Cookie inhaled sharply, and Osh finally realized how distressed she was. I think, in fact, my worry for her was keeping my own stress-induced hissy fit at bay. I wanted to rant and rail and crush a few larynxes until somebody came up with the location of my daughter. But I couldn’t do it in front of Cookie. I couldn’t upset her any more.

“And the bodies?” Reyes asked him. Still kneeling beside me, he had one hand on my leg and one around the arm of the chair. The arm cracked with the pressure he was putting on it.

Osh nodded. “They’re … decomposing at an unnatural rate. Not to mention the fact that the hounds were getting restless. Pawing the ground. Sniffing the air. Itching to hunt.”

“But what could they do against a god?” I asked.

“Buy us time.”

The direness of the situation had me light-headed. “You got Beep out of there before you needed them, though?”

He nodded again. “She’s at a new safe house with the Loehrs and most of the Sentry.”

That’s what we were calling Beep’s army. The Sentry. “Most?”

Osh dropped his gaze. “Your man, Donovan. He stayed behind to keep an eye on the area. To let us know if any more bodies showed up.”

I blinked, astonished, and so grateful that he would do such a thing that a lump formed in my throat. “Is he still there?”

The beautiful kid before me, who was actually older than Reyes by a couple of centuries yet looked like he was in his late teens, nodded, his mouth a grim line. “He’s trying to get ahead of it. To track it down and figure out its next move.”

I shot to my feet. “By himself?”

“He insisted the other two go with the Sentry.”

“Osh, he’s only human.” I stepped closer to him, and Reyes stood as well. Took hold of my arm in warning. I shook it off. “What’s he supposed to do if he does find it?”

“Call,” Reyes said, taking my arm again.

“Call?” I asked, appalled. “And would that be before or after the god hijacks his body?” When no one answered, I said, “I need to go to him.”

“And do what?” Reyes asked, his ire pulsing through the room like a bass drum. “Be the guiding beacon that leads him straight to your friend?”

“You must not like him very much,” Osh teased.

They were right. I would only get him killed faster. As would Reyes. His darkness was very much like my light. I’d found that out when I learned to shift between planes. He was like a great void in the landscape. A dark chasm. Just as I was a portal to heaven, he was a portal to hell. And any supernatural being could see it from a thousand miles away.

“Can I ask, what makes you think there’s only one god in the area?”

“That’s how they work,” Reyes said. “They split up until one finds its prey, then the other two join it.”

Reyes really had no idea he was one of the three gods of Uzan. That there were only two out there.

“If this were any other world, they would’ve just destroyed it.”

“What’s stopping them?” Cookie asked.

Osh answered her. “The God Jehovah. It’s part respect and part self-preservation.”

“The last thing they want is a war with another god.”

“So, they’re cowards as well as mass murderers.”

“Pretty much,” Osh said.

But my husband was the furthest thing from a coward. He was truly nothing like his brothers at all. “What can I do?” I asked first Reyes then Osh.

“Go back to work,” Osh said.

Reyes agreed. “Go about your day as normally as you can. They could have spies.”

“Spies?” Cookie said, paling even more than she had.

“They could be trying to smoke us out,” Osh explained. “If you panic and start checking on Beep and the Loehrs, trying to track them down to make sure they’re okay, the spies could lock on to their location.”

“We would be doing all the legwork for them.”

“So, I’m just supposed to go about my day, knowing—”

“Knowing Beep is okay,” Osh insisted. He stepped to me and brushed his fingers under my chin. “I promise. We’ve already moved them to a secure location.”

“Secure for now,” I said.

Unable to argue, he offered another nod and then started to head out. He stopped at the door and added, “I almost forgot to tell you. I killed another emissary.”

Reyes, who until only recently saw Osh as a lowly Daeva, an entity beneath him that was more foe than friend, walked over to him and gripped his forearm. Osh took Reyes’s in turn, solidifying the brotherhood that shared a common goal: protect and serve, at all cost, Elwyn Alexandra Loehr, the girl who would battle the pestilence of the world. The girl who would save humanity.

I hadn’t told Reyes that Osh was also destined to fall in love with our daughter. No need to rock that boat just yet.

I pushed my hand inside my jeans pocket and wrapped my fingers around the god glass. It was our only hope against the two gods of Uzan. The only one that I knew of, anyway. Should I tell Reyes?

In order to trap a god, or any spiritual entity, in the hell dimension, one had to know its name. Its true name. But I didn’t know the gods’ true names, much less Reyes’s. Not his godly name. If I told him about the god glass, would he use that against me when he found out his true origins?

It had only been a week. I’d known he was a god for a week. I could hold on to that tidbit for a while longer. Just until I had more information. Just until I knew for sure that I could trust the godly part of my husband. The part that was supposedly as evil as they come. Which sucked.

9

When I was a kid …

No, wait, I still do that.

—T-SHIRT

I wondered when I left how many of the bad twelve, the emissaries sent from Satan himself, were left. If I was counting correctly, I guessed nine, but there was no way to be certain without calling them all in for a roll call. That could work, actually. We could do a sting and tell them they’d won a TV like they do with criminals who jumped bail. If only I had their addresses. How could I send them a letter announcing their wins if I didn’t have their addresses? And did demons even watch TV?

Beep was safe. I forced myself to say it over and over in my head, Beep was safe, while Cookie and I pretended our day was going beautifully. We began looking into Emery Adams’s background as well as Lyle Fiske’s.