by Jessa Slade
She pinned Ecco with a gimlet stare. “If I’d known you like malice in your shower . . .”
Archer studied Bookie expectantly. The Bookkeeper fiddled with the dials on his machine, his brow furrowed. He muttered.
“Well,” Archer prompted.
“It happened so fast.” Bookie straightened his glasses, a faint tremor in his hand. “I can’t quite believe—”
Archer frowned. “Didn’t you get it?”
Ecco pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. Cloves masked the sulfur stench. “I’m not getting slimed again just because you forgot to push ‘record.’ ”
Bookie whirled on him. “It’s not that simple.”
“Demon here. Demon gone. Gone where?” Ecco peered over Bookie’s shoulder. “What’s this braid of light?” He pointed with the cigarette, the glowing cherry tracing the readout. “Here’s where the malice is draining, like usual. But here looks like the inverse, as if somebody wove it back together, except light instead of dark.” His brow furrowed. “When Archer grabbed Sera.”
Sera took a step around Archer’s big frame to see the screen. The spirograph pattern could have been the exploding malice’s good twin, the splintered strands winding back toward some bright, elusive center.
“Yes, it’s unusual,” Bookie said with cool reluctance. “I need time to decode and match against previous readings. Unless you can figure it out by yourself.”
“Whatever.” Ecco took a hard drag off the cigarette. “As always with you people, been fun.”
Archer waited until the talya’s footsteps faded down the hall. “About Sera’s necklace.”
Bookie jerked his head up. “She told you?” He frowned at Sera. “I thought we agreed to wait until I could convince the league not to kill you out of hand.”
“I’ve pissed him off once or twice, but I took a chance Archer wouldn’t slay me without better cause.”
Bookie didn’t smile. “Possession of the desolator numinis is more damning than you know.”
“So explain,” Archer said. “Is the stone how she destroys the malice?”
Bookie hesitated. “From what I’ve read, the desolator numinis is like the energy sinks we use to ward league dwellings from the negative emotions that attract horde-tenebrae. Except the matrix seizes the emanations we call souls.” He glanced at the spirograph. “It seems likely she’s doing the same with demonic ethers.”
Sera’s skin prickled as if the pendant squirmed against her neck. She resisted the urge to tear it off.
Archer let out a slow breath. If she hadn’t spent the last few days as his living shadow, she might have missed the carefully buried disappointment in his voice. “Then it’s just a kinder and gentler garbage can for dumping demonic trash, not a one-way ticket back to the demon realm.”
Bookie laid one hand on the spirograph machine as if steadying himself. “Is that what you hoped for?” His tone rose incredulously. “An opening into the tenebraeternum?”
Archer’s expression blanked. “And why not?”
“You can’t just rip through the Veil as if it were some petty malice.” The historian sputtered, as close to a laugh as Sera had heard from him. “It’d be chaos. Actual chaos.”
From Archer’s predatory stillness, Sera didn’t think he was particularly amused, especially when he asked softly, “Are we not teetering on that edge already?”
Any semblance of laughter fled Bookie’s face. “Not that close, as far as most of us are concerned. Bringing on the apocalypse for your own sense of closure seems arrogant, even for a talya.”
Hoping to ease the spiking tension, Sera cleared her throat. “The desolator numinis might be just another prison, but it could still hold a hint.”
“What hint?” Bookie’s lip curled, nothing like a smile but not quite a sneer.
If anyone was arrogant . . . From Bookie’s sudden pallor, she knew her eyes flared violet. “The hint inherent in all prisons. A way to escape.”
She remembered Zane’s comment about the temptation of calling on the demon, and shame pricked her. Bookie, acerbic comments and all, was part of the league, not the enemy.
“A way out might be a way back in. If the stone holds demons, just like the demon realm, what we learn from one could apply to the other.” She relaxed her fingers, fisted around the pendant. “Who besides you can tell us what other hints the Bookkeeper archive holds?”
Bookie inclined his head in grudging agreement. “More than one person could discover in a lifetime. A mortal lifetime, anyway. But I’ll let you know what I find.” He clicked off the spirograph device, and the machine powered down with a descending hum.
“On that note . . . ,” Archer murmured.
Sera grabbed her things and followed him out. “I thought nerds were charming these days.”
Archer propelled her down the hall with a hand at the small of her back. “He is not the man his father was. I suppose that is true of us all.”
In the elevator, she turned to him. “What did you think you’d find today?”
“Something, anything we didn’t know before. Which is plenty.” His gaze rested on her with a hint of the unruly need that kept flaring between them. “But I think you’re even more rare than the secrets in Bookkeeper histories.”
She wanted to kick herself for the hiccup in her heartbeat. Rare indeed.Two-headed calves and meteor strikes were rare too. Rare didn’t always mean desirable.
When the elevator stopped on her floor, he held her back. “I want to show you something. Come up to my room.”
Actually, meteor showers were beautiful, awe inspiring, and only very rarely killed people. And who wouldn’t want a two-headed calf?
She followed him up.
CHAPTER 16
His room had a better view of the city than hers, but about the same level of personality—which was to say, none. She wished she hadn’t made fun of his Spartan loft. She could’ve saved those zingers for now.
