“So what are you saying?” I asked, picking up the conversation from where we left off. “That my mom prayed and God left the answer to her prayers here with you?”
Jericho made a noise at the back of his throat. “Your mother’s case was a little more complicated than that.” We walked up a narrow staircase. Here the dust was especially thick, and I waved my hand in front of me, coughing. My lungs heaved, unable to fully purge the cough.
“All the Hail Mary’s in the world wouldn’t save you. She knew that.”
“Wait. Me?” I’d been assuming that whatever deal Celeste had made had to do with her.
“Yes, you. You’d been marked since before birth. There’d be no stopping the wheels of a fate this strong from turning. Even Nona knew that, which is why she sent your mother here in the first place.”
“Nona sent her here?” I must’ve looked like I just found out Oliver had burned my wardrobe because Jericho quickly elaborated.
“Thick as thieves those two were. From what I hear, she and your mother were the best of friends. All I know was that Nona saw your mother’s fate unravel along with yours, and she came to me seeking divine intervention.”
“What?” This was all too much too quickly. Nona was once … young? And she’d been friends with my mother?
That picture of my mother at Cecilia’s house. The other girl had been her. Holy crap, my mother had been friends with a fate.
Jericho pulled a key ring out of his pocket and unlocked a door at the top of the stairs. He held the door open, and dazed, I stepped inside.
A wave of magic hit me, knocking the breath out of me, and I stumbled at the sensation.
Jericho chuckled. “It does that,” he said, following behind me.
We’d entered some sort of storage room, only this one was full of magical—and likely very valuable—objects. A strange gemstone reflected hues of light I wasn’t positive I’d ever seen before. The placard beneath it read, Alchemist’s Stone. A series of goblets took up one of the walls, some with descriptions, some without.
Jericho walked over to the far wall and pulled down a domed glass case caked in dust. He placed it on a side table and grabbed a rag, wiping it down.
Beneath the dust, the glass case housed an iridescent feather. I stepped forward, eyes narrowed. On closer inspection I realized it wasn’t simply a feather, but a quill.
“In return for a series of tasks, your mother and Nona were given a celestial request quill to be bestowed upon you in a time of need.”
“A celestial request quill?” I was so going to need a definition for that one.
“It’s a pen that allows you to place an official request for the heavens to hear your case.”
“My … case?”
I glanced back at the quill and swallowed. I didn’t have a good track record with quills. I tended to break them.
“The terms of its use are that the Celestial Plane—heaven—must hear your complaint and rectify it as they deem fit.” He glanced down at it. “You can only use it once.”
I looked at the quill. Had my mother and Nona meant for me to use it to write into God about my current situation?
I reached for it, but Jericho pulled the item out of my reach.
“You’re not going to give it to me?” I eyed the case. I was not above grappling with an old, angelic being for the thing.
“Nona had her own conditions,” Jericho said, “and there was one she was particularly adamant about.”
My eyes flicked from the container to the man that held it. “What was it?”
“She said I was not to give it to you until after you married the devil.”
Chapter 25
After I married the devil.
The devil.
I shivered at the implications of that.
Jericho’s hand rested lightly on my upper back as he walked me out. He held open the front door for me.
It hadn’t struck me as strange that Cecilia never mentioned Jericho when I visited her. Not until now.
Because she hadn’t meant for me to find him until after I’d met with Decima and after I watched her die. She’d wanted me to know that help wouldn’t intervene in time to save my life.
But help might come later. After I died. It was the tiniest spark of hope in the darkness.
“Now you be safe, and come find me straight away when your situation changes,” Jericho said, propping the door open with his body.
I let out a disturbed little laugh that ended in a whimper.
He clasped my hands in his dry, wrinkled ones. “For the record, you might smell damned, but I know an innocent soul when I see one.”
“Thank you?”
He nodded, more to himself than to me, and left me there. I stared after the emporium, my mind a tangle of thoughts.
“I am seriously considering chaining you to our bed.”
I yelped at the sound of Andre’s voice.
He pushed off the wall he’d been leaning against and prowled towards me, the muscle in his jaw feathering. “That seems to be the only way to keep you out of danger these days.”
“I had to come.” Had he overheard my conversation with Jericho? Did he know?
“Here?” Andre gazed up at the weathered sign. In the late evening, on the abandoned street, the musty books and faded antiques seemed a little wilted behind their glass casing. “Whatever for?”
He hadn’t overheard. I couldn’t decide if I was relieved or anxious at that.
“Cecilia had given me another task.”
His brows rose. “Why didn’t you tell me?” If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Andre sounded hurt.
“I needed to be alone.”
“‘Needed’?”
“Wanted,” I corrected.
Andre nodded. “As you’ve done most things lately.”
I took a step back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He paced forward, refusing to put space between us. “Animals find quiet places to die alone. They sequester themselves away from the living.”
And I was the dying animal in question.
“It might be a stretch to call you ‘living.’”
He stared me down until I squirmed. I held my hands us. “Okay, okay, it’s a distinction without a difference.”