Three Trials (The Dark Side Book 2)(47)

“Why would she be rambling about the nineties if what you’re saying is true?” Kai finally asks him.

Lamar’s eyes water as though Kai’s just asked him something very personal that has made him emotional.

“We can see a lot of the future. The human future, that is. We spent centuries perfecting our nineties slang,” the watery-eyed man says very quietly.

“Not quite perfected even after all that,” Jude says as he looks back at me, smirking. Then gives his serious face back to Lamar.

“She and I made a pact that we’d go mortal in the nineties. She wanted to be a dancing pop singer, and knew you four would end up her backup dancers or a boy band.”

I’m so stunned that I can even recycle my One Erection joke.

Lamar continues speaking when no one says anything, and the guys just stare at him like he’s lost his damn mind for suggesting such a horrible thing. They’d be an adorable boy band.

“She wanted to read about the scandal later when she had all her memories and her body back, and like always, you’d all sit around basking in how you fell in love again, even though you had no idea who you were in that time. I was going to become a politician, because we both knew Manella would go if I went, and we’d fall in love there. He’d never gone mortal before, but promised me he would in the nineties. It would have been a helluva scandal for us to enjoy upon our return.”

“Did he go?” I ask, feeling my heart hurt a little for no really good reason.

“Why would she—”

“Did he go?” I ask louder, talking over Jude, who looks at me like I’m going crazy.

“Did you go?” Kai asks him on a sigh.

Lamar’s jaw trembles and he clears his throat while blinking and looking away. “It didn’t seem right to go without her.”

Deflated, I sit back.

“I believe him,” I say quietly. “I’m the Devil’s daughter with a horribly non-badass name like Paca. Who names hell spawn something that bubbly? I’m not bubbly at all.”

“What’s she saying that has all of you looking at me like you want to do harm?” Lamar asks, frowning.

“We’re trying to decide if you’re lying or not. She believes you. It’s not going to be good if you’re fucking with us,” Ezekiel drawls, looking at his nails as though he’s bored.

“Touching her seems to amplify our powers,” Jude goes on, his hand slipping through mine. “Supposedly I’m Death.”

Lamar slides off the desk slowly, so as not to make any sudden movements.

“Paca, I know you’re probably overwhelmed if you prevented yourself from remembering all this for whatever reason. But trust me when I say we’ll figure all this out together. You sought me out in hell’s throat. I spent five years convincing myself it was not you I kept feeling, because it was impossible. Then I felt you. Then they said she, and I finally knew we’d been right. They were yours and you were back.”

Just feeling their tingles start to surround me helps. Kai and Gage are also touching me. It’s Ezekiel I’m worried about. He’s not touching me, and he looks much too calm for the embodiment of war who got used to peaceful sleep, only to have it ripped away from him for over a month.

He’s the one who might actually kill Lamar before I can decide how I feel about him.

“Lucifer knows. He knew even before I did. I told you that. The trials were just him throwing it in your face that he knew so you’d stop pretending you all weren’t back. He figured it out months ago as his madness continued to lift the closer to hell she got. Manella told me this just after the night Lucifer exonerated me—the night his lucidity completely returned. You know the Devil’s games…I would have told you sooner, but I thought I was playing your game, even as it hurt my feelings to be left out.”

Looking betrayed makes a little sense, if we really were besties.

“Is that why he tried killing us?” Jude asks, a lethal, hard edge to his tone as he takes a step away. “Because of him, she was killed a month ago.”

Never mind about Ezekiel. Jude’s the one to worry about now. He’s the one who watched me die, and then kissed me for the first time when I came back because I wasn’t dead.

Very hard man to impress, that one.

“And all along he could have healed her? Did he know she wouldn’t really die?” Gage asks with an eerily calm tone.

Shit. Now he’s the one who might kill him.

“Kai, please just stay behind me. I need some tingles, and Lamar has enough of—”

Before I can finish the sentence, Kai is holding a sword under Lamar’s chin, appearing there in less than an instant. Now he really might kill Lamar too. Damn it.

“Move and I’ll do worse than cut you. Answer the questions,” he growls. “Did he kill her just to punish us for not properly playing a game we had no idea we were even playing? A royal fucking escort killed her.”

Lamar glances at him, not moving anything other than his eyes.

“No. There are always rebels in hell. It’s hell, after all. Rebellions spring up like weeds. We’re stifled by the volume in this particular rebellion, since Lucifer has been decommissioned for so long with your dead girlfriend’s father in his ear. At least we assume it’s him, due to her involvement in the botched assassination attempt on your lives. You were just caught in the crosshairs. Apparently we’re not the only ones who’ve noticed Paca back. And the Devil’s youngest daughter back from a true death and back to reign with her four unstoppable horsemen? I thought the five of you were playing a very dangerous game.”