is going through with this insane plan.”
“Doesn’t she always? I think that’s what she was talking to Evan about.” I couldn’t help him with this one. I didn’t see another way out. “It’s truly the only way to save the kid. Do you want to just walk up to that asshole and see if he’ll give up a feather or two?”
“No, but I think we should negotiate.”
“With Lucifer?” I asked. “That seems like a moronic thing to do. Aren’t you supposed to be an academic?”
The words came out of my mouth before I could temper them.
His shoulders went stiff, and he was back to cleaning. “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
I hated the fact that I’d hurt him. I seemed to know how to go for his throat. It shouldn’t bother me but it did. A few moments of uneasy silence passed between us. So unlike the quiet we had between us before. We could sit and read and never say a word and still feel like we’d spent time together. That ease was natural with him.
“Do you think Tix can hear the baby?” I asked the question because I couldn’t stand the silence.
Casey turned my way, drying his hands on a towel. “Do you want the answer I’ll give Kelsey or the real one?”
“Both.” I was intrigued. I thought he would tell Kelsey the truth about everything since he sometimes treated her like she was some kind of messiah.
Had I been jealous of his relationship with Kelsey?
“Kelsey, of course he can’t hear the baby,” he said as though talking to her. There was an amused sympathy on his face. “That’s impossible.”
“And the real one?”
He winced. “I can’t be sure, but I know a few things. Tix is blood oathed to the House of Sloane, and he’s an empath with strong powers of telepathy. It’s not outside of our reality that he would be able to communicate with his future lord and master. He knows things about Gray that Gray doesn’t tell him. Like when Gray’s in trouble. Tix can feel that across the planes. That kid she’s carrying is unlike anything seen on the Hell plane before. He’s part demon, part Hunter. We don’t know what he’s capable of.”
Rather like the child the queen was carrying, although I did know what that darling would be capable of. Utter destruction. I didn’t think he would want to hear that from me. “So Kelsey’s baby is commenting on her sex life, and he’s definitely seeing some things he doesn’t think he should see.”
A laugh burst from Casey’s chest. “I hope she never figures out Tix might not be teasing.”
I thought he was hedging, and not in the right direction. “I think Tix is being perfectly truthful. You know a demon loves it when the truth is the worst thing he could possibly say. Was he telling me the truth when he said he was a child of Lilith?”
Casey joined me, leaning against the wall and looking out over the now pristine space. “Yes. He’s actually one of her favorite children.”
“What’s Lilith’s place here in Hell? I know who she is but not if she has any power here.” I know this will surprise a lot of people, but Hell isn’t known for its feminist icons. The truth of the matter was most of the demonesses really were kept in the kitchen and barefoot and spitting out other demons. Wives were a thing, but there were usually a bunch of them, and monogamy didn’t really matter. Well, it mattered to the husbands, but only where it concerned the wives. They could fuck all they liked. Men that is.
“She’s considered the highest female on the plane. She’s called the mother of demons. Basically she didn’t like the whole ‘stand by her man’ even when he’s a boring, overbearing asshole and chose to leave the Garden of Eden to join up forces with Lucifer. She gave birth to a line of demons who make up a hierarchy of Hell all on their own.”
“How did Tix end up here? Or am I not seeing how this is a high position.”
“It is among the servants,” Casey allowed. “Tix never talks about this. I had to look up records on him. He’s not a full-bred demon. He’s the product of Lilith’s affair with a reptile shifter.”
I could actually see that. His mannerisms could be reptilian, and sometimes his eyes went cold. “So why can Gray be a duke of Hell but Tix can’t?”
“Because Gray has far more power than Tix has ever thought of. Tix is thousands of years old, and his power never grew past his mental skills. Gray wasn’t supposed to take over for his father. He was supposed to serve his father. He was bred to be a focal point for his father’s needs. That all changed when he became the first dark prophet in a thousand years. He’s considered one of the most powerful creatures in Hell, but he’s also feared because he has connections to the Heaven plane and the Earth plane that bind him as well. Lucifer cannot command him away from his prophet duties. He cannot force Gray to do anything because like a satan, a dark prophet provides balance and therefore is immune to having another’s will forced upon him.”
“It’s why Lucifer had to have a contract with him rather than simply ordering him as he would any other demon,” I mused. I had to wonder if the elder Sloane had understood what he was doing the day he forced his son to take on prophecy. I would bet he’d been blinded with thoughts of how important the House of Sloane could become and not to the fact that there was now another Sloane who could take his place.
