What if she thought I’d absconded with Jemma …? What if she was seeking Jemma out now, to retaliate? I had no doubt that Hellen would decide my disappearance was cause enough to renege on her end of our bargain.

I staggered to my feet, ready to take another charge at the mist. I had to get out of here! I had to make sure that Jemma was safe.

I ran for the translucent barrier.

No gong. No pain. No flying across the creepy, foggy space.

Instead, I sprawled face-first onto a plush, cream-coloured carpet. Three sets of large, masculine feet stepped into view as I moaned out my pain.

“You used the magic word, Son of Lucifer!” one of them boomed down at me. “Isn’t it fun, what good manners get for you?”

I rolled onto my back, hissing at the carpet burn on my bare chest.

“You okay, Boss?” Beezle asked, worry in his bark.

“No … yes … I don’t know,” I grunted, sitting up, taking my first good look at my captors.

Shit.

“Bloody angels,” I winced, peering up at three pairs of wings, feathers so white they were almost blinding. Their Y-fronts gleamed with the same shimmer, drawing the eye. I sneered, refusing to give them the satisfaction of gawping at their nethers. Not that they had anything remarkable packed into those tightey-whiteys anyway.

They smirked down at me. “I’m Mike,” the one closest to me, with golden hair that glowed with a bloody halo above it, said. “And this is Gabe,” he gestured to the one with brown hair, “and Raphe.” The black-haired one waved. Aside from their hair colour, there was no possible way to tell them apart. They all had the same smug, punchable faces, the same glimmering skin. The same lean builds.

“You could take ‘em, Boss,” Bub muttered. “You’re broader than all three of them put together.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” I mumbled out of the corner of my mouth, eyeing the three of them with distaste. “But I just need to get out of here, and I think wholesale slaughter of archangels is likely not going to help my cause.”

Mike cleared his throat, that sneer making me almost change my mind about wholesale slaughter. “You mentioned wanting to see Her? We’ll take you there now, if you’d like.”

I did not like. I wished with a fervour that pulsed in my chest to be anywhere else right at that moment. And that was exactly what I was going to do, now that I was out of their stupid mystical prison.

Shifting onto my side so my back was to the three, I rotated my wrist, as surreptitiously as possible, to conjure a portal.

Nothing.

I coughed to cover my surprise, moving my hand more vigorously.

Still nothing.