“Please tell your husband he cannot steal my evidence, Darlene. We haven’t even registered them as evidence yet, so he can’t steal my evidence.”
The Devil’s wife laughed. “Did he find some otters at the crime scene?”
“Apparently.”
“Tell him to come home and fill out the paperwork to adopt the otters properly. The CDC will play ball with him, as he has no sense and an ever-growing love of otters, but I’ll make him follow protocol this time. Thank you for the warning. Ask him how many new residents we’ll be getting, please.”
“How many otters, Lucifer?”
“Fifteen,” he announced.
“I heard him,” Darlene said with laughter in her voice. “I’ll have some of the fucking assholes get to work on their residence. In the meantime, tell him he is to compensate you for being a pain in the ass and bothering you while you’re working. I’ve also been notified you’ll need a second safe space for coffee for your cadet.”
“Yes, considering how today has gone, I expect Alec will need a safe place for his coffee. While you’re working miracles, tell my bosses they are mean, mean people, and that I will be crying myself to sleep tonight because I have to pretend I’m qualified to wrangle the FBI and CDC. They’re all up in my investigation!”
“Made you stand around and just confirm if you’re okay with how they’re proceeding?” she guessed.
“Basically. I get to investigate after all the evidence is carefully gathered. I don’t know anything about pulling evidence off fish tanks, so I’ve been watching Alec pet a stingray.”
“Enjoy the view?”
I chuckled at her well-aimed tease. “They’re both adorable, but I don’t have space to house any stingrays, so he can’t take one home with him.”
“Miniature stingrays exist, and some of them are cuddlers.”
“Repeat that, please?”
“Miniature stingrays exist, and some of them are cuddlers.”
I heaved a sigh. “I’m surrounded by animal-obsessed freaks, aren’t I?”
“You absolutely are. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it. And once you get used to it, you’ll join us. This is your fate, wolf wrangler.”
“I’m getting a police dog, not a wolf. And I’m just in line.”
“That’s what you think,” Darlene said, before hanging up on me.
I bowed my head and heaved a sigh.
“She told you about the wolf, huh?” the Devil asked.
“You will follow proper channels for the adoption of your otters, and you will not ruinanyof my evidence. You ruin any of my evidence, and I will give you a taste of hell you will never forget, Lucifer.”
“I’m telling my wife on you,” he muttered.
I held out my phone. “Go ahead and try me.”
The Devil stared at my phone, narrowing his eyes. After some hesitation and a sigh, he took my phone and called his wife. “I was just tricked, my darling. She’s making me try her, and she’s going to win, because she’s going to make me use filthy words again.”
I rubbed my temple, wondering if I could ask for hazard pay for babysitting the Devil. “I don’t have all night or nearly enough painkillers for this headache you’re making, Lucifer.”
“I said I would tell on her to you, my darling. She said if I ruined her evidence, she’d give me a taste of hell I’d never forget. She shouldn’t be flirting with me when her cadet is nearby.”
Alec glanced up from playing with the stingray to raise a brow. “You aren’t even competition, so why are you posturing? We’re not even in the same league. I’m a bachelor of sterling reputation. You are not.”
Oh. My eyes widened. Would Alec survive? If he did, would I need to nurse his wounds when the Devil snapped at the implication of being inferior to a mere mortal? I could handle caring for him while he recovered from whatever evils happened to him in the next ten minutes.
Lucifer sighed. “Darling, her cadet’s joining in, and I feel it is unfair I’m being goosed by a pair of mortals. The one keeps rejecting my incubi, and the other keeps rejecting my succubi, and they are being absolutely rude.”
