“Are you staying for whatever Samiel’s cooking, then?” I asked.
She pulled me into the bathroom and lowered the toilet seat lid. “Sit.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue with her. Besides, it didn’t seem that arguing would do any good. Chloe was like a force of nature. I could see why Samiel was so disconcerted by her.
She took the scissors from the cabinet and began to snip here and there. Every once in a while she would tell me to move my head this way or that. I closed my eyes and hoped I wouldn’t end up looking like G.I. Jane.
“There,” she said with a satisfied tone in her voice. “Look.”
I stood, a little afraid, and looked in the mirror. And was pleasantly surprised.
She’d shaped the hacked-off mess into a neat pixie cut that framed my face.
“It suits you,” she said.
“Thanks,” I replied.
She nodded and walked out. I brushed my teeth, washed my face and took a moment to admire the new me in the mirror before something bad happened to me again. Of course, the new me came with a set of slash marks across my face courtesy of the Hob. The cuts plus the hair made me look a lot like an anime character.
Chloe and Beezle sat at the table in the kitchen. Both of them were shoveling pancakes and bacon in their mouths as fast as Samiel could make them.
“Are you preparing for an appearance on Man v. Food?” I asked.
Chloe and Beezle both grunted at me and kept eating.
“Where’s Nathaniel?” I asked Samiel.
He said he wasn’t certain he would be welcome so he would eat downstairs, Samiel signed, shrugging.
“Well, if he thinks I’m going downstairs to soothe him out of his sulk, he’s got another think coming,” I said.
Samiel plated some pancakes and handed them to me. You’d better take this before it hits the table; otherwise one of them will devour it.
I sat down with my pile of pancakes and started eating. After a while, Beezle came up for air.
“I went online last night after you fell asleep.”
“And?”
“And it seems that all is not quiet on the faerie front. Certain factions in Titania and Oberon’s court believe they should not have sent the Hob after you.”
“Really? I’d have thought all the faeries were on the vengeance-for-Amarantha team.”
“There are some who believe that Amarantha brought her troubles on herself by involving the court in the affairs of angels. And now that the Hob is dead, those folks are saying that to pressure you further is an unnecessary risk.”
“It seems your reputation for complete and total destruction precedes you,” Chloe said.
“And they think it would be stupid to pick a fight with a child of Lucifer,” Beezle added.
“Why? Lucifer’s never bothered assisting me before.”
“But just because he hasn’t yet doesn’t mean that he won’t in the future. And nobody wants Lucifer angry with them. They know what he did to Amarantha.”
“Yet Titania and Oberon don’t share their trepidation,” I said thoughtfully. “Why?”
“They must think whatever power they’ve got can stand up to Lucifer,” Beezle said.
“Can it?”
“They are probably more or less as powerful as they seem, but I think it’s been millennia since Lucifer really bothered to exert himself.”
“So if he wanted to, he could squash them like bugs.”
“I think so. But it would be more like squashing a nuclear power plant.”
“If you kill something that old and that magical, there will be aftershocks,” I guessed.
“Right.”
“So what these factions are really worried about is being in the way when the explosion happens.”
“You can’t credit most faeries with concern for the greater good,” Beezle said.
“J.B. is pretty noble-minded,” I said.
“He’s only half-faerie, and he spent most of his childhood with his father. He’s more human than you are.”
“Thanks,” I said, chewing slowly and thinking about what Beezle said.
Titania and Oberon’s actions didn’t make sense. Even if they believed I owed them for Amarantha’s death, the matter should have been settled after I killed the Hob. They had to know that if the Morningstar got involved, it would be bad for everyone. It was almost as if they were…
“They’re picking a fight with Lucifer,” I said aloud. “But why?”
“Remember what Jude told us when Wade was missing? All the courts are choosing sides for a future war.”
“Yeah, but Titania and Oberon are not just lining up on one side of the battlefield or the other. They’re actually trying to start the war.”
“What’s in it for them?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t know. They must think they’ll get the spoils. But this brings us back to what we were just talking about. Lucifer is more powerful than anyone knows, so there’s no way they could win.”
“Except maybe he’s not,” Chloe said.
“You think Lucifer is not as powerful as he’s perceived to be?” Beezle asked.
I thought about the strain of magic that ran in me from Lucifer’s line, diluted by hundreds of generations and yet infinitely stronger than any other power I carried.
“He is that strong,” I said. “But the faeries must think they’ve got something stronger.”
Beezle looked at me. “Or that they’ve found his weakness.”
“I am not Lucifer’s weakness. He would happily throw me on a bonfire if he thought he could get something out of it.”
“Maybe before, but not now,” Beezle said pointedly.
“But they don’t know about…” I said, trailing off. I didn’t want to talk about the baby in front of Chloe.
“If that meaningful silence is for me, don’t bother. I can totally tell that you’re pregnant.”
“Really? How?”
“You’ve got that puffy look that pregnant women get.”
“I’m maybe two weeks pregnant. I do not look puffy.”
Chloe’s eyebrows winged up to her hairline. “Whoa. So you look like this all the time?”
“Moving on,” I said. “There’s no way the faeries could know. And even if they did, I don’t think killing me is the best way to weaken Lucifer. I don’t think he would sit at home crying over me; do you?”
“No. He would probably blast the entire kingdom of Faerie into oblivion,” Beezle said.
“Exactly. So it doesn’t make sense. Nothing they’ve done makes sense.”
A headache was brewing between my eyes. There were too many plots, too many loose strands to collect. Azazel and the vampires on one side, Titania and Oberon and their obsession with vengeance on another. A common desire to overthrow Lucifer linked them both. Were the two plots connected, or was it just coincidence that they both decided now was the time? Why had Lucifer suddenly been perceived as vulnerable?
I didn’t have enough information to try to decipher the ways and means of Lucifer’s enemies. So I had to focus on what I did have—Azazel’s notebook.
While Chloe and Beezle demolished the rest of the pancakes, I explained what had happened the day before.
“So we need to find out what Azazel’s experiments are all about,” I said, presenting her the binder that Nathaniel had found.
She took it from me with a look of gleeful curiosity on her face, scanning the pages quickly.
“He’s definitely using some known chemicals, but some of the other symbols seem to be unique,” Chloe said, frowning over Azazel’s equations.