‘Why me?’ and he answered, ‘I do what I’m told.’”
“You didn’t tell me this before,” Alec accused.
“I’m sorry.” And she meant it. Staying alive meant not dropping the ball. “He was dead and sent back to Hell. I was trying not to join him. The memory got lost in my brain.”
“Shit. This is why you’re not supposed to be able to shut us out.”
Eve didn’t know how or why she was sometimes able to circumvent the inherent connection between Marks and their superiors, but she was grateful. A woman had to have her secrets, especially while embroiled in a contentious relationship triangle.
She continued before they got off on a tangent. “I also noticed something new today—his details say he’s now one of Asmodeus’s lackeys.”
Reed turned off the fire on the stove. “The Nix’s details were courtesy of a lessor demon.”
“They’ve changed since that first day you and I saw him,” she insisted.
“Sammael and a king of Hell,” Sydney breathed. “Yowza.”
Eve could only give a lame nod. And to think she had once thought of herself as a lucky person. “Can I ask why Satan is a prince, but the demons under him are kings?”
“No!” Reed and Alec barked in unison.
She held up her hands in a defensive gesture. “OOO-kay, then…”.
Alec stared at her with narrowed eyes. “Damn it, angel.”
Evangeline. Eve. Angel. A nickname only Alec had ever used. He still said it with the rumbling seductive purr that had gotten her into this marked mess to begin with.
Montevista gave her a wry look. “Only you would have multiple high-level contracts out on you, Hollis.”
“Maybe the Nix and the wolf met after the explosion, and became friends. Maybe Asmodeus and Grimshaw were friends,” Eve said, “and Asmodeus is trying to help his buddy out in the revenge department. Maybe the Nix jumped ship to Asmodeus so that he had a valid excuse to hunt me.”
“There’s a hell of a lot of ‘maybes’ in there’ Alec bit out. “And friendship is relative to demons. Favors aren’t free. Asmodeus would’ve had to be paying a debt or getting something in kind.”
That didn’t sound good to Eve.
“That would have to be a huge debt or gain to make Asmodeus go after someone important to Cain,” Montevista pointed out. “Grimshaw came after Hollis in vengeance for the death of his son. Asmodeus has no excuse, and he knew he’d piss off Jehovah and Sammael at once.”
Eve sighed. The battle between Heaven and Hell wast a free-for-all. For the most part, Celestials and Infernals lived alongside each other in a wary truce. Satan’s minions were ordered to stay under the radar, so they could do the most damage. Marks were only assigned to take down rogue demons. Montevista was right. Something big had motivated Asmodeus to break the rules in such a major way.
“Unless Sammael told Asmodeus to do it,” Sydney suggested quietly. When everyone stared at her, she shrugged.
Montevista broke the silence. “She’s got a point.”
“I hadn’t run over his dog yet;’ Eve reminded.
Dog. Ha! Since the damn creature had been the size of a bus, Eve’s mind could barely connect “dog” to her road kill in the same train of thought.
“This has to be about more than Sammael’s damned hellhound,” Reed insisted. “He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Everyone and everything else— including pets—is expendable.”
“So he wants something? I don’t have anything valuable.” Her gaze darted between the two brothers. “Except for both of you.”
Alec and Reed fell silent, both physically and mentally. They knew she was a liability to them.
Eve refused to stay that way.
Reed turned back to the stove. Alec began routing orders through the mental switchboard system eaàh archangel had to everyone in their firm. She moved into the living room. She was still within seeing/hearing distance, but the space helped to give her mind a break. Tuning the others out, Eve settled onto her down-filled sofa and contemplated the mess that was her life.
The Nix and Grimshaw’s kid hadn’t been the only Infernals in the kiln room that disastrous night in Upland. There had also been a gaggle of tengu— Japanese gargoyle-type demons. Since the Nix and the wolf had both lived to be killed another day, it was reasonable to wonder if the tengu might have found second lives, too.
Alec shifted over to her and settled into a seated position on the edge of her glass-topped coffee table. The thick denim of his blue jeans did nothing to hide the fine form of his long, muscular legs.
“You’re going