“Assigning one of the students?”
“TextingForza. We need an answer fast.”
I nodded. “We should mention it to Eddie, too. If we ever find him.”
It took a while, but we finally found him in the kitchen trying to finagle cannolis from Signora Micari.
“Take this beast out of my kitchen,” she said. “He is a human vacuum.”
We bribed Eddie with two of the treats, then dragged him to the dining table which, at the moment, was only occupied by Jared who was reading a book that looked ancient, smelled musty, and seemed to be written in another language.
“Anything?”
He shook his head. “I’m trying to figure out if there are ways to enhance a vampire’s telepathic powers. Get through to Celia and maybe get more information on their location. Nothing so far.”
“Good plan, though. Keep looking. Will we bother you?”
He shook his head, but didn’t look up from the book.
“Heard Father Donnelly was here,” Eddie said, cream on his upper lip.
“I’ll tell you all about it later,” I promised. “The big news flash is that we really are related. And my ancestors and Eric’s accidentally conjured gates to hell.”
“Heh. Related, eh. Don’t go trusting him. You listen to me, girlie.”
“I know.” But despite Eddie’s years of warning me off Father Donnelly, I had to admit that the more I learned, the more I wanted to know. And that meant I was going to have to get to know him better.
But not right now. Now, I needed to focus. “Stuart said something,” I told him. “Do you know anything about demons and rubies?”
His bushy brows drew together. “Say again?”
“Stuart had another trance thing. He said that a ruby would reveal her. Does that mean anything to you?”
Slowly, Eddie shook his head. Then he looked at Eric. “A job for the librarian, I’d say.”
“I’m on it.”
“It was just a thought,” I said. “What I really wanted to ask you about was the thing you said about pieces. You said something about how Lilith might have been partially inside Allie or Stuart, remember? That day at my house after Stuart spoke the first time.”
“I remember, girlie. Nothing wrong with my memory.”
“You never explained how it was possible.”
“I don’t think it is,” Eric said. “Trust me when I say that I’ve done a bit of research on High Demons moving into a living body, and there aren’t anyForzaaccounts of that happening without consent. And in all my reading, I don’t remember seeing anything about a partial inhabitation. As far as I’ve seen, there’s no indication that a High Demon can get—and stay in—a living human. Even if they went the possession route, they’d burn out the flesh in under a minute.”
“Yeah, well that’s the thing,” Eddie said.
“What is? I asked.
“It might be bullshit. Or it might be our best line of research. And I’m not surprised you haven’t read about it. As far as I know,Forzadoesn’t have any experience with this.”
“What are you talking about?” Eric asked.
“This is something you learned about after you leftForza,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
Eddie had a falling out withForzamany decades ago. He’d become a rogue Demon Hunter and from what he’s told me, he had quite a few adventures.
“Are you saying that you’ve seen a partial inhabitation?” Eric asked. “If there’s still a piece of her in our realm….”
