keep them, give them to family, whatever you want to do."
She stared at me with skeptical eyes. "It seems too good to be true."
I laughed. "Based on your aura coloring, I think you may be descended from the children of my brother. I want to do this. These items are no good to me." The thought of my daughter drifted through my mind. I sucked in a deep breath and hoped the guys would agree with this. "I do have one favor."
She harrumphed. "I knew it."
"We have a daughter, Lucifer and I."
She nodded. "She's the only reason I initially agreed to help you."
"She's been kidnapped." I couldn't remember what all we'd told Mary before, either time she'd helped us. "By an Archangel."
She nodded. "I know all this."
"The problem is that we don't know if she's human. Or, purely human at least. If she's mostly human or has a human body, she will have to live on Earth when we get her back. Human bodies don't survive the entrance to Abaddon."
"I wondered about that," she said. "You want me to raise her?"
"Yes and no. Originally, I planned to let a human family raise her, but she's too vulnerable for that. I would like to have you live with her, yes. One or more of us would be around as much as possible, but we have duties to perform. There might be times none of us could be around."
Mary stood and walked over to her counter to an electric kettle. "Tea?" she offered.
"Sure, thanks." She put bags in two mugs and poured hot water over them.
A container of honey sat in a decorative glass in the middle of her table. I helped myself when she put the mug in front of me.
"I will help your daughter. When you find her, and if she must remain on Earth. If the need arises while she’s here." She sipped her tea as if what she'd said was nothing more than an observation on the weather.
My heart soared. "Thank you," I whispered. "Truly, you are a blessing."
"Are you planning on dying soon?" Mary asked with eyes far too shrewd.
"I hope to," I said. "That will solve half our problem if Lucifer and I can return to Abaddon. We can make sure Raphael never opens the gates."
She sipped her tea. "I have a lot to learn about the differences in the Fallen and the Angels."
"They aren't so great, not really. We have different jobs to do, for sure, but we all want the same thing. For humans to have good lives and gain entrance to Heaven. And thanks to the Fallen, humans have the free will to choose their paths."
"I still don't like demons," she said with a grumpy expression.
I burst out laughing. "Truth be told, neither do I."
When Lucifer finished setting up the game, we said our goodbyes. I told her human lawyers would be in touch when our bodies were found, though I wasn't sure how long it might take.
We went straight to the lawyer Lucian always used and arranged our wills. He asked about the baby, and we told him we'd put her up for adoption and she'd been adopted already. His surprise was palpable, but as a professional, he didn't pry. By the afternoon, we had everything set up to leave to Mary.
We returned home, desolate and feeling rather hopeless.
I poked around the kitchen, bored out of my mind and trying not to think about how worried I was and how much I missed Ariel.
My mind tried to conjure any possibilities of either finding my daughter or a way to return us to Abaddon, but I came up blank every time. I wanted to make sure Ariel was safe before returning, but that looked less and less likely as the hours passed.
When the kitchen was spotless and a casserole was in the oven for dinner, I ambled into the living room to find Lucifer splayed out on the couch with his laptop open on his legs. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"Looking online for any credible information about Relics. It's all fiction or incorrect, though." He shut the laptop and slid it onto the coffee table with a sigh. "It's all useless."
Gabe and Michael came back just in time to eat the chicken casserole, of course. They loved when I cooked.
"Anything at all?" I asked.
They both shook their heads. "We've got the librarian helping, but there's so many books to go through, and it's not organized in Heaven like they are now on