Page 52 of Infernal

Curiosity getting the better of him, he pushed off the doorway and came to stand in front of me. Craning his neck, he looked down and peeked at the numbers I’d circled.

“Owens?”

“I’m not sure which number is his,” I said as I picked up the phone and dialed the first phone number listed under Owens. I really should have thought twice about smashing my phone to smithereens on the side of the highway.

“His?” Dominic hung up the line. “Now would be a good time to fill me in.”

“Caleb Owens—he’s a Caster.”

“Yes. And what of him, love?”

“Do you remember what I told Gabriel last night? That maybe we were reading the wrong books?”

“Vaguely.”

I paused before answering. I needed to get my thoughts together in order to present my idea as efficiently as possible, because if I didn’t, Dominic wouldn’t go for it. And if he wasn’t for it, he was against it, which meant he would be a thorn in my ass, and I so didnotneed a thorny ass right now. “Well, that got me thinking—”

“Heaven help us.”

“—Maybe we really are wasting our time digging through the Order’s endless supply of books and Scripture. If the Dark Legion knew how to create a vessel for Lucifer, they must have a fail-safe if something goes wrong, right? And if anyone knows the ins and outs of a vessel, it’s the Dark Legion.”

He frowned, knowing where I was going with this.

“And who better than the ones who opened the Hellgate in the first place?”

“The Roderick Sisters.”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

“Okay,” he said, dragging the word out. “And you think they’re just going to hand over this information to you?”

“Not even if Hell froze over,” I said, knowing full well what lies ahead of me. Unfortunately, the Roderick bitches and I left off on bad terms, so chances were, they weren’t going to help me with a damn thing. Not that they’d help me even if we were on good terms. Hell was the team they played for, and that alone made us enemies.

“I need to find another way to get close to them,” I began cautiously. “The only thing I can think of is to isolate one of them from the pack and then force her to give me the information I need.” And by force, I mean torture until she begs to tell me everything I want to know.

“That’s assuming you can get anywhere near them, which we both know isn’t a possibility.”

Apart from being prominent Dark Casters, they had the gift of Sight, meaning they could hear and see me coming from a mile away.

“Right.” I tweaked my eyebrows. “And that’s why I need Caleb.”

“And what is it that you think he’s going to do?”

I smiled darkly. “He’s going to bind their magic.”

19. BLAST FROM THE PAST

After several awkward conversations with people who were obviously not Caleb Owens, I finally called the right house and managed to get Caleb’s mother to give me his cell phone number. After that, it wasn’t hard convincing him to meet up with me, especially after I told him I needed his particular brand of services again.

Caleb Owens was always up for a chance to show off his talents.

Dominic and I pulled into the parking lot of Starry Beach, the lakeside park that had hosted Spring Carnival several weeks back. It seemed like such a lifetime ago that I was walking through the park with Gabriel, still learning the truth about who I was and the hidden world around me. It was hard for me to think about the past now. The more I looked back, the further I felt from it…from who I used to be.

Caleb was already there waiting for us, sitting on the hood of his yellow Camaro and fiddling with his phone when Dominic and I walked up to him. A toothy grin coiled his mouth as his eyes flicked up and found us.

“Damn, Blackburn. Long time no see,” he said as he ran his hand through his chestnut hair and then nodded over to Dominic, who faintly returned the gesture. “Where’ve you been hiding?”

“You don’t want to know,” I said and gave him a quick hug. “How have you been?”

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