Heir of Night by Emily Goodwin

Chapter 11

Istare at Tabatha, positive I heard her but confused at the same time. “I can’t send a demon to Hell right now, and unless someone found out how to get a raft on the River Styx, an exorcism will just set the demon free into the world. Which seems rather dangerous, if you ask me.”

“We’re not setting it free,” Tabatha says with a slight smile. “Your friend Melinda gave us the idea, actually. If you can trap a spirit in a box, why not attempt to trap a demon in something stronger than another person?”

“I’m not follow—wait—you said Ruby and the twins are meeting with us. They’re not coming here, are they?”

“No, we are going to them at the Covenstead. It’s where Lucas is right now.” Tabatha holds her hand up, knowing I’m about to fire off a million questions. “Hellfire kills demons, but we only know for certain it does when they’re in their true form. Killing a demon when their dark spirit can’t be sent to Hell will release that spirit on earth. Normally, if the body the demon is possessing is under stress or in danger, they’ll leave, which is exactly what they do when the body starts to decompose.”

“Are we going to constantly transfer the demon from one body to another? That’s a death sentence for a lot of people.”

“Not if we put the demon into a vampire.” Tabatha straightens her shoulders, still looking regal despite not getting much, if any, sleep last night. “It was Lucas’s idea after Ruby told him about her breakthrough with the binding spell, and he retrieved a vampire for us. We can bleed the vampire and make it weak, but it won’t die. The demon can be bound inside and kept safe at the Academy until we are able to send it to Hell for good.”

“Whoa. That…that’ll actually work.”

Tabatha smiles. “Just pray it will.”

“Pray to who?” I ask cattily. “Lucifer’s on vacation right now and he’s the only one who’s been answering any of my prayers.”

Tabatha purses her lips and shakes her head. “I have several witches and warlocks from our coven already preparing the spell, and the High Priest is coming from the Crescent Moon Coven to help.”

“You’re saying you don’t need me?”

“We have this covered,” she tells me.

“You know I don’t do well sitting on the sidelines. Besides, you know you’ll end up needing me.” I raise my eyebrows and give her an innocent smile. “And if Lucas is there, plus the whole freaking coven, I won’t exert myself.”

“It’s not just exerting yourself, but exposing yourself.”

“That only happens when I drink. I promise to keep my pants on.”

Tabatha shakes her head again. “I’m not only suggesting you sit on the sidelines because you’re pregnant and could get hurt. I am worried, Callie, about what will happen if the archangels get definitive proof a Nephilim is on earth. We know what they’ll do to you, but we don’t know what they’ll do to your father.”

She takes my hands. “I’m sure you’ve thought about it before on a personal level. But cosmically? A war between such powerful beings could actually be the end.”

I swallow hard, making a mental note to add yet another thing to my oh shit list. “You’re right, and I know I’m still fighting through resentment and abandonment issues, but my dad has sacrificed and risked everything to keep me alive.”

“He has, and you’ll understand more once you hold your baby in your arms. There is nothing we won’t do for our children. You cross lines you never thought you’d cross.” She lets go of one of my hands and picks something up from the table next to us. “Just like I am now.”

“What?” I ask right as Tabatha blows a powder into my face.

“Somnum, my darling girl.”

I can’t react fast enough, and the spell takes effect immediately, making everything around me go black.

My eyes flyopen and I sit up, sucking in a breath. I’m in my bed, and Binx is next to me. “How did I get up here?” I ask out loud.

“I carried you,” Eliza says. She’s leaning against the closed bedroom doors, looking like a fairy princess again in a pastel-blue dress with her blonde hair hanging in perfect waves around her face. A fairy princess I’d very much like to punch right now. “Like a baby. I can’t say you sleep like one. You talk in your sleep.”

“I don’t.” I blink a few times, fighting off the rest of the sleep spell. “I was trying to say a counter-spell, but those damn herbs were paralyzing. I couldn’t talk.”

“That was the point.”

I stretch my arms out in front of me and wiggle my fingers. “This is bullshit.”

“Is it?” Eliza crosses her arms across her chest and doesn’t move away from the door. Physically, she’s much stronger than me but is no match if I use magic. “We all know you would have gotten involved, just like when the protection spell was cast on the Ley lines.”

“Yeah, and it’s a good thing I did get involved. They needed me, and they might need me now.”

“Don’t even try,” she says when I get out of bed. “Tabatha put a barrier spell on the house. You can’t leave.”

“I can break a barrier spell with ease.”

“She was aware, which is why she linked it to every bottle of wine in the cellar. If you try to break the spell, all the bottles will break right along with it. All that wine will be wasted.”

“Hilarious,” I deadpan, giving Eliza a blank stare. “Just…just step aside so I don’t have to telekinetically shove you away.” My feet are tingly, as if they’d fallen asleep. I wiggle my toes to get the feeling back. The spell hasn’t quite worn off yet, but I know how to completely counter it. I just need to get downstairs and mix up a quick potion. I get up and wobble.

