“To kill angels,” Lucas finishes.
“Yes. In case it came to that.”
I tense. “You mean, if it came down to me or another angel.”
“Yes,” Julian says.
I spin my weddings rings around my finger, stomach getting queasier and queasier by the minute. Lucas, bless him, can sense my discomfort and holds me a little tighter.
“It’s late. The sun will be up soon and you…” he starts, looking at Julian. “You should rest? Do angels rest?”
“Normally, no, though I should lie still for an hour or so to speed up the poison leaving my system.”
“Do you, uh, need anything?” I ask.
“A new shirt. This one is torn.”
“You can have one of Lucas’s,” I say and get the side-eye from Lucas. “Oh, please,” I mutter. “You have more clothes than I do.”
“Fine. I’ll get something.” Lucas kisses the top of my head and gets up to go to our room and get Julian something to wear.
Silence falls over the room, and Freya trots in, rubbing against me and then curiously sniffing Julian. We’re related in a cosmic way, and as strange as it is to say I feel a connection, I do.
“Has your former brother left you alone since we interrogated him?”
“For now. Though I have a feeling he’ll come crawling back to cause drama sooner or later. Especially since I ran into Nancy Martin and her pretentious friends while wedding dress shopping. She knows I married a vampire.”
“Which is bad because she doesn’t like vampires?”
“Yes, and it goes against everything William Martin’s political party stands for.” I roll my eyes. “They can’t really renounce me publicly, though, so as far as the press is concerned, I’m still a Martin, through and through.” I shrug. “Honestly…I don’t care. Well, I do. I’m still hurt by everything, no matter how hard I’ve tried to put it behind me. But between turning down demonic wedding proposals and hunting a homicidal necromancer, anything they throw at me will take a backseat.”
“Homicidal necromancer?”
“Ruth, the witch who has it out for me. She’s turned to voodoo and necromancy since her powers were bound by the Grand Coven.”
“And she went after Lucas?”
“Yes. It’s…it’s a long story.”
Julian sits up. “Tell me.” His eyes meet mine, and that weird sense of divinity vibrates through me. It’s like sensing his angel-powers makes me realize how strong mine are. I’ve had nothing to compare them to, and what made me feel so different is humming right along in the same cosmic rhythm as Julian’s powers.
“To make a long story short, she cursed him with the reverse of a necromancy spell, which slowly kills someone from the inside out. She started bringing Lucas back to life, knowing he wouldn’t survive it.” I swallow the lump in my throat and feel even more nauseous than before. “He got stabbed by some crazy anti-vampire protester, who I don’t think had anything to do with Ruth, actually.” I shake my head and let out a breath. “He just stood there and took a knife to the stomach to prove a point. Vampires aren’t all bad. Just like people aren’t all good.”
I pause and look at Julian, almost afraid he’ll correct me and say that vampires are bad and I’m silly for denying it. Because there’s no way I can deny that Lucas has done some terrible things and doesn’t regret it. And I know he’d still do terrible things if it weren’t for me.
Which opens a whole other can of worms, because part of me would be okay with him doing terrible things to certain people.
“How did you lift the curse?” Julian asks.
“Evander—you met him at the wedding—got ahold of another warlock who specializes in curses. We used a variation of a Solomon summoning circle to contain the curse and then transferred it to another undead body.” My heart speeds up just a bit. Please don’t ask for more details. I don’t want to lie to Julian, but I definitely don’t want to tell him that Lucifer ultimately gave me the missing piece to the puzzle.
And that I’m still thankful for his help.
“I had to resort to necromancy myself,” I admit. “I brought a dead squirrel back to life and transferred the curse that way. It got a little dicey, but it worked.”
“Michael told me your mother, Callista, was quite the remarkable witch. I’m not surprised you are, too.”
“Really? Has he said anything else about her?” I lean forward, desperate to know more about my mom.
“He said you look a lot like her. She had green eyes, too.”
I’m hit with emotion again and smile, somehow comforted by the fact I share a physical attribute with my mom. It makes her seem more real.
“I don’t know much,” Julian tells me apologetically. “Michael doesn’t talk about her. He’s still hurt by her death.”
“It was my fault,” I say, suddenly realizing it. “She died so she could give birth to me.”