“What happens when I come more than once?” she asked him. “Do you get more energy?”
The languid pleasure left his face, replaced by hollow misery. “I promised I would hold nothing back, so I will tell you the truth, but I warn you it is unpleasant. Do you truly want to know?”
Autumn met his somber gaze, unflinching. “Yes.”
Irdu took the towel from her and began drying her off. Autumn suspected it was so he didn’t have to look her in the eye. “The energy I receive from you only goes partially to my own survival. The excess is siphoned away by the Host, to further her own ends in the Underworld.”
“What are her ends, exactly?” Autumn asked.
“I don’t know with any certainty, but I have a suspicion.”
“And that is?”
“I believe she intends to break the barrier between living and dead, and expand her dominion into the living world.”
Autumn shook her head. “I don’t understand. How would that—”
“Everyone would die. Everyone.” He wrapped the towel around her and nudged her out of the bathroom. “The Host believes that she could inhabit life and death simultaneously. But she does not walk in the living world like demons do, and she does not understand it. Her takeover would destroy life itself.”
“Is there anyone who can stop her?”
“There are those within the Underworld who are working against her. But it’s dangerous. Her eyes and ears are everywhere. The slightest hint of mutiny is brutally crushed without regard to innocence or guilt of those condemned. But the resistance exists. Just barely—but it is there.”
Autumn turned to face him, her eyes wide, brows drawn together. “You’re leading another rebellion, aren’t you?”
His expression hardened for a moment. But as he gazed into her worried eyes, the hardness fell away to something like resignation. “Yes,” he said simply.
Emotion welled in Autumn—fear, pride, worry, admiration, grief, and… and something deeper and more resonant. She wasn’t sure what to do with that feeling. So she dropped the towel and threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his broad torso, and pressing her face into the solid wall of his chest.
“Talk to me,” Irdu urged, tilting her chin so that she looked him in the eye.
“I’m scared for you. And proud of you. And…” She twisted her chin out of his grasp so she could look away. When he reached for her again, she bit his finger.
“Ach!” He started in surprise. “Vicious little thing. Are you sure you’re not a demoness?”
Autumn laughed, blinking away the burn of tears. Sobering, she looked up at Irdu, letting him see the storm of emotion playing across her face. “I don’t want you to put yourself in danger. But I’m so… so… I’m just awed by your bravery. I can’t believe you think of yourself as anything but a hero.”
Irdu shook his head. “I’m only paying the debt I owe.”
Autumn sighed. “You’re so blind.” She turned away from him and walked to her dresser to pull on a t-shirt and underwear. She padded over to her narrow kitchen. “You’ve worn me out, my lovely incubus. I need sustenance.”
Autumn made herself a simple dinner of scrambled eggs while Irdu looked on. While she ate, they talked about easier topics. Irdu told her about his human life in the cradle of civilization. Autumn listened, rapt, as he described what he could remember of the family he’d once had. A loving mother, seven living siblings, and a father who’d died when Irdu was a boy.
“That wasn’t so unusual back then,” Irdu remarked. “Life was more… unreliable in those days. A simple scratch on the hand could kill a perfectly healthy man as surely as a slit throat.” He rubbed absently at the scar across his own throat. “More slowly, though.”
When she’d cleaned her plate, they returned to the propped-up pillows on her bed. They talked more. They kept on talking—about the things Irdu had seen and done, the places he’d been. Autumn told him about her relationship with Dylan, every excruciating detail from start to finish. Irdu rumbled his disgust with her ex, and she found herself feeling immeasurably lighter. For the first time in a long time, thinking of Dylan’s betrayal didn’t send her reeling back through all the bitter hurt.
They talked about Autumn’s loneliness and the burden of Irdu’s guilt. They talked about her empty Christmas and his need to atone for his failures. They talked long into the night, cuddled together on her bed, until Autumn’s eyelids were drooping and her words were coming slow and clumsy.
“You need to sleep,” Irdu said gently.
“I don’t want to sleep. I only get to see you at night.”
Irdu smiled. The look in his eyes made Autumn’s heart swell in her chest. “You have to work in the morning,” he said in a failed attempt at sternness.
“Who cares about work?” Autumn said sulkily, even though—despite her antipathy towards her current job—she was typically an over-achiever.
“Go to sleep,” Irdu whispered gently. Autumn felt her eyelids grow heavier.
“Is this—” she yawned luxuriantly ‘’—is this some kind of demon magic?”
Irdu chuckled. “No, love. You’re exhausted. Go to sleep.”
“Don’t want to,” she murmured, even as she snuggled down into her blankets. Irdu’s chest was warm and solid against her back, his arm curled beneath her head.
“Go to sleep, and when you dream, I’ll find you.” He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
6
She knew she was dreaming, because instead of her crappy, spider-infested apartment in late-December, Autumn was sitting at the end of the pier at her favorite Lake Michigan beach, under bright summer sunshine. The beach was filled with colorful umbrellas and towels. People played in the water while gulls swooped overhead and crowded hopefully near anybody who had food.