He must’ve seen her expression. “I don’t stay here often. This way.” On his desk, a computer idled, the league’s @1 insignia scrolling randomly. “I want to show you what Bookie won’t acknowledge.”
She leaned over the laptop beside him, inadvertently bumping his wide shoulder. “But I’ve finished less of the Bookkeeper backlist than I have malice and ferales.”
“I don’t need indoctrination. Bookie won’t look past what he already knows. His father was a brilliant researcher and historian, but our current Bookkeeper doesn’t seem confident enough to follow the tradition.”
Sera thought him more frustrated than unsure, but she didn’t really know the man. “What can I do?”
“You have a good mind. I need that.”
He’d brought her up to his room for her good mind. With effort, she focused on the computer screen, trying to ignore the hot bulk of his body, the memory of how he’d pulled her close as the malice unraveled. “So show me.”
He took a breath that ruffled her hair. “When we first registered the distortion in the Veil that meant a demon was crossing over, we also began recording an upswing in horde-tenebrae activity in this realm. The intensity of activity surpassed anything we’d seen before.” He opened a graph that showed the abrupt spike. A few more clicks opened demon-fighting strategies, historic battles, ancient prophecies, and oracular folklore. “Bookie believed a djinni was crossing. He said we should stay out of its way if we wanted to survive.”
“Sounds like reasonable advice.”
“I said we should destroy it before the possessed came fully into his power.”
She pursed her lips. “Sounds like your sort of advice.”
“Niall agreed with me, conditionally.”
“You threatened to do it without him.”
“I’m sure I phrased it more tactfully.”
“No doubt. So then I enter the picture.”
“Unexpectedly, a woman.” He ticked off on his fingers. “A repentant demon, but potent. Undiminished post-crossing activity.” He cl
osed his hand into a fist, his gaze fixed on her. “And an unusually thorough technique for banishing demons.”
The coiled tension in him made her restless. “Which all means what, exactly?”
“I couldn’t understand why you seemed to be slipping back into the most dangerous hour of your possession when you drained that first malice. You were sinking into the demon realm. And then with the ferales, I almost followed you down. It seemed so peaceful, I almost . . .” He straightened, putting a short step between them. “Anyway, I hoped Bookie would confirm the technique, but I think your demon isn’t simply draining the malice or locking them away in a stone matrix. I think it’s sending them back through the Veil.”
“How can that be?” If she’d been immersed in a beaker, the water around her would be boiling from the concentration in his eyes. “Everything I’ve been told so far involves the demons invading us, not the other way around.”
“You have a unique connection to the other side. What if the teshuva chose you for that?”
She grimaced. “I was demon fodder from the start? So my mom was right; they were after me.”
His gaze softened. “Or she was the start, your penance trigger. Ever since she took you for that last car ride, you’ve flirted with death and damnation. Is it surprising you wore a path to the demon realm that led the teshuva back to your door?”
She stiffened against the unfurling anger and wondered whether her eyes glinted violet anyway. “Don’t blame her. Or are you saying I brought this on myself?”
“What good is blame? I gave that up along with everything else a long time ago.” He paced the length of the room. “I’d rather think about a half dozen djinn crammed back-assward into one of Bookie’s beakers. We could take the war where it belongs.”
“And maybe you can ditch your demon while you’re there.”
He froze in midstride, anguish sharpening the lines of his face.
She cringed at the sting of cruelty in her words, but she couldn’t stop needling him for the self-immolation that lurked at the heart of his craving. “If my demon can uproot a malice from our realm, why not another teshuva? A cure for possession.”
“There is no cure. Possession is a terminal case. Except for the part where you never die.”
She wrapped her arms around herself—since no one else would. “You’ve said things are changing.”
“But we still don’t know how. Or why.”
“Well, that’s why you were testing me tonight,” she reminded him. “And why you told Liam you wanted to take on the next djinni instead of fighting horde-tenebrae on the sidelines as usual. Why are you so afraid of hearing you might be right?”
“Because what if I’m not?” His voice was low.
“Is hope that hard to grasp?”
“I can’t remember. It’s been so long since I reached for it.”
As a grim silence fell, she sensed the demon settle within her and wished she hadn’t provoked him or it. “Which battle was it, Archer, that began this war for you?”
His gaze strayed toward the window, the gray light bleak in his dark eyes. “The War Between the States.” His lips twisted. “Everyone notes the irony of the term ‘civil war.’ War is never civil. Of course, the Latin meant citizen. One citizen against another. The teshuva against the other legions of hell.”
She processed the time. A hundred and fifty years of fighting. “No wonder,” she murmured.
“I tried not to.”
“You really think a demon can open the Veil between the realms, that we can banish all the wayward evils that plague our world and end this war?”
He met her gaze, jaw flexing on words he wouldn’t say.
Her cell phone rang, and she almost jumped out of her skin. She ignored the muffled tone in her bag.
The ringing cut out as her voice mail picked up. After a moment, the phone rang again.
Archer lifted one eyebrow. “You going to answer that?”
“You going to answer me?”
He shrugged. The ringing stopped and started again.