“Callie,” she says sternly. “You’re not steady on your feet. Sit before you fall—again.”

Needing to stick it to her just a little, I hobble to the end of the bed and sit on the bench. Binx comes over, rubbing his head on my arm.

“No, I’m not mad at you,” I tell him. “But you could have stopped them.”

“We all agreed it was for the best,” Eliza says.

“Even Lucas?”

“I’m sure he did when Tabatha told him,” she says after a moment of hesitation. “He’d already left when it was decided you should stay behind.”

“So he has no idea what’s going on?”

“Easy.” Eliza holds up a hand. “He’s been filled in on everything, knows you’re safe with three familiars, a hellhound, and me, and you can go to the Covenstead to wait out the day with him when it’s all over.” She points to an hourglass on the dresser. “Now that really is linked to…I don’t know…something. Magic is confusing.” She shrugs. “The sand will run out when the spell is complete.”

I watch golden sand slowly fall from the top of the hourglass to the bottom. There’s no surplus of sand at the top like normal, since it’s being supplied by magic. “Leaving me behind, though…that’s shitty. I could have sat in Evander’s office or something.”

“Really?” Eliza puts a hand on her hip and stares me down. “Sometimes you don’t know when to leave well enough alone, and you know that.”

“Fine, it’s true. It just hurts to be left behind like this.”

Eliza moves away from the door and sits by me on the bench. “It wasn’t that long ago you yourself were quite worried about going into premature labor. And really, it wasn’t like they set out with a secret plan to ditch you. It was decided right before you woke up this morning, actually.” The sunlight streaming in from the large windows hits Eliza’s face, making her subtle ivory eyeshadow sparkle. “You’d be the demon's number-one pick once it’s removed from Noah’s body.”

“I can’t be possessed,” I tell her, thinking back to the time when the demon I exorcised from Evander tried to take control of me. “Because I’m half-angel.”

“But Elena’s not.”

“Demons don’t possess babies in utero.”

“Do you know that for sure?” she asks, and when I don’t answer, she gives me a pointed look. “Kristy was the one who thought of it, and once she said it, we all agreed she had a point. If the demon tried to jump into your baby, we wouldn’t know, would we? And we don’t know what that would do to a baby.”

“Great, so add worry your newborn is going to get possessed to the list of other things I have to worry about.”

“I think they’re being a bit extreme if you ask me, but Callie,” she puts her hand on mine, “sit this one out.”

“If something happens, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“Don’t you think we all feel the same?” she counters, raising her perfectly filled in eyebrows. “You’ve saved the world multiple times since I met you, and I haven’t known you that long. Besides, you have to agree it feels like this demon is baiting you.”

“Well, yeah. It’s a chaos demon.”

“It feels bigger than that.” She straightens her shoulders and looks out the window. “Bigger than wanting to create chaos in your little group. It feels…apocalyptic.”

“That’s because it is.” I run my hand over Binx’s smooth fur. “I never got a chance to tell you guys last night, but things are…are bad.”

“How bad?” Eliza’s brows push together.

“When the gates of Hell opened, demons got out.”

“Yeah, we already know that,” she interrupts.

“Including the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

She looks at me, unblinking. “You’re not fucking funny.”

“I’m not joking. I told Lucas, and that’s why I asked Tabatha to get Evander here yesterday.”

Eliza springs to her feet, pushing her long hair back. “Well, fuck.”

“I know.”

She paces from the window to the door. “I understand your carelessness with this exorcism now. You need to move on to bigger things.”

“I’m not careless,” I counter. “But yes, stopping the Four Horsemen of the fucking Apocalypse is the bigger problem.”

“Yeah, I’d say so. What’s your plan?”

“I don’t have one.”

“You always have a plan,” she snaps. “An annoyingly heroic plan that puts yourself in danger with no regard to how being in said danger makes those who care about you feel.”

“I’ll come up with something. Julian’s already trying to find out everything he can. In the meantime, we’ll, um, we’ll prepare and do what my dad is always telling me to do: live your life.” I make a face. “God, it’s weird when I give out the advice I won’t take.”

“Shouldn’t you be watching the news? I’d imagine the Horsemen will be easy to spot.”

“It’s not going to happen like that,” I say. “Four creepy dudes on horseback would definitely create a stir. And honestly, I don’t even know if they’re literal dudes on literal horses. War isn’t going to roll into town swinging a battle ax. He could start slow, making friends turn to enemies, and then work his way up to world leaders clashing.”

“You’re worried the chaos demon was sent by War?” Eliza whirls around.

“No, I mean, I was, but the timeline doesn’t match. They said Noah got possessed the night before the Horsemen escaped, but it did give me flashbacks to when I was dying of the demon disease.”

“The Horsemen were still in Hell then.”

Something clicks in my head. “I think this was the plan all along. Maybe the demons knew they’d never actually be able to overthrow Lucifer.”

“So they wanted to turn earth into Hell 2.0.”

“Exactly.”

“How are you doing?” Eliza asks softly. “Really doing?”

