by May Dawson
He reached back and took my hand, his strong fingers wrapping around mine brusquely. “Come on. I’ll make sure you don’t trip.”
“I don’t even fifty-fifty trust you not to walk me into a wall for your own amusement,” I said.
“I wouldn’t hurt you on purpose.”
“The dojo?”
“That’s training.”
“Levi said it’s your kink.”
Jacob said dourly, “And that’s why I only fifty-fifty trust him.”
“You kids are cute,” A man said ahead of us.
I jumped, pressing my free hand to my fluttering heart. I thought I could make out a shadowy figure up ahead, outlined in a doorway to a brighter room. But there was a flicker of movement suddenly on my right.
The lights came up. We were in a room full of mist, and then the mist curled away in wisps, seeping up through the ceiling as if it were being Hoovered up. The person I thought that I had seen in front of me was nothing but a pile of books and papers and a cash register on a desk. I shook my head, wondering how I’d ever mistaken it for a human figure. The room was full of jars and baskets on shelves, and two enormous wooden dressers with tiny drawers.
The man on my right touched my elbow, drawing my attention back to him. I frowned, perplexed at how I’d forgotten he was there for a second.
“Hello, my girl,” he said. “It’s so nice to see the Lilith in person. I’ve never met one of you before.”
He was a small man, shorter than I was, bald and ruddy-cheeked. He beamed at me, and for a second, I thought he might hug me. That was the most enthusiastic I’d ever seen anyone about meeting a Lilith.
“I’m Ellis Landon,” I said, sticking my hand out to shake.
He shook my hand enthusiastically. “Turner. And it’s good to see you again too, Jacob. How are you?”
Jacob shrugged.
“Angels never do small talk well,” Turner confided to me. “Does this one talk like a fortune cookie?”
“That might be an improvement,” I said.
“Well, what can I do for you?”
“We have a list,” Jacob said, reaching into his inside jacket pocket and pulling out the ingredients list for the anti-love spell. “And we also want to ask you some questions.”
“List first,” he said. “Then we can sit down and chat.”
Jacob handed him the list.
Turner looked over the list and then looked back up at us, something keen and glinting in his eyes. “You don’t want to be bound together?”
“We’ve got quite a few things we need,” Jacob said evenly. “I need herbs for smudging, oil for a summoning spell…”
“Right, right,” Turner said impatiently. “But what you’re really here for is the Trilian root, right? The fig leaves and the nettles and the hawkweed for unbinding?”
Jacob stared at him, his eyes flinty, and I knew there was nothing he was going to say that was tactful.
“Do you have all of that here?” I asked. I felt a genuine sense of wonder being in this place full of ingredients for magic, and I glanced around curiously. “Will you show me around? Magic is so new to me.”
“Of course, dear girl,” he said. He picked up a handful of white paper bag and thrust them into my hands. “We can gather your ingredients together, and I’ll show you everything.”
He led me on a tour, showing me the various ingredients in the dressers he called his catalog as well as the larger or bulkier items, which were in the jars. Some of them were what I’d call unsavory. Apparently eye of newt really was a thing.
“All right,” he said, tucking the smaller bags into one big cardboard box. “Here’s everything you need. Why don’t you step into my office and we’ll talk before I ring you up and get you out of here?”
“Thanks,” I said.
He opened a door behind the apothecary and led us down a narrow hall and into a small, windowless room, where a small fire burned steadily and unexpectedly in a fireplace without a chimney. Two wing chairs were in front of the fire, and there was a long desk in one corner with a leather chair drawn in front of it. Shelves of books and elaborate wall hangings were the only décor. In gold and silver thread, the wall hangings were embroidered with intricate, abstract shapes.
“Fancy wards,” Jacob said shortly. It might have been a compliment or an observation or hell, a complaint. I could see why he said he needed Olivia, who had grace enough for two. Even though I wouldn’t find Olivia to be particularly socially competent compared to anyone but Jacob.
“They’re beautiful,” I said.