With a curse, she grabbed her bag and dug out the phone. What could possibly matter more than her role in the existential dimorphism of good versus evil?
“Hello?”
“Sera. Thank God you’re all right.”
For a second, she struggled to align the words with her life at the moment. She really wasn’t all right, and God didn’t have anything to do with it.
“Jackson?” Her oldest brother never called beyond confirming mealtimes for major holidays. “What’s wrong?”
“We just heard about your apartment. You hadn’t called us, so we didn’t know what to think.”
She frowned at his tone of mingled reproach and relief. “We got it all cleaned up.”
“Cleaned up? They said the building was a total loss. And all the dead . . .”
Her skin chilled as all the blood rushed to her pounding heart. “I’m sorry, what?” She nudged Archer away from the computer, found his Internet icon, and entered her keywords.
The picture bloomed on the screen. For a moment, disbelief and vertigo left her stomach roiling.
Flames engulfed the building, spreading downward. The two silhouetted firefighters looked small and helpless against the inferno.
SEVEN DEAD—THREE CHILDREN—IN FREAK APARTMENT BLAZE.
“Oh my God.” Her knees gave out at a nudge from behind, and she collapsed into the chair Archer had pulled out for her. With a quietly exhaled curse, he leaned closer to read the article.
“You didn’t know?” Jackson’s voice was incredulous. “Where have you been?”
“My apartment was broken into. I’ve been staying with a friend.” Her attention drifted as she scanned the article in shock and she reminded herself to guard her tongue. No sense blurting out something even more disturbing.
“You could’ve stayed with me,” Jackson said.
She grimaced. She hadn’t moved in with her brothers even after the car accident. She loved them, but their mother’s fate had left them with an aggressive head-in-the-sand philosophy of life. Their father’s decline had focused them even more myopically on their ambitious careers, vigorous social climbing, and high-profile philanthropic projects. She was proud of them, and they drove her nuts with their single-minded attention to mundane matters.
“I told you it was a bad neighborhood,” her brother fretted. “Break-ins. Arson.”
Her world spun again. “Arson?”
Archer tapped the screen over the words “possible arson.”
“At least you’re safe.” Jackson paused. “Where did you say you’re staying now?”
“With a friend.”
“That Betsy has just been trouble, getting you that job—”
“Not Betsy,” she said. “No one you know.”
“Well, bring her over for dinner, as thanks for saving you.”
She slanted a glance at Archer. “I don’t think he’s ready for dinner with the family yet.”
Jackson was quiet. “He?”
“My sometime lover, Jackson.” She rubbed her forehead at the sputtering she heard on the other end of the phone. The room on her end was deathly silent. “I can put him on the phone if you want to thank him now.”
Archer backed away.
She imagined Jackson doing much the same. “Geez, Ser, some stuff I’m still too young to know.”
“Prude.” Affection for her brother welled up, as if the images of fire had burned a hole through a lifetime of daily dross to pure emotion underneath.
“Nut. If you need anything . . .”
“I know.” Her gaze strayed to Archer, who stood looking out the window, legs braced, arms crossed.
A hundred and fifty years since he’d heard the voices of his family. No wonder he hadn’t let himself care for anyone since, knowing the people he came to love would die while he went on.
Assuming she survived so long, would she be the same? Were the mysteries that the demon had promised to r
eveal as important as seeing her father through his last days, as watching her nieces and nephews grow up?
For once, the answer didn’t matter. How could she willfully narrow her worldview again to birthdays and Christmasses, even the solemn rites of deathbed vigils, knowing a war raged in the shadows without her?
“I love you, Jackson,” she said softly. “Talk to you later.”
“Yeah. Sera, would Dad have liked him?”
She closed her eyes,Archer’s silhouette etched starkly on the back of her eyelids. “Probably. Before.”
Before her father lost his mind. Before Archer’s possession.
Jackson sighed. “Just keep being safe, okay?”
A little late for that. “Okay.”
As she disconnected, an updated photo showed blackened stalagmites, all that was left of the building. She could almost smell the sour stench of burned insulation and electrical wiring. The article said no definitive cause for the deadly blaze had been found.
The chill that had briefly left as she talked to her brother crept in again. “What are you thinking?”
Archer turned from the window. “That it’s a good thing you were here.”
“Was it my fault?”
“Did you set the fire?”
She pushed herself up from the desk. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s a long step from breaking and entering to fatal arson.” He hesitated. “Unless you’re a djinn-man. Then it’s as easy as breathing. The pattern of the fire in the photo isn’t natural.”
“Seven people,” she whispered.
“I’m concerned about the security hardware we installed in your unit.”
She looked up in horror. “You think it short-circuited and started the fire?”
“No, but it should have triggered an alarm here.” He ran a hand over his head. “Something else to talk to Bookie about.”
“I should have called the police about the break-in.” She rose to pace.
He watched her, expression shuttered. “There’s nothing they could do against a djinni.”
“What can we do? We have to stop him. How can we—?” She raised her head. “What’s that smell?”
He shook his head. “You’re just . . .” Then he sniffed and must have caught the same drifting scent of smoke. “Fuck.”