A shadow fell over Autumn and she looked up to see a tall man looking down at her. He was big and broad, with swarthy skin and blunt, unhandsome features. His raven-black hair fell to his shoulders. He looked familiar, but Autumn couldn’t place him. The man eased down to sit beside her, dangling his legs over the edge of the pier.
“Do I know you?” she asked, bemused.
“I should hope so,” he answered in a deep, growling voice that Autumn instantly recognized.
“Irdu? Why are you disguised again? I don’t need the illusions.”
“I think this is what I looked like when I was human.” He braced his arms on the lower rung of the railing and stared out across the lake. Blue water met blue sky, an endless vista with no horizon.
Autumn twisted to look at him, taking in the harsh lines of his features, the warm tan of his skin, the thick curl of his eyelashes. His eyes were a deep, chocolate brown, with round pupils. His black hair fluttered in the breeze, thick and a little messy. He’d dressed himself in a plain gray t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. It was so strange seeing him like this. He was Irdu, but not. Somehow more familiar and more alien at the same time.
She reached out and traced his hairline where his horns should be and felt only smooth skin. She tucked his hair behind his ear, and found the tip of it curved instead of pointed. Seeing his features on a human face made her realize that some of what she’d taken for a demon’s naturally harsh appearance was actually a broken nose that had healed without being properly reset.
“Smile,” she said.
He turned his head towards her and humored her with a toothy grin. Flat, human teeth.
His smile faded. “You don’t look happy to see me.”
“I don’t know why, but it makes me sad to see you like this.”
His eyebrows—black—shot up. “You prefer my demon form?”
“It’s not that, exactly.” She thought for a moment, turning her gaze back out to the endless blue in front of them. “Seeing you as a human—yourself, but human—reminds me of everything terrible that’s happened to you. Everything that’s been taken from you. But it’s also a reminder that, if you’d gotten the life you
deserved, I would never have met you. I wouldn’t know you if you were human.”
His features flickered and faded until the demon Irdu sat next to her on the pier. She reached out and cupped his face, brushing her thumb across the tip of one fang. The benefit of a dream meant that nobody ran shrieking and screaming from the sight of him. In fact, nobody reacted at all.
“How were you able to create this?” She gestured to the beach. “Can you see my memories?”
“No. This was your dream. I just walked into it.” Sunlight gleamed over his features, making him look even less human than he did in the low light of her apartment.
“You can be in the daylight in dreams.”
“Yes.” He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, letting the sunshine soak into his skin. Autumn smiled, and suddenly felt bad for asking him to drop the human illusion. So many things had been taken away from him. In her dreams, he could have them back, if only for a little while.
Looking back at the beach, she swung her dangling feet. “I used to come to this beach when I was a kid—when both of my parents were alive. We’d come here almost every weekend in the summer. Do you want to see more of the beach?”
Irdu got to his feet—clawed, elongated paws rather than feet—and held out a hand to her. She let him pull her up, and hand in hand, they walked down the pier and the beach.
“If you could be human again, would you?”
“If I could be human with you.”
Autumn’s throat tightened. If only. Swallowing past the welling emotion, she steeled herself to ask a question that had plagued her since she’d first realized what Irdu was. “We promised to tell each other everything.”
Irdu’s hand tightened on hers. “Yes.”
“Is there a way to release you from your current circumstances? A way in which you can live and be free?”
Irdu was silent.
“Please. Just tell me.”
“Yes. There’s a way.”
“Then why don’t we try—”
“Because it would require me to trick a mortal into taking my place in the Underworld.”
Autumn’s hopes fell and shattered. “Oh.”
“I would never do that.”
“I know you wouldn’t.”
“I wish I could tell you that I’d do anything to stay with you, but I can’t—”
“I would never expect you to. I would never ask that of you. I know you wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt.” Autumn thought for a moment. “I probably wouldn’t be able to either.”
The corner of Irdu’s mouth lifted at her reluctant admission. “I know you wouldn’t be able to. You’re too good for this world or the next.”
With a start, Autumn realized she might eventually be joining Irdu in the Underworld. “Does everybody who dies go to the Underworld?”
Irdu slid a worried glance at her. “Why are you asking this?”
“I’m not going to kill myself,” Autumn said, appalled.
He looked forward again. “Yes. All souls journey to the Underworld.”
Autumn was quiet, thinking.
“Your silence is unnerving, considering the topic,” Irdu said.
“I’m not going to kill myself!” She insisted again. She couldn’t help laughing at the morbidity of their conversation. “Let’s get in the water.”
They rolled up their pants and waded into the lake, falling into a conversation about Autumn’s childhood memories of visits to the beach.
“My dad would put his hands together, and I’d step on them, and he’d just launch me. So high, and so far!”
Irdu grinned at her and laced his fingers together, forming a step with his hands. “Want to try?”
“My clothes will get wet!” At his expression, she remembered. “Oh. Right. This is a dream. Okay then, let’s see what you’ve got.”
Laughing and playing with Irdu, her dream eventually eased back into the oblivion of sleep.
