But though I’d seen nothing specific on the paper, something buried deep inside me was certain that Father Donnelly’s name was penned in somewhere on that tree. Just as I was.
If that was true, though, what did it mean?
“Mom?”
I jumped. “Sorry. Distracted.” I shoved the family tree into the box and pushed it toward Allie. “Put this in the closet. I need to make a phone call.”
“Sure. No problem. I just wanted to tell you that Jared’s here. He came on this really cool vintage motorcycle and Daddy and I are going out front to see it. Stuart’s got Timmy. They’re getting the ice cream out of the freezer in the garage.”
“Fine. Great. Sounds fun.” I barely heard her. My mind was too full of questions, and as Allie flew toward the front door, I hurried into Stuart’s study. I slammed the door behind me, and snatched up the phone. Then I tapped a pencil impatiently on Stuart’s desk as I got routed through the switchboard to Father Corletti.
“Katherine,mia cara, thank goodness you are returning my messages.”
“Father, I—wait. What? You called me?” I said a silent curse, then crossed myself, all the while wondering where I’d left my mobile phone. “Father, what’s going on?”
“My child. Things are not as they seem.”
“Wait. What? Which things?”
“The reports you have made. The reason the demons are protecting Allie … Kate, it has all been horribly twisted.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The demons do not want to keep Allie alive because she is the only one who can defeat Lilith.”
“Then why?—”
“They wish to keep her alive because she is the only human who can contain Lilith’s energy without consent.”
I sat down in Stuart’s chair. Lilith was ridiculously powerful, so of course she would burn through a human body in an instant. She’d manifested only one time in the last millennium that I was aware of, and that had been when she’d moved into Nadia’s body. Nadia, however, was a power-hungry ex-Demon Hunter who’d known the score and had traded her body for power.
She’d consented, and Lilith had hitched a ride into this dimension.
But there weren’t very many Nadia’s in the world, thank God.
Which meant that now we knew for certain—the baddest bitch in the demon realm was once again coming after my family. And this time, she wanted my daughter.
No. Way.
No. Freaking. Way.
I stood up, needing to tell Allie right away, only then processing what she’d just told me—she and Eric had gone outside to look at Jared’s bike.
Jared.
The boy who supposedly wanted to protect my little girl so she could kill Lilith.
The lousy son-of-a-bitch.
“Father, hang on. I’ll be right back.”
I didn’t wait for him to answer. Just shoved the handset into my back pocket as I raced out of the study and toward the front door, taking one of Stuart’s pencils with me. I barely noticed Laura standing with Mindy and Cutter, all three of whom looked completely perplexed. Stuart was at the top of the stairs, calling my name.
I ignored them all.
I’d just reached the hallway when the front door burst open, and Jared raced in, the skin on his face raw from what looked like lash marks. “Kate! Kate! They took Allie and Eric! A van. They stopped, and they ripped off Allie’s necklace, and?—”
I didn’t let him finish. Instead, I leaped on him, knocking him to the ground as I straddled him, the sharp end of the pencil over his heart. “Believe me when I say I can get this through your clothes and your skin and right into that cold, dead heart. I am highly,highlymotivated.”
