Regretting all the water I drank, I wake only an hour later to use the bathroom. Lucas isn’t in bed with me, and I’m sure he’s in his office working. I lie back down after using the bathroom but can’t fall asleep because I need to get up and organize my weapons. I pull on a gray maternity dress, lazily make the bed, and empty the contents of my weapons chest on the bed.
“What are you doing?” Eliza asks, stopping in the hall outside our room.
“Taking an inventory and putting the weapons that would be the least helpful at the bottom of the chest,” I tell her, moving my favorite silver-tipped wooden stake from the bed back to the chest. “I can enchant a few of these too.”
“Is this your version of nesting?”
I look from the weapons to Eliza and back again. “Is it wrong if I say yes?”
“For anyone else, it’d be fucked up. But for you, it’s fitting.” She shrugs and continues down the hall. I go back to organizing my collection of weapons and bring two daggers and a battle axe with a human-bone handle downstairs to enchant. I need to do the same Nephilim-blood magic spell to the sword Lucas used to mow through the monsters Bael created.
Thinking about blood magic reminds me of that stupid blank piece of paper. It enrages me more and more each time I see it, because I have no fucking clue what it means. I can’t see anything on it, and I’ve tried multiple spells to try and get a hidden message to appear. Evander couldn’t detect any sort of spell on it, and I’m seriously starting to think my dad grabbed a piece of paper from a random printer, folded it, and gave it to me on accident or something.
Though I suppose it doesn’t matter, because my locator spells to find Lucifer have come back with zero results.
“Want to help me enchant some weapons?” I ask Pandora. “I’ll have to mix up some potions.”
She jumps all over that and beats me into the kitchen. I’m finishing the spell for the battle axe when my phone rings. It’s Abby, and we’ve talked a few times since I told her about Julian’s death. She keeps calling to check on me, which I appreciate, but in true Callie fashion, I want to repress my grief and focus on revenge.
“Hello?” I answer.
“Hey, Cal. Is this a good time?”
“Yeah. I’m almost done putting an enchantment on an axe.”
“Oh, wow. That’s, uh, interesting. What does it do?” she asks.
“This particular spell will make the blade burn anyone it cuts, but it’s not hot enough to cauterize the wound. Just burn you while you bleed out.”
“You sound too cheery about that.”
“There are certain demons I would love to see suffer. Anyway, what’s up?”
“I’m still good friends with a few doctors who went through med school with me, and I was talking to one in Dallas this afternoon. She said they’ve had an influx of patients coming in the ER with an unknown virus with varying symptoms, but the pathology all comes back to the same thing. The CDC is involved now, and they’re going to make a public statement soon. This is spreading fast, and there’s no cure.”
I step away from the stove, turning down the burner. Holy shit. “Pestilence is making a plague,” I think out loud. “Be careful, Abby. If this comes to your hospital, take a vacation.”
“I can’t avoid it. I work in emergency medicine. This is my job.”
“Yeah, but we know this disease was created by a Horseman.”
“Who’s to say others we treat weren’t created by him too?” she asks ruefully.
“That’s a good point. Did your friend say when this all started?”
“They saw their first case a week and a half ago.”
The day Paimon failed and Julian died. “Well, Pestilence is a lush. He moved on fast. Don’t worry, we’re onto—” I cut off with a sharp intake of breath. What felt like a bad period cramp came on all of a sudden, gradually getting stronger until it fucking hurt.
“Cal?”
I grunt and put a hand on the counter, blowing out air. “Sorry, I got a cramp out of nowhere.”
“A cramp?” she echoes. “You don’t mean like in your leg, right?”
“Right. It felt like a period cramp.” Gritting my teeth, I put my hand on my lower abdomen and inhale, feeling better. “It’s gone now.”
“Cal, that’s a contraction.”
“Maybe Braxton Hicks. I’ve been busy creating high-powered magical traps all day and now I’m casting more spells, so it could have trigged those pains again.”
“I kinda want to know more about these magical traps, but you need to mark this down so you can keep track of contractions.”
“There’s no point,” I tell her. “As much as I’d love to get this baby out of me, I’m not going into labor right now. The midwife checked me yesterday, and I’m only dilated barely one centimeter. That was an experience, by the way.”