“Honestly,” I start and look up at her, wanting to confess how good it felt to sit on the throne of Hell, to have all those demons under my command, and how there’s a small part of me that is starting to think claiming ownership—for good—could solve all our problems. I stop when I see the worry in her pretty blue eyes. “I never expected things to go like this. Marrying a vampire was enough of a stretch. Add in finding out my father is the warrior of all warriors and my uncle Lucifer is the most reliable family member, and yeah…never imagined this would be my life.”

“Tell me about it. It doesn’t seem that long ago when my biggest fear was getting caught in a flash mob.” She shudders. “All that cheer and coordination. Gross.”

I laugh. “That’s a legit fear that I’ve never thought about before.”

“At least I can make a quick exit.”

“Lucky.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “But I can’t make the lights flicker.”

Rubbing my thumb over my fingers, I conjure a string of rainbow-colored magic. “That part is fun. In my younger days, ya know, before I got so mature and wise and not petty at all, I used to make people think certain places were haunted. Once, I spent six hours outside this guy’s house moving things around telekinetically and turning his electronics on and off. I only left when he called 911.”

“Do I want to ask why?”

“He cheated on Kristy. I saw him making out with another girl after he told her he was too sick to take her to dinner.”

Eliza smiles. “There’s nothing like a bit of revenge.”

“It seems insignificant now.” I shake each foot, testing them before I stand. “Though at the same time it doesn’t. Little insignificant things are what make life so good or so bad. They’re the difference between living and merely surviving.”

“After living as long as I have, I can attest to that.” Eliza gets a distant look in her eyes. My phone buzzes with a text. No one inside the Covenstead has service to text me, so that leaves someone from the bookstore, my sister, Melinda, or Easton to be the one texting. I was right, and I open Melinda’s text.

Melinda: Hey. Everything good?

Me: We’re still working on it.

Melinda: Let me know if you need anything else from us.

Me: I will, thanks.

I scroll up in the text, seeing that she sent photos of that alchemy book. Lucas must have forwarded the images to Tabatha while I was sleeping last night. I put the phone back on the nightstand and walk around the bed.

“I’m just going to the bathroom,” I tell Eliza. “And I’m not going to make a jail break. Wait a minute. Tabatha wouldn’t lock me in the house with no means of escape. What if it caught on fire or something?”

“I might have made that up. I didn’t know a barrier spell was a real thing.”

“It’s like a containment spell but prevents doors or windows from being opened,” I explain. “They typically don’t last too long and can be easily undone.”

“Good to know, I think.” Eliza shrugs and looks at her nails. She has long acrylics on, painted in various shades of pink with lots of glitter. Her girly appearance can definitely be misleading and is a good reminder of why you shouldn’t judge anyone by their appearance.

I use the bathroom and then take a few minutes to load up my laundry basket to take downstairs. I have time to catch up on laundry, at least.

“What are you doing?” I ask Eliza, seeing her standing in the hallway.

“Trying to decide what room to take.” Eliza points to the door next to the room that will be the nursery. “This will be closest to the baby, but I really don’t want to hear you and Lucas fucking every night. I do like the view from that room.” She turns and points to a room at the end of the hall. “Though it is smaller, so I’d have to keep the pigs in another spare room.”

“Whoa, the pigs? Why are you bringing your guinea pigs here?”

Eliza looks at me dubiously. “You really think you can handle a newborn without me? You couldn’t even get through one little party.”

“There were extenuating circumstances yesterday.” I prop the laundry basket on my hip.

“Exactly. You’re a danger-magnet, Callie. You admit it. It’s who you are, and I’m not faulting you for it. Someone has to swoop in and save the day, and really, the world is lucky to have you. But we need to be realistic here. The next time you’re in danger, get flown off to who-the-fuck-knows-where, or have to rush out to exorcise a demon from a fucking werewolf, someone is going to have to watch Elena. We both know Lucas will go after you if you’re in trouble, too.”

“That’s…that’s true.”

“Next to Lucas, I’m the person you should trust the most with my sister.” She flashes her fangs. “I’m able to protect her.”

“You are,” I agree. Lucas and I haven’t discussed things this far ahead yet, but having a live-in nanny crossed my mind once or twice, and then the idea was immediately squashed. It’s not like I could put a disclaimer in my help wanted ad about my baby having magical powers and demons most likely seeking her out.

“I know. She is my sister in one sense or another. I know I might not come off as someone who loves children, because I don’t.”

“That’s a reassuring thing to say to the mother of the child you’re forcing nanny-duties onto.”

“Elena is different. She’s not some grubby child. She’s family, and when you disappeared yesterday, it…it really scared all of us. Including me.”

“I am sorry I scared you guys, but I’m not sorry I went.”

“I’m not, either, and I—” She cuts off and turns her head, listening to something I can’t hear. I drop the laundry basket and follow her when she goes back into the bedroom.

“What is it?” I ask.

“The sand,” she starts, pointing to the hourglass. “It’s going back up.”