Page 8 of All's Hell That Ends Well

Given the oppressive weight of grief that lay upon this palace, though, it was clear that Lilith wasn’t here, not even as a damned soul.

“Now those wheels are turning,” Lucifer murmured and took a sip of his drink. “Do let me know when you’ve figured it out.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Just because her soul didn’t end up here doesn’t mean she got reincarnated. That only happens to demons and angels.”

“When that blade cleaved through her neck,” he said with surgical precision, an abyss of sorrow looming behind that chilling tone of his, “what happened?”

I gulped. “She, uh, she dissolved into particles of light,” I said softly, new grief gripping me at the vivid memory of that scene.

“And that usually happens at the death of whom?”

“Demons and angels,” I whispered. “But…she wasn’t one, was she? A demon?”

He shook his head. “Nor was she human any longer.” His gaze fell to the liquid in his glass. “Not after all this time.”

I processed that for a moment, trying to understand just what he was asking of me. “How…how am I supposed to find her?” I waved at my chest. “This isn’t a radar. Or a GPS tracker. It’s not like this’ll let me pinpoint her location.”

“Her essence will call out to you.”

I threw my hands up. “Over thousands of miles, all around the world? We don’t know where she got reincarnated—if she did at all.”

He glared at me, and the lone candle in the room flickered precariously, while a morbid chill whispered over the floor and crawled up my legs.

I cleared my throat. “Um, yeah, without deets on her absolutely for sure, factual reincarnation that totally happened, I don’t even know where to start looking. And I doubt I’ll be able to trace her essence from the other side of the world, so…”

“You’ll feel a kinship when you’re near her.”

I opened my mouth and closed it, narrowing my eyes and raising my hands to ball them in frustration right in front of me. With a deep breath to gather my composure, I straightened my fingers. “So, do I understand this right? You want me to comb the entire earth for her?”

“Yes.”

I closed my eyes briefly and pressed my lips together, hoping that when I opened them again, I’d be dealing with a less unhinged version of Lucifer.

Alas, he looked just as insanely determined as before.

“This is madness,” I whispered.

The smile he gave me was something out of a horror flick. “You haven’t seen madness yet.”

“Do you know how many people there are on Earth?” I sounded just as aghast as I felt.

“Eight billion one hundred three million seven hundred fifty-four thousand and sixty-three.” He made a pause. “Sixty-eight.” Another pause. “Seventy-two.” A second later: “Seventy?—”

“All right, all right!” I waved my arms. “Point made. But also, you can’t honestly expect me to go looking for her in such a huge crowd. It’d be easier to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

“Searching for her,” he replied with icy calm, “will be your only purpose from now on. You will scour the earth for her until you find her.”

“But that could take years! Decades, even!”

“Then I suggest you hurry, because she doesn’thavedecades.”

I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. “What do you even intend to do when I find her? Bring her back down here?”

“Precisely so.”

My brows drew together. “But…you do realize that living in Hell made her?—”

I broke off at the terrifying speed with which his expression darkened, inky veins spidering out from his obsidian eyes.

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