“Yes.” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “He told them he’d stay willingly if they let me come home.”

Adam sighed. “That’s Thomas for you.”

In the morning, Isabelle woke up wrapped in the blanket on the cold warehouse floor, with a crick in her neck. Adam lay sprawled nearby.

Thomas hadn’t returned.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-SEVEN

ON THE STOVE, THE TEAPOT WHISTLED. ISABELLE pulled it off and poured steaming water into her coffee cup, then turned and leaned against the kitchen counter to sip it. Letting the mild flavor of the lemon balm tea fill her senses, she glanced around at the wreck that was her kitchen.

These days she wasn’t home much. Every waking moment was spent at the Coven, with Micah, trying to get back into hell. Together they had read every word of the texts forward and backward, tracking down and cross-referencing the information they found with anything else they could locate about Eudae and demon magick. Desperately, they looked for any way to open a doorway that didn’t involve the cold-blooded murder of a series of witches.

By digging far and wide into non-magickal ancient texts, they’d discovered a wealth of information they’d never known existed. But it took a lot of time to separate the wheat from the chaff. She’d started her search the day after she’d returned and had worked every day and every night since, averaging about four hours of sleep per night.

Isabelle glanced around her kitchen again, curling her lip at the sink full of dishes, the hand towel discarded on the counter, and the trash can that definitely needed to be emptied. Nothing mattered but her research. She came home late every night, made dinner, maybe some tea, then got a meager amount of rest.

Her mother had come back from California when she’d heard about Thomas. She was actually being supportive and unselfish, which was…strange, but also welcome. Her mother had hired a cleaning service to come in starting tomorrow and Isabelle hadn’t declined. It was a good idea under the circumstances, and Isabelle was pleased that her mother was making an effort with her.

Isabelle would be up in a few hours and back at the Coven to work at the first sliver of dawn on the horizon. Jack and Ingrid kept insisting she just sleep at the Coven, but she couldn’t do that…not yet.