I’m too upset to marvel over riding the winds high and sharp across the suffering plains of Hell this time. I pretend it’s the foul air that makes me cry every few minutes, but it’s a thin lie. Lilith sets a determined pace, and trusts me to keep up with her in my borrowed black witch cloak.
When we reach the banks of Styx, river and goddess-dragon-who-hates-me, the waters are roiling and black. There’s a chorus of moans rising out of it that makes every hair on my arms prickle with sheer uncanniness. The stench of sulfur and sweat and blood.
Styx bursts from the filthy water, dripping, and I dread whatever task I’ll have to face to earn my passage—even with Lilith here, there will be some toll. Instead Styx cries out to us, her talons beckoning us closer.
“Porsoth must be beside himself about the young sire,” she says, her long face mournful at the end of a two-story neck. “He’s called in Buer and Glasya, which means this is beyond his own skill.”
Lilith clucks in sympathy and I can see the worry line on her forehead deepen. It hasn’t left her face since we departed from her house on our way to the Gray Keep.
She’s his mother. I tell myself that’s only normal.
None of this is.
I recognize the names Styx used from the demonology text Ars Goetia. Glasya-Labolas commands thirty-six legions of Hell’s soldiers, knows all art and science, and is a specialist in slaughter and bloodshed. And he’s a good (very bad) boy—a dog with eagle wings. Buer has the head of a lion and five goat legs that surround it, allowing him to walk in any direction and making him look like a weird furry wheel. In charge of fifty legions, knowledgeable about herbs, and supposedly in charge of the best familiars.
“You will be in a hurry to get to him, your prince,” Styx says, and shakes her head at the end of her scaled neck. “Consider your toll a single tear.”
For Styx, this is sentimental in the extreme. Whatever of my own worry eased after I reached Lilith kicks back into high gear. As a person with anxiety? That’s off the charts.
The tear won’t be a problem, I mean to say, since we’ve been traveling through the wind and I’ve been crying silently on and off the whole time. I reach up to stripe a hand down my cheek to offer one. I’m sure there’s many to choose from.
Before I can manage it, Styx’s taloned fingers reach out and—gentler than I’d have thought possible—she scrapes the back of a nail across my cheek, almost as if she’s drying my tears.
“Hurry to his side,” she says. “Tell Porsoth I cursed my banks that I could not leave them.”
“Thank you, Mother Styx,” Lilith says, and inclines her head. The dragon disappears with a giant splash, collapsing into the water, the moaning chorus rising in her wake.
Lilith swirls her cloak, about to conjure the winds so we can continue our travel, but she pauses. “I’m surprised you still had to pay a toll.”
“What?” There’s no time for questions, but I’ve asked one and she gives me a fierce look. Judging something.
Me. Judging me. I feel a chill. “What?” Now I’m asking in truth.
“You are on the path to becoming one such as I. Soon enough, you’ll be able to travel unencumbered.” Lilith strokes her lip thoughtfully. “Which means you are not fully mortal. Even if he had your weaknesses, he might survive.” Her cloak cracks at her back. “We mustn’t delay.”
And so when she launches into the sky, I grip my cloak and follow suit, letting the winds carry me. I’m not fully mortal anymore? What does that mean?
There’s no way to know, so I cling to the possibility Luke survived, that maybe I helped him survive.
We reach the Keep in record time that still feels like an eternity, descending onto an upper stone landing that forms one reaching branch of the tree-shaped castle. No demonic guards rush to greet us. No torches burn on the outside of the Keep. A pockmarked moon, mottled black and gray, rises in the gray sky above. I’ve never seen a moon here before.
Lilith takes it in. “A portent. Of change.”
“Good or bad?” I ask.
“Change is never all one or the other,” she says.
I hate that this is the one thing stories definitely nail about magical beings: they love to speak in lyrical riddles. “I was looking for more of a yes or no.”
Lilith hesitates, gazing at the moon.
“Let’s go,” I say. “He’s in there somewhere.”
“Wait,” she says. “It’ll be but a moment.”
See what I mean? I have to hold in a growl. If I knew the castle well enough to navigate it from this random branch, I’d leave her standing out here trying to wake the moon and go find Luke.
It’s the first time my worry truly becomes fear since we noticed his body missing, since I realized he hadn’t come to me and there must be a reason. If he’s gone, if he’s—thinking the word is like a knife—dead … what will I do? I don’t mean it in some way like an angsty heroine on the moors ripping my nightdress dramatically. Oh, I’m manless, I can’t go on. Not that.
Though my life at present is a puzzle, a riddle I haven’t found the answer for yet, Luke is part of the solution. There are some people that, even if they’re absent, change your life forever, the same way their presence did. Yes, I’ll go on. I’ll be fine as far as breathing in and out goes. Maybe get my job back at the Great Escape and work there for fifty years and take over for Mom when she retires. Maybe get my PhD and become a fierce historian bringing all the haters to the yard with my rad occult theories. Maybe become a librarian and spend my days helping people (because that’s what librarians do, they don’t sit around reading).