Autumn woke to the annoyingly cheerful tone of her weekday alarm. She reached for her phone, but froze as she felt the heavy warm weight of an arm curled around her waist. It took her only a split second to remember—
“Irdu!” She silenced her phone and twisted to him, pressing a happy kisses all over his face. “You’re still here!”
He smiled under her onslaught. “I have only a few minutes before the sun rises.”
Autumn cast her eyes to the window. The sky was lightening to gray at the edge of the horizon, faint light gleaming over rooftops. She curled back into Irdu, holding him tight.
“The sun sets before I get home from work. Will you be here when I get back?”
“Of course.”
Autumn snuggled tighter against him. “I don’t want you to leave.”
He clutched her tightly. “I don’t want to leave.”
But he had to. Autumn’s arms suddenly collapsed around empty air. She reached out uselessly, hand closing on nothing. The bed was still warm where he’d lain, but Irdu was gone. She sat up, looking around her quiet, empty apartment.
“Oh, wow. That’s a good look for you,” Therese said snidely when Autumn walked into work.
Autumn looked at her outfit. She was in the process of taking off her double-breasted wool coat, revealing a blue button-down shirt, covered in a repeating pattern of tiny chickadees. It was one of her favorite shirts. “What are you talking about?”
Therese gave Autumn one of her patronizing smiles and tapped her back.
Autumn looked over her shoulder and found a pair of her underwear stuck to her coat. They were the pair Irdu had peeled off of her and flung across her apartment last night. A goofy grin stretched her lips. She turned away from Therese to hide the happy flush that suffused her cheeks.
“Uh, whoops.” She shoved the underwear into her bag. “Laundry gets so staticky in the winter.”
“Right,” Therese said skeptically.
Autumn nearly choked on the laughter she was trying to suppress. She floated through the rest of the day on a cloud. When Colton somehow managed to convert the recently finished pamphlet files to the wrong color mode and then emailed them to the wrong printer with an order for five thousand, Autumn just laughed and got on the phone to fix it. When Kyle draped himself over the top of her cubicle wall and told her effusively how beautiful she looks in that shirt, Autumn smiled maniacally and told him she found it in a dumpster.
“There was some kind of weird-smelling slime on it, but it still had all the tags on! And the slime washed right out.”
“Oh. Uh. Good find.”
Autumn grinned as Kyle backed away.
Despite her buoyant mood, Autumn was excruciatingly aware of each individual grain of sand filtering through the hourglass of her workday. She glanced at the time every two minutes—continually astonished to find that only two minutes had passed. She took lunch early and left the office to call Liz. Expecting to leave a voicemail while Liz was occupied in the National Archives, she was surprised to hear her pick up the call.
“Hey, sorry to bother you. I was wondering if you know any experts on ancient Mesopotamian languages and cuneiform.” Liz wrote for the Arts and Culture section of the Chicago Times Herald. She had contacts across an unbelievable number of fields.
“Yeah, actually. Leila Kader. She’s an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago. She wrote her dissertation on the divergences between the various accounts of Inanna’s descent into the Underworld.”
Autumn’s breath caught. A myth about a journey into the Underworld—contemporary to the time when Irdu died and became a demon? “Is that a story about a living human going into the world of the dead?” she asked.
“No, she was a goddess. Leila can tell you all about it. I’ll text you her info. She loves talking about this stuff. Why do you need to know about Mesopotamian mythology?”
“A personal project,” Autumn hedged, letting Liz believe she meant one of her art projects. “Well, I better let you go,” she said before Liz’s
journalist senses detected that Autumn was hiding something.
“Alright. Talk to you later.”
With the remainder of her lunch break, Autumn texted Leila Kader.
Hi, Dr. Kader. This is Autumn Havener. Liz Cruz gave me your phone number. I’m looking for somebody who can answer some questions for me about Mesopotamian myths and cuneiform. If you’ve got the time, I’d love to buy you a coffee and pick your brain.
The historian responded almost immediately.
Definitely! When did you have in mind?
Not after work, Autumn quickly decided. That would cut into her Irdu time.
Could you meet sometime tomorrow? Any time or place that’s convenient for you, during the day.
Absolutely!
She gave Autumn the name of a coffeeshop near campus and told her to be there at noon.
Thanks so much. See you tomorrow!
“Decided to wear your underwear under your clothes?” Therese sniped when Autumn returned to the office.
Autumn laughed as if they were just two friends bantering. Therese gave her a baffled look. Autumn had never figured out why Therese hated her, but she was too happy to care. In a few hours, she’d go home to Irdu. Therese could be as caustic and abrasive as she liked.
Thanks to another one of Colton’s mistakes, Autumn left work forty-five minutes late. The sky was dark. The sun had set more than half an hour ago. Irdu might already be in her apartment, waiting for her. She hurried to the train, desperate to get home.
When she got to her place, the sun had been down for an hour. She missed the lock with her key twice before she finally wrenched the door open and burst inside. She looked around. Unless he was hiding in the bathroom, there was no Irdu.
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