CHAPTER NINE
“Are you sure this is the right way to go?” Lilith stared at her phone lying on the table and ran her tongue over a fang. She’d asked her friends to meet her at the local coffee shop. “It seems like it would be a lot simpler if I told him we were soulmates. He would accept it eventually, just as I will.” Maybe. She still had a hard time believing that, after all these millennia, fate would create a life partner who refused to date vampires for the cursed Queen of the Night.
But her friends could be quite convincing.
“Absolutely not.” Venus looked at her as if she’d grown a second set of fangs. “You are not, under any circumstances, to tell him that.”
“Listen to her, Lil,” Eve said. “The Goddess of Love knows what she’s talking about.”
Lilith huffed. “Back me up, Dee. Don’t you think…”
Deirdre shook her head adamantly. “If Azrael had told me we were soulmates from the get-go, I’d have turned tail and hauled my undead ass back to New Orleans. He has to figure it out on his own, or it will never work.”
“I’ve never believed in soulmates, and it’s crap like this that makes me skeptical still. Why all the games?”
Venus gave her a sympathetic look. “Because hearts are delicate, especially ones that have been broken before.”
Surely she was talking about Spencer’s heart. His ex-fiancée had been wicked to him. Of course, Adam kicking Lilith out of Eden and having her cursed for all eternity wasn’t exactly kind either. Yes, her heart had been broken too, but the scars had hardened it into a block of stone encased in ice and barbed wire. Lilith was anything but delicate.
Anyway, the Goddess of Love was perpetually single, so how could she be the authority on relationships? And Eve…her luck with the man she was made for didn’t last much longer than Lilith’s. Neither of them had ever experienced the mysterious happily ever after they claimed to help people achieve.
With Esther’s life at stake, Lilith had removed the barbed wire from her heart, and in the short time she’d known Spencer, he’d managed to thaw a few layers of ice. But happily ever after? She looked at Deirdre. “Is it worth the hassle?”
“Down to the last drop.”
Venus rested a hand on Lilith’s. “He is your soulmate. I feel it in my blood.”
Who was Lilith to argue with blood? “Will you come with me to talk to Lucifer? I don’t think he’s going to like my idea.”
“He'll despise it.” Venus grinned wickedly. “But I’m sure we can convince him. I’ll meet you at the palace in ten.”
Lilith stopped by her house on the way to Lucifer’s castle. Esther lifted her head when she offered her a freeze-dried mouse, but the snake’s coloring was still yellowish white.
“I’m trying my best, my sweet, sweet danger noodle.” She stroked her familiar’s smooth scales, and Esther thankfully ate her dinner. Lilith couldn’t be sure if it was the excitement of what she was about to offer Spencer or if it was the man himself making her sluggish pulse thrum, but Esther was moving and eating, so she was on the right track.
“Come, Percival.” Lilith stepped out the front door, and her crow flew ahead of her toward Lucifer’s palace.
The ruler of The Underworld sat behind a massive dark wood desk in his office. His elbows rested on the arms of a high-backed leather chair, and he steepled his fingers as she knocked on the open door. “Come in, Lilith. Venus said you have a proposition for me.”
The Goddess of Love sat in one of two black leather chairs facing his desk, and Lilith sank into the other one.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
Lilith cleared her throat. “I’ve been around almost as long as you have.”
He huffed an incredulous laugh. “Not quite.”
She straightened her spine. “Anyway…”
Venus gave her an encouraging nod.
“I’ve been all over the world, lived through nearly every century, and I have connections with some very old beings topside. People who were around back when humans believed in magic.”
“I am aware.” He made a circular motion with his hand, urging her to hurry it up.
“I met a man, an owl shifter, who’s part of an adventure show called The Hunt for Cryptids. His show is about to get canceled, and…” She pressed her lips together and glanced at Venus, who patted her shoulder and whispered, “Get to the point.”
Lilith nodded. “I’d like permission to take him to some of my contacts and to film evidence that magic used to exist, or at least that people fully believed it did.”
