He might really need to pee.
She was about to get up and find out, when he spoke again. “I’m calm now. Let’s talk.”
Giving it a hefty pause, she eventually said, “Are you calm?”
“Yes.” He sounded like he’d forced the word out through a clenched jaw. Given that she had summoned and then abducted him, she could cut him a bit of slack. That would be galling for any powerful being, and doubly so for the hell prince who embodied pride. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Climbing out of bed, she drew a couple of bracing breaths. Strategy. It was all about clever strategy.
“Any more wine?” Lucifer asked.
At this stage, she might handle him better when she was drunk. “Yup.”
“Good.”
When she walked into the living room, he was still where she’d left him, propped up on the sofa. Of course he was, she’d near enough paralyzed him in place. The look in his eyes had downgraded from imminent incineration to carefully blank. The latter scared her more. “Do you need the bathroom?”
“No.” He smirked. “Keen to get a good grope like Patty?”
“No.”
He studied her as if she’d surprised him. Then he nodded. “You will be. All the witches are.”
Rather than smack him, she fetched more wine and filled his glass before taking a seat in the armchair across from him.
“Tell me about your missing coven members,” he said.
If they were going to talk, she needed to get her head straight. “Let me get you a shirt.”
Chapter Seven
With Lucifer’s immaculately sculpted torso covered, Bianca took a seat and got into it. “Right then.” After smirking about her covering him up and giving the sweatshirt a look of unadulterated horror, Lucifer was listening—or pretending to.
“It started a couple of months back,” she said. Months in which nobody had noticed anything amiss. “At first, we didn’t think anything of coven members being gone. One went to visit her daughter; another went on vacation. That sort of thing.”
“And they didn’t?” He sat back and sipped his wine. He did good listening face.
“As far as we know they did.” So many totally plausible reasons for absences. “That’s why we never thought to report anything. Everything made sense, and it’s summer, so people go places.”
He was looking at her as if he doubted her sanity. “And?”
“They didn’t come back.” Bianca’s stomach ached as the anxiety about her coven members escaped the tight leash she kept on it. Panicking accomplished nothing. “None of them. Recently, the disappearances have escalated and there aren’t any even decent excuses for them.”
“Haglette.” He shook his head at her. “Call your human authorities and release me. This is not a matter for a hell prince.” He took a deep breath, as if reaching for patience. “There are bigger matters at play, and you need to unbind me so I can deal with those. I empathize with your problem, but I have more important things to deal with.”
“Firstly.” She held up a finger as she reached for patience. Strategy, strategy, strategy. “Don’t call me that pejorative name. It’s not cute. It’s demeaning.” And now came the truly tricky part, which given all that had transpired between them thus far, was saying a lot. “And I know all about your important matters.”
He scoffed. “I doubt th—”
“I know about the weakening seals.”
Lucifer went so still she couldn’t be sure he was breathing.
“I also know about the demon rebellion and Eddie being abducted.” And whilst she was being honest, she might as well make a clean sweep. “And the horsemen.”
His jaw muscle flexed. “How?”
“Is that relevant?” She went for nonchalance. “Let’s take it as read that I know and move on, shall we?”
“How do you know?” Granite jawed, eyes flinty, he was an intimidating sight.
“Patty,” she said. They’d discussed how much to tell him before the summoning. Patty had given her permission to reveal the information if necessary, and the way he was glaring at her made it very necessary. “Her gift is precognition.” In the spirit of making a clean slate, she added, “And listening to what happens around her.”
Patty could give the intelligence service pointers, and as for seeing the future, Patty was the real deal.
“Patty has been busy.” A hint of a smile softened his lips.
Bianca breathed an inner sigh of relief and shrugged. “It’s when we found out what had happened to Wrath. About his power being taken that the pieces started to fall into place.”
“Explain.” He nodded at his glass and Bianca refilled it.
“The amulets they used on Wrath and Eddie.” She pointed to the one around his neck. “They sound very like the one you’re wearing.” Minus a few pertinent details. “They are witch made,” she said. “Our coven makes them from a spell we found in an ancient grimoire.” Before he could speak, she hurried on. “I think there’s a link between my vanishing witches and those amulets being used by the rebel demons.”
Lucifer dropped his head and stared at the amulet. “That is the thing you’ve said that makes the most sense to me.” When he looked up again, anger tightened his features into a beautiful, terrifying mask. “Witches are always seeking to steal and use power that is not their own.”
Now that was unfair, and she needed to set him straight. “They were originally made to store magic. Our magic.” His low opinion of witches didn’t surprise her. On the whole, witches got a bad rep. “They were designed to be a storage device or a battery that meant we could store our own magic for when we needed it. We discovered by accident that they could also store another witch’s power.”
