Page 53 of The Death Wish

She’d blinked, but barely paused. ‘Not as such, but I can get a hold of some reading material if you’d like. What takes your fancy?’

‘Fairy tales.’ Now she blinked again, with an added small smile.

‘Is there a problem?’ he’d glowered.

‘No offence intended, my apologies. I just hadn’t thought you…never mind.’ Smart woman. ‘Fairy tales it is. I’ll see what I can do.’

She’d not spoken more than a handful of words to him since. And had brought him several volumes of Grimms’ Fairy Tales–which he already had in his private collection at his residence in Arcadia–along with a pile of penny dreadfuls.

For two days he’d lingered. Reading. Sipping black tea. Picking at scones. But never fully falling into the lull of the tales that normally soothed him.

His hand ached.

The gash from his own vestige had not yet healed. Its line across his palm remained: a dirty grey cut with thin veins of black spreading from it. An oddity which concerned him, but one likely to be rectified on his return to Arcadia.

He simply had to decide when that return would be.

Lucifer took another sip of tea, and looked out through the iron-wrought window. The proprietor had shifted the small tableand chairs that had occupied this space elsewhere, and moved the armchair he favoured to rest there instead.

He had simply thought to catch his breath, amongst quieter folk. Sit with the dullness of the purebreds, before he presented himself to those of Gimli Hall. Before he took a knee before Enoch’s Ophanim throne; the throne beneath which the Creation Flame burned, guarded by the Eternal Wheels which spun in perpetuity, their nekhri surfaces covered in a thousand watchful eyes.

But he’d not been ready for those eyes, or those of the court, who would devour his every word, digest it, and then spew it back at him with a thousand questions. The Higher Angels would not take news of Gabriel’s betrayal well. Nor of Iblis’s existence, and the scourge of maleficium festering beneath their very noses. He would be challenged; he would face torrid accusations. The angels and daemons held an uneasy alliance. The Archangels would rage. Would always assume a king of Daemonkind sought to extend his power. Would always spoil for a fight.

Who did not, in Arcadia?

He’d be challenged.

Why had Lucifer not called on any Angelic assistance? Had the Lord Enoch truly gifted him the trumpeter, or had Lucifer stolen the Lord’s Wrath? What proof did he have that Gabriel was a turncoat?

Lucifer had no idea what support he could rely on from Enoch. Arcadia’s master never shared his designs. His workings were unknowable.

And his nature was devastatingly mercurial.

Who was not to say that this would be the moment Arcadia’s master would rid himself of a daemon king who knew a dangerous secret?

It was not beyond the realm of possibility that Enoch had not given Lucifer free will out of a genuine desire to allow Seraphiel’s plan to fruition, should the fates allow, but to bring about the demise of the one daemon in Arcadia who knew the Lord of Arcadia had killed his favoured angel.

Lucifer drained his tea cup. He’d barely set it down than the woman replaced his tea pot with another. She was remarkable in that way: knowing when a refill was needed, saving him the need to utter a word.

It was Lucifer who used words today. His throat dry with disuse. ‘I wonder if I might have a boiled egg?’

The woman’s face brightened. Strange creatures they were. ‘I’ll see to it, right away, sir. Toast, too?’

‘No.’ Lucifer returned to his penny dreadful, where a dubious barber was breaking necks, so as to make pies.

‘Right then.’

She turned away, but did not move. He shuffled his thin papers, coughing in the hope she’d move out of his space.

‘Can I help you?’ Her voice wavered.

Lucifer raised his gaze from one nasty piece of work, to another.

The man who had entered the comfortable rooms cast a silence over all its guests. Tea cups hung halfway to mouths, crumbs remained spilled in laps with hands raised in the process of dusting off but going no further. Only the fire dared to keep crackling.

‘Michael.’ Lucifer folded his penny dreadful, placed it carefully upon the table. He wished there had been one more swill of tea to drink so he could delay his rise further. ‘Would you care for tea and scones? An egg perhaps?’

The Seraphim appeared as a mortal man, but made himself no small creature. Imposing and dominant, as the angels were in true form, Micheal was a great bruising chap who’d be morelikely to bodyguard a crime gang’s leader: hair cropped so short he appeared almost bald, a protruding brow creating a shadow over his dark eyes. Though none of the purebreds could see the angel for who he was, he doubted they’d be more any more fearful if they could. So much threat rippled from the man.