I stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring blankly at my refrigerator.

“This is why I wanted you to accept me before you learned the truth. Your father said you would react like this,” Gabriel said from the doorway.

I looked up at him and blinked. “I don’t have any wine, or tequila, or anything else with alcohol in it.”

Gabriel sighed, muttered under his breath, did a funny little finger wave and suddenly there was a bottle of red wine uncorked on the counter. He had even put a glass next to it.

I looked at him, then picked up the bottle. “Elysian Fields cabernet sauvignon?”

He sketched a little bow.

“Thanks for the magical bottle of underworld juice, but I have chocolate somewhere, and it will do in a pinch.” I started rummaging in the cabinet above the sink.

He frowned. “You do not want the wine?”

“I’ve read enough faerie tales to know that only the deeply stupid take food or drink from supernatural beings,” I said, pushing aside a couple of bags of granola and cursing. Where had I put that damned candy?

“I told you I am not a faerie,” Gabriel said, and he sounded a little affronted.

“Yeah, but you didn’t bother telling me exactly what you are, did you?” I said, and my voice rose. “Dammit, Beezle, did you eat that chocolate again? I told you, that’s for emergencies only ...”

My voice trailed off as I remembered what had happened to Beezle.

“Can you fix him?” I demanded.

“Fix . . . ?” Gabriel asked.

“Beezle. My gargoyle. The big, horned sweetheart who made mincemeat of my face hurt him, and I can’t tell how.”

Gabriel looked uneasy. “Show me.”

I led him into the bedroom. A couple of hours ago, the mere thought of Gabriel’s presence in my bedroom would have sent me into raptures, but now I could see him only as a Beezle-savior.

Gabriel leaned over Beezle, who was still and quiet on my pillow. The gargoyle had never looked so small to me, or so frail. I ached for his eyes to open so he could give me his best basilisk glare, or to hear him complaining about the sparrows nesting in his perch. I wrapped my arms around myself and watched as Gabriel laid two gentle fingers on Beezle’s chest, then lifted the gargoyle’s eyelids.

Gabriel murmured something that sounded vaguely like Latin. A little ball of blue flame appeared in the palm of his hand. The room suddenly smelled like a freshly baked apple pie. He turned his palm over and placed his hand on Beezle’s chest. The flame slid smoothly under Beezle’s gray skin and for a moment, nothing seemed to happen.

“Well?” I asked impatiently.

“Wait,” Gabriel said. His voice was calm but his eyes looked worried.

Beezle arched his back and took a great gasping breath. His eyes flew open and he coughed so hard that it seemed his chest would break open from the force of it.

“Beezle!” I shouted and took a step toward him, but Gabriel held his arm up to restrain me.

“Wait,” he repeated, and when I started to jostle past him, he grabbed both of my arms and held me in place.

Beezle coughed and coughed, a terrible choking sound, and his eyes rolled in his head. Then a great cloud of black smoke spewed out of his mouth, a malignant thing that seemed to have glowing red eyes in its depths. For a moment it hovered above him.

Then it seemed to sense the presence of other people in the room. The cloud turned, spotted me and gave a sickening howl. It rushed toward me with the unerring precision of a bloodhound and the speed of a laser beam.

Gabriel shouted, “No!”

Beezle cried out, “Maddy!”

I thought, He’s all right. Then the cloud flew into my nose and my mouth and my ears and my eyes and it burned its way into my body. For the second time in two days I felt myself falling, and falling, and the darkness hurried to me, and in the darkness she was there again.

Evangeline woke in darkness, and knew something was wrong. She did not feel the Morningstar’s presence beside her, where he had always been since the day she had come to him. Her hands went to her belly, now as big as the mountains that loomed above the Valley of Sorrows, and she felt the comforting flutter of wings. Her children—for she now knew there were two—were still safe inside her.

But they would not be for long. The day of her lying-in was coming soon, and something was wrong. She was in darkness, and beneath her she felt the shift of dirt and damp, and heard the scuttling of small things. How she had come here she did not know. She was suddenly gripped by fear, for she knew that her love would not have released her willingly, and she had a brief vision of his glorious strength struck down.

She shook the vision from her eyes. In her heart she would know if Lucifer was dead, and her heart told her that he still lived. But her heart did not tell her how she had come to this strange place, or why.

Evangeline remembered going to her bedroom in the palace to rest, and Lucifer had followed her as he always did, so that he could love her before she slept. And afterward she had slept while he held her in his arms.

And then she had awoken in this place, and there was no memory of what came between.

There was a scraping and a scratching from above, and a sound of something heavy being lifted, and the grunts and gasps of he who lifted it. She pushed heavily to her feet, her mountain of a belly before her, wanting to do credit to the Morningstar and hold her head high. But a blazing shaft of light appeared when the trapdoor was pulled away, and she covered her eyes with her arm.