I don’t know how the not-being-fully-mortal-anymore part will fit in, but I’m not truly part of this world. No matter how much I want to be. So I return to my own and I mourn and maybe I meet someone and I sad-jokingly tell them my most serious relationship was with the prince of Hell. They laugh and eventually I realize it won’t work out between me and this random nice person because I still. Love. Luke.
With my whole heart.
His damn secret-keeping, and his also-secret vulnerability, the way he can’t quite stand up to his father yet but I know he has it in him, the way he admires my brain, and let’s be real, my perfectly normal body, and the way we get each other into terrible situations and then back out again.
Please, back out again.
“I’m done waiting,” I say.
“Someone’s coming.” Lilith holds up a hand. “I promise.”
“Is this someone a snail demon?” I ask, getting cranky. I have to know. I have to find Luke. See him.
“You have an impatient streak,” Lilith says. “I like it.”
Doors clatter open in the distance behind us, closer to the main trunk structure of the Keep. She raises an eyebrow, so that must be where Luke gets that specific talent from. See, why ever doubt me? all in a brow arch.
Porsoth walks to us, his scholar’s robe floating around him like he’s an apparition. I can’t stand how slowly he moves. One slow step, then another.
I want to run to meet him, but I’m afraid to. My Great Escape/historian/librarian futures flash before my eyes. The moon hangs above, taunting. Bad change, it seems to say, if you’re so desperate for an answer.
The second Porsoth is close enough for me to see his face, I ask. “Luke?”
He spreads his wings wide. “We have employed all the darkest arts available. Now we must see if he wakes … You realize he was wounded by a holy weapon.”
He sounds tired. Exhausted. It’s taken me hours to get here, so he would be.
“But he’s alive?” I seize on that.
Lilith latches onto the injury. “How badly?”
“On the surface, not so deep, my lady,” Porsoth says. “But such wounds can be tricky, as you know. The weapons are designed to nullify our magic. We do not understand their mechanisms.”
She tosses the hood of her cloak back, revealing her hair wild beneath it. “I want to see him.”
Porsoth fidgets. His usual way. Foot to foot. There’s a somber quality I’m not used to. “You can’t.”
“The hell I can’t.” I start to stride past him, but he extends a surprisingly firm wing. It holds me back.
“You can’t.” The words sound like a lesson. “Lucifer is with him. We’ll have to wait. All of us.”
“You must be joking?” I look to Lilith for support. This can’t stand. She won’t let it.
She nods. “I don’t like this moon, ’Soth.”
He crooks his feathered neck to examine it. “I don’t either, my lady.”
I can’t believe this, but Porsoth still hasn’t lowered his wing. He’s blocking me from going to Luke. He doesn’t move it until I take a step back, relenting.
“Porsoth,” I say, “we’re friends. Please.”
“Some duties go beyond friendship,” he says, noble owl’s beak lifted.
I don’t know what’s worse, the sentiment or the fact he’s broken out the lyrical pronouncements too.
Obviously, I only pretend to have given up and that I’m waiting semi-patiently for us to be allowed in, for Lucifer to arrive with an update. Once it becomes clear that may be a while, I start to scheme. It’s what Luke would do.
He wouldn’t sit out here cooling his hot heels under a cursed moon, not if it was me in there. I have as much right to see him as Lucifer. More, if love is a factor. (Because Lucifer loving anyone but himself? Doubtful.)
I’m surprised Lucifer even cares that he’s wounded, honestly. He practically set us up for some catastrophe like this … I snag on that thought.
He probably did set us up for something exactly like this. No way am I waiting out here. For all I know, he’s decided to murder his son. Once you’ve read enough books, the patterns are disturbing. And, with Lucifer, anything is possible.
When in doubt, I decide, go simple, not big. At least in this situation.
“Porsoth,” I say, “I hate to ask, but I have to pee. Can we go inside?”
First step, get in there. I don’t know where Luke’s chambers are from here, but I might be able to find them. There’s a chance that’s where he is. I can’t imagine a prince getting stuck in Hell’s medical bay. “Does Hell have an emergency room?” I ask, before I can stop myself.
“It does not,” Porsoth says. “Is this a ploy? My dear lady, you can’t disobey, not this time.”
“No, the question just occurred to me.” I feel a hint of guilt as I twist the knife. “For you to shame me for asking for information … our love of knowledge is part of our bond.” It’s for Luke.
Behind his spectacles, Porsoth’s eyes slide down. He’s chastened. “I apologize. Yes, we can wait inside as well as out. I’ll know when we can return.”
But not to a medical area. Hmm.
Lilith studies me like she suspects I’m up to something, but true to form keeps it to herself. I don’t think she’ll mind, and might even be disappointed if I’m not. She won’t violate the order herself apparently, for mysterious reasons, but I don’t have her hang-ups where Lucifer is concerned.
