Eddie straightened. “For now,” she said. “Some food and rest, and then I have another two seals to repair.”
Shade opened his mouth to object, but she gave him a quelling look. “We have Raphael here to help with Lucifer’s. Send for Sophia, and we’ll do yours as well.”
“Eddie.” Shade shook his head. “You can’t go through this three times.”
“I have to.” She’d survived this repair, and she would get through the other two. “Three strong seals is a fuck of a lot better than one.”
Chapter Forty-Two
On Sophia’s return from hell, Bianca got the news that Eddie had managed to patch first the wrath seal, and then the lust and pride seals. They weren’t fixed, but they would hold.
Sophia beamed at her, happy to celebrate a small victory. “We’ve bought ourselves some time.”
“That’s great,” Bianca said and meant it. A small gap in the unrelenting pressure was welcome, but she’d run out of joy. Carmen was having a tough time with Christen’s death and needed all Bianca’s love and support. Her sister’s grief should’ve pushed Lucifer out of her mind, been enough distraction for her to grasp the inescapable reality that he was no longer part of her life, and that was a good thing. Bianca should’ve been concentrating on Carmen.
Instead, she’d come to the depressing conclusion that she missed Lucifer more than ever, which meant that she was an even bigger idiot than she thought she was. With Carmen inconsolable over her loss, Bianca buried her feelings deep and got on with life. She would get over Lucifer, because she had to.
Keeping busy occupied her mind and kept her obsessing to manageable levels. Fortunately, there was plenty to do. As humans, the witches didn’t have any great powers, and their magic was on lockdown just in case, but they could find information and free angels to do their angelic stuff. Angels could be annoyingly secretive about what that consisted of, and she didn’t have the energy to pursue the details.
Instead, Bianca had been trying to find out more about the mysterious three that being, Indolex, had mentioned.
Sophia took a seat beside her at the large wooden table in Sophia’s library. “How’s it going?”
With its vaulted ceilings and four floors of books rising on each side of a central atrium, it was a place to warm a book nerd’s heart. So much knowledge retained in that vast space blew her mind. The age of some of the books was similarly dizzying.
“Not too bad.” Bianca carefully closed the book in front of her and pushed it away. This one was a mere four hundred years old and not even worthy of the librarian’s special handling.
Sophia read the titles of the books spread on the table in front of her. “Any idea who or what the three may be yet?”
The angel in charge of the library coughed and handed Sophia a pair of gloves.
“Sorry, Celeste.” Smiling at her, Sophia put on the gloves. As the archangel of wisdom and knowledge, Sophia had the largest library on any of the three planes.
“Any reference we find to the three normally refers to heaven, earth, and hell,” Bianca said with a nod to Celeste.
Celeste had been a major help in narrowing the search to what Bianca needed in the massive repository. Bianca would have wandered around for years without her assistance.
Sophia looked thoughtful. “Given the context, I would say that’s a reasonable assumption.”
“We thought so.” Celeste folded her lips primly. “Other biblical references refer to the father, son, and holy ghost, but we couldn’t connect the witchling Emma to any of those.”
“So, based on the assumption that the three does refer to heaven, hell, and earth, we think we can confidently say that whatever the reason is that they want Emma, she represents the earth of that trilogy.” Bianca showed Sophia a huge tome with leather binding and an elaborately embossed title. “I’m searching for a connection between witchcraft and demons.”
Celeste folded her hands in front of her. “Much has been written about the connection between witches and demons,” she said. “Many accounts of witches summoning demons or being in league with them. Most of these can be dismissed as superstition, but there are a couple that bear closer examination.”
Sophia’s blue eyes sharpened. “How would you know the difference?”
“Right.” Bianca and Celeste had been working on this for days. She’d read more stories and journal entries about cloven-hooved babies than was good for anyone. “We know demons don’t reproduce with humans.” Only hell princes could do that apparently. Who knew? Well, now she did. “We also know that only hell princes can be summoned, so that narrowed it down to only references to one of the seven hell princes.”
“The difficulty has come in the names.” Celeste sighed. “Humans use hell princes’ names interchangeably and incorrectly, and it is not unusual to find several hell princes named in one summoning.”
“I also know a couple of the summonings that were real.” Bianca kept her face and voice expressionless. “Lucifer mentioned some names. So, we started looking for summonings and interactions with demons that bore a resemblance to those.”
Sophia looked impressed. “You have been busy.”
Well, it was that or mope around and wish she had better taste in males.
“Here we came across several consistencies.” Celeste tenderly located a book which had been hand scribed with beautiful gold embellishments and painted illustrations. “Most notable of which was that the more powerful the witch, the more effective the summoning.” She cleared her throat as Sophia reached for the book, and then pushed it toward her.
Sophia snatched her hands back and winked at Bianca. “Sorry, Celeste.”
“In addition,” Celeste said. “The more powerful the witch, the more extensive the consequences of the summoning.”
Sophia frowned. “Explain.”
“A lesser witch performing a summoning would have a smaller effect.” Bianca indicated a pile of abandoned books at the far end of the table. “It would vary from a piece of furniture moved, or something breaking in the house. Small things.” She pointed to a smaller pile near them. “The stronger witches did actually have an interaction with the demon, or as we know hell prince, they’d summoned.”
Celeste clicked her tongue. “Unfortunately, not many of them survived.”
And Bianca knew who was to blame for that. He’d bragged about it to her. Not the right male for any woman, especially a witch. “And their deaths were often consequences of their demand from the hell prince. Like, for instance, if one asked for eternal beauty, she could end up murdered by a jealous lover.”
“Right.” Sophia nodded. “So how does this relate to Emma?”
“Emma is the most powerful witch I’ve ever seen,” Bianca said. “And she’s only eight. She hasn’t even come into her powers properly yet. We know that archangels and hell princes can boost a witch’s power because they’ve done it with me.”
“Most irregular.” Celeste shook her head.
