“Okay,” I told them both. “Just let me know if you need my blood or whatever.”
Lincoln swallowed hard and nodded. When he did that, it was like a nervous tic. The hard swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing—all signs he was hiding something.
“Out with it! What are you hiding?” I put a hand on my sore hip.
He groaned. “You know me too well. That’s not fair.”
I did the time in this relationship, and now I knew him well enough to catch him in lies. Perfectly fair.
He sighed. “I won’t be needing your blood. I’m the one signing the contract. If it all goes wrong, I want the fallout to be on me, not you girls.”
I clenched my jaw. “No way!”
Lincoln nodded. “Yes way. I looked at the rules last night. Fights end in either death or submission. If you girls submit, you walk away with your life, and what does Grim get for letting you fight? He’ll want some type of collateral. They always do. So I’m the collateral.”
Shea was staring at him with her mouth open, as was I.
“If we lose, we’ll give him Sera.” I hated it the moment the words left my mouth, but Lincoln wasn’t something I could afford to lose, and I had faith I would win.
‘I understand,’ Sera said in a melancholy tone. She was part of me, and she loved Lincoln too.
Lincoln reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. That was his let-down pose; he was about to let me down, and the hand on shoulder was my consolation prize.
“I suggested that, but the archangels agreed that a seraph blade should never be allowed in the hands of the demons.”
I mean, I loved Sera, and I knew she was powerful but… she was just a weapon.
‘Hey,’ she retorted.
‘Sorry.’
Lincoln leaned close to whisper in my ear. “I overheard Michael saying Sera could open the gates of Heaven. She has that much power. Can you imagine if the demons had the key to Heaven?”
My whole body went rigid, and chills broke out on my arms.
“Secrets don’t make friends,” Shea pouted from a few feet away, but I was still spinning his words in my head.
‘Is that true? Can you open the gates of Heaven?’ I asked my infinity weapon.
‘How should I know? I’ve been stuck in a cabinet for over a decade waiting for you, with little memory of before that. But it feels right,’ she told me.
Wow. I didn’t even know what to say to that.
“Okay, well, we’re going to win, so…” We had to win now. There was no way I could let Lincoln work off my mom’s debt.
He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “I have faith in you.”
For some reason, those words made me feel worse. Lincoln was putting his life in my hands, and I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea.
Chapter Sixteen
“I feel sick,” Shea said as she paced Lincoln’s carpet.
“Me too,” I admitted.
Chloe, Luke, Lincoln, and Noah were all sitting around, waiting with us until it was time to leave for Fight Night.
Lincoln stood. “You’ve trained, we’ve gotten Grim to agree to the contract, and your mother is on board with the plan. You got this.”
Hearing his logical words should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. This wasn’t Angel City we were going to, it was Demon City. Home of the rule breakers, risk takers, and stab you in the backers. They weren’t going to play by the rules. We had to be ready for every dirty trick in the book.
Shea pulled a baggie out of her pocket. “Magic is allowed. I made these energy lozenges. As we weaken with each fight, we’ll take one and get an adrenaline surge. It’ll carry us through to the end. Hopefully.”
I nodded. The lozenges would be much needed in the end I was sure.
Chloe cleared her throat. “How many fights are there?”
Chloe’s dad, owner of the Third Eye Moon club and basically vampire overlord, was sending some of his men to the fight to make sure Grim kept his word if we won.
“Seven.” Noah stood. “Lincoln and I won’t make it through all of them, so we’re going to go in shifts. Lincoln will go for the first four fights. I’ll go for the last three. You’re allowed to get healings, so we’ll both be healing you between the fights.”
It was a good plan. I had Sera, and we’d been training like crazy. At this point, Shea and I could join some elite supernatural assassin force if there were one. We were killing machine badasses, but I still felt a lump in my throat.
“Yeah,” I answered absentmindedly.