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Sarah crossed to the pedestal and lifted the cloth back with two fingers. She was careful not to touch the relic beneath. The stylus underneath was a thin piece of plain black iron no longer than her hand. It was worn smooth in the middle from use.

"Why me?" she asked without looking up.

"Because you have the power to wield it. And there may not be a next one, if Lucifer finishes what he's started." Ithuriel began retreating toward the window, the gold under his skin dimming further with every step. "Use it. Learn it. And Sarah Morgan, when the time comes to write, lean on your mate. There are ways to share the burden. I would rather you inherit my tool than my ending."

His comment left everyone speechless, which was how he managed to walk through the sealed window without so much as a flicker from the spell meant to keep everything out. Sarah stood there as the weight of her situation settled on her.

"Okay." She clapped her hands and glanced around. "The good news is I've got a magic pen and a job description nobody bothered giving me until tonight. When a stranger broke into my shop to explain it. Anybody want to volunteer the bad news? Or are we saving that for whoever shows up next?"

"Sarah." Abraxos turned her by the shoulders. Whatever he saw on her face made his jaw twitch. "Don't turn this into a joke. It’s not necessary. It’s a lot to deal with."

"It's my shop, my magic, and my very literal job title," she shot back. "I get to make it a joke if I want."

"Not with me, you can't," he countered. She let him pull her in. Arguing took energy she didn't have left after a day that had included tarhounds, a Titan, a family history rewritten twice before lunch, and now a tool. "Not about this."

Izzy cleared her throat loud enough to qualify as a small weapon. "As much as I'd love to give you two the room, we still don't know what Lucifer's next move will be. It’ll be a doozy now that his key just picked up a set of instructions. I'd rather we weren't standing in a shop with a compromised ward when he decides to test that."

"She's right." Donovan was already at the window, running a thumb along the frame as if he could feel for weaknesses. "We need to get this back to the mansion where we’re protected." He meant Sarah, but she let that go.

Sarah closed her fist around the stylus and stuffed it in her bag. She pulled back enough to look at Abraxos properly. He was already watching her with an expression that made her chest ache. "You heard him," she told her angel.

CHAPTER 10

ABRAXOS

Sarah hoisted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder like that settled anything on God's green earth. Abraxos gaped at her as she headed for the door without so much as a backward glance.

"Heard who say what, exactly?" he called after her, already moving to catch up.

Abraxos hadn't heard a single word out of Ithuriel's mouth. What he'd heard was his own pulse after it decided to relocate to his throat. It seemed like an overreaction even for him, but there hadn’t been much he could do to change it at the time. Now, he was scrambling to catch up with everything. He was never usually this slow.

"Ithuriel told me to lean on my mate. Right before he strolled through my sealed window as if it wasn’t there, he said there were ways to share the burden." She tossed him a breezy look over her shoulder as if they were discussing the weather instead of the fact that a several-thousand-year-old ink creature had just handed her a magic pen and a death sentence disguised as a compliment. "Sounds like a plan to me."

"That's not a plan." He caught up to her at the doorframe. They were close enough to Izzy that she made a gagging noise behind them. He ignored the princess on principle. Ignoring Izzy was practically a hobby at this point. "That's one sentence from a guy missing three fingers and half his color palette. I'm not letting you bleed yourself dry over a stranger's advice before we've even talked about it. "

"Nobody's letting me do anything." Sarah stopped walking long enough to jab a finger into his chest, which would've been more intimidating if she hadn't been swaying slightly from exhaustion while she did it. "That's the whole point, Sparky. I don't need permission. I need backup from my mate." She stared into his eyes, making it clear who she believed that to be.

Something in his chest cracked open just then. It was quiet and sudden, like a door he hadn't realized she’d unlocked before that moment. He'd been braced for an argument. Not for her to look at him as the answer rather than the problem.

"Well," he managed, though it came out rougher than he meant it to, "when you put it that way."

Izzy sighed loud enough to be heard in the next parish over. It was dramatic enough to qualify as a Hallmark special. "Can we table the mushy conversation until you're alone. No one wants to hear it. Besides, doing it in a place that's a crime scene with a broken ward isn't exactly what a female dreams about when she thinks of romance."

She had a point, much as it pained him to admit that a vampire princess had better tactical instincts than he did in that particular moment.

Donovan was still at the window, running two fingers along the frame as if he could read the damage in braille. "Whatever came through wasn't a demon,” he reported. "The seal’s intact. Whoever, whatever Ithuriel is, he didn't break anything to get in here. He walked through without any problem as if the wards recognized him."

"We figured that out already." Izzy's hands waved wildly, blade and all, narrowly missing a bookshelf. "We've got a talking book monster with a key card, and you're just going to stand there taking notes on his door manners? Love that for us."

“Let’s get back and tell the others what happened,” Sarah suggested.

Abraxos nodded and prodded her forward with a hand at the small of her back. “We’ll meet you back at the mansion,” he told Izzy and Donovan.

On the sidewalk, Abraxos looked back inside the shop to see Donovan saying something to Izzy about them not taking everything at face value. Abraxos understood the young warrior’s position. He’d done his own assessment of Ithuriel in the first second after landing in the alley. Good thing too because he’d lost it for a few seconds there.

Abraxos wrapped his arms around Sarah and launched them into the air. The flight back to the mansion was quick and quiet. The tension between them bristled with everything they'd left unsaid. He focused on how right she felt in his arms. Especially when she tucked herself against his chest.

He landed on the mansion lawn a few minutes later. Somebody had finally remembered what electricity was for. The way the house was lit up. That should have told him something right then. Angelic wards muffled sound. Everybody knew that. They didn't dim the lights, and every window on the ground floor was blazing gold against a sky that hadn't decided yet whether it wanted to be dawn. As a vampire, Izzy would need to be back indoors before the sun fully came up.