Premonition of Peace (Her Immortal Monsters #3)

Chapter 16

sixteen

NATHALIE

A day and a half of searching memories and a day and a half of trying to figure out how to find the shears using the Eye, and I had come up with nothing. As much as I didn’t mind going at things alone, I knew when to call in the cavalry. Pulling this off was going to take a group effort, but Lucifer didn’t know how to find the objects of fate any more than August did. It certainly didn’t stop them from trying to get me some answers. If I didn’t get some answers, I was going to fail everyone. The plan would be null and void if I didn’t get my ducks in a row. And these ducks were acting more like rabid squirrels.

I needed a new perspective. I needed my best friend. Someone who understood what it meant to have the weight of the world resting on their shoulders.

It was decided.

Glancing at the clock, I knew she’d be awake. The twins were still on a bizarre sleep schedule. So, I freshened up and with keys in hand, I tiptoed to the door. I’d asked Lucifer to sleep in his room for the night. I just couldn’t give him the attention I knew he needed. Just as I reached for the handle of the front door, I felt a familiar presence behind me. Lucifer stood, his arms crossed over his bare chest, his presence filling the room with a quiet intensity.

“Sneaking off to save the world?”

I huffed a laugh. “Going to see Piper, actually.”

“At two in the morning?”

“She’s awake,” I said, shrugging. “Kids.”

“That sounds horrendous.” He wrinkled his nose.

Smacking him on the arm, I gave him a disapproving look. “Watch it. Those are my godchildren you’re talking about.”

“Forget I said anything.” He held his hands up in surrender. “Want me to go with you?”

I shook my head. “No, I need to go on my own. Get Piper’s input. Ronan’s too. I’m not sure everyone is ready for a family gathering.”

“By family, you mean my brother.”

“Of course I am. I have enough on my mind as it is. I don’t need to deal with the two of you right now. That’ll come in due time.” He raised a brow in surprise, and I put my hand on his shoulder, reaching up to kiss his cheek. “Don’t burn the place down. And don’t follow me.”

The drive to Piper’s house was a blur, the road passing beneath me without notice until I found myself standing outside her door. Piper opened up almost immediately, concern and exhaustion etching lines on her face, but the surprise of seeing me on her doorstep was evident.

“What’s with the sunglasses? It’s the middle of the night.” She waved me in, and I stepped into the foyer.

“About that,” I said, taking them off and turning to her. “We have some catching up to do.”

Piper’s mouth fell open but she didn’t say anything, just watching me intently as a crease formed between her brows. Eventually, she nodded and cleared her throat.

“Ronan,” she called, never taking her gaze off my face.

“Hmm?” His deep timbre rumbled from the other room.

“Put the kettle on for Nat, will you?” She paused. “And bring whiskey.”

Several minutes later, I found myself sitting in Piper and Ronan’s living room while they stared at me. The kids and Mist had recently gone to sleep, thanks to a concoction the Se?ora had put together to get the twins to sleep at the same time. It wasn’t perfected yet, but the trials were getting closer.

“So,” Piper began, her eyes peering over her cup at me as she took a small sip, “that is going to take some getting used to.”

“That’s what you focus on?”

“What? It looks . . . weird. I’m just saying,” she mumbled, lifting a shoulder. “If I showed up on your doorstep with a golden metal eyeball, you can’t say you wouldn’t say the same.”

“Yeah, I probably would . I plan on keeping it glamoured, so you won’t have to get used to it too much. No one needs to know. I’d be killed in a heartbeat just so some idiot supernatural could steal it from me. I just figured the easiest way to get the conversation started was putting it out in the open.” Letting the magic settle over my face, the glamour covered the orb, and Piper could stop staring at it. “Better?”

Ronan tilted his head. “Did my brother convince you to do this?”

I snorted. “Please. I make my own decisions. You know me well enough by now. He didn’t know about it until the surgery was underway.”

“Are you going to fill us in on why you did it, then?” Piper asked, setting her cup down on the table.

“Brace yourselves. It’s a lot,” I said, and began to fill them in on everything that had happened in the two and a half days. Carissa’s death. Kat’s family secret bomb. Morgan La Fay not being able to actually die and me being her ultimate vessel. My plan for how to trap her. All of it. Including my complete failure in locating the objects of fate.

“The Morrigan is in Sasha’s body? Are you fucking serious? How is that bitch not dead?” Piper asked, a mild mix of panic and anger in her eyes. “We killed her. Or sort of killed her. Did we? If we didn’t kill her, who was it?”

“We killed a vessel. Nothing more. Her soul jumped to another one.” I crossed my arms, wincing. “I just thought the coven had brought her back. I didn’t have a clue she’d been alive-ish for centuries, bodysnatching.”

“Fucking magic and glamours,” she mumbled. “Looked just like her.” She finally breathed out a long sigh, then nodded. “This a lot to take in.”

I hated that she was worried. I could see it on her face. How could she not? She had her children to think about. This affected all of them too.

