Chapter three.

My hair.

I screamed.

Yesterday it was black, thick and dark to my shoulders. Now it was white. Every strand.

I touched it with both hands, like touching it would prove it wrong.

The girl in the mirror looked like she had aged twenty years overnight. I stared at her, and she stared back, and neither of us had anything good to say.

Is this what happens to the women who go near him?

His last wife died after six months. Nobody ever explained why.

Tears came down my face. I pressed my palm against the glass and tried to breathe.

"Hey."

I turned.

Seraphine stood in the doorway. Her eyes went to my hair first. Then to my face. Her expression didn't do anything complicated. The color went out of it, quick and total, before she forced it back into place.

"You stayed," she said. Very quiet. "I told you to leave before morning."

"I overslept."

Her eyes dropped to my hair again. Something moved behind them that wasn't anger. It looked closer to fear, gone as fast as it came.

"You slept with my husband," she said.

"You sent me to do it."

"I sent you to be used." She crossed the room slowly. "Not to enjoy it."

"I didn't..."

"This white hair does not make you a victim." She stopped close enough that I could feel her breath. "You hear me?"

I didn't answer.

"Get out," she said. "Now."

I crossed the estate grounds fast and pushed through our front door. My mother was already waiting inside, a cup in both hands. Something dark moved beneath the surface of it, thin threads of black curling through the liquid like smoke that hadn't decided to rise yet. It smelled of metal and something burnt.

"Drink this," she said.

"What is it?"

"It will stop what he started in you."

"Mom, what is that?"

"Drink it."

I turned my face away. She grabbed my jaw with a strength I didn't know she had, and the liquid hit the back of my throat before I could stop it. It burned going down, worse than any drink should burn, and for one second I felt something inside my chest recoil from it like it was trying to protect itself.

Then it was over. My mother stepped back and watched me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Now go upstairs," she said. "Rest. You'll need it."

I climbed the stairs on legs that didn't feel entirely mine. I sat on the edge of my bed and pressed a hand flat against my sternum, waiting for pain that never fully arrived. Only heat. Only that same strange turning I'd felt in Lucifer's room, like something old shifting in its sleep.

I didn't understand it yet. I only knew it wasn't dying.

I came down for dinner because staying upstairs alone felt worse than facing them. My mother and Seraphine were already at the table, tea between them, voices low.

They looked up when I entered.

"Sit," my mother said.

I sat.

Seraphine studied my hair again, then my face, then her cup. "Lucifer wants to see his wife tonight," she said. "Before his trip."

"Which one?" I said.

Silence.

"He knew, Sera." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "He knew from the first night. He knew it wasn't you."

My mother's cup stopped halfway to her mouth.

"He knew the whole time," I said, "and he still let me stay."

"Shut up," Seraphine said, but there was no force behind it. Her eyes had gone somewhere else, somewhere far past the table.

My mother stood. She walked to the counter and opened the drawer, and when her hand came out, it was holding an old phone I had never seen before, small, scratched, the screen cracked in one corner.

She set it down on the table between us and pressed it once.

The screen lit.