wall, there’s a set of closed double doors, and we head right for it to stay out of sight.
“Alright, clothes check,” Medley says as we come to a stop, and the three of us immediately start to straighten our dresses and smooth our hair.
“Plan?” I ask as I check my hands and wrists and see that all I have to show for the slices in my skin are faint pink lines on my palms and wrists. This quick healing thing is amazing.
“Okay, we spread out when we get in there. We still don’t know what Morax looks like, but I clocked a couple of the Abdicated,” Delta says. “If you remember any of them, keep track so that we can weed them out. If anyone gets into trouble, just tug on our connection. We all need to try to find the Seven Sins of Lucifer’s inner circle and warn them. The last thing we want is for shit to go down and for them to think we’re on the wrong side, but we’ll have to be careful. We’re going to be watched, and Morax and the other Abdicated might realize that the guards and Shateel are missing. We just have to play our parts of mind-controlled dolls and hope Morax is cocky enough not to question too much.”
Medley and I nod in agreement as the three of us start making our way through the room. The further we walk across the marble floor, the louder the party becomes.
“The rest...we’ll have to make up as we go,” Delta admits with a wince.
“It’ll be just fine,” Medley says, her hips swaying with forced confidence. “We go in, we work our puppet-faced charms, and we ruin Morax’s plan.”
“Then we kill him,” I growl.
“Damn right,” Delta says with a grin. “Then we fucking kill him.”
Medley beams. “Let’s do this.”
28
I try not to fidget as I count to fifteen and wait my turn to push through the doors that lead into the party. I study a painting of ham and ignore my stomach as it gurgles with interest. We decided that it was best if we didn’t enter all at once. Individually, we have a better chance at slipping in and blending, which is why I’m waiting here on the other side of the tall walnut doors and trying not to pace.
My stomach growls loudly as I look at the stupid ham painting for the fiftieth time. Maybe there’ll be food inside. Then again, from what Toreon and Medley have said, the food in Hell can be pretty weird, so it’s probably best to ignore any hors d’oeuvre trays passing my way and just focus on tracking down the Seven Sins and figuring out who Morax is.
As I wait, I run through the scant few faces of the Abdicated that I can recall from Morax’s lair. Then I mentally go over Delta’s details about the Sins and what they look like as though I’m working through flash cards in preparation for a test. I pay careful attention to what Tazreel is supposed to look like. Delta said he was tan with long blond hair and sepia-like wings. I guess we also get our gray eyes from him, but Medley mentioned Tazreel’s have gold bits around the pupil.
The plan is to find him, give him some code word about how he fucked a pixie, and then get him to help us and warn the other Sins. I’m trying to be clinical about it all. I tell myself I’m meeting the Sin of Pride, not the man responsible for my existence. No big deal at all. From the sound of things, he’s not exactly the fatherly type anyway, which is fine, because I’ve never had that and probably wouldn’t even know what to do with one.
The fact that I’m going to have to approach him and try to get him to recognize me and the dire situation my sisters and I are in is a little intimidating, though. And apparently, I’m the only sister dressed like someone Tazreel would listen to, so I automatically drew the short straw.
My stomach grumbles again, and I push my palms against it, only to realize that I stopped counting.
Shit. Was I on ten Mississippi or thirteen Mississippi? I sigh. No time like the present I guess.
I pull in a deep cleansing breath and let Hell’s air work its magic, helping me to feel less anxious. I smooth my dress down one more time, making sure all the parts of my disguised