Authors: Michelle Rowen
She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the marble Lucas gave her earlier with trembling fingers. She squeezed it. She didn’t believe it would really bring her any luck, but it was a pleasant thought. She needed some pleasant thoughts.
The marble warmed in her palm. When she looked at it, she realized it had started to glow.
Why was it glowing?
She frowned. “What the hell?”
Snap.
A bright white light, as if someone had just taken her photo, emanated from the marble and blinded her. She blinked and rubbed her eyes. When she opened them again, she realized she wasn’t in Opa’s ladies’ room anymore.
THIRTEEN
Eden stood alone on the shore of an ocean, barefoot in the sand. It was warm out and the sun shone above her. There were palm trees and large pink and purple flowers she could see as she turned around in a circle.
She gawked at the nearest palm tree.
What the hell just happened?
Had she passed out because of the pain? Maybe she couldn’t deal with it anymore.
Another thought occurred to her: Was she dead?
No. Her heart was still beating. She was breathing—more rapidly with each passing moment. She could feel the tropical breeze on her skin. This had to be a dream.
It felt too real to be a dream.
From the corner of her eye she noticed a man approaching her. He wore white pants and a white shirt and walked steadily down the beach toward her. As he drew closer, she realized that she recognized him.
“Lucas,” she managed, her voice breathless.
“Glad you could make it, Eden.”
“Am I dreaming right now?”
“No.” He glanced at their surroundings. “This is real. I wanted to talk to you privately. I thought you might like this.”
Her head hurt. She looked down at the marble sitting innocently in the palm of her hand. “And this is—”
“Not a marble.”
“It looks like a marble.”
“It does, doesn’t it? But it’s not. It’s a summoning crystal created especially for you.”
She flexed her right fist, ready to will black magic into it, but nothing happened.
“You can’t use your magic here,” Lucas said. “This is a neutral zone.”
“Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
He smiled. “I’m your new neighbor. The substitute teacher.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Strangely, no. Take this. I don’t want it anymore.” She held the marble out to him.
He shook his head. “That’s how we’ll communicate.”
“And why would we want to do that?”
“Because you’re going to help me solve a problem I have at the moment. Someone wants to destroy me. And you’re going to help stop him.”
She looked around. “How do I leave? I need to get back.”
“Darrak will be fine without you for a few minutes. Don’t worry. This isn’t far enough to strain your bond. It’s a metaphysical location rather than a physical one.”
She looked at him sharply. “How do you know anything about that? Tell me who you are, or we’re going to have a problem here.”
His smile didn’t falter. “You’re still welcome to call me Lucas. I like it.”
“But . . .”
“But my full name is”—he raised his gaze to hers—“
Lucifer
.”
That knocked the breath right out of her. “You’re joking.”
“Nope. No joke.”
Her mouth went as dry as the sand she stood on. “Lucifer. As in
the
Lucifer. Or were your parents just majorly Goth?”
“
The
Lucifer.”
She didn’t speak for a moment. She
couldn’t
speak.
Just as she was about to freak out as fear and panic spread through her, she forced herself to remain calm. This
couldn’t
be the real Lucifer. It was impossible. Wouldn’t Darrak have clued in when they’d met him in the hallway?
Of course he would have.
And wouldn’t the Prince of Hell give off some sort of important vibe? He felt 100 percent human to her. Not even a wisp of magic.
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” she asked, forcing herself to sound as skeptical as she felt.
“Seriously?” He stared at her for a moment. “You need proof?”
“Well, yeah. Of course.” She nervously poked her big toe into the warm sand. What she really wanted to do was turn and run away, but since she had no idea where she was, she knew that wouldn’t help.
“You need to take my word for it.”
She crossed her arms. “Why would the real Lucifer be concerned about anyone trying to destroy him? Wouldn’t you be all powerful and all evil?”
He raked a hand through his short brown hair. “This meeting is not going nearly as well as I’d anticipated.”
She was losing her fear the more she spoke. “Lucifer wouldn’t need my help.”
“Oh, really?”
“That’s right. And if I refused to help, he would have already killed me. I’ve seen the movies, you know. I know demons.”
“You think so, do you?”
She glanced at the beach around her again. “Maybe you’re that wizard master Stanley was talking about. Maksim. And you’re trying to mess with me. He said you were at a resort right now on vacation. Is this it?”
Lucas rolled his eyes. “And to think you own a private investigation agency. You’re no Nancy Drew, are you?”
She drew close enough to poke him in the chest. Even that felt completely human to her. More proof that’s exactly what he was. “Okay, Maksim. Enough. You have no damn idea how close I am to the edge this week. You do not want to piss off a black witch who doesn’t come with an instruction manual. You think PMS is bad? Guess again.”
“I’m not Maksim,” he said patiently.
“Then who are you?”
