Luce made a zipping motion and the words choked off again. It was reckless to be spending so much of his magic when he was meant to be storing it back up for another Armor ritual, but Gabriel always knew exactly which buttons to push to get a rise from his target.
“You don’t get to say her name,” Luce hissed. “Does my son knowyourrole in the death of his mother?”
Gabe went pale.
“Oh, you thoughtIdidn’t know?” the Devil laughed darkly. “I deluded myself for so long, telling myself it was an accident, but now I wonder. Don’t pretend that ‘helping’ my son with his grief hasn’t just been some way for you to appease your conscience.”
He took a step forward and Gabe shrank back, trembling at the fury that radiated from Luce. The space seemed towarp around them, leaving them in a tense bubble where Gabe struggled to draw a breath in the thinned air.
“You are self-serving and fickle,Gabriel. Foster is not your redemption project, and he is not a bargaining chip. Your role in his life is effectively redundant. If you defy my request and I see your conniving face before me, so help me, I willnotbe lenient again.”
Gabe closed his eyes tightly, trying to still his shaking limbs, and nodded. When he opened them again, Luce and Cwall were gone.
Raguel had learned, over many eons, to pick and choose his battles. In fact, he often chose to avoid them altogether for the sake of sanity. He was married to a veritable pipe bomb, and his ‘boss’ could oscillate from dignified badass to melodramatic toddler in the span of minutes. It was a trait Lucifer had always possessed, Rag was forced to admit, and one that wasn’t lost on others.
Rag’s own best friend had denounced him when the Fallen chose to follow Lucifer into exile, warning him that he would come to regret it. Thinking back to the ‘conversation’ Sachiel had recounted with Lucifer from just hours ago, Rag wondered if Ezekiel had been right.
He brought his cleaver down, chopping through the carrots on the counter as if metaphorically severing that bond of friendship again. Rag had deflated in the face of his closest friend’s utter disdain, but—as he had said then—how could he be happy without his wife? It would be like cutting off his own arms.
As wild and ‘unladylike’ as she had always been, Remi had never had to fight for Zeke’s approval. The other man knew Rag well enough to know she suited him. The redhead would never have been happy with a partner as vain as Gloriana, or as placating as Mags. He needed to be challenged, kept on his toes, and knocked down once in a while. Remi might be a handful, but she had never drawn Zeke’s ire like Lucifer had.
Even as they’d argued that day, Ezekiel had known Rag would go. If Remiel went, Raguel followed. But Zeke had hated Lucifer for drawing her in. He was a rigid man, fond of rules and structure, and had often scoffed at Lucifer’s antics openly. He had been smug, Rag remembered, when Lucifer was cast out.
His knife came down again, this time into a freshly peeled onion. Rag had learnedthatlesson the hard way when Mags had pulled a peel from her mouthful of stir fry and gently informed him that it was, in fact, intended to be removed.
Mags…by far the sweetest of their motley crew, and even more impressive for it after the life she had lived. His knuckles went white on the handle of the cleaver as he wished, not for the first time, that he could punch her disgusting father in the face once more. But the man was no longer in the Pit. Luce had made sure of that as soon as he’d learned the bastard had crossed over.
Cooking was the shared bond between them because of that instance. Rag had seen the shadow looming over the small woman; had seen her listless drifting in the aftermath of her father’s reappearance and demise. He knew she loved to cook, so he made himself a willing student. Her gentle smile and quiet manner suited teaching, and soon Rag even found himself enjoying their lessons.
He wasn’t a fool; he knew he was terrible, but Mags’s constant encouragement and the soothing effect of working in the kitchen kept him at it. Plus it was fun, sometimes, to see thelook on someone’s face as they struggled to compliment a dish he well knew was rancid.
As if his thoughts had summoned her, his wife appeared in the doorway. “Wow, Rag. That smells…different.”
‘That’ being the pot of stock he had boiling on the stove, bubbling merrily as it waited for the chopped vegetables and emitting a stench most closely defined as old sneakers. Horrendous, but he hoped the sugar would counteract that when he added it later.
“Thank you.” He motioned her closer, drawing her in with one arm and kissing her brow. “Why do you look so cranky?”
She groaned. “Why am I always cranky?”
“Because you live to be offended and are always half looking to punch something?”
She struck his ribs and Rag laughed, his point proven.
“It’s Lucifer,” she grumbled, bumping him with her hip to move him over and grabbing a knife. She followed behind him, mincing the carrots he had already chopped into chunks.
She was ruining the texture, but he suspected she needed the release of violence. And besides, did itreallymatter if the pieces were in chunks or in a finely crushed pulp?
“What has he done now?”
“It’s what heisn’tdoing!” she snapped, chucking the carrot bits into the dark brown liquid on the stove. “He came storming back in yelling about forbidding Gabe to see Foster, but now he won’t talk to me. He’s hiding in that damn firetrap he calls his ‘memories room’ again.”
“I keep telling him to have a Yard Sale,” Rag murmured. “Mortals love those.”
Remi made a non-committal noise and grabbed the onions, chopping them into miniscule pieces as Rag started on the mushrooms.
“Why are you worried about Luce, anyway? He’s always moody, he’ll come out of it.”
“We don’t have the luxury of time, Rag!” She brandished her knife at him accusingly, as if he hadtoldLucifer to hide in his rooms. “The fucking Apocalypse seems hell bent on coming, and for some reason I feel like I’m the only one taking it seriously!”
