“All right, all right.” She held her hands out as if placating a rabid dog. “But it could be worse. At least you have control of your body back.” She flapped her hand at the living room. “And you managed to do all this and then fix it.”
“I. WANT. MY. POWER.” He breathed deep. “All of it, and not merely the ability to perform parlor tricks.”
She dived for her bag and hauled out her cell phone. “Understood.”
Lucifer repaired the glasses and cleaned up the wine spill.
“The important thing is not to overreact.” Bianca’s hands shook as she worked her phone. “Patty’s our most senior member. She’ll know what to do.”
He stalked closer to her. She needed to understand that she had to fix this and fix it now. He was done playing games with her. He was Lucifer, hell prince of pride, and nobody defied him.
Except, apparently, her. He glanced at the repaired cabin and mentally shook his head at himself.
Her call connected, and the other side rang once before it was picked up. “Bianca,” Patty said.
“Hi, Patty.” Bianca gave him a sickly smile.
Normally, Lucifer enjoyed tormenting impertinent witches who summoned him, but he could safely say that he was not having a good time. Not even a bit.
Bianca had gone still and was frowning. “Slow down, Patty. I can’t understand what you’re saying.” She listened and then gasped. “What? No!”
He couldn’t give a shit about her crisis. He was right in the middle of his own, and his took precedence. “Ask her about the amulet.”
Leafrot could have disappeared by now with the information Lucifer needed. Once he found Ashe—and he would—he needed all his power to make the fucker sorry. And he would.
Bianca had the temerity to wave her hand at him to silence him. “How long ago?”
“Did you shush me?” Nobody shushed him. Not a being in this universe. Particularly not one who was clinging to life by the strength of a forced blood oath from him.
“I’m on my way.” Bianca hung up and shoved her phone in her bag. She ducked past him and picked up a running shoe. “I need to go.”
Go? Go! She’d dismissed him and the amulet. He was momentarily paralyzed by the audacity.
Bianca laced her shoe and slipped the other one on. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.” She frowned at him and waved at the kitchen. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge.”
Not a fucking chance. Lucifer latched on to the back of her T-shirt and brought her to an abrupt halt. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“I need to go.” She whirled on him and slapped his restraining hand. “Another of my witches has disappeared, and this one has children.”
He tightened his grip. “I don’t care.”
“And I don’t care about your fucking power right now.” She shoved both hands into his chest. “Lives are on the line. Children’s lives. My witch’s life.” Her purple eyes flashed at him, and her jaw settled into an uncompromising line. She was going to be stubborn about this.
“I’ll come with you.” He wasn’t a complete shit. He didn’t want the children to die. Also, if he went with her, he could get the answers to his predicament firsthand. After they’d dealt with the missing witch and her offspring.
She whipped around and ran for the door, snatching her car keys out of her bag.
Lucifer almost baulked when he saw her car. Dear hell, he would not demean himself by occupying such a vehicle. A late model Toyota Corolla.
Bianca opened the driver’s door and tossed her bag over the seat into the back. “If you’re coming, get in.”
“I am not—”
“Fine. You can stay here.” She cranked the engine and threw the car into reverse.
He barely got his ass on the passenger seat before she was gunning her car down the drive.
The soft chirp of the seat belt warning chimed at him to buckle up.
Bianca swung a hard left onto the road, jamming his shoulder against the door.
All things considered, buckling up sounded like a great idea.
As they drove, Bianca kept her gaze fixed on the dark road ahead of them. Her set expression was partially illuminated by the dashboard lights.
As he was along for the ride, he may as well gather intel. “What happened?”
She started and stared at him, as if she’d forgotten he was there.
Well, that didn’t happen often, and never before with a human.
“After we were sure our witches were disappearing, we set wards around everyone’s houses,” she said.
The steadily climbing speedometer made his palms sweat. Normally, he loved speed, but not under the questionable control of an overwrought human. Forest blurred past the window.
“Leona’s wards were triggered about half an hour ago,” she said. “Christen was the closest and went to investigate.”
The idea of Weaz-adj being useful made him snort.
She barely slowed for a stop street before taking another hard left.
Lucifer took back his uncharitable thoughts about the Corolla. The car was handling this bat out of hell shit like it was glued to the road. This side trip might turn out to be useful. If whoever had taken this Leona was connected to Ashe, this trip might even work in his favor. “So Weaz-adj investigated?” he prompted.
Bianca shot him a glance before—blessedly—returning her attention to the road.
“Leona was gone, but her children were still there,” she said. Her determined facade buckled, and she pounded the steering wheel with her palm. “Fuck! They’re so young. They need their mother.”
Lucifer was not usually in the business of reassuring humans. Mostly, it was humans who needed reassurance because of him, but Bianca’s obvious upset pinged a trace of empathy, so he said, “We’ll find her.”
“You don’t know that.” Bianca swiped angrily at a tear. “Don’t say shit that you can’t back up. Nobody needs lies and platitudes. Believing that bullshit only ends up hurting more in the end.”
He smelled a story. His interest surprised him.
“Eight witches have gone missing from our coven,” she said. “And we haven’t found one of them.” She shook her head. “Nine now.”
That was a lot of missing witches, and she was right about platitudes. But she was wrong about him. He never made promises he couldn’t follow through on. Her missing witches had just become his mission.
Ashe and his fucking cohorts had been draining Eddie to death when Shade and Sophia had rescued her. Eddie was his niece, and despite what Wrath believed, Lucifer did care for her. The amulets had been used against his family, and that made them his problem. If, as Bianca suspected, her missing witches were creating those amulets, they were in more trouble than he had the heart to tell her about. “How old are they? The children.”
