“I don’t know,” Julian says apologetically, eyeing me from across the table. “It won’t come to that. We will protect you.”
“Told you,” Eliza mumbles, and Lucas puts his arm around my shoulders.
“Would it be possible for me to talk to my dad?” I ask, telling myself not to get my hopes up.
“Possible, yes. He’ll want to know what happened, and if Lucifer has taken any sort of interest in you, he will protect you himself. Your father loves you, Callie.”
And now I’m all teary-eyed again. Throat tight, I nod and go back to my food.
“I have to report back,” Julian says. “And I will find Michael. He will come if it’s safe.”
“Will you be back too?”
“Yes, when I can. I shouldn’t have stayed a long as I did, but I needed to warn you about the dark prophets.”
“I’ll be ready. If they can hold off attacking until after the Blood Moon, I’ll be able to make a strong vanquishing potion.”
“That’s a good idea,” Julian tells me and reaches out, resting his hand on top of mine. “I will come back as soon as I can.”
“Don’t keep me waiting too long. I worry.”
Julian smiles softly. “Okay.”I roll over, angrily fluffing my pillow. I’m tired all fucking day, and now that it’s night and I’m in bed, I can’t sleep. Lucas is next to me, lying perfectly still. Since he’s not consuming as much blood as usual, he needs a few hours of sleep tonight, and I might be feeling a little bitter about how easily he was able to slip into a dead sleep.
Unable to turn off my mind, I slowly get out of bed and tiptoe downstairs so I don’t wake Lucas. I keep going over it in my head, replaying the scene of Abby getting shot and Lucifer showing up. I want so badly to believe he cares like he said he does. That him taking the baby wouldn’t make sense.
But the more I thought about it, the more I made things worse in my own damn mind. Lucifer knows I’m Michael’s daughter. He knows his brothers and sister would kill me with no hesitation and then would probably turn on Michael, knowing he betrayed and lied to them.
Would Lucifer try to use me as a bargaining chip? Turn me in in exchange for his freedom?
“No,” I whisper as I open the fridge, pulling out my leftovers from Suzy’s Cafe. “They wouldn’t let him run free.”
Binx jumps up on the counter, waiting for me to heat up the chicken tenders so I can share with him.
“I do believe that he’s bitter and pissed at his siblings for locking him up,” I tell him and run my hand over his sleek fur. “Turning me in would be the opposite of spiting them, right? Unless it’s just to spite Michael.” I sigh and gently close the microwave door. “And I thought I had family issues.”
I get my food out right before the microwave beeps, and share the remaining chicken tenders with my familiars and Scarlet.
“Need out?” I ask my little hellhound. She goes over to the door, prancing in place. I toss my to-go box in the recycling and dash into the living room to get a blanket from the back of the couch. I wrap it around my shoulders and pad back into the kitchen to go out the back door.
The second I open the door, bright lights turn on overhead and a terrible screeching alarm rings out in the night.
“Fuck,” I mutter, having forgotten about the stupid security system Lucas installed. I wasn’t even aware he turned it on like this at night since I’m usually asleep if he is. In just a second, he’s down here, fangs bared.
“I was letting Scarlet out,” I shout over the alarm. “How do you turn it off?”
Lucas takes a hold of my wrist and pulls me back in the house, not convinced bad guys aren’t lurking in the shadows, and enters the passcode into the alarm system’s control pad. It’s the same code he uses at his house in Lincoln Park: 666.
“Sorry,” I say once the alarm goes quiet. “I forgot.”
“You’re all right?” Lucas shuts the door and puts both hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. The annoyance over the stupid alarm fades away as soon as I see the worry in his eyes. Being woken up by that horrible noise would be starting enough, but to be woken up by it and then think your pregnant wife was under attack would be even worse.
“I am. I couldn’t sleep so I came down to get something to eat and then let Scarlet out.” I put both my hands on Lucas’s chest. He’s wearing navy-blue sweatpants and nothing else, and I don’t know why I find the sweatpants-only look so damn hot on him, but I do.