Page 83 of All's Hell That Ends Well

His low laugh was drenched in mischievous amusement as he turned the book over and read the back cover copy.

I remembered that tome on Sumerian legends I’d read in the library the other day, and I summoned it to me with a thought, not wanting to sit here and stare holes in the air while Lucifer explored the depths of my depraved reading tastes.

Fortunately for my nerves and general state of embarrassment, though, Lucifer didn’t actually read the book, instead laying it to the side after a moment and indeed returning to sitting in silence with me, his gaze unfocused as he stared at the wall, apparently deep in thought.

That cloak of sorrow and misery around him had lightened a bit, maybe courtesy of Lilith’s spark being close to him, though there was still a whisper of moroseness about his power. Minutes passed, and I settled into the ancient tales of gods and heroes and kings, to the point where I startled when Lucifer spoke up again.

“Humans think death smells bad,” he said in a toneless voice, his gaze still unfocused on some random point on the wall. “When in reality, it’s not death they smell, butlife.”

I lowered my book and blinked at him. “Excuse me, what?”

“Death itself has no scent. What people are smelling on a rotting corpse are actually the bacteria that are part of thedecomposition, and those bacteria”—he leveled his enigmatic dark gaze on me—“are alive.”

I shuddered all over, not so much because of the image he painted, but because the way he was saying it and that entire line of thinking was creeping me the fuck out.

“Death,” Lucifer said, “is stillness and silence and the absence of variation. It is the great neutral. It’s life that fucks things up.”

Once again, I snapped my book shut, my eyes fastened on the horrible emo-goth version of Lucifer in front of me. I felt like gifting him with a mixtape featuring Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, and maybe some Ville Valo sprinkled in for good measure.

I leaned forward. “Do you need a mental health intervention?”

He stared at me unblinking, and I swore those eyes were like black holes drawing in energy and matter and devouring everything around them. “Why?”

I flailed in his general direction for a good ten seconds, struck mute by the many things that were currently making me worried for his emotional well-being.

“Are you having a stroke?” he asked calmly.

“Areyou?” I shot back. “This”—I made a sweeping gesture indicating him in all his goth glory and the tomb-like room he preferred to spend his time in—“is concerning.Youare concerning. You can’t just drop some creepy musings on death while you look like a barely alive version of yourself, not when I know your mental health is hanging on by a mere thread. Are you okay?” I pinned him with a probing look. “Will you be okay for the next few weeks until I get back?”

He gently waved that away. “I will be fine. I know that you are going to find her, and once she is back with me, all will be well.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek, fighting the pressure to voice what had been building inside me the more I’d thought about this whole Locating Lilith thing. Alas, I lost the fight. “I feel like,” I began, “we need to talk about logistics.”

Those obsidian eyes pinned me with a questioning look.

I wrung my hands. “Am I right in the assumption that your intention is to bring Lilith down here as soon as I find her?”

“Yes.”

“What if I find her while she is still a child? Would you bring her down here regardless?”

Lucifer stared at me.

“Your answer,” I gritted out, “cannot be yes.”

His expression darkened. “You are not in a position to tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.”

“You’re right. Only Lilith would be. And if she were here, she’d tell you that you are out of your ever-loving mind if you consider dragging a child to Hell with the intention of making her your bride.”

The room shook with his power as he bared his teeth and snarled, “I am no pedophile!”

“No, you’re just a groomer!” I snapped right back.

He blinked at me, his energy hovering like static in the air.

I took a bracing breath and plowed forward. “It doesn’t matter if you wouldn’t touch her until she’s of age and able to consent. If you bring her here to live with you, you’ll put her in a vulnerable position as your ward, and she’ll bond with you as a child will with an adult who takes care of them. She will look up to you and trust you, and all the while, you will know that you intend to one day have a romantic and sexual relationship with her, but she won’t realize that—and she wouldn’t be in a state to even grasp what that means yet—which makes for a horribly creepy, exploitative dynamic where she doesn’t even get a fair chance to grow up on her own terms. Even if you don’t mean to,you’ll be raising her to be your bride.” My heart hammered in my chest, threads of anxiety pulling at my nerves, but I gathered my courage and pushed on. “I will not stand for that.”

My rapid breaths echoed in the quiet of the room, my energy a buzz in my blood.

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