Mia gasped. "Oh, no, please, do come in."
The front door opened into a tiny living room with open windows, letting the warm afternoon air in. It was a stark contrast from the last living room we'd visited, where the shades had been drawn for privacy. This woman didn't have a secret in her soul.
Too bad his father did. Mia gestured we should sit on her couch and one recliner. She perched on the edge of the coffee table with her little boy in her lap. "What can I tell you?" she asked. "How can my Raphy be involved with your daughter's kidnapping?"
"We believe he may have information that will help us, ma'am," Lucifer said. He put on his diplomatic face. "But we've been unable to track him down."
"He's been scarce for many weeks," she said. "He comes by on occasion, but his business keeps him traveling often." She gestured around the living room. "But his job keeps us in a comfortable home, so we cannot complain."
"I'm sorry," Michael said. "What is it that Raphael does?"
"He is an airline steward," she said. "He travels the world, flying on his wings, as he calls it." Well, at least that was partly true. He did have wings, could fly, and did travel the world. "He's working on his pilot's license, as well."
"Yes, that matches the information we have about him," Gabe said. "Has Raphael been acting out of the ordinary at all recently?"
She nodded. "Yes. We were married five years ago, a month after I turned twenty and Raphael was twenty-one. We were as the Americans call high school sweethearts. Then, a few months later, he disappeared for about a month. I was devastated."
"What happened?" I asked, filling my voice with sympathy.
"He returned and had a fantastical tale. He'd been in a car wreck in the United States while on an overnight and had temporary amnesia. When he got his memory back, he came home and not long after got me pregnant." She giggled and jostled the boy on her knee.
"But when he returned, he was different. I would've sworn his features changed slightly as silly as that sounds. But pictures of him looked the same. He acted differently. He became obsessed with research. He quit his job and took up the job with the airlines. He'd been a kindergarten teacher. He began researching in our bedroom constantly when he was here. I don't like saying these things out loud, but whatever accident he was in changed his brain. He wasn't the same man I fell in love with."
She was twenty-five now. That meant Raphael had come upon his Earth cycle roughly ten years after Lucifer and I had. When he was twenty-one, his human body died somehow. But instead of leaving his wife, like any angel would've and should've done, he returned to her. He either loved her or thought he'd found a good hiding place to do research.
"Mia, could we see his research?" I asked. "And when was the last time you spoke to Raphael?"
"It's been weeks, at least," she admitted. "I'm starting to worry. He usually checks in every time the plane lands and he gets the passengers off, but he's gone longer than he has since his accident."
She looked at Michael. "I'll go get it. He boxes it all up when he's not here." She stood and ruffled the boy's hair. "Go play outside but stay behind the fence."
He gave us a wide-eyed look and sprinted out the open front door. We didn't dare speak in the tiny house for fear Mia would hear us. She returned a few minutes later with a large box. "Sorry." She set it on the coffee table. "It's kind of a lot."
I felt Michael's power intensify and looked at him, wondering what he was about to do. "Wouldn't it be a good idea for you to go play outside with your son for a little while?" he asked Mia.
She nodded with a dreamy expression on her face. "That sounds lovely." She walked out the door, and Gabe jumped up to close it behind her.
We opened the box and immediately had answers. It was research on the origins of Hell. Abaddon. Michael reached in and pulled out several books. "These are supposed to be in the library in Heaven," he said. "They're angelic tomes."
I gazed at them in wonder. I hadn't seen any of the books from the Heavenly library since the Fall. I used to love reading them. They held so many secrets and answers to the world.
"Everything in here is somehow related to Abaddon." Lucifer ruffled through the handwritten notes. "He's been planning this longer than this one Earth cycle, though. He had to have been planning it when Lucian was born to place the spell on me as a baby."
"This has been going on way before Ariel," I whispered. "What made him do this?"
"And what are his plans?" Luc asked. "There's no telling what information he has that isn't here. This stuff isn't important enough. I think he probably took his important research with him. He didn't leave it here for anyone to find."
Damn. Fear filled my gut. "How close is he to succeeding?"
"Look at this," Gabe said. He pulled a small tablet out of the box. "It's still got a charge."
He scrolled through the recently opened apps. "He had a conversation with a man in the States. He claims to have something that will open the gates."
"Who is he?"
Gabe shook his head. "I don't know. He uses a screen name."
"Let's go. We'll find someone that can trace this." Michael took the tablet and pointed at the box full of papers and books. "Bring all that."
