“No pressure, right?” I ask as I drop my head to my arm. “So…what you’re saying is there is a point to this fight, and I do stand a chance, so long as I time everything perfectly—”

“Oh shit,” he says suddenly, staring at the pages in disbelief.

I’m scared to ask, but…

“What now?”

He stands abruptly and goes to the door, peering around, and then he chants something that seemingly creates a burst of energy, which visibly wavers around the room.

“What are you doing?”

“Ensuring this conversation stays private,” he says as he takes a seat again, fingers running over the page very rapidly, as though he’s quickly rereading to ensure he’s understood correctly.

I think.

I have no choice but to speculate, because he’s certainly not in any hurry to clue me in.

“Paca, I think you moved your secondary trigger into them,” he says in a ghost of a whisper.

My skin chills as I struggle to keep the flame inside me, and he cuts his eyes toward me. “If Lucifer finds this out—”

“I’ll kill you,” I say, finishing that sentence in a much different way than I’m sure he intended.

He swallows so hard I can hear the lump go down his throat. “If he finds out, it won’t be from me.”

He tears out those pages and hands them to me. I quickly turn them to ash.

“If he found this out, he’d send them in there on their own, and they’d be forced to needlessly sacrifice themselves. Not even you could withstand the effects of a destructive detonation of that caliber inside the Pure Branch,” he says as he looks away. “Not in Purgatory. Not on Earth. And in Hell, you’d just—”

“Blow everything up. Yeah. I know. I wish everyone would stop reminding me of that. And now I have this to deal with. Why would I move it to them? I know I’d never sacrifice them in my place,” I say quietly, sinking in my seat as something heavy weighs on my chest.

My mind searches for memories that are no longer mine, straining to collect even one fragment that would help me piece this fresh, confusing puzzle together.

When Lamar and I huddle up to do a conspiratorial cramming session, I don’t know if we sound like cryptic geniuses, or raving loons that make no sense.

“You’d never sacrifice them in your place,” he agrees, putting his hand over mine and giving it a gentle, friendly squeeze.

It’s oddly comforting, probably because he knows the old me way better than I do and sounds very sincere.

“Then why would I do it?” I ask him quietly.

“Everything you did, you did it with purpose. Maybe it’s to give them the chance to level the world in your absence, should…”

He lets the words trail off, and I nod slowly.

“Should I not win in the war against Jahl,” I say in closing. “I’d have a backup plan to help them stay safe for as long as possible.”

“They’d level the world to the best of their ability, reaping all the souls they could at once, sending them to their final rest or unrest, before Jahl could steal their minds and souls to feed himself and consume everything all at once. It’s your Hail Mary pass to give everyone what they want, and gamble on both Heaven’s plan and Hell’s. Theoretically.”

“Because I couldn’t decide, even back then, what needed to be done,” I say on a long, suddenly tired sigh. “Theoretically.”

He squeezes my hand again, patting it with his other.

“Only you could make it possible to form this Plan A and Plan B. The secondary trigger is almost as powerful, according to the math I’ve done based on these journals, only it’s not lethal to the host, especially if it’s spread out between four instead of one.”

“But all bets are off if Lucifer learns about this twist of fate,” I go on, scrubbing my free hand over my face. “He’ll sacrifice them and probably buy me a pony as an apology.”

“He does have a hard time with sympathy,” he states too seriously, certainly downplaying things.

“Let’s not tell the guys,” I say quietly. “I need to learn more about my latest level up. I have some really awesome cyclone thing that does a lot of vacuum sucking, but it’s not a portal like that living whirlpool in Hell’s Black Heart.”

My eyes scan some of the riddles in this particular journal, lips pursing as I read the one in the margin. Notes in the margin are always the most important, or at least they were in the nineties. I think.

From death comes life upon a grave misdeed. Only then can one sow a truly destructive seed.

That sounds ominous.

Flipping the page, I find another note in the margin.