“No reason why something necessary shouldn’t be beautiful too,” Turner said. His gaze flickered toward Jacob. “No need for our lives to be all spray-paint and salt stuck in the treads of your shoes.”
“I like things practical,” Jacob said.
“And not full of magic and destiny and love, I can tell,” Turner said. He turned to me, his eyebrows lifting slightly, before he headed across the room to pick up the chair from the desk. “Unless this is your idea, my girl, and you don’t want to be bound to this barbarian for the whole of your life.”
I didn’t want to answer that. It seemed like I’d betray too much of how I felt if I admitted this wasn’t my idea. I wanted Jacob to be free. But part of me hoped that he would turn back and realize that he wanted Ryker and Levi and me.
Of course, that was my end of the Curse talking. Once Jacob and I were unbound, I’d probably be able to watch him walk away, that distinctive lope and his broad shoulders in his leather jacket, his curls brushing his collar, and I’d feel nothing. Or almost nothing.
“Sit, sit,” Turner said, gesturing us to the wing chairs. He pulled his chair up close to the fire, leaning forward to feed a handful of what looked like rocks to the flames. They popped, sending up small white bursts of flame. The air filled with the scent of baking pie, like sugar and butter and roasting apples.
“Oh, I like that,” I said, leaning forward to breathe deeply.
“I’ll teach you how to make them,” he promised me. “They’re easy enough. I’ll pack a bit of what you need up in your box.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Jacob sat forward. Right. It was not time to stop and smell the magical fire.
“We wanted to talk to you about bringing people back from the dead,” Jacob said.
Turner tossed anther magic rock in the fire—pop—and froze, staring at the bright flames. Then he turned back to us. “I’m not in that business anymore.”
“I know you aren’t,” Jacob said. “I’m not asking you to help.”
“I hope you’re not thinking of doing such a thing.” Turner’s voice was suddenly deadly flat, when he had been so bubbly and outgoing a minute before.
“We’re just thinking,” Jacob said. “We’re not committed to the idea. There are some unusual circumstances that make it… not so dramatically a bad idea.”
“It’s always a bad idea,” Turner said.
“You did it.”
“Well, yes, I did.” Turner got up from the fire, his footsteps heavy as he crossed the floor to his desk. He came back with another handful of rocks and a framed photo, which he passed to me. “My wife. My daughter. Taken by a drunk driver.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, taking the frame from him. A younger Turner held a little girl in his arms, and a dark-haired, grinning woman leaned into them both. The three of them smiled at the camera. “They were beautiful.”
“Are beautiful,” he said. “Little one’s not so little now, she’s in her second year of college now. And I’ll go home to my wife in the morning when I close the store.”
“You raised them successfully?”
He held a hand out. “Don’t get too excited. There were unusual circumstances. I was able to get there moments after they died. I had known something awful was coming…” his voice broke slightly, as if the memory was hard to remember. “And I was able to freeze their bodies. Magically. So they didn’t begin to decay. Espe
cially not their mind. The breakdown of the cells of the brain, that’s what makes it really impossible to raise someone up without… consequence.”
“My sister was resuscitated,” I said, ignoring Jacob’s warning look. “She’s on life support. Her spirit is still trapped in the Far, but her body’s supposed to be intact.”
“We don’t know that her body is intact with any certainty,” Jacob said. “It’s a possibility. But even if it’s true, we were concerned about bringing a demon back in a human body.”
“Oh, yes, that’s terribly dangerous,” Turner affirmed. “There’s nothing that can ravage this earth like a demon in a human body. Without a body, for all their evil, they’re almost inconsequential.”
“Almost?”
“They can’t touch the corporeal world,” Turner said. “All they can do is whisper into human ears. And frankly, the ears that are open to receive them—well, they’d probably do quite a bit of evil on their own, anyway.”
“But when they have a human body…”
“They can do the devil’s handiwork directly,” he said. “They make it their business to kill Hunters, for one thing. And…” His eyes shifted towards Jacob, and he trailed off.
