Elena smiled and nodded. “She’s fine.”

With Adam helping me, I crossed the stage to where Hope lay on the floor, Jeremy tending to her, Jaime gripping her hand. And Karl … Karl was holding a baby.

“Nita Elena Adams Marsten,” Hope said, smiling. “Yes, it’s a mouthful, but she’ll grow into it.”

“She’s beautiful,” I said. And she was—with black hair and wide blue eyes, staring up at her father.

“She’s putting a spell on him,” Hope said. “Not that she needs to. Someone already has Daddy wrapped around her little finger.”

“Takes after her mother,” Karl said.

Everyone laughed. I just sat and stared at Nita. I’m not one for babies, really. But this was different. This was … I won’t say a miracle, because that’s corny. But after everything we’d gone through, this new life just seemed … perfect.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” Karl said.

“What?” Hope blinked. “Um, if you mean when I was taken captive, you were nearly dead at the time, so—”

She stopped. Karl had been looking down at Nita. Now he lifted his head and his eyes shimmered. They weren’t orange or green like a demon’s. And they didn’t just glow like Aratron’s. They shimmered iridescent, with points of a thousand colors.

“Oh,” Hope said.

She lifted her hands as she struggled to keep her expression calm. He handed the baby back to her and she clutched Nita tight, her gaze never breaking with those eyes.

“I was watching,” he said. “But it seemed best not to interfere.” She just nodded and cradled Nita, who started to fuss.

“The grandchildren of demons don’t inherit their powers,” he said. “But I am not a demon.”

“No,” Hope whispered. She looked at Nita, and her eyes filled with tears, then she looked back at him and said, fiercely, “No.”

He pushed the sweaty curls from Hope’s forehead. “She will not inherit the hunger for chaos. That is …” He tilted his head. “A consequence of living among demons. It is the powers she will inherit—the visions and the rest. That will not be easy, but it will be … easier. More important, it will be easier for you. She’s taken some of your power. It will dilute it, and dilute the hunger. That will help.”

Hope stared at him, still shaking her head. “Please, no. I don’t want that. I’ll keep it—all of it. Please.”

Lucifer didn’t answer.

I cleared my throat. “The visions aren’t easy to deal with, I’m sure. But you’ve done a lot of good with them. She’ll do a lot of good with them. And if it cuts down on your chaos hunger …”

“That’s good,” Elena said, kneeling and squeezing Hope’s arm. “It’ll make life easier for you, which will make it easier for her.”

Hope looked up at Lucifer, “Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

She swallowed. “Then we’ll deal with it.”

“Of course you will.” Lucifer leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You always do.”

He leaned back on his haunches and closed his eyes. When they opened, they were blue again, Karl shaking his head.

“What happened?” he said.

Hope just smiled and handed him his daughter.

Back to Miami, where we discovered that after a birth, we now faced the opposite. Bryce was dying. His body couldn’t adjust to the virus. He was on life support.

But we had the antidote, right? Except Giles had played one last trick. He gave us the antidote and the coded instructions, which had been deciphered before we returned to Miami. But it wasn’t just a simple matter of giving the antidote to Bryce. There was a ritual to be followed, a ritual that required a critical ingredient.

The life of a vampire.

“Oh, stop being dramatic,” Cassandra said as she paced the boardroom. “It requires a vampiric life. That a vampire surrender his immortality and return to being human. Offering mine is hardly noble. I’m dying. I have only a few years left at best. Give me the rest of my mortal lifetime and you’re doing me a favor.”

Aaron shook his head “The ritual doesn’t guarantee you a human life, Cass. It theorizes that’s what happens if you give up your vampiric one. For all we know, you’ll turn into a pile of three-hundred-year-old dust.”

“Well, then you’ve saved the cost of cremation, haven’t you?”

He glowered at her. There were only a few of us in the board-room—me, Adam, Paige, and Lucas. Cassandra thought Sean should be present—his brother’s life was at stake—but Sean had demurred. He was staying downstairs with Bryce. This was a decision he didn’t dare influence.

Cassandra might pretend she was being selfish, but she knew the risks. She was offering her last years to save Bryce.

Aaron wanted to find another vampire. Surely there was one locked in a Cabal prison somewhere, on a legitimate charge, a vampire whose crimes deserved the death penalty.

“It would take time,” Lucas said. “Bryce doesn’t have time. However, there may be a larger problem here. Cassandra’s vampire life is nearing an end. It … may not be enough.”

More arguing followed. Aaron retreated to a chair and sat there, staring, until he said, “What if it was two vampiric lives?”

We all turned to him.

“What if we both offered ours?”

Cassandra strode to him. “You are not giving up—”

“I wouldn’t be giving up anything,” he said quietly. “I never wanted to be a vampire. You know that.” He looked up at her. “This is a chance for us both to be human again. I don’t want to be a vampire if you’re not.”

“And if it fails?”

He held her gaze. “Then I don’t want to be here if you’re not.”

Cassandra choked on her reply. She stood there, facing him, back to us, and I could hear her trying to speak, but she couldn’t.

Paige reached over and squeezed my hand. “Let’s go,” she whispered.

We crept out and left them alone.

FORTY-NINE

A few hours later, we were in the Cabal underground ritual chamber. It was another three hours before the rite was completed. It had taken a whole team of spellcasters, including me, Paige, and Lucas to pull it off, and even then, we had a couple of false starts.