Witness (10 page)

She also didn’t have a lot of time. Hell, she probably didn’t have any time. Yet for the life of her, Ava couldn’t will herself to move away from the window. Shit, she didn’t want to think of what Lucifer would do. There was no end to the laundry list of possibilities, which just magnified her awesome stupidity in coming back in the first place. The clean-up crew had yet to address the mess left at her farewell party, and the lover for which she had forsaken Hell had instead forsaken
her
.

And damned her in the process.

‘I can’t be with a Sin’.

Six little words. Who knew six little words could be the end of everything as she knew it?

Her gut clenched.

Run.

Every natural impulse whispered the same thing, and she knew to obey. She had to get out if she wanted to live, because Lucifer sure as fuck wouldn’t think twice about eradicating her from existence. Yet at the same time, she couldn’t find the will to move. Before, turning her back on Hell had meant spending an eternity with the man she loved. The man she’d thought loved her. Now it meant running until she was found, then dying a long, painful death or—even worse—a short and forgettable one.

Through the knotted mess of her insides and the wilting hopes that screamed she must have misunderstood, through every nerve that just wanted to give up for a good cry, she couldn’t make heads or tails of her sudden flight instinct. Sebastian was gone.

Run.

The soot-smeared glass of her kitchen window blurred with the onset of her tears. Goddammit, Ava had sworn a millennia ago she’d never cry over a man. Not after Invi’s four-hundredth heartache, during those years when her sister had fallen in love every time she had turned around.

Childhood could be a bitch, even in Hell. Something had always warned Ava that if love could inspire such pain during adolescence, it would leave nothing but a barren wasteland of the heart when the real world came into play. When those little girl thoughts and feelings matured into something real.

He was really gone. He had really left her. All those things he’d said, all those promises he’d made…

He had left her to die.

Ava choked back a sob, then cleared her throat and shook her head, keeping her gaze focused on the dimming sky. “Man up,” she murmured, flexing her hands into fists. Her hands with her teeth-marked thumbs. Girls got dumped every day, even in Hell. Ava might not have been a seasoned veteran of matters of the heart, but she damn well knew she wasn’t the first woman to feel these godawful pains in the chest, nor was she the first whose gut wrenched and whose insides felt twisted into something damn near unrecognizable.

Her fight or flight sense should have nothing to do with it.

Yet she needed to run, and she needed to run badly.

Ava sighed and tore her gaze away from the window. The faux sun would soon set over the Lake of Fire. The letter sat where she’d left it on the table.

“Does he know what you are?” Lucifer had asked her that just yesterday. Her or some younger, stupider version of herself. The version of herself that had felt too good to be real. The Ava who had just experienced a bout of firsts unlike anything else. First
I love yous
. First vows of forever. First time with a man.

Now first heartache. Fucking perfect.

“What the hell are you still doing here?”

Ava started at the voice and whirled around, her heart jumping into her throat. Her brother stood in the empty space between her kitchen and living room, his bald head catching the reflection of the setting not-sun. His eyes were narrowed and his nostrils flared. He stared at her as though he’d seen a ghost.

“Gula.”

He nodded gruffly, blinking and darting his gaze around the room. “You were supposed to be gone.”

“Gee, bro. Love you too.” Ava swallowed and did her best not to glance at the letter. She still hadn’t decided what she wanted to do about it, or determined if she had options. If there was anything she could do aside from wrap her arms around herself and wait for the end.

The one thing she knew now was that she didn’t want Gula to see it. She didn’t need his thoughts before cultivating her own, no matter how much her weary brain might appreciate the break. A part of her—a stupid, weak part of her—hoped Sebastian would change his mind again before she had to make any tough decisions. Save her from the burden of realizing what a fucking deep hole she’d managed to dig.

If the universe was in the business of granting wishes, she must have gotten on its shitlist. The next thing she knew, Sebastian’s letter was in Gula’s hands—hands which went from firm to trembling, then lowered until the scrap of paper was at his side and his gaze was affixed on hers.

“He left.” Gula’s expression darkened but remained otherwise unreadable. “Your boy.”

“Sebastian.”

“Like I give a fuck what his name is. He left.”

Ava wet her lips and rubbed her arms. How one could be cold in Hell, she didn’t know. But cold she was. “He left.”

“He knows.”

“Not from me,” she said sharply. “I didn’t tell him. I never told him anything. I don’t know how he found out.”

Gula clearly remained skeptical. She would have been insulted were she not so damn numb. As it was, her warring insides had yet to settle on any one emotion. Between the inane urge to cry her eyes out and the survival instincts commanding her to flee, she couldn’t tell up from down.

Instead, she decided to focus on the one thing she knew. “I didn’t tell him anything, Gula. What the hell do you take me for?”

“You bedded the guy.”

“And?”

“Do you really need me to go on?” He waved the letter. “You’re not other people. Do you have any idea what this is gonna look like?”

“Any idea? Asshole, I can’t even decide if I wanna scream or cry. I haven’t gotten to what this is gonna look like.” Her itching legs disagreed, but she decided not to tell him that. Running now, with Gula looking at her like he didn’t know her, didn’t seem the wisest move.

“Let me tell you, then.” He took a step forward, the letter crinkling in his hand. “It’s gonna look like you got lazy. Or got sloppy. Either way ain’t good for you. It’s gonna look like your boy got a dose of the real you and is now up there telling
fuck knows what
to Big J.”

“You wanna say that a little louder? You don’t have to whisper.”

A shadow fell across his brow. “Is this funny to you?”

“Do you know me at all?”

“I dunno.” He waved the letter. “Do I? He called you by name, Ava. He knows you’re a Sin.”

