“Lilith, wait,” Cam said.
“What are you trying to do, Cam? Drive me to suicide like that other girl?”
He reached for her. Everyone was staring at them now. “It’s not what you think.”
“I’m done being played.” She shoved him away and headed for the door.
A bunch of kids from school oohed in Lilith’s wake. Cam closed his eyes and tried to tune them out. He sensed Arriane and Roland at his side.
“That did not look good,” Arriane said.
“You’re cutting it close, Cam,” Roland said. “I know you like to live dangerously, but you’ve got one more day. I don’t see this ending well.”
The café door swung open, and in swanned Luc. “Hello, old friends.” He shot them all an incredibly fake smile. “Talking about my favorite subject, Cam’s inevitable doom?”
Cam couldn’t stop himself: Without thinking, he pitched his coffee cup in the devil’s face. The plastic top popped off, and the sizzling brown liquid splashed across Luc’s skin. Cam heard the students’ gasps, but he was more concerned about Lucifer’s reaction. That had certainly been a very dumb thing to do.
The devil took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, then leaned in close to Cam, his face strained with rage.
“I gave you an out,” Luc said. “You should have taken it.”
He spoke to Cam in his true voice, quietly enough for the kids around them not to hear it, though they certainly felt the rumbling of the earth beneath their feet.
“And you two.” The devil turned to Arriane and Roland. “You were allowed in for one reason and one reason alone. Do your job. Talk some sense into your senseless friend. Or face me.”
“We’re working on it, sir,” Roland said. “You know how stubborn Cam can be.”
“This is between me and Lucifer,” Cam said. “And it’s not over yet.”
“It was over before it began,” Lucifer said, motioning to the door Lilith had fled through. “You’ve managed to make her hate you even more now than she did before you got here.” He let out a low laugh. “Yes, it is definitely over.”
The devil stepped closer, until he and Cam were inches apart. Cam could smell the rot of Lucifer’s breath, the stench emanating from his skin. “By the end of the day tomorrow,” Lucifer said, “you’ll be mine. Forever.”
Approximately 1000 BCE
Cam sat on the deck of a wooden boat anchored in a small marina.
He was shirtless, with his ankles crossed, gazing out at a low moon. For the past two hours, he’d been trying to teach himself to play the lyre he’d stolen from a man selling saffron at the market. Surely if he could conquer Lilith’s instrument, he could conquer the Lilith-shaped hole inside him.
So far, it wasn’t going well.
“Cam,” a sultry voice purred, “put that thing down and come over here.”
He turned to the young, olive-skinned girl behind him. She was propped on an elbow, her long legs folded behind her. Her golden hair undulated in the breeze.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” Cam said.
Since he’d left Lilith, Cam had surrounded himself with a series of girls, hoping in vain that they would distract his broken heart.
When he’d fled Canaan on his wedding day, he had sought out Lucifer in the clouds. Since the Fall, Cam had had little to say to the devil. Every century or so, Lucifer proposed a deal—Cam’s allegiance for a dominion within the underworld—but Cam was never interested.
That time, though, when Cam turned up, Lucifer smiled knowingly and said, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Now, a second golden-haired girl interrupted Cam’s memory as she walked the plank from the marina to the boat. “I thought I’d find you here,” she called.
“What are you doing here, Xenia?” the first girl demanded. She looked at Cam. “Did you invite her?”
“Korinna?” Xenia exclaimed. “Why are you on Cam’s ship?”
Cam set down his lyre, glad of the distraction. “I see no introductions are required.”
Hands on hips, the two girls glared at him and each other.
He took a breath and forced a smile. “You’re two beautiful girls on a beautiful moonlit night. Unless you prefer fighting, why don’t we have a little fun?”
He dove into the sea. When he surfaced, he floated on his back, looking toward the boat. Maybe they’d join him. Maybe they wouldn’t.
He didn’t care either way.
“Still want to go through with this?” the boy asked from the helm of a cedar rowboat anchored at the edge of the marina. Lilith had discovered his name was Luc, but otherwise had learned very little about her companion.
Lilith listened to the splashing and the laughter from the water near Cam’s boat. She swallowed, a lump in her throat.
She had come all this way to find him. It hadn’t occurred to her that he might already have moved on to the next girl, and the next. She ached inside, but she would not leave Lesbos without trying to know his heart once more.