“Lucifer.” He gritted his teeth. “Like I already said.”
“Sure you are.” Still, her voice shook a little.
“You want proof?” he asked. “Take my hand.”
She looked down at his outstretched hand for a moment and then grabbed it. “Fine.”
Snap.
The next moment the beach and ocean were gone. Eden now stood on a rocky precipice that jutted out from a cliff side. She looked down into bleak horror below. Flames undulated like a terrifying ocean hundreds of feet below. It was fire for as far as her eye could see. She felt the heat reach up and wrap itself around her, oppressive, making it hard to breathe. She couldn’t see anyone else, but screams of terror and pain pierced her eardrums.
A rock shifted and fell to the canyon below, and she shrieked as she almost lost her balance. Lucas grabbed her arm before she fell.
“Welcome to my home,” he said. “As a living human, you normally wouldn’t be able to visit here, but much like the beach, this is only a representation.”
“What is this place?” she managed.
“I’ll give you three guesses, but the first two don’t count. Let’s just say it’s a nice place to visit, but you probably wouldn’t want to live here.”
“Hell.”
“Part of it. There are many other areas, but this is the place that looks the best on the postcards. Do you believe me now?”
She couldn’t think straight. “I . . . I’m not sure . . .”
“Fine,” he replied. “Have it your way.”
He pushed her off the side of the cliff and she fell, head-first and screaming, into the ocean of fire.
Snap.
Back to the beach. Lucas sat beside her, dragging his fingers through the sand. A warm breeze wafted through her hair. Her heart jackhammered in her chest.
“Theo will require your help to find a weapon here in the human world,” he said evenly. “He believes it has the power to destroy me. For now I only want you to observe, but eventually I’ll need you to bring it to me.”
She stared at him. He was Lucifer, wasn’t he? No matter how much she tried to deny it, it didn’t change anything.
“Why me?” She fought the urge to scramble away from him. He looked so harmless, but he wasn’t. Looks could be so deceiving.
“Because you’re close to the action. Also because we have a few things in common.”
Her eyebrows went up. “I find that hard to believe.”
He absently made patterns in the sand. “You’ve recently been dealing with a curse. I’ve been dealing with one for an eternity. You have a powerful darkness inside you that you shouldn’t use. So do I.”
She let that sink in. “Hold on.
You’re
concerned that you have a darkness inside you that you shouldn’t use.”
“That’s what I said.”
She just stared at him blankly. “I find that hard to wrap my head around.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He met her gaze, and he looked so incredibly human. “Many people confuse me with Satan. I don’t doubt that you would, too.”
A shiver coursed down her spine at the other recognizable horror movie name. “Are you trying to say he’s the real prince of darkness and you’ve just gotten a bad reputation because of him?”
“Not exactly.” He was silent so long she wasn’t sure he’d say anything else. And then, “Satan is who I become when I use my dark powers. He’s who you should really be afraid of. Satan is my curse, part of my punishment—the one I received when I was cast out of Heaven. And with your help I can destroy him once and for all.”
Eden just gaped at him. It was a look she figured she’d perfected today.
Lucas stood up and paced to the waterline before turning and coming back. “And you’re the one who gets to know the truth. Don’t you feel lucky?” He grinned, but it was strained. “All of this time, thousands of years, I’ve been cursed to remain in Hell. Cursed with an inner darkness that keeps me from redemption.”
More gaping on Eden’s part. “You want to be redeemed?”
“More than anything. I was cast out of Heaven because I refused to kneel before humans.” His face shadowed with disgust. “Insects. Powerless, ungrateful, and dirty, destroying the gift of this world from the moment they were created. And I’m supposed to love them unconditionally?” His lips thinned. “I tried to accept my punishment and make the best of it, but I never have. I want to go back to my home. But the curse works like an anchor, trapping me in Hell.”
“But you’re here.” She looked around the beach, trying to make sense of what he was telling her. It wasn’t easy. “I touched you in the hallway of my apartment. You’re real.”
“I’ve found a way to enter the human world, but . . .” He trailed off.
“But what?”
“But when I’m there, I’m not exactly the same as I am in Hell.”
She studied him carefully and warily, trying to sense something in him, but there was still nothing. That alone helped clue her in to what was really going on here. After a moment, she gasped. “Wait a minute. Are you . . .
human
here? I don’t sense anything more from you because there’s nothing more to sense, is there?”
It was as if the answer came to her head directly from Alex Trebek himself.
He raised pale brown eyes to hers, and she could see the shock and immediate distrust. She’d figured out his little secret too quickly. “You sensed that, did you?”
Eden just nodded, waiting for him to deny it.
He didn’t. “It’s why I try to stay here as little as possible. It would be very embarrassing if I got hit by a bus while crossing the street.”
“What would happen then?” she asked, trying to reconcile everything she was learning from him and failing miserably.