And they torture little kids when they get their hands on a baby Nephilim. Things that I had learned.
“We can’t let that happen,” I said, trying to sooth what Jacob must fear, after everything he’d been through. “How did you make sure a demon didn’t catch a ride home?”
He leaned forward, feeding a new handful of rocks into the fireplace. These little pops were pink and lavender. The air filled with the scent of a fresh spring day, the scent of rain and greenery and lavender. I drew in a deep, contented breath. I was definitely going to learn to make these. I could live up to Wendy’s killer-Betty-Crocker, with a little extra magical zing and a perpetually-pie-scented house.
He held out a hand, and I gave the frame back to him. “I conducted an exorcism at the same time as the returning ritual. It takes a team, Ellis. It’s quite complex.”
“Lucky me,” I said. “I have a team.”
“Lucky you, indeed,” he said. He stood to his feet and crossed to set the frame back on the desk, picking up another handful of stones.
“There are things I need to tell you about that night,” he said. “Things I’ve never told anyone.”
“You’re willing to help us?”
He walked behind me, running his hand over the top of the wing-back chair. “I need to get a book for you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“What you’re doing is ill-advised, my girl,” he said. “I shouldn’t encourage this. I had a team of old men—all dead now, no help to you—who knew their magic well. The four of you are barely more than children.”
“We’ll have our Fourth by then, I hope.”
Jacob shot me another warning look. Oops.
“Do you think you will?” he drew a book out of the shelves and brought it to me. He only had one hand free, so he offered it to me awkwardly, and I took it out of his hands. “Turn to page 112. I think you’ll find it helpful. Who do you think your Fourth is?”
“We’ll find him,” Jacob said.
“It’s the strangest thing, not knowing who your brother is. Might be a first in the Mythos.”
“My mother was a character,” Jacob said, his voice deadpan. “She knew how to keep things interesting.”
“She certainly did.”
I thumbed through the book to page 112. Turner leaned forward and threw the next set of rocks into the fire. I stared down at the Latin text filling the page. “Oh, I can’t read this. Jacob, can you?”
Jacob leaned over the arm of his chair to look over my shoulder. “This looks like a spell for summoning a demon. A crossroads demon—”
The fire went pop, pop. Dark blue sparks. A strange scent filled the air, and I felt my nostrils flare for a second, trying to make sense of it. Something like ash and fire, like the stuff of my nightmares, and something sweet, too. Like death.
I pressed my hand over my nose, suddenly sick to my stomach. I looked around for the source of the sickening scent. Somehow Turner had backed up near the door while we were talking; he stood with his hand on the knob now, watching our reaction.
Jacob was on his feet at the same moment as Turner turned the knob. He turned and flew out the door.
Jacob rushed for the door as he barked, “Don’t breathe it in, Ellis.”
I stumbled to my feet, stumbling towards the door, but my thoughts were slowing. I just knew I had to get away, get fresh air, get free.
Jacob yanked at the door handle, and then he was fumbling at his inside pocket for his lock-picking kit. “I’ll get us loose. Just hang in there.”
I nodded, putting my back into the further corner of the room. I pulled my t-shirt up over to cover my nose and mouth, wadding the fabric against my lips. My eyes were watering now, and I had to blink constantly as tears filled my eyes.
“God damn it,” Jacob said. He pounded on the door once, as if he were in despair. “I don’t know the magic he used. The answers have to be in here somewhere.” He glanced around the library.
I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. Had it been something about when we were kids? I had desperately wanted a pet. I bet those assholes in England hadn’t let him have a pet. “You always wished you had a cat when you were a kid too, huh?”
“What, Ellis?” he looked at me, perplexed. His angel’s constitution must hold up a bit longer than mine.
I giggled at his confused face. He reached out to catch me, and I fell forward into his arms. My legs didn’t seem to quite work anymore.
