And I did.
Harvey was the last inside. He closed the door carefully, then turned the lock. I stood in front of the Fright Club. My best friends, ever since we were little.
Now they were my team, assembled on the cushions we’d piled up on the floor. Roz, her legs tucked under her and her corduroy skirt smoothed under her nervously moving hands. Theo, arms looped around his legs, his face bright with determination. And Harvey, gun laid down by his side, hunching forward with his elbows on the worn knees of his jeans and dark eyes steady on mine. Every one of them was inexpressibly dear to me. Every one of them was intent on our secret mission. I’d asked them to help me, and they’d sworn they would.
“All right, Fright Club,” I said. “Let’s review.”
I lifted a hand and the whiteboard sheet Roz used for projects slid down over Ambrose’s British flag. The sheet was covered with writing, Roz’s neat print, Theo’s slapdash scribble, and my script, flowing and dramatic because Aunt Zelda had taught me calligraphy when I was five. Harvey had drawn the pictures.
Each scribble and drawing were connected by a web of lines drawn in marker. Every black line across the whiteboard looked, in my eyes, like a road to hell.
Aunt Hilda wanted me to forget what had happened. I couldn’t.
It didn’t matter that I was Lucifer’s daughter, not Edward Spellman’s as I’d always believed. Not a Spellman at all. Who cared? I’d decided I would be a Spellman. I would be a witch, and I would live half in the mortal world and half in the witch world with my chosen friends and chosen family, and I would never use my strange powers ever again. I’d be happy.
But before I could be happy, I needed one more thing.
I needed Nick.
Nothing mattered, except finding a way into hell. I had to devote myself entirely to Nick. That was what he’d done for me.
I smiled at the drawing of Nick, gorgeous and grinning in a tuxedo as though nothing bad could ever happen to him. His picture was placed in the center of our winding paths.
Nick had used his own body as an enchanted cage to imprison Satan, foiling Lucifer’s plans for the world and his daughter. Nick cast the spell for me because he loved me. Lilith, the Mother of Demons and the new Queen of Hell, carried Nick away into the depths of her kingdom so Satan could never escape and take back the throne.
That was why Nick was trapped in hell. That was why I would risk anything to free him.
I couldn’t stand the thought of what might be happening to him down there.
L ilith, Queen of Hell, was aware of the importance of appearances. The world impressed on women early that their surfaces meant more than whatever seethed beneath.
Now that she was a public figure, with the eyes of hell upon her, presenting a darkly serene image to her subjects was vital. Lilith spent a great deal of time each morning carefully putting on her face.
There were many faces to choose from.
Lilith spun in the cavern that served as her walk-in closet. More than a hundred wounds had been slashed into the stone walls. In the roughly hewn recesses were golden plinths. On each plinth rested a face torn from one of the lost souls of hell. The faces awaited Lilith’s pleasure, tucked away in the dark until their turn might come to suit Lilith’s fancy. She could wear faces men had killed for, faces that launched a thousand ships and burned towers. This power was hers now.
As Lilith surveyed her kingdom of beauty, she paused, arrested by the sight of one face. Placed down low, it shone in the shadows like a pearl.
A cloud of dark hair, cheekbones for days, and a mouth that was slack now, but Lilith knew how it curved. The eyes tilted, catlike, so people saw them as green. Lilith remembered they were truly blue. A face she’d put aside after her descent to rule in hell but had kept for sentimental reasons. Mary Wardwell’s face.
Adam loved that face. Not her first Adam, but her last. Mary Wardwell’s Adam, who came to his fiancé e’s cottage with gifts. Adam, whose love was kind. The taste of kindness was so strange, Lilith almost found it sweet. But Lucifer had killed Adam and left a different taste in her mouth.
It didn’t matter. What was that mortal Adam’s love worth? He’d never even realized the woman he’d returned to was not the woman he’d left behind, but a murderously evil demon who’d stolen Mary Wardwell’s life. Like every man, Adam saw only the face.
So much for love.
The Queen of Hell turned away from Mary Wardwell’s face and selected another. This one was smooth as ice, the hair pale gold. A snow queen’s face, cold as winter, feeling nothing. It was exactly the face she wanted in case a lord of hell visited the palace. Lord Beelzebub in particular was judgmental of his new queen, and Beelzebub’s heir, Prince Caliban, had the distinction of being the most annoying soul in hell.
Lilith left the cavern of faces. She dropped by her office on the way to her throne room.
Pretending to be Mary Wardwell in Greendale, she’d been promoted from teacher to principal, and discovered her new high position meant far more administrative work.
Oddly, this was also the case in hell. When Lilith had spent centuries dreaming of ultimate power, she hadn’t imagined documents from infernal officials. Lord Beelzebub wrote endless insulting missives about war in the borough he ruled, and about the impossibility of quelling unrest with Lilith upon the throne. Beelzebub had a definite idea of how power should look. He thought it should look male.
Prince Caliban wrote Lilith exquisitely polite letters. Somehow, that was even more vexing.
Dealing with the lords of hell was almost enough to make Lilith miss the days when her worst problem was attempting to corrupt Sabrina’s annoying soul. Little Miss Snow-White Hair was irritating beyond belief, but there was only one of her, and she wasn’t a man.
Lilith must be careful if she wanted to keep the power she’d won.
Men might look down on an ambitious woman, but they felt comfortably secure assuming she’d never reach her goal. They hated a woman who’d achieved her ambition. Not only was she in their way, she taught other women it could be done.
The dark lords of hell were in eternal opposition, but now they’d united. She was sure they were plotting to crush her.
Lilith had faced worse. She’d spent centuries with their master’s boot on her neck. There was not a soul in hell Lilith feared, save one.
And Lucifer, Prince of Lies, was tormenting someone else now.
Lilith departed, tossing Lord Beelzebub’s latest letter high above her head. Pages fluttered to her bone chandelier. The papers caught fire, curling like black roses in midair, then falling to dust at Lilith’s feet. As all empires would, in time.
That was the paperwork sorted.
Lilith flung open the golden double doors. Here was her throne room, the seat of her power. Here the Infernal Pedestal, there the tasteful satyr statues crushing humans under hooves. She’d schemed to achieve this through all the long, weary days of her life.
A demonic minion hurried to her, uttering an oily whisper: “Can I serve you in any way, my queen?”
“Bring me Lord Beelzebub’s head on a platter, and Prince Caliban’s tongue in a salad,” drawled Lilith. “Can you do that?”
“Defeating their infernal armies could be tricky,” mumbled the minion. “I’m only a minor imp … I meant, can I bring you a refreshing beverage or a fresh soul to torment. Can I serve you in any petty way, my queen, that sort of thing …”