“Charming. I wonder where your creativity comes from, perhaps personal experience?” Bickering wasn’t getting us anywhere, and I had more important things to do. Apparently, Wrath felt the same way. He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing me. “What’s got your skirts all twisted, witch?”
“Nothing.”
“If it’s about the spell I used, or the dress . . .”
“It’s not.” For some reason, now that I was near him again, I wasn’t quite ready to ask for his help solving my sister’s murder. I needed some other assurance that this was the best course of action. And there was one thing he might be able to answer that would help me make up my mind. If he didn’t laugh himself to death first. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. “An invisible demon attacked my grandmother yesterday. And before that, I think . . . I think it was stalking me.”
I expected him to mock me, or ask if I’d recently indulged in too many spirits. Instead he studied me very carefully. “Did it speak to you?”
I nodded. “It said, ‘he’s coming.’ ”
Wrath paced around the bone circle. “Sounds like an Umbra demon. But for it to be here and speak to you . . . did it say anything else?”
“I—I don’t remember exactly. The first time it said something about memories and hearts being stolen.”
“The first time?” He swung around to stare at me. Wrath wasn’t very good at showing a wide range of emotions, probably because he was an immortal being spawned in Hell and not a human, but was clearly surprised at this news. “Exactly how many times have you encountered it?”
“Maybe three? I thought I was being followed in the monastery . . . that night . . . then I found my sister and didn’t think about it again.” I started walking around the outer edge of the circle. “What’s an Umbra demon?”
“Mercenary spies, mostly. They sell their services to any royal House that has use for them. There are a few who are only loyal to Pride. They’re mostly incorporeal and are very hard to kill. Magic doesn’t always work on them the way you’d imagine it to.”
Very hard to kill wasn’t impossible to kill. A silver lining if ever there was one. “If it’s supposed to be spying, why reveal itself?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it, witch? They typically don’t speak at all.”
“Do you think Greed hired it?”
“Why would I think that?”
I looked him over for signs of deception. Surely he knew his brother was here. “Because I spoke with him in his gambling den right before my grandmother was attacked. And I may have tricked him into giving me more information than he’d originally agreed to. It’s not his sin, but I’m sure his royal pride was injured.”
“Funny.” Wrath gave me a dry look. “It is nearly impossible to fool a prince of Hell.”
“Well, unless he was lying about who he was, tricking him wasn’t that hard.” I couldn’t tell if Wrath believed me, and I didn’t care. “You said that some Umbra demons are loyal to Pride . . . do you think he sent them?”
Given the fact that it stole one of his horns, it seemed likely. But Wrath didn’t know that’s what I’d been after when I’d invaded the Viperidae nest. I was interested in his response.
“It’s possible, but not probable. Not when I’m here. An Umbra demon can’t transvenio to the underworld. They can only slip between realms if a prince sends them, or if they’re summoned. And even then that sort of power can only be used during specific periods.”
“How does traveling between realms work?”
“It’s like plucking threads of time, and weaving them in different places.”
Vague. “If someone was trying to summon the devil . . . would you be able to tell?”
Wrath cut a sharp glance my way. “He can’t be summoned.”
“What if someone had the Horn of Hades? Could Pride be summoned then?”
The demon prince went very still. His surprise only lasted a second before a slow smile spread across his face. “You’ve been busy.”
I had been, and I’d done a decent job so far of tracing my sister’s steps, but now I needed help. Wrath might be my enemy, but he’d saved my life. I hoped it meant I could trust him.
I thought carefully about what I wanted to do next. His responses about the Umbra demon reminded me of my twin and the way she’d take notes in her diary, and it put me at ease. It was like Vittoria was giving her blessing for this most unusual of unions. I reminded myself that Wrath could have easily tried taking my soul or bargaining for my life as I lay dying. And he didn’t do either of those things. Instead, he sacrificed his own power without expecting payment.