and pull out leftovers from last night and heat up a plate of food.
“Good morning,” Lucas says, coming into the kitchen. He’s wearing blue checkered pajama pants and nothing else, and his hair is still messy from bed. “I thought you’d sleep in longer. You were restless last night.”
“I didn’t mean to keep you up.”
“I ate last night,” he reminds me, speaking of the bagged blood Eliza brought. “I don’t need much sleep. You, on the other hand, do.”
“I got a weird text message from Easton,” I tell him and open the microwave when the timer gets down to one second, stopping it right before it beeps. “All it said was to call him, and I did and got his voicemail.”
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Lucas deadpans.
“Yeah, I think so too. Melinda would have tried to call if something was really wrong.” I set my plate on the counter and go around to get a fork. “You know me, though. I start thinking about what could go wrong and then I can’t shut off my brain.”
“Tell him not to contact you between the hours of nine PM and nine AM.”
“I’m usually awake then anyway.”
“True, so tell him not to contact you at all.”
I look up at Lucas, raising an eyebrow. “You still don’t like him, do you?”
“I tolerate him and stand by what I’ve said before: you are too forgiving, Callie.”
“I might be.” I mix my stuffing in with my mashed potatoes. “Though I can still be very petty and impulsive, don’t worry.”
Lucas grins. “You know I love your petty and impulsive side.”
“Good, because it’s not going anywhere.”
Lucas sits with me while I eat breakfast, and then gets a fire going in the living room while I feed my familiars and Scarlet. We snuggle up on the couch together, and now that it’s officially the day after Thanksgiving, I get Lucas to watch a Christmas movie with me. I fall asleep before it’s even halfway over, and wake up when my phone rings.
“It’s Easton.” Lucas picks up my phone from the coffee table. “Want me to hang up on him?”
“No,” I say, grumpy from being woken up. I take the phone and close my eyes once I answer. “Hello?”
“Hey, Callie. Did I wake you up?”
“I was awake and then fell back asleep. What’s going on?”
“The FBI took over the murders,” he rushes out. “We have a friend on the inside who let me know last night…and then this morning he called to say another body was found in Ohio. Another twenty-something-year-old woman, heart cut out and a sigil carved into her back.”
“Do you know whose sigil it is?”
“Michael, the archangel.”
My eyes fall shut and guilt pushes me under murky water. This is my fault, isn’t it? I was the one who told Bael Michael was my father, and only hours later a woman turns up dead. He would have gone through the list of archangels, I know, but I can’t help but feel responsible.
He’s killing them to get to me.
“I’ll send you photos of the police report. It’s pretty graphic,” he warns. “More so than the others.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I, um, I don’t think you should look into this anymore. We know the demon responsible and he’s dangerous.”
“I actually agree with you.”
“Fuck,” I huff. “Be careful.”
“You too.”
I end the call and look at Lucas, knowing he heard everything. My phone buzzes with a text message, and I hold the phone up so we both can see. Easton was right about the photos being graphic. The victim, Carla Stoner, was tied up like the others and had her heart cut out while she was still alive. But unlike the others, her face was scorched, and the ME’s report stated that her eyes burned from the inside out.
To further torture myself, I look up Carla on Facebook. She’s a mother of four, and just had a newborn six weeks ago.
“Stop,” Lucas tells me, taking the phone from my hands. Bottom lip quivering, I nod and turn my face in, burying it against Lucas’s chest. He holds me as I suck in a sob, trying to stop myself from thinking about Carla’s poor children…and how easily that could be me.
What the hell were we thinking, bringing a child into this world? I know it wasn’t planned, but for us to think we should actually go through with it?
“Dad?” I pray, sitting up straight. I fold my hands together and close my eyes, fat tears rolling down my cheeks. “I could really use some