tissue stuck in my nose because a dodgeball/volleyball/soccer or insert-any-sport-with-a-head-sized-ball had hit me square in the face and made me snort blood.
I didn’t fare any better in gymnastics, track and field, or any of the other athletic activities. It was like my DNA was deeply suspicious of all forms of organized sports. Perplexingly, that reasonable explanation did not win over any of my PE teachers.
The only exercise I’d ever been halfway decent at was yoga, thanks to which I was nicely flexible. Pity that fact didn’t help me all that much when it came to fighting. I still landed flat on my ass more times than not, even when I was sparring with someone who pulled all their punches, like Caleb.
It was either him in the training ring with me, or Hekesha, and, occasionally, Azmodea, like today. Never Azazel. He only watched from the sidelines of the sparring hall, witnessing my repeated failures with barely banked heat in his eyes.
When I asked him why he didn’t train me himself, he shot me a dark look and said silkily, “Lack of motivation.”
“What?”
He crossed his arms. “Any time I’d best you, one way or another, we’d end up on the ground with me between your legs. You’d have no incentive to really fight me.”
He did have a point. So training with anyone else it was.
I’d been at this for two weeks, and only today did I manage to theoretically die a few times less than usual. I had no clue why Azazel thought it would make any sense to train me in combat, given the fact that I was and always would be a hundred times weaker than a half-blood. With no powers of my own, I wouldn’t last a minute. And if I had to go up against a full-blood demon, I’d be toast in a matter of seconds, combat training or no.
Still, I kept at it. A promise was a promise.
“So,” Azmodea said, flipping on her side to face me, “how have you been holding up?”
“With what?” Though I could guess what she was aiming at.
“Your father.” Her silver eyes held the glint of knowledge and old pain.
We’d touched the subject here and there in the days following my visit to Earth, though I didn’t tell her as much as I did Azazel. Still, it was nice to have someone else to talk to about this—someone who could also sympathize with a complicated paternal relationship.
My chest constricted, and I took a deep breath that would have hurt my bruised ribs if Azmodea hadn’t healed them right after practice. “I’m okay, I guess. I mean, okay-ish. It still hurts, but I have a feeling it always will. I don’t think about it all the time, but there are moments when it hits me. That he’s really gone. That I’ll never get a chance to talk to him about everything.”
“Grief comes in waves,” Azmodea said gently.
“Yeah. In those moments...I wish I were still living on Earth and sort of religious. Because then I’d believe I’d at least see him in Heaven at some point, you know? I now know that place is real, sure, but with me being down here, I also know I’ll never enter Heaven. So, even that little hope is a moot point.”
Azmodea was silent. Uncharacteristically silent. It was the kind of heavy pause in a conversation after someone said something truly shocking, unbelievably dumb, or so obviously wrong that the other party didn’t even know how to unpack that.
I lifted my head and stared at her. “What?” Oh, God, what kind of verbal blunder did I commit now?
Her eyes shimmering silver, she opened her mouth, closed it again, her expression somewhere between pity and pain. She nodded at the demon masseuses, and they left the room.
“What?”
“Zoe,” she began in the tone of voice used to deliver news of a loved one’s death, “your father is not in Heaven.”
I blinked at her. A chill grabbed my stomach and twisted. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“He’s either a ghost on Earth—which is unlikely, because then you’d have seen him hang around his house when you were there—or, more likely, he’s...down here.”
“As a sinner?” I choked out.
She gave a tight nod.
The chill spread through my body. “Why?” I sat up, clutching the towel to my chest. “Because he’s an adulterer?” My opinion on his wrongdoing notwithstanding, that was ridiculous, draconian, incredibly Old Testament—
“Well, yes,” Azmodea cut into my thoughts.
My whole body tingled, and not in a good way. I couldn't feel