Page 62 of Fear No Hell
Sam
I’ve never seen my mother as quiet as she is right now.
The second Lila snapped and dropped the bombshell of who she is, my mother went dead silent.
She picks at the worn seams of her jeans, her eyebrows raised so high that her forehead is one wrinkle away from looking like a Shar Pei’s.
Through it all—the fidgeting, the quiet, the disbelief—her attention remains on Lila.
“I’m sorry. I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” Mom finally says.
“I mean that I’m the woman Sam saw in the attic.” Lila stares my mother down, her chin raised defiantly.
Fuck, I love her so much.
“What would you know about Sam’s woman in the attic?”
“Far more than you do and on a far more intimate basis than you as well.” Her grip on my hand is crushingly tight. “I wouldn’t test me on this one if I were you, Michelle.”
“You can’t be—”
“Oh trust me, I can, and I am,” Lila spits. “Arthur locked me up there and raped me for four decades. The only time I saw anybody who wasn’t Arthur was the day he threw Sam down the stairs and the night I escaped.”
“But… there’s no way you can be the woman in the attic. That was almost—what—20 years ago. You don’t look a day older than Sammy.”
“I promise you I am.” Lila rolls her shoulders back as if she’s expecting a fight.
They face off for a second, Lila fiery and determined while my mother’s face cycles rapid fire from mockery to confusion then, finally, to disbelief.
“But how? Why? I don’t understand. Why would he do that?” My mother’s voice breaks, vulnerable in a way I haven’t heard her sound in years. “It can’t be… you can’t be real. There’s no way.”
Lila shoots me a look, one that asks whether I’m okay with her sharing her true identity.
Given everything we’ve discussed today—including that my father is a goddamn deity—I can’t see any reason why we wouldn’t, so I shrug.
Can’t hurt to air out everything, including that the love of my life is an immortal goddess.
“I’m the muse of epic poetry. I inspire authors at all stages of their creation of fiction.
Arthur figured out who I was and took me from my home in Greece.
As best I can tell, since I was unconscious during my kidnapping, he called in a favor with someone to transport me through private means and get me to Chicago.
And if Sam was conceived in 1997… then I had already been in the attic for several years by that point. ”
“You’re a muse? Like the muses in Greek myth?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not… possible.” Mom shakes her head.
“No, no, that can’t be right. The muses don’t exist.” For all that she’s denying Lila’s existence, we can’t miss what she’s doing.
The words are too earnest, her eyes too concerned, her voice too insistent; she’s begging us to tell her that she wasn’t, no matter how unintentionally, a part of Lila’s abuse.
That she didn’t wrongfully commit her only son because she couldn’t believe his stories about his father imprisoning a woman in the attic.
“You’re asking us to believe that your son’s biological father is the god of Pandaimonium who impregnated you during a sex ritual but would have us believe the muses aren’t real?
” Lila smirks with little humor. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but my sisters and I are real, regardless of whether you believe in us or not.
Your ex-husband imprisoned, abused, and raped me for almost forty years, all in the name of inspiration.
Most importantly, your son did, in fact, see your ex-husband raping me and tried to protect me.
And when he did, Arthur threw him down the stairs. ”
A clapping sound rings through the room as my mother’s hand flattens over her mouth. Tears gather in her eyes before they spill over onto her cheeks.
“The muse of epic poetry, hmm?” Lucifer lifts an eyebrow at Lila. “What did you say your name was again, my dear?”
“I go by Lila.”
A shiver of happiness goes through me at her proud declaration of the nickname I gave her. The only one she has ever had.
“That’s not your true name, is it?” Lucifer presses.
“No.”
“What’s your real name, oh muse of epic poetry?”
She narrows her gaze on him. “Is there something you’re digging for?”
“Your full name, for starters.” It’s unexpected how intense a pair of obsidian eyes—no irises, no sclera, no pupil, nothing, just blank, uninterrupted blackness—can be when they’re fixed unmoving and unblinking on you.
“It’s Calliope.”
“Ah, yes, I thought that might be the sister you were.” He clicks his tongue.
“That’s not who you really are, is it? You’ve been discovering things about yourself recently that don’t quite make sense, haven’t you?
” A long finger flicks lazily up and down in her direction, its arc encompassing the whole of her body.
“You haven’t looked like this your whole life, have you? ”
“I was around when Socrates introduced the Socratic method. It didn’t impress me then, and it sure as shit doesn’t impress me now. Say what you’re dancing around, Lucifer.”
“Well, pretty little muse…” Lucifer stands as an angry, hissing noise slips out of my lips in response to the endearment. He ignores it as he saunters across the room, his shoes barely making a sound on the floor as he comes to a stop in front of us. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
That finger emerges again, this time settling under Lila’s collarbone before drawing down to press against the tattoo barely revealed by her low-cut top. His fingertip sits nestled in between her breasts. “It’s good to see you, Lilith.”
I don’t know what he says after that because, at the sight of his hand on her, my vision hazes over, and I lose my mind.