“Hang on, Princess,” he said, helping me down to the floor. He shook his head, those golden eyes bright, watering from the poisonous smoke curling through the room. His head nodded wearily, as if he were close to falling asleep too. “I should’ve taken better care of you.”
“You did a fine job,” I said. It still amazed me that he made breakfast for me and fetched my coffee, quietly attentive even though he mocked me constantly. “I do like my eggs with catsup sometimes.”
Sleep folded its dark fingers around my brain, and the last thing I saw was Jacob’s worried face. I think I tried to tell him that I loved him, because someone should, he was totally lovable in his own awful way, but I wasn’t sure if I managed to say it. I gave up and let myself sleep.
16
I woke up cold.
It was only the cold that pulled me out of the brain-fog I was in. I turned over, my head heavy and groggy, and the room seemed to spin. I stared up at the gray ceiling for a second, watching it revolve in slow circles, and then I closed my eyes to keep from throwing up. I wanted to go back to sleep. If this was anything like what a hangover felt like, I was going to make sure I never had one.
“Jacob?” I asked. My voice came out ragged, rough with sleep, and I coughed. I tried to push myself up onto my hands, and that was when I realized they were bound together.
The night before came rushing back in bits and pieces—Turner, the alleyway, the poison in the fire—and I sat up in horror. I tried to yank my wrists apart, but my wrists were bound together with zip ties. They were too tight, and my skin was swelling pink around a deep red groove.
“Jacob?” My voice was ragged with my terror. Calm down, Princess. I could practically hear what he would tell me. But I wanted him here to say it too.
Unless he could have gotten away. I’d rather he was safe.
In the corner of the room was a big-shouldered, masculine body in a t-shirt and boxers, facing away from me. I struggled to my bare knees—shit, I was in my bra and underwear, and there was an image that horrified me, old Turner with the beaming smile cutting my clothes away from my flesh—and hobbled over to him. My ankles were bound too, but with cold metal shackles that bit into my calves.. More shackles hung free against the wall, swinging just faintly. Five pairs. Enough for a Lilith and her Four. Cold dread settled in my stomach.
I had to take little wobbling steps on my knees, which already ached against the cold stone floor, and every step felt like a bruise forming. My ankles were zip-tied together, and then someone had shackled them; there was play in the chain between my ankles, but not with the zip ties.
Jacob. His eyes were closed in sleep, and I leaned forward, pressing my cheek to his chest. My own heart was beating so frantically that for a second, I couldn’t even figure out if his chest was rising and falling. Then I felt his heart beat, the quick flutter of his chest expanding against my ear.
I wasn’t alone. He was alive. Tears rose to my eyes, tears of relief, no matter how bad the shit was that we were in.
“Jacob, wake up,” I begged. “Turner kidnapped us. I don’t know what’s going on.”
His face was still and unresponsive. I vaguely remembered the night before, through a fog as if it all had happened to someone else. I remembered him fighting the darkness longer than I could. But what if his angel’s metabolism had some kind of cost, and now he couldn’t wake up as easily as I could? Or what if Turner had hurt him to make him sleep, with some other spell?
“Please,” I begged. My hands were shaking. I started to lean over him, to press my forehead to his and to see if I could heal him and wake him up with my kisses.
I stopped when I felt myself tremble against him. God, I was being so selfish. I was terrified, so I wanted him here with me. Healing him was the right answer, if I could chase away the last of the fog he was in, but I had to get myself under control first. He didn’t need to wake up to a terrified girl that he had to comfort.
I sat back, feeling shivers of cold and dread race down my spine, and drew my knees up in front of me. I pressed my elbows over my chest, covering as much of my breasts and stomach as I could for warmth; the cold made my back ache vaguely, my muscles shivering. How long had we been locked up here?
The room told me nothing. It was a big room, the floors, walls and ceiling all the same slick, pale gray material, like tile without a seam. There were no windows. The only light came from a fluorescent bulb high above, out of reach. There was one door, which seemed to be covered in the same gray tile. Well, that was some dedication to a theme.