"I was coming to comfort you. Whatever you're about to say is bothering you." I let him help me back to the chair with a sigh. "I'll be glad to get back to my regularly scheduled body."
Gabriel sat across from me and took my hand.
"I think Raphael is behind all this."
My jaw dropped. I couldn't imagine him doing something insane like risking the gates of Hell. "Why do you think that?"
"He's unaccounted for," he said with a morose look on his face. "Nobody can find him. And it had to have been an insane amount of power to put that spell on Lucifer. A longevity spell like that is, well, nearly impossible."
Michael dished a bunch of eggs onto a plate after Gabriel finished cooking them and brought them to the table. "He's always been good with manipulating magic." Michael said, looking stricken by the idea as well.
"Why though?"
Gabriel shrugged. "No idea."
Michael brought the sausages over, and Gabe rose, going to the fridge. "Do you have any orange juice?" he asked. He answered his own question when he pulled out a big jug.
"My pregnancy, the spell of longevity, Lucian's personality being all one-sided. What else is going to happen?" I dug into the food. All this stress made me even hungrier. This human body wasn't one to lose her appetite when stressed, though I did remember times I had been that way. It was a little different every time. Overall, I'd end up with the same personality, but my upbringing altered me in small but significant ways.
"The baby." Michael pointed at my stomach with his sausage. "That's a big one."
"Yep. Why in the world would Raphael make me pregnant?"
Gabe chuckled. "He didn't make you pregnant."
Always the jokester. He couldn't just let one pass. "Of course not, but why would he do something that surpassed the curse on my body and make it so I could get pregnant?"
They both stared at me blankly as they chewed. "Exactly," I said. "There's no reasonable explanation."
The why behind it all had been on my mind since the moment I was able to retain my ethereal memories. Nothing made sense. Nothing tied it all together and explained everything.
We ate in silence until all three of us were pretty much done. Then, I sighed and sat back. "Michael, can you try again? Can you delve in and study the baby and just make sure she's human?"
He started and smiled. "Of course. Go get comfortable, and we'll try."
"I'll clean up here," Gabriel said. "Be there in a few."
Michael walked with me up to my bedroom and sat cross-legged on the bed. I laid down on my side with my trusty pregnancy pillow between my legs and waited for him to do his thing.
He put his hands on my stomach, and I closed my eyes as they glowed.
The next thing I knew, he was rubbing my shoulder. "Wake up."
I blinked at him and smiled. "I fell asleep?"
He grinned. "Yeah, but I helped you get there. You looked exhausted."
"So, what did you find?" I sat up and rubbed my eyes to find Gabe lying at the end of the bed on his back, tapping his feet to some music only he could hear.
"Much of the same." Michael still had his hands on my stomach. He breathed deep and flexed his fingers on me. "She's human. I'm sure of that. But I've been trying to see if I can sense any magic in her at all."
He cocked his head, eyes closed, and went quiet. "I can't sense any, but your magic is loud, Lil. It's coiled deep inside, locked away so it doesn't ruin this human body. I can't hear or sense hers over it, if she has any."
Disappointment flooded me again. There had been a small bit of hope that he’d come up with something new this time. "Even if the baby is a human with magic, which is exceedingly rare, she can't follow us to Heaven in her human body."
Michael shook his head and put his hands in his lap. "She'd die immediately, and her soul would go straight to Heaven."
The age of accountability. The souls of children or adults with child-like minds were sent straight to God when they died. Their rebirth was inevitable and usually quick.
