I scooted to the edge of my seat. “Okay. I’m hooked. Why?”

“Those are the ones that refer to your unimaginable power and your army.”

“Okay, power’s good. I’m still not sure about the army thing, though.”

“Not just power,” Garrett said, growing excited. “Unimaginable power. According to his prophecies, you will recruit a warrior, a scholar, a prophet, gatekeeper, a warden, and a couple of other figures Dr. von Holstein is still working on.” He read from a letter. “Okay, here’s the part I was looking for. The ruler, or king, of evil will take the daughter’s father captive to lure her into a trap —”

“Wait. What would Satan want with my dad?”

“Maybe it’s not your father here on Earth, but your other dad.”

“Oh, right. The king from that other realm?” I asked Reyes, but Mr. Farrow was busy stewing in his own thoughts.

“And with the daughter’s army protecting her,” Garrett continued reading, “she will take on the ruler. There will be a great and terrible battle, but she will defeat him and peace will settle on the Earth for a thousand years.”

Reyes stood and walked to gaze out the window. I had no idea where his thoughts were. But I knew exactly where mine were. “Um, I don’t think that’s how it happens in the Bible,” I said, suddenly skeptical again. “And I don’t really want to fight Reyes’s dad. Can I just hand in my resignation now? Cross that off my to-do list?”

“But isn’t it amazing that this guy wrote hundreds of prophecies about you hundreds of years before you were even born?”

“So you believe. And there’s just one problem with your theory. Reyes wasn’t sent to kill me. He was sent to kidnap me, to take me back to hell with him. Right?” I looked at Reyes. He stood looking out over our illustrious parking lot. He was so not cooperating.

A microsecond before I was going to continue my rant, Reyes spoke at last. “And how do you think I was supposed to manage that, Dutch?”

I crossed my legs. “What do you mean?”

He turned to me, his expression severe. “How do you think I was going to get you into another dimension?”

Garrett looked at me sadly. “He was sent to kill you, Charles. There was no other way.”

The oxygen evaporated from the room as the realization that Garrett was actually on to something dawned. I brought my knees to my chin.

Cookie’s fingertips rested on her mouth in a mixture of astonishment and regret.

Reyes turned back to the window. “My father gave me the same line of shit he gave Swopes. And like him, I doubted my father’s motives. Swopes is right. Why would he want back into heaven? It never made sense. Every word out of my father’s mouth is full of ulterior motives, but that was different. I always got the feeling he was hiding something. He created me for a reason. He needed to make sure I would make it through the void and onto this plane. And he had me wait. For centuries I waited in the dark until you were chosen.”

“But you saw me,” I said, my feelings hurt. I felt like a silly schoolgirl. “You saw me in another form and you fell in love.”

He bit down and lowered his head as though embarrassed. “I did.”

“Still,” I continued, memorizing the pattern on my sofa, “if you hadn’t, you would have killed me?”

After a moment, he leveled a hard gaze on me. “Most likely, yes. But I also didn’t trust my father. He wanted your physical body destroyed, and I didn’t know why. I cannot say what I would have done. Either way, you would still have been you. You would still have been the reaper incorporeally.”

I nodded, trying to swallow his admission. “So, all that crap about the key inserted into the lock —”

Garrett’s head snapped up. “You know about that?”

“Yes,” I said, suddenly tired, “one of the demons told me. Said that if Reyes and I got together in the flesh – if the key was inserted into the lock, so to speak – it would start a war or destroy the world or something else equally as horrid. You know, the usual doom and gloom. But let me tell you, the key has been inserted into the lock, and while the earth moved, as far as I know, we did not start a supernatural war.”

He looked down at his books in thought. “I can’t figure that one out, either. I remember hearing that same caveat. I think it’s part of the prophecy I was told about, but I just don’t know what it means.”

“And who told you about this prophecy?” I asked. “Lucifer wouldn’t have done that, not if it meant you would figure out he was lying to you.”

“The only one who could have. The only being with enough power to both send me to hell, then rip me back out again. And the way I see it, only one being has the power, the know-how, and the inclination to send me to hell and back.” He cast a hard stare at Reyes. “The son of Satan.”

I blinked in surprise, then scoffed. “Reyes? Swopes, that’s ridiculous. Why would Reyes do such a thing? More importantly, how would he do such a thing?” After a few seconds defending my man, I realized I was the only one in the immediate vicinity who was doing so. I turned to Reyes, to the frigid glimmer in his eyes as he fixed a steady gaze on Garrett.

“You’re smarter than you look,” he said.

Garrett’s expression turned deadly. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I saw an opportunity and I took it,” Reyes said. He was the picture of tranquillity on the outside, but his insides were churning, boiling with aggression and unspent emotion. “There is an instant,” he continued, “when a person dies and is brought back to life where his soul is caught between two dimensions. In that instant, I decided I could use you as a spy.”