“So I got something from Daddy besides the color of my eyes,” I said impatiently. “So what?”

“A blood connection has power. You, of all people, should understand this. It is why Lucifer pursues you so doggedly.”

I understood the strength and importance of bloodlines all right, but I failed to see why this particular trait was so meaningful to Nathaniel.

“Let’s keep moving,” I said, continuing down the hall.

I thought about the little one growing inside me, wondering what traits it would get from me, and which ones it would get from its daddy. For the first time since I’d found out about the baby, I felt a little chill of fear. There were monsters in this child’s bloodline. Would my baby be another horror unleashed upon the world?

We crossed through several more rooms and hallways until I was hopelessly lost. Everywhere we went were signs of damage and destruction. Strangely, there were no bodies. I knew for a fact that we’d taken out dozens of Azazel’s soldiers as well as a ton of charcarion demons. We reached the ballroom, and I pushed open the doors.

The room was smashed to pieces. Chunks of the ceiling were missing, and the floor-to-ceiling windows that bordered the back lawn were shattered, letting in the cold Minnesota air. Outside, the sky was gray and still. A whisper of menace drifted through the open window.

“Madeline.”

“Can we move to another part of the mansion?” I said, shutting the doors hastily and moving down the hall to a set of steps that I thought would lead to the labs.

The stairs were stained with blood and other sticky gunk from the nephilim we’d battled, but again, no bodies.

“What happened to everyone?” I asked as we climbed the stairs. “Did Azazel actually take the time to have all the corpses carted away?”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Jude said.

We reached the upper hallway. Four doors stood on the left side before the hall terminated in another short flight of stairs. All four doors were padlocked.

“Interesting,” I said, looking at Jude.

He nodded. “What’s the point of locking doors if there’s nothing behind them?”

I approached one of the doors to inspect the lock.

“Be careful,” Nathaniel warned. “Azazel surely protected those rooms with something stronger than just a human’s lock.”

I hovered my right hand above the lock. The snake tattoo on my palm shifted, warning me that Nathaniel was correct.

“There’s some kind of spell on the door,” I said, thinking. “But there has to be a limit to how much damage it will do.”

“Why would you say that?” Jude asked.

“Because Azazel would want to deter the curious without potentially destroying whatever he was trying to protect. So I think it’s safe to assume the door won’t blow up or anything like that.”

I stepped back, searching my pockets. All I came up with was some lint.

“Have either of you got a coin?” I asked.

Nathaniel silently produced a quarter and handed it to me.

“You know, the two of you need some help in the playful banter department. The quality of the conversation really goes down when Beezle’s not around.”

“We should argue with you for no productive reason in order to make you more comfortable?” Nathaniel asked.

Jude looked at me impassively. No help there.

“It’s like being with two stone sentinels,” I muttered.

I tossed the coin at the door. It hit the spell that covered the entrance. For a second I thought the magic was just a warning, or that it wasn’t working properly. The coin dropped toward the floor, and then suddenly it crumbled into ash.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“Kicking the door in isn’t an option, then,” Jude said.

“That was almost a joke,” I said. “Your delivery needs some work, though.”

We all stared at the door as if a solution would suddenly present itself. And then one did.

“Why do I keep forgetting about that?” I murmured.

I stepped forward and put my hand on the wall beside the door.

“What are you doing?” Jude asked.

“I am the Hound of the Hunt,” I said quietly, “and no walls can hide my quarry.”

The wall became fluid beneath my touch, and my hand passed through it.

“I’ll see if I can get the door open from the other side,” I said, and disappeared into the wall.

I emerged in a clean, bright room that could have been a chem lab at a university. Beakers and tubes filled with various mixtures sat on shelves. There was a long counter with a microscope at one end. On the opposite wall were several black three-ring binders.

I checked the impulse to immediately start going through the binders and instead turned back to the door. There was no obvious sign of a spell on this side—no handy “off” switch, and I didn’t think I’d be able to turn the knob with the padlock on the other side, anyway.

I stuck my head back through the wall. Jude and Nathaniel stood with their arms crossed, scowling at each other.

They turned to me simultaneously, starting to speak.

“I don’t want to know,” I said, cutting them off. “There are some binders in here that I want to go through, and I can’t see any obvious way to open the door. I’ll look through them and be out shortly.”

I ducked back into the room before either of them tried to speak again. I was pretty sure I knew what they were arguing about. Jude had probably questioned Nathaniel’s loyalty/bravery/masculinity and Nathaniel had gotten angry. Cue downward spiral of civility from there.