“I heard your screams.” Goose sounded furious, and when I peered past my steaming mug, he looked it as well. “We all did. Paine wanted to intervene, but the family stopped him. We all know something bad transpired between you and Gabriel. Something very, very bad.”
Very, very bad? That was putting it mildly. “Then you also know if Disco didn’t mention it, it remains between us.”
He was still angry, but he relented. “Fair enough.”
Goose’s phone rang and I almost jumped from my seat like an edgy alley cat. He motioned for me to stay put and went to the phone hanging next to the kitchen door.
“Hello?”
I could hear Disco’s voice through the phone. “Have you found her?”
“Not yet. I was going to get a shower and hit Central Park.”
“Call me the minute you find her.” Was that panic in his voice? The part of me that wanted to believe it was quickly suffocated by the hurt portion that always managed to keep such thoughts out. You didn’t hurt those you loved. Once bitten, twice shy. It was more than a great eighties song—it was a motto worth living by.
“Don’t worry, I will.”
Goose hung up the phone and returned to his chair. “See, I wasn’t lying to you. No matter what happens between you and Gabriel, you can always trust me. Our friendship stands outside the confines of the vampiric family. It always has. You can trust me, Rhiannon.”
Damn it to hell, I wanted to cry again. “I can’t trust anyone right now.”
“Then when you’re ready, I’m here, okay? I’m just putting it on the table.”
As the steady thrum of the amulet warmed my skin, I knew there was something I could trust Goose with, even if he wouldn’t want to help.
“There is something you can help me with.” I pulled the jewelry from my sweater so he could see, and his eyes narrowed.
“I told you to get rid of that thing. It’s no good, I can feel it.”
I allowed the stone to drop to my shirt. “It doesn’t matter. Good or bad, I now owe a debt that has to be repaid within a year. Coming back wasn’t something that was free of charge.”
“You ended Zagan’s bargain.”
I nodded. “That I did, but it came with a price.”
The tension coming from him was palpable. “You made a deal with another demon?”
“No, I made a deal with a fallen angel. Marigold Vesta, to be exact.”
Goose dropped his mug, causing coffee to spill all over the table. He made no rush to clean it; he simply gawked at me as if I’d lost my mind. When he managed to find his tongue, he sounded bewildered.
“A fallen angel?”
“I don’t know much about her.” I retrieved the notes I stuffed into my back pocket and tossed them at him. “Just the information I was given in the future.”
As he began sorting through the papers, he asked, “What deal did you make with her?”
That was the whammy, wasn’t it? “She wants to be brought back to life. She said her remains are hidden in a location she is unaware of, and she wants me to find them and deliver her from Hell.”
I almost thanked Goose for keeping the papers in hand versus dropping them into the coffee, since his fingers were trembling. “You made a deal with a fallen angel who’s trapped in Hell?”
“Yeah, and get this.” I took a sip of coffee, hoping he didn’t take off screaming. “She’s Lucifer’s own concubine. How cool is that?”
“Only you would do something so foolish.” He rose from his seat, placed the papers on the counter, and went for the Bounty paper towels. “Pissing off the overlord of Hell isn’t exactly smart.”
“I didn’t have much of a choice, believe me. It was either make the deal or remain in a Hell world you don’t want to know about.”
I averted my eyes when he started at me, reminded too much in that moment of the daughter he would never meet because of what I’d done, the very daughter who had sacrificed her life in order to achieve a different, brighter future.
“So what are you planning? I don’t dabble in this sort of thing.”