We all watched in various states of distress as the man howled, rocked, tried to tear at his bindings. But his eyes never moved from the camera.
Suddenly the man went completely rigid and silent, and then he slumped forward, his eyes closed.
I pulled away from Gabriel and ran to the man. Chloe was right next to me, untying the restraints. Together we eased him down to the floor and I checked for a heartbeat.
“He’s still alive,” I said, lifting his eyelids. His pupils were normal, but there were streaks of blood on his cheeks.
“Good,” Chloe said. “I think he’ll sleep for a while now.”
“And when he wakes up he’ll be good as new?”
“Well, sleeping helps memory function in normal people,” Chloe reasoned. “So we assumed that after the memories were restored, the victims would need to sleep for several hours. Their brains need to process the restored information.”
“Don’t try this on anyone else yet,” I said.
She shook her head. “We’ll wait and see if it takes.”
Chloe stepped into the hall to find someone who could help her bring the man back to the rooms they had prepared for the victims.
I stood, feeling drained, and looked at J.B. “Call me if you want me to help the special teams.”
He nodded. “I think we have it under control, but you could help by trying to find out where Focalor is. We know from my mother that he’s part of this.”
“He may just be in his court,” I said, thinking of Focalor’s appearance at Samiel’s trial.
“We’re not going to try to beard the lion in his den again, are we?” Beezle asked. “Because that didn’t go so well last time.”
“No,” I said. “I think I’ll give Grandpa a call.”
I dialed Lucifer’s number—yes, that really is as weird as it sounds, giving Satan a phone call—and waited for him to pick up. I got his voice mail.
“Azazel said Lucifer hasn’t been answering his calls,” I said to Gabriel.
“You think Lord Lucifer is in some kind of danger?” Gabriel asked.
“More likely he’s on vacation in Aruba and has his phone shut off,” I said.
“Or he’s decided to see if you can handle the pressure from your marriage yourself,” Beezle said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He gave you what you wanted; now he wants to see if you deserved it,” he replied. “I could kill for a cupcake right about now.”
“Forget it,” I said, thinking over the implications of what Beezle had just said. “You think Lucifer is purposely waiting to see what kind of fallout there is because I married Gabriel?”
“It is an excellent way to see which of his courts would openly object, and which would fall in line,” Gabriel said. “Remember what we discussed this morning.”
I believe, truly believe, that we are permitted to exist only at his sufferance, and because it does, as you say, amuse him to watch us.
“If that’s the case, then Beezle’s probably right—”
“I usually am.”
“—and Focalor probably will send someone to kill me.”
J.B. looked troubled. “Should I assign a team to you for protection?”
I shook my head. “I can handle whatever Focalor’s got.”
And I don’t want any more blood on my hands than I have already, I thought. Most Agents, even highly trained ones, were not even remotely prepared for the kinds of horrors that lurked in a demon court.
“Make sure she doesn’t get hurt,” J.B. said to Gabriel, and they shared a long look.
“Why is it that when you two decide to be manly men you act like I’m not in the room?” I said crossly. “Come on, I’m sure we need to feed Beezle something healthy.”
“Carrot cake has carrots in it,” Beezle said hopefully.
“Yeah, and cream cheese frosting has calcium, too, I suppose,” I replied.
“I think the food pyramid is really about interpretation,” Beezle said.
We retrieved our weapons from security and went out onto the roof. Amarantha was missing, thank goodness.
“I forgot to apologize to J.B. for setting his mother on him full-time. He can’t be happy about that,” I said as we took flight. It was starting to snow lightly—like we needed more snow. It had taken me, Gabriel and Samiel hours to shovel the walk and the gangway.
Samiel tapped my shoulder. Do you think that Amarantha would try to stay in touch with her cohorts, even though she’s a ghost? We still don’t know who the third party is, the one who provided the technology to extract memories.
“You think we should track her?” I asked, intrigued. “That’s a good idea. She may try to get in touch with Focalor or with this other character. I’ll ask J.B. about it. We can probably take turns keeping an eye on her.”
“I wonder what happened to Violet?” Beezle said.
I shrugged. “She must have chosen the Door. Otherwise she’d be hanging around Amarantha, I’m sure.”
Beezle climbed inside my (dry-cleaned) jacket for warmth. I wiped snow out of my eyes, thinking it would be a good idea to get some goggles for this time of year. We landed in the front yard, shaking snow out of our hair.
Samiel scooped up a snowball and threw it at Gabriel’s face.
My exceedingly dour husband gave his half brother the evil eye. It was slightly less effective with snow and ice dripping off the end of his nose.