“I love you too.” We hug again, and Elena kicks when my stomach is pressed against Kristy.
“Oh! I felt that.”
We break apart, and I put my hands on my stomach. “I think she wants me to eat.”
“I can take you to the staff lounge. The students are still in the great hall. They have class today, but there’s no lingering in the halls,” she says, knowing I don’t want to run into any of my oddly adoring fans right now. “Or I can bring something up.”
“Evander brought me food, but biscuits and gravy sound really good for some reason.”
“Then let’s go to the kitchen and make some.” She squeezes my hand.
“I’m going to tell Lucas first. He’s sleeping. He, um, he lost a lot of blood last night and won’t drink from me.”
I can see the mental debate going on inside Kristy’s head by her facial expressions. “He can have mine.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know. I want to. Sister Celeste can fill a few vials. It’s not a lot, but it’s better than nothing, right?”
“You’d really do that for him?”
“For you both. We could really use someone fast, strong, and immortal on our side right now. Let’s eat first. The last time I donated blood, I almost passed out.”
“And that,” Ruby says, voice ringing out through a large classroom of first-year students that we just passed by, “is why we don’t mix lavender with sandalwood.” The students all murmur in agreement, shocked to find out that mixing the two is a good way to accidentally summon something. Though if one or two of them in there is like me, they’re going to go back to their room and try it.
It’s nearing three p.m., and Ruby is finishing her last class of the day. After eating breakfast with Kristy in the staff lounge, I went outside to visit Scarlet with Binx, Freya, and Pandora. They get me, no questions asked, and I spent a good few hours outside on the school grounds crying and thinking about how fucked up everything is.
It still weighs on my mind as I make my way back to the room—to Lucas. Kristy, true to her word, went to the infirmary and had Sister Celeste take her blood for him. He looks better, not quite as pale as before, and the life is back in his eyes—so to speak, that is.
“Hi.” I close and lock the door. “Sorry I left you alone for so long.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” Lucas says. He’s sitting at the little table near the window. The bathroom light is off, and it’s dark in the room. A tiny bit of light glows around the thick curtains, giving just enough light for me to see.
“You had to be bored up here.” I take my shoes off and go to the bed.
“I had Evander bring me a few books to look through.” The chair scoots out, and he stands, turning on the lamp on the dresser. “When I went to the house last night, I noticed something I hadn’t before.”
“More bodies?”
“No, those I had noticed. The books Julian had been looking at.” Lucas picks up a scroll of paper and brings it to me. “Look familiar?”
“No,” I say, scanning a copy of some sort of Ancient Egyptian drawing of a boat in a fuzzy-looking lake.
“Hieroglyphs were before my time,” Lucas goes on. “I’ve been translating a translation, which is tricky because words have different meanings when translated certain ways. Regardless, this is a lake of fire that guards a gate to the underworld.” I lean in, needing more light than what the small lamp on the dresser offers. I extend my hand to summon a string of light but stop.
Something in the drawing does look familiar. The water isn’t fuzzy. It’s the lake of fire.
Blue hellfire.
Chapter 40
A small blue flame dances in my hand. I look from it to the drawing and back again. “That’s where I’m summoning the fire from.”
“Julian seemed to have thought so. He said he was checking out a theory.”
Closing my fist, I put the fire out. My mind is whirling. The Underworld is another hell dimension. If I can pull fire from it, the gates to it aren’t closed and sealed like they are to Hell. Which means I can send something down.
Like the Horsemen.
“There’s one other thing.” Lucas goes back to the table, trading the scroll for a torn piece of notebook paper. “It’s in Enochian. Julian wrote it.”
I take the paper, throat tightening. Blinking back tears, I go to the dresser for better light. “I don’t know what the first line says, but this,” I say, tapping the paper, “it says to find Lucifer and give him the paper my father gave me.”
“The blank piece of paper?”
“That’s the only one.” I flip the paper over, checking for a hidden message. Did Julian even know about the paper? My brain is too fuzzy to think back and remember if I mentioned it or not. If I didn’t, then my father did. The paper has some sort of significance, obviously, and as soon as night falls, we have to go home.