Page 60 of Fallen Demon

She smiled at him. “You’re welcome.”

I glanced from Lacey to Rage, back to Lacey. Was I sensing something here, or was it just me?

“How did you sleep?” Farrah asked me.

I shook my head. “Not very well.”

“Me neither,” she said.

“I don’t think any of us did,” Wyatt said.

“Ain’t that the truth?” Tanner's voice rang through the room as he and Jasmin walked in.

“Calm down, Tanner,” Jasmin muttered. “We talked about this.” She took one of the heads of the long table while Tanner took the other. “Lily, we’re ready.”

Lily appeared from a side door with two lesser demons who brought out heaps of food and deposited it in the middle of the table. There were pancakes, waffles, all kinds of eggs, bacon, toast, muffins, bagels, croissants, fruits, juices, three kinds of coffee, and even hot chocolate. The delicious scent of it all tickled my nose and my mouth watered.

For a few minutes, the only sound on the room was of everyone piling up their plates and eating.

Tanner ate only a little and didn’t waste time.

“With Lord Drake not calling the shots at the moment, we need to come up with a plan ourselves,” he said, his voice unusually serious. This pissed off Tanner was rubbing me the wrong way. “Anyone have any ideas?”

“So, just to recap,” Farrah started. “We need to capture Ylena and Levi, return Levi to his old self, stop Rhodes, and save Elysium?”

“You say that as if it was an easy to-do list,” Rage mused.

“Definitely not easy, but we need to know all the details before we come up with a plan, no?” she said.

Frowning, Rage nodded.

“I think the first thing is to figure out where Ylena and Levi would have gone,” Lacey said. She looked at me for a second. “I think Levi would be going after Ylena.”

“And we heard Rhodes is after Ylena too,” Jasmin said.

I frowned. “How?” And more importantly, “Why?”

“We might not have a handle on the entire underworld yet, but we do have plenty of connections in the human realm,” Tanner said. “As for why … to kill her? To shut her up? To bring her back to their side since she’s strong? Who knows?”

“And who cares?” Rage said. “The important thing is stopping both of them.”

“So what?” Zad asked. “We go after Rhodes and Ylena?”

“And Levi,” Lacey said. “He’ll be where they are.”

“And I think I know where Ylena will be,” I said. “Well, that’s not true. She doesn’t knowwhere, but I do know what she’s after.”

“The Scarlet Hex Dagger,” Zad said.

I nodded.

“So, one more item for that list,” Jasmin said. “To find the dagger before Ylena and put it in a secure place, where no one, not even us, can access it.”

“Do we even know what the dagger does?” Tanner asked. “What if it’s a simple dagger and everyone is going crazy over it?”

“It can’t be a simple dagger,” Lacey said.

I nodded. “Molraz went to great lengths to secure it, and then look at everything Ylena and Rhodes did to get their hands on it. Whatever this dagger does, it can’t be good.”

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