Pressing my lips together in a thin line, I gave her a look of apology and sympathy. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. There’s just so much . . .”

“There’s more you aren’t saying, isn’t there?”

I sighed. “Even with all of this, I’m also trying to think of a way to save Marcel, and I just . . . I don’t know how. I check on him every day. He’s weakening, and I can’t do anything to stop it. I’m lost, Piper. I’m in over my head, and I genuinely don’t know what to do anymore. Everything is a fucking ticking time bomb.”

Piper wiped her palms on her pants, leaning forward. “You aren’t kidding,” she murmured, before shaking her head of whatever thoughts had crept into her mind. “So . . . what do we do? We’re here to brainstorm, right?”

I gave her a small smile in thanks. “I’ll take whatever advice you have. Give me any ideas.”

It felt like hours had passed as we tossed suggestions back and forth, finding a hole in each and every one of them. Each idea we tossed around fell apart under the weight of practicality or unforeseen complications. It was frustrating, disheartening even, to come up against so many dead ends.

Three pots of tea had been consumed. Snack wrappers littered the coffee table. Piper paced the room, chewing her thumbnail as she thought in silence while I slumped on the couch, my neck bent back over a pillow while I stared at the ceiling.

“Maybe there’s a way to go about it without the objects of fate?” Piper asked. “If you can’t find them with the Eye, maybe it can do something else?”

“Not that I know of,” I said, glancing at Ronan and he shook his head in agreement. “I can see the ties that bind all of us. Everything is covered in thin gold threads. I can touch them, but I can’t do anything with them.”

“Would she fall for a lure somehow? A way to coax her out of Sasha’s body?” Ronan suggested.

I pulled my legs up on the couch, sitting crisscrossed. “Not likely. She’s too cunning for that. She chose Sasha for the safety net. The Morrigan knows we won’t just kill her out right.”

“Even if we were willing to, how would we do that without putting anyone else at risk?” Piper sighed, running a hand through her hair, her voice tinged with weariness. “The moment she got a whiff of danger, she’d just jump into the body of someone else we care about. Possibly even one of the kids.”

We were all in agreement as we sat in the quiet for several moments, the wheels turning in our brains. We needed a way to just get rid of her altogether. If there’s a soul tie between two people, the only way to do that without getting rid of the tie, would be to get rid of the soul.

The Nats in the loci were just as silent until The Warden piped up. “Maybe we don’t need the shears?”

“ Explain ,” Ann said, pinching the bridge of her nose, not looking up from her file.

“ If there’s a soul tie, but we can’t cut it, the only other option would be getting rid of the soul.” The Warden tapped the table, getting everyone’s attention. “ Don’t you see? We have to get rid of the other soul.”

“Never gonna happen,” Bad Nat chimed in, picking at her nails with a dagger.

“Wait,” Ann mumbled, then pulled out a memory and slapped it on the table. I understood what they were saying.

“Ronan,” I said, breaking the silence and looking at him as the tiniest spark of hope warmed my chest. “Can’t you just consume Morgan Le Fay’s soul?”

Piper looked at me triumphantly before looking back at Ronan. “Would that stop her?”

He hesitated, then gave us a single nod. “Yes, technically.”

“Why technically? You’re the Harvester,” I said, waving my hand at him. “You eat souls.”

“Happy to,” he said on a sigh before adding, “Just one problem. I do that, and your friend’s body dies. There’s no coming back.”

“Dammit,” I whispered under my breath, deflating again.

“ Told you,” Bad Nat muttered, and I wanted to slap her.

Piper groaned. “Scratch that off the list.”

Pressing my thumbs into my temples, I closed my eyes. “This list sucks.”

“We really need those fucking shears,” Piper said, dropping down on the coach next to me. “There’s really just no other way.”

“Mama?” Orson called out, coming down the stairs.

“I’ll be back,” she said, patting my leg as she got up and left the room.

Ronan looked at me with an intensity that told me whatever he was thinking was not something I wanted to hear. “Spit it out,” I said, shifting my gaze to the hallway and then back to him. “She’s out of earshot. Say what you need to say.”

“I’d already considered that solution,” he began, his voice firm and resolute.

“Why didn’t you just say that earlier?”

He took a moment, his eyes narrowing just a fraction. “Because Piper doesn’t need to hear the rest of it.” Realization dawned on me, and I had no doubt it passed over my features. For a brief second, Ronan almost looked sympathetic when he saw that I understood. “If this comes down to protecting the kids, protecting Piper . . . I won’t hesitate to take her soul. It doesn’t matter whose body she is using as a vessel. Even if that vessel is you.”

“Good,” I whispered, giving him a resolute nod. “I expect nothing less.”

“Say nothing to her,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “We both know she will do everything in her power to stop me. She’ll believe there’s another way.”

“We both know there isn’t.”

No one needed to know. Not Piper, not August, and definitely not Lucifer.

This was my contingency.

A last resort to protect the people I loved the most, no matter the cost.