“But I didn’t tell him!” Ava’s chest heaved, her ears ringing, the corners of the room starting to blacken. Here it was at last—the panic. The rush. The crash of
holy shit
fear she’d been waiting for. Gula didn’t believe her. Of her brothers, Gula was the one she was closest to. If Gula didn’t believe her, Luxi wouldn’t either. And Invi, Ira…shit, none of them would.

Facing Lucifer with her siblings at her back was dicey enough. He wasn’t one to give a crap if his decisions were popular, but with all Seven Deadly Sins united as one, she might—just might—have stood a chance. Alone, and she was a dead woman walking.

“What should I do?” she asked, feeling all of three inches tall. Tears stung her eyes and she wiped them away. Ava had happily gone through many a year without crying once, and the presence of tears now fortified her panic and fear with annoyance.
Goddamn asshole made me cry.
That wasn’t what she said, though. “I didn’t tell him, Gula. I wouldn’t have told him. You have to believe me.”

Her impassioned plea had little effect on her brother. He looked at her with an unreadable expression. Eons could have eclipsed in the silence that spanned between them. Perhaps they did. Ava lived and died a thousand times before he spoke again.

“Tell him.”

“What?”

“Go right now to Lucifer. You gotta tell him. Tell him everything. Get it out there before more damage is done.” Gula blinked and heaved a sigh, running a hand over his smooth head. “Go now.”

Ava wasn’t in the habit of taking orders, unless those orders happened to come from the devil. There was no hierarchy among the Sins—all were created equal, and none had the power to command the others around, no matter how often they might wish it. Were it not for the fact that Gula was the only one of her brothers guaranteed never to raise his voice at her, she might have kneed him in the balls for being so damn bossy.

But she didn’t, and not just because he’d never before snapped at her like this.

Rather, because he was right. She had to talk to Lucifer. Now.

One way or another, Sebastian knew she was a Sin. He knew the one thing no one could know, and by sending that letter, he might have just destroyed her.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I’ll go.”

“Now,” Gula repeated. “Go right the hell now.”

Ava rolled her eyes and stalked forward. She snatched Sebastian’s letter out of her meddlesome brother’s hands, then brushed passed him for the door.

“Where are you going?” Gula called after her.

“To the Red House. Where do you think?”

“You’re walking?”

Ava tossed a glance over her shoulder. “I need time.”

“Dunno how to break it to you, sis, but that’s one thing you ain’t got.”

“It’s a five minute walk, Gula, what more do you want from me?” She twisted to face him head-on, her hair whipping around her face in a burgundy blur. “Is it too much to ask for five minutes? I don’t know how any of this happened and I don’t know what I’m gonna tell him, but if he decides to kill me, I’d like to know I at least didn’t rush to the guillotine.”

The air hummed between them. Something dark flickered behind Gula’s eyes.

“He won’t kill you,” her brother said, though she heard the doubt in his voice. Doubt and worry, which was enough to scare the piss out of her. “He loves you, Ava.”

“Yeah.” She formed a fist, the note crinkled between her fingers. The paper’s edge skimmed the crease of the tooth-mark in her thumb. “So did Sebastian.”

Then she turned on her heel and stalked outside her home.

The home Lucifer had given her after her first mission. Of course, Hell itself was the only home she’d ever known, and the one she’d been so damn ready to cast aside for want of an angel.

Tears stung her eyes again—
goddamn him—
but she wiped them away before they could fall.

She wouldn’t cry now. She had precious few moments to spare, and she needed to apply all those moments to determining just how Sebastian could have figured her out. How he could know what she was, when she’d never uttered those words to a soul outside of Hell.

There were only a handful of creatures who knew the Sins had physical form. Ava and her siblings were well known in Hell, often regarded as children of the devil, but very few individuals were privy to the truth of their nature. Aside from Lucifer, there was Pixley, the curator of the
Arbor Scientiae
—Hell’s largest library—who knew because her job demanded it. There was Fugie, or
Lucifuge Rofocale, Lucifer’s personal assistant. Fugie was the only other member of Hell’s staff who served as an official consultant who wasn’t also a Sin. He also acted as Lucifer’s double for events, meetings and other asinine tasks Lucifer didn’t wish to attend. But Fugie was more than a staffer—he was a friend
. One she trusted almost as much as she trusted her brothers and sisters.

And there was the Binsfeld Six. The Binsfeld Six had been the last to discover Sins existed in flesh-and-blood, and had been sworn to secrecy on the threat of cruel and unusual punishment should they let the secret slip. Of course, the six demons had maybe half a brain cell among them, but there was no reason to suspect they would start blabbing now.

That was it. Lucifer and his limited staff, her brothers and sisters and the Binsfeld Six.

And somehow Sebastian knew.

Ava sniffed again and wiped at her cheek, his letter whispering against her skin. The gravel beneath her feet crunched with every step, loose pebbles occasionally flying into the grassy lawns that made up the Bells—Hell’s nicest neighborhood. Light blues lingered above but had mostly given way to the more common reds and oranges of twilight. The twisted, reaching tower that comprised the
Arbor Scientiae
silhouetted in the distance, and across from it was the Red House.

And in it Lucifer.

Ava’s lips twitched. She’d always wanted to see Malach, the Angel of Death, in action. Whether or not destroying a Sin would require Malach’s services was another thing altogether. Perhaps she could make a request, though that particular angel was typically reserved for human death. And Ava was not human.

Humans got multiple chances to make mistakes and repent. Sins were not so lucky.

A long sigh rattled off her lips, sending a shiver down her spine. The Red House was closer now. A few more feet and she guessed she’d be able to hear the screams from the Lake of Fire if she tried, which she honestly hadn’t done since she’d learned to tune them out.