A weapon can be used more than once, and never fully ceases to exist. The ammunition is the loss that comes at a cost you will find the hardest.

My fingers run over those lines, the wheels of my mind turning, as I try to piece that together. The weapon is supposed to cease to exist once it’s used, right?

Then again, all the information I’ve learned in Hell gets called into question anytime new information conflicts with it. After all, the Devil is the one controlling the information stream down here. Shit’s sake. This is why we can’t be heroes. It’s every bonded group for themselves down here, and no one can trust anyone.

He pats my hand again. “I know what none of that means,” Lamar says, cutting through my thoughts.

I nod, even though I’ve already forgotten what I said by this point, my mind lost on the route of self-doubt and inner tangents.

“What do you think this means?” I ask him, pointing at the note in the margin.

He frowns as he glances at what I’m pointing at.

“What does what mean?” he asks.

“This,” I state, pointing again.

He slowly shakes his head, flicking his gaze to me. “You apparently see something I don’t. It’s just a blank margin to my eyes.”

There’s a quiet fluttering in my chest, and I swallow harshly. The margin notes are oddly in English instead of this dead language. The old me only wanted me to see this, apparently.

“What about this one?” I ask him, flicking the page back again.

He slowly shakes his head. “Also blank.”

“I also made the ground break apart,” I add, going back to the conversation I remember us having before the inner tangents and confusion.

Lamar, not missing a beat, follows suit, not prying. I’ll figure out why these notes are important and secretive when I’m alone.

“You control storms and natural disasters with a flick of your wrist,” he assures me.

It wasn’t quite that simple, but I don’t admit that.

“I also found out I have—”

A squeal takes the place of the rest of my words, as a fist slams into Lamar’s face, and he goes flying across the room.

I jerk my gaze over to see Kai rubbing his fist as though Lamar’s jaw has hurt it, while Lamar groans from the floor.

“No touching,” Ezekiel says as Gage stabs his sword into the table in front of me.

“Next time there won’t be a warning shot,” Gage adds, eyes lethally narrowed like Lamar is the most offensive man he’s ever encountered.

“You do know he’s gay, right?” I ask as Jude siphons across the room, moving to be behind Lamar, his eyes just as cold and dark as his soul. “And banging my lazy brother,” I tack on, just to be certain they understand how innocent Lamar’s touch is.

“I see you’ve gotten a lot of your strength back,” Lamar notes as he finishes picking himself up off the ground and siphons across the room to take a seat. “One punch wouldn’t have knocked me down so easily otherwise.”

Fortunately, Lamar doesn’t seem offended. I’m still unsure how powerful he is versus my still-growing boys.

Ezekiel slides into the recently vacated chair next to me, as the other three pull up chairs all around the table.

“Stay over there,” Gage tells Lamar, when my bestie stands to come join us. “I may still stab you.”

Lamar immediately plants his ass in a chair on that side of the room, not bothering to argue.

“I think that’s a bit excessive. Lamar is my bestie. Don’t be so—”

I shut right the hell up when all four sets of eyes suddenly light up twice as bright with that cosmic blue that was dull in three sets of eyes just moments ago. Even Jude’s have lost the black, getting in sync with the rest of theirs, all within a unified blink.

“That’s creepy,” I point out.

They continue to stare at me with those creepy eyes.

“No touching,” Jude says, echoing Gage’s words. “Unless you want girls—gay or straight—touching us.”

I look over at Lamar and give him a shrug. “No touching,” I tell him, trying not to smile.

I’d so set a bitch on purple-fire. I wouldn’t stop at punching her in the face. I still want to roast Chloe and all those other girls who’ve touched them, but I feel that’s a bit overboard. I wonder if my current favorite color played a part in my new fire’s shade.

Things to ponder…

“Surely you all realize no woman in her right mind would touch you on purpose,” Lamar tells them blandly. “At least not now that Paca has made her champion debut. Most of the souls who attend those things were too young to even know The Apocalypse is a real being.”