Porsoth turns and we head across the stone limb to the doors. I pause to remove my cloak and drape it over my arm, because there’s a distinct possibility I’ll get tangled in it or catch it on a burning candle inside otherwise. Lilith wears hers like a queen, as darkly elegant as a sentence to Hell is long. It’s difficult for me to believe we share even a hint of something in common, like non-mortalness.
Except for Luke. Hang on, I’m coming.
The wooden doors have two of the grotesque soldiers who frequent the castle posted inside. “We were coming to fetch you, sir,” the one with horns like a skeletal deer says to Porsoth, and then adds a leering, “ladies.”
Lilith’s eyes go heavy-lidded and for a second I think she might flirt, but then she flicks her wrist at him. “May your fingers turn to ice and fall off,” she says.
And … they do. The demon shrieks, but at a spear nudge from the other blue-skinned frog-like demon, quiets himself. The frog demon steps over his compatriot’s frozen fingers and gestures. “Here he is now.”
The demon Glasya-Labolas trots up the hall and it’s nearly impossible not to react to him like a dog at first. His face truly is the ultimate slobbery, happy dog face (Bosch is a lady, not a slobberer), though the rest of his shaggy body and the thick claws ruin the effect. Not to mention the eagle wings.
“Lilith,” he says with a voice like a deep bark, “Porsoth.”
He doesn’t even react to the frozen fingers on the stone and the antlered soldier standing with icy arms attempting to be as quiet and meek as possible.
“Report,” Porsoth says.
“We were asked to leave by…” he begins and keeps talking. Doctors here, just like in the regular world, not letting anyone else get a word in edgewise.
Lilith and Porsoth are intent upon the strange dog demon’s medical report and, while I’d like to hear what he has to say, I’d rather see for myself.
I make it two, then three steps away. A familiar head peeks out of a door up the hall and waves to me before disappearing again. Agnes.
The horned demon guard with the frozen, handless limbs raises one and says, “Excuse…”
Lilith shoots him a quelling glance that offers to freeze more of his appendages and he quiets. I shrug at him, and try to gauge when I should run.
Something tells me Glasya will be quick on those four paws of his. I look back and see Lilith waiting for me to catch her eye. She flicks her wrist again, behind Porsoth’s back. And then she asks Glasya a question. Porsoth nods and listens.
I go as quickly and quietly as I can toward Agnes’s position. She grabs my arm and drags me up the hall. Once we reach the end of it and round the corner, we’re out of sight.
“Where is he?” I ask her.
“His apartments, I believe,” she says. “I … I wanted to tell you that if it’s a choice between Luke living and me staying here … I’ll stay. You tried your best.”
“It’s not. Agnes, it’s not. But I have to see him. Which way is it?”
Agnes shrugs, pained. “I’m not sure. I only have access to common areas and the library.”
I take a beat. I visualize a mental image of where we were outside, and then where Luke and I have seen other people come and go from before. I think I’m on the back end of where I usually come in with Luke.
If I’m right, that means his apartments are somewhere on this side of the massive castle.
The corridors are empty, and the entire place has a feeling of holding its breath. Hell’s big on omens (Heaven too—I can think it again). I imagine that ominous moon has forked tongues wagging. Along with whatever rumors are spreading about Luke’s fortunes, and mine.
Something flutters against my face and I startle and nearly scream, but manage to swallow it. The moth from Lilith’s forest hovers in front of me on wide black wings and does a little Lassie the dog maneuver, back and forth. It must think I’m a moron.
“I get it,” I say. “Agnes, go now, back to wherever you’re supposed to be. I don’t want you in hot water.” Here, it might be literally boiling.
She looks like she might say something else, but she only nods.
When the moth takes off down the hall, bobbing and weaving on its lacy wings, I follow and Agnes heads in the opposite direction. Twice, the moth and I pause. There are distant shouts behind us and possibly the scrabbling of demon-dog paws.
But I begin to recognize the corridors and then there’s one final stairwell. The moth and I hide within it, one floor up, as tusked attendants in black leave. The moth circles the door.
I carefully tiptoe down the stairs and ease the door open to see what’s beyond.
Luke’s chambers.
The moth buzzes in my face once, then darts back the way we came, no doubt returning to Lilith.
The moment of truth. I prepare for whatever I find in these rooms.
And go through the door. There’s an attendant working in the small kitchen and I breeze past, raising my hand to dismiss protests that never come, not looking at them. I get past unseen.
I have to find Luke before I get hauled out of here. Lilith helped me for a reason.
The rest of the place is empty, so I head for his bed chamber. I hear voices within. One voice is dominating—Lucifer’s—but he’s in a conversation. If he’s talking to someone, it must be Luke.
If Luke’s talking, he must be alive. Right? I’m shaking with relief and joy and—
The smart thing would probably be to wait out here for Lucifer to leave.
I do the only thing I can: I barge in.
Let the devil take the … devil. I’m here for my man.