Page 67 of Like Grim Death: Part One
His eyes search mine and he brushes his lips over my own, a soft moan coming unwillingly from the back of my throat. He huffs a laugh, slipping his tongue into my mouth, twirling it with mine. Our kiss is wet, and passionate, and he presses his chest further into me, pinning me to the door, but he doesn’t touch me.
“Good,” he whispers, then kisses me again, sucks on my tongue, causing my pulse to shoot up. He pulls away, but just barely, our lips still touching, saliva between us. “He’s your brother. I’m your husband. I don’t have anyone else to think about.It’s only you, and Rain, and me.I’m fucking selfish, andI’mthe one who’s going to be loving youto death.”He finally reaches for me, his fingertips slipping under my shirt and gliding over the swollen flesh from where he bit me. My stomach muscles jump, but I don’t flinch.
There’s no remorse in his gaze, and I stare defiantly back at him.
Yes, Lucifer. I know. To. Death.
When Rain and Lucifer are both sleeping, each in their rooms, I clutch the baby monitor tight in my hand as I walk quietly down the hallway of our second floor. My phone is in the pocket of my black sleep shorts and I have a verse typed out there in my Notes section.
Nightmares are not warnings,
They are merely shadows of our own minds.
Dark corners lit from sleep,
Flickering candles over snakes,
who
creep.
I don’t think I’m the next Poe or anything, but it’s the reason I woke and jotted down the verse which has me quietly entering Lucifer’s darkened office.
A dream of a boy with gray eyes, watching me in the night. He smiled, and a snake flicked out where his tongue should have been. It was fucking disturbing, and it hasn’t left my mind.
Slowly, I close the heavy, dark wooden office door behind me and for a moment, I only stand against it, breathing quietly in the night. The scent of old books I’m sure Lucifer has never read, alongside his pine scent, invades my nostrils. It smells like home and after another exhale, I push away from the door and walk across the hardwoods to Lucifer’s desk, black wood, ornate corners and edges.
I sweep my gaze over the entirety of the office—towering bookshelves; gauzy, black curtains pulled closed on floor-to-ceiling windows at each end of the office; an oval mirror I do not wish to catch my reflection in; and the desk itself, with an electric fireplace behind it, alongside a burgundy, leather chair.
The desk is not hollow. There are drawers on either side of it. I sit down in the cool leather chair, my thighs sticking to the seat, then I carefully place the sleek monitor on the desk, gazing at Rain sleeping peacefully in his little sleep sack.
My mind flickers to the walk today. Lucifer’s words to me later, about his uncle,Boaz,Rival’s Claw. How some secret societies have pages of information for the public to gawk at and devour and yet this one had almost none. I think of my husband’s insistence that he doesn't know the initiate nor why he’s suddenly arrived.
I wiggle the gray mouse for the desktop computer, watching as a black screen asking for a password pops up.The Malikovs.That’s the username with a bat and his outstretched wings as our icon, but I know Lucifer has his own too, even though he’s never shared it with me. He’d have to in order to honor cult secrets even wives aren’t supposed to know.
But I don’t plan to be merely a pawn to threaten or a decoration to perch. If my son could be in harm’s way—if other children could be in harm’s way because of the 6—I want to know. I want to do something about it.
It’s what Lucifer and I agreed to. There may be many powerful people around us, security for the type of sickening trafficking which gave me my childhood, but Lucifer is powerful too. The Unsaints could be the change in their own right. I don’t believe they’ll ever be heroes, but some things cannot stand.
Even so, I do not enter the password on the computer. Instead, I glance around the desk. An hourglass timer—for thirty minutes—a skull pen holder, and two candles both in small black cauldrons. I bought those.
There’s a black lighter too, and a white one, beside the candles.
I ignore all of that.
Instead, I flick on the only lamp—dark purple, royal, in its way—then, as light spills over this corner of the office, I lean over and pull on the lower drawer’s wrought iron handle. There’s a keyhole, but the tiny key is in it. The drawer doesn’t open, but I turn the key softly, then it does.
There are black file folders stacked all the way to the back. They aren’t labeled, and I study each of them, until I find one that seems to have been bent a little, near the top. Like someone tightened their grip on it in the throes of some strong emotion.
Dark corners lit from sleep.
I reach for the folder and splay it open with two fingers, then extract the printed papers inside with my free hand.
There are only two, which surprises me somehow. I thought angry secrets would be thicker. I guess though, it doesn’t take much to turn my husband into an asshole, even against printer paper.
I lean back in his office chair, hearing it creak as I do. One leg crossed over the other, I stare at the first page, gripping it softly in both hands.
Governor Phil Cooper discharged from hospital; attacker unknown.
