I waved to Gabriel and Samiel to follow me and walked toward the door. Amarantha flew after me, cursing.
“This is not over, Lucifer’s spawn,” she hissed.
“It is for you,” I said.
“I will haunt you to the end of your days!” Amarantha vowed. “You will never be free of me.”
“We’ll see about that,” I muttered.
We went inside and down to Chloe’s secret lab. J.B. was waiting for us in the hallway.
“Uh, why is your mom hanging around on the roof?” I asked.
“Because she refused the Door,” J.B. said. “She’s been following me around for the last couple of days. I had to have a spell put up around my condo to keep her out.”
“Can I get one, too?” I asked.
“She threatened to haunt Madeline ‘until the end of her days,’” Gabriel said.
J.B. rubbed his eyes. “I’ll see what I can do. Come on—Chloe is anxious to run the tests.”
We crowded into the small room. Chloe’s worktable had been removed. In its place was a tripod with one of the machines on it, and a man tied to an office chair so that he faced the lens. He looked like he was in his mid-forties, paunchy and balding. He was dressed in a jumpsuit that looked a lot like the sort of thing that prisoners wore. He wasn’t screaming, but he kept rocking back and forth in the chair. Chloe was making some adjustments to the machine when we walked in.
“We had to tie him; otherwise he kept trying to bang his head against the wall,” Chloe said apologetically.
Her hair was pink today, and she wore a leather vest with a tiered black skirt. She gave Samiel a very suggestive smile.
“Okay,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s get this party started.”
Nobody spoke as Chloe pushed a button to turn on the camera. Gabriel took my hand and squeezed it. My whole body was taut. The man in the chair went rigid as the scanner met his eyes.
“We’ve attempted to speed up the reinsertion process,” Chloe said as the machine did its work. “It seems, from what we could determine in analyzing the spell, that the memory extraction takes a number of hours.”
“And you think it’s safe to put the memories back in there faster than they were taken out?” I asked, skeptical. A human brain is a delicate and complicated organ. It didn’t seem that quickness was wanted here, but rather care.
“We have no idea if this is safe at any speed,” Chloe said frankly. “I erred on the side of rapidity only because we have so many victims to restore.”
“Plus, we don’t know how many more may be out there. Our resources are taxed as it is taking care of the ones that are already here,” J.B. said. “I’ve got special teams all over the city looking for warehouses like the one you found.”
“I can help with that,” I said, surprised that he hadn’t asked me.
“There’s no point in putting you in charge of a team,” J.B. said. “Chaos follows you everywhere you go, and I don’t need to deal with any more property damage.”
“I don’t think you are taking the long view,” I said, my cheeks reddening. “The people in the warehouse were saved.”
“By J.B. and his team,” Beezle pointed out.
“Who didn’t have to deal with the monster arachnids,” I said.
“Enough,” Gabriel said.
Beezle and I both subsided, glaring at each other.
The man in the chair moaned. We all stared at him. I would have squashed Gabriel’s knuckles into powder if he hadn’t been supernatural. J.B.’s hands were balled into fists in his pockets. Chloe had her arms crossed, her mouth drawn in a straight line. On my other side Samiel slung a comforting arm around my shoulder. Beezle fluttered around the room nervously.
The man moaned again, louder this time, and then he shouted, “Janie!”
He began to thrash in his restraints. I released Gabriel’s hand and stepped forward, only to have Chloe cut me off.
“Wait,” she said.
The man tore back and forth, screaming now. It was a different kind of screaming than when we had removed the victims from the cameras. That screaming had a kind of dull, automaton quality to it. This screaming was a soul-deep cry of pain. Blood leaked from the corners of the man’s eyes.
I started to move around Chloe, to go to the man who was screaming so hard and long it was breaking my heart.
“Wait,” she repeated, her hand on my chest. “The process isn’t complete yet.”
“His eyes are bleeding,” I said furiously. “You think that’s a good thing? He could be having a stroke.”
“Trust me,” she said, her face desperate.
I think she knew I could blast her out of the way if I wanted.
“Wait, Maddy,” J.B. said. “Just wait.”
He sounded as deeply unhappy as I felt. Beezle landed on Samiel’s shoulder and covered his little ears.
Gabriel touched my shoulder, pulled me back to him. “Wait.”
We all watched in various states of distress as the man howled, rocked, tried to tear at his bindings. But his eyes never moved from the camera.
Suddenly the man went completely rigid and silent, and then he slumped forward, his eyes closed.
I pulled away from Gabriel and ran to the man. Chloe was right next to me, untying the restraints. Together we eased him down to the floor and I checked for a heartbeat.
“He’s still alive,” I said, lifting his eyelids. His pupils were normal, but there were streaks of blood on his cheeks.
“Good,” Chloe said. “I think he’ll sleep for a while now.”
“And when he wakes up he’ll be good as new?”
“Well, sleeping helps memory function in normal people,” Chloe reasoned. “So we assumed that after the memories were restored, the victims would need to sleep for several hours. Their brains need to process the restored information.”
“Don’t try this on anyone else yet,” I said.
She shook her head. “We’ll wait and see if it takes.”
Chloe stepped into the hall to find someone who could help her bring the man back to the rooms they had prepared for the victims.
I stood, feeling drained, and looked at J.B. “Call me if you want me to help the special teams.”
He nodded. “I think we have it under control, but you could help by trying to find out where Focalor is. We know from my mother that he’s part of this.”
“He may just be in his court,” I said, thinking of Focalor’s appearance at Samiel’s trial.
“We’re not going to try to beard the lion in his den again, are we?” Beezle asked. “Because that didn’t go so well last time.”
“No,” I said. “I think I’ll give Grandpa a call.”
I dialed Lucifer’s number—yes, that really is as weird as it sounds, giving Satan a phone call—and waited for him to pick up. I got his voice mail.
“Azazel said Lucifer hasn’t been answering his calls,” I said to Gabriel.
“You think Lord Lucifer is in some kind of danger?” Gabriel asked.
“More likely he’s on vacation in Aruba and has his phone shut off,” I said.
“Or he’s decided to see if you can handle the pressure from your marriage yourself,” Beezle said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He gave you what you wanted; now he wants to see if you deserved it,” he replied. “I could kill for a cupcake right about now.”
“Forget it,” I said, thinking over the implications of what Beezle had just said. “You think Lucifer is purposely waiting to see what kind of fallout there is because I married Gabriel?”
“It is an excellent way to see which of his courts would openly object, and which would fall in line,” Gabriel said. “Remember what we discussed this morning.”