But she spoke true. "He has," she said. "He won't hurt you."
Mia glared at me. "He better not."
We stood. "He won't. We just have a bit of work to do and she'll have her powers back and we can stop all this madness."
Mia nodded. "Fine."
"There," I said. "Try to do it."
"Do you have a trinket that would let you return to the place where Raphael kept you?" Lucifer asked. The only indication he gave that he'd nearly burned to a crisp was a slight twitch of his finger.
She nodded. Reaching into her pocket, Ariel pulled out a coin and handed it to us. "I have to touch it with my blood."
Mary whistled. "Blood magic. He got this from a Nephilim."
"How does this work?" I asked.
Lucifer stared at Mia with an intense gaze. "Is this the only way in or out of the realm?" He leaned forward so his nose was nearly touching hers. "I will know if you're lying."
"No," she said shakily.
I nearly chuckled. Lucifer was the Lord of the Morning, after all. He was damn intimidating.
"This is the only one," she whispered.
"If you have found a way to lie to me, I will possess your soul and own it forever, do you understand that? I have that power."
She nodded rapidly. "I believe you," she whispered.
He stepped back and looked at the coin. "Then I should be able to destroy this. With Raphael gone..."
"Gone!" The little boy piped up for the first time. "What do you mean gone?"
He clenched his little fists and glared at us. "What did you do with my Daddy?"
Ariel began to cry. "Where's Daddy?" she asked Mia.
Hearing Ariel call that monster her father gutted me. How dare he? He told her he was her father? As if he could hold a candle to Lucifer.
Mia knelt and gathered them both close. "It's okay. He's had to go away for a while. But you're safe. They won't hurt you."
I ached to hold Ariel and comfort her. But I was a complete stranger to her. Mia was the only mother she'd ever known. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them back.
Lucifer turned to me, hiding his face from the other angels and Mia. His eyes were full of tears as well, but I knew he didn't want anyone to see.
Michael and Gabriel gathered close. "What do we need to do?" Michael asked in a hushed voice.
"I'm not completely sure. We'll blast this thing with magic and see what happens." Luc looked at me uncertainly. I shrugged. "We have to try. Otherwise, we'd have to go there and try to do it from there."
He focused on the coin, but nothing happened. "Let me try." I took it from him and held it up between two fingers. Lucifer pushed control of all the power over to me. I nearly trembled feeling it running through me. It wasn't like the power of the souls in Purgatory, but it was still pretty heady.
Lucifer most likely had tried to blast the coin. It needed something with more finesse, though. I trickled the smallest strand of magic into it and worked my way around until I found the spot where the magic to open and close the realm rested within the coin. For such a small object, it held a massive amount of power.
Unfortunately for the coin, so did I. I filled it with more and more power until it began to strain the confines of the spell on the coin. Then, I directed the magic to branch out and search for weak spots or points of exit while still feeding more and more into it.
If we couldn't destroy it by attacking it, then we'd destroy it from within.
It took more time than I would've liked. Ariel and the boy, whose name I still didn't know, sat on the grass with Mia and leaned against her.
