“I know.” Her big green eyes widened further as she looked around her. “And if you hadn’t gone scuttling off like a cockroach, I wouldn’t have had to follow you.” She jammed her fists on her nicely rounded hips. “What were you thinking, Satanus?”

Universal tits, but he hated the full name thing. “I was thinking I didn’t need a babysitter to do my job.”

“Well, that’s not true.” She chuckled and motioned where the demon had been lying. “Otherwise, he would never have gotten close to beating you.”

“I had it in hand.” A bit of bluster never hurt, and if by in hand he meant he was about to see the wrong side of a fight, he was telling the truth.

“No, you didn’t.” She patted his chest. “And that’s why I’m here.”

“You shouldn’t be here.” He was really losing his verbal touch. It must be the shock of what had happened.

“We’ve been over this.” She rolled her eyes. “But now that I am, what’s the plan?”

“For you to go back.” He fingered the rip in his shirt that must have happened during his fight. Dammit! He liked this shirt. It was a favorite. Which is why he had about twenty of them hanging in his wardrobe.

“Ugh.” Haziel groaned. “Keep up, Wrath. Until this is settled, I’m your shadow.” She winked at him. “And lucky for you that I am.”

“You ended him with a heaven wrought blade.” Wrath followed her curvy round ass out of the clearing. “That’s hardly a fair fight.”

She strode forward, pushing undergrowth aside as she went. Stopping suddenly, she exclaimed and bent to her right to examine a flower. “Isn’t this pretty?”

“Where are you going exactly?” And how did she seem to know her way around so well? But as she was currently entranced by some bright red flower thingy, he stuck to one question at a time.

Haziel stroked the petals of the flower and gave a happy sigh. “Mammon’s demesne.”

“Mammon’s.” She was on the move again, and he had to step lively to catch up with her. “I need to get to Lucifer’s.”

“Why?” She blinked at him. “If Lucifer is causing all this, that’s the very last place you should go.” Lowering her voice, she leaned closer. “Especially considering you have no power.”

Not no power, just not enough to talk about yet, but he wasn’t going to share with her interfering ass that his power was trickling back. Even if it was a rather fine ass. “Because if he has my daughter, I’m going to make him tell me where she is.”

“Don’t be obtuse,” she tossed over her shoulder. “You can’t face Lucifer in your current state. And you, more than any of us, should know that even if he is guilty and doesn’t end you on sight, he’s an accomplished liar.”

“He’s not an accomplished anything.” Wrath followed behind her, simultaneously furious that he was and unable to do anything else.

Haziel looked around her and took a deep breath. “It really is quite lovely here.”

“My demesne’s better,” he snapped, for no reason other than she got under his skin.

“Agreed.” Haziel smiled, and two dimples popped up in her velvety cheeks. “But this is also beautiful.”

It irked him him comfortable she was with hell. “How do you know how to get to Mammon’s?”

“I have a map.” She patted her pocket. “Just like you hell princes have a map of the heavenly realm.

She had him there. “Why are we going to see Ava?” And how had they become a we?

“We should see if Avarice’s demesne looks anything like this.” She gestured around her. “Let’s see how widespread this damage is.” She winked at him over her shoulder. “Plus, the way I hear it, Ava has her ear to the ground down here, and if anyone knows anything, it’s her.”

It did make a certain sense, and Ava did have her nose in everyone’s business. Purely coincidentally, she would not be happy to see him. “I need to find my daughter.”

“Wrath.” She stopped suddenly and jammed her hands on her hips again. The motion drew her top tight against her pert breasts. She might be doing that on purpose to befuddle him, and it was working far too well for his peace of mind. “We both know Shade has gone after Eddie, and with his hounds, he will find her faster than anyone. Now stop asking inane questions and tell me instead how much of your power has come back.”

Chapter Seven

Sophia liked Daniel Lee. He was a definite improvement over the bunch that had descended on the theater with Chris Fellows.

“The gate is stable.” Daniel looked across the kitchen table at Dee and smiled.

Dee did her best not to smile back, but Daniel was a good-looking man and had an easy way about him that made it hard for even Dee to hold a grudge. She’d lifted her edict about him not being in her living space enough to let him eat with them. Sophia didn’t think it would be long before he was rolling up his sleeping bag and leaving the basement for the guest room upstairs. Dee had offered the guest room to her, but she preferred the nice little B&B at the end of the road. They made wonderful French toast, which Sophia liked to slather with maple syrup.

“You mean since Wrath and Haziel went through.” Sophia needed Daniel to understand that she may look harmless, but she was still an archangel.

Daniel chuckled. “Right. Since then.”

Sophia appreciated that a guardian was sharing information freely and not taking their normal territorial approach.

“It hasn’t registered any activity since Haziel went through,” Daniel said.

Which was good news, because it meant no demons were trying to come through to this realm. “Any sign of the original witch who summoned Shade?”

“No.” Daniel put his fork of mashed potatoes on his plate and raised an eyebrow. “Were we expecting there to be?”

“Perhaps.” Sophia had given this a lot of thought. “Someone summoned Shade, and we know it wasn’t Eddie. Then that someone disappeared, and it strikes me as strange that a witch went to all the trouble of summoning a hell prince and then did nothing about it.”

“Hmm.” Daniel picked up his fork and resumed eating. “You make a valid point. What do you think, Dee?”

“It’s not my problem anymore.” Dee sniffed, but her objection lacked weight as she frowned in thought. “But if it were my problem, I’d have to agree with Sophia. You don’t summon a hell prince for shits and giggles.”

“For nobody to notice this witch, she would have to be someone familiar,” Daniel said. “Someone who is free to move about the theatre without raising any questions.”

Dee raised her chin. “We have over four hundred members in the Paradise Players, not to mention our regular audience members.”

“But an audience member wouldn’t be wandering backstage.” Daniel dug into his parmesan chicken.

“How would you know?” Dee snapped. “You’re not familiar with how we do things here.”

Daniel stopped chewing and stared at her. “You’re right. My bad.”

Dee huffed and went back to her dinner.

Sophia really liked Dee, but where Daniel Lee was concerned, Dee had a blind spot. She was determined to dislike a thoroughly likable young man. Dee’s barriers wouldn’t last much longer, but for the sake of all their digestion, Sophia changed the subject. “I imagine Haziel has caught up with Wrath by now.” She didn’t approve of Ramiel sending his second to track Wrath, and she’d told him so. Hell wasn’t a safe place even for archangels, and a seraph would draw all the wrong kind of attention. As per usual, Ramiel wouldn’t listen to anyone else’s opinion and smiled and waved away any objections. According to him, Haziel was very powerful and could take care of herself. Sophia hoped he was right about that.

“But there’s more bad news,” Daniel said, and forked mashed potatoes into his mouth. That he ate with such gusto was in itself a miracle. Dee was a lovely woman, but her cooking was not a leading skill. “Word from HQ is that the other hell gates are also experiencing power fluctuations.”

“Dammit.” Dee added another piece of chicken to Daniel’s plate.