by Jill Archer
But I couldn’t continue to ignore her either. As I’d reminded Ari, she was the demon with the second-most seniority in the gorge. If I was going to work here, I’d have to learn to get along with her. So, after repeatedly telling her I had no interest in sharing or hearing any stories involving Ari, and that I was also uninterested in having her teach me how to shape weapons laced with poison, I reminded her that the only thing she might be able to help me with was repairing Miss Bister’s table – the one that Nova had chewed up the morning before I’d left New Babylon. I’d brought it – or rather what was left of it – up to Rockthorn Gorge with me.
Why?
Because I was stubborn like that. And because, if I didn’t find a way to repair it, I wouldn’t be returning to Megiddo when I returned to St. Luck’s, which was pretty hard to contemplate.
The week before Frigore Luna, I finally accepted one of Cliodna’s invitations.
Because Sartabella hadn’t included any “visit with your ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend” outfits, I donned my walkabout clothes. Fara, however, was in a pique about that morning’s melee and All Things Demon and recast her glamour. Instead of her usual show-stopping beauty, which would have been perfect for visiting a demoness who valued that above all else, Fara masked herself as the hideous Morridusa from the Daimoneda/Perthius/Megaptera story. Then, her pique still not assuaged, or perhaps because she remembered Cliodna’s bitchy remarks regarding barghests, she glamoured Virtus too. In a snap, Fara’s feline was transformed into another barghest. Suddenly, her tiger was bigger than a bear, smellier than a sewer, and uglier than a warthog.
She stood in front of me then, her hair hissing, my bag of sticks resting on her hip, daring me to tell her to change the glamours. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because I was sorely tempted to tell her to cast me up with a similar one as well. After all, how likely was it the vain, shallow Cliodna would go out of her way to try to fix Miss Bister’s “ruined piece of trash”? It was much more likely that Cliodna would offer me something else – something outwardly pretty but riddled with inner toxicity. And then, when I refused it, she’d declare me as hopeless as the irreparable things I refused to give up on.
Shortly after lunch, we ascended the stone steps of the ruined amphitheater behind the rotunda and made our way to the top of Mount Ortus. Cliodna’s sanctuary was an airy pavilion painted in white, gold, and black, with a steepled roof and scores of shapely caryatids. It was as beautiful as the demoness who made her home there.
We were met at the door by one of the handsomest Hyrkes I’d ever seen. He was shirtless and had quintessential six-pack abs, bulging biceps, a sheen of sexy sweat, and a killer pearly-white smile. I had more than my share of men to deal with (Ari was, let’s face it, more than a man, and Rafe… well… let’s just say out of sight did not always equal out of mind), but I couldn’t help staring. I had to will my jaw to stay shut so that I wouldn’t say something idiotic. And then I remembered outwardly pretty but riddled with inner toxicity. This poor blacksmith or glassblower might be poison-free but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a trap like everything else Cliodna would offer me.
The man beckoned for us to follow him and led us through the pavilion. Hundreds of birds – hyacinth macaws, scarlet tanagers, golden pheasants, rainbow lorikeets – squawked, talked, and then scattered when we approached. I realized that the space wasn’t a sanctuary for humans, or even demons, but rather for birds. There were no cages. There was only shelter, seed, and countless basins full of rippling fresh water.
We passed through various artisan stations until we finally joined Cliodna in the cabinetmaker area. Instantly, I felt guilty. Her dress was wildly provocative – it barely covered her butt – but she’d obviously worn it with our visit in mind since it was made out of wood. Her eyes narrowed when she saw that I was accompanied by Fara-cum-Morridusa and two barghests instead of one.
“Charming,” she said. “I gather every cabinetmaker under my auspices, ask them to assemble their finest collection of tables, and clothe myself in the most austere robe I’ve ever deigned to wear and you bring me your bag of trash and three beasts beaten by an ugly stick.”
My guilt fled and I almost fled with it. I decided then and there I would never learn to get along with Cliodna no matter how long I stayed in the gorge. She was awful. I couldn’t stand her and I didn’t want to be around her one more minute than I had to. But her next words stopped me from leaving.
“You’re upset because I voice the obvious?” she asked. “You expect me to believe your Guardian chose to glamour herself as one of Halja’s most infamously grotesque creatures by accident? Or that she turned her comely cat into a beast known for its homeliness to pay homage to me? No, Nouiomo. She did it because she does not like me. And you didn’t stop her because you feel the same.”
“Candid words from a demoness whose preferred weapon kills anonymously and remotely.”
She sighed. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
Uh-huh. Ari was the reason I wasn’t dead, not Cliodna.
“You said you had something you wanted my artisans to look at,” she said. “Let’s see it.”
I motioned to Fara, who upended the bag. The remains of Miss Bister’s eleventh-century pedestal table clattered to the floor. The sticks were no longer soggy. Instead, they were covered in some sort of green fuzz. Ugh. I guess barghest slobber didn’t react well with rosewood. Cliodna didn’t bother to hide her distaste. Her signature pulsed with disgust. To my surprise, she turned toward Fara.
“Can you glamour it?”
“Of course.”
Cliodna looked at me. “Then you don’t need my artisans.”
“I don’t want a glamoured table.”
“You have a glamoured Angel.”
“It’s not the same.”
“How so?”
I scoffed. “Fara’s a person, not a possession, for one thing.”
“And for another?”
“It’s not my table. It’s my dormater’s. She doesn’t want to pay an Angel to keep glamouring it. She wants her table back, the way it was.”
Cliodna gave me a long look before answering. “Sometimes we can’t have things back the way they were.” I shrugged, and Cliodna pressed her point. “You really expect to turn that… pile of putrid hardwood back into the table it once was without using magic?”
I exhaled and switched my gaze from Cliodna’s ice-blue eyes and exquisitely shaped cheekbones to the soft, billowing clouds gathering in the heat-hazed sky.
The Angels tell us that it never rained in Heaven. There was no weather, and caelum est aeternum was a truism, not a fallacy. It was only after the apocalypse that Angels experienced storms and loss and transmutation. In Halja, death was a process, not a state. But it meant that all Haljans, including the Angels, truly lived. And living meant letting go. Accepting that nothing lasts forever.
Caelum semper mutans.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t. I guess I was hoping…” My voice trailed off. Had I made the right choice in coming here? I wasn’t in any immediate danger, but what could I realistically hope to accomplish? Cliodna and I would probably always just barely tolerate each other. Miss Bister’s table would be forever ruined. A new, different table might be able to be built from its pieces, but it would never be the same. Even if Cliodna’s artisans were able to create a new table – some sort of phoenix-from-the-ashes table – was one more year at Megiddo really worth indebting myself to a demoness who wanted me dead? Probably not.
Cliodna motioned to the artisans who were gathered here. All told, there were twenty or more, a mix of men and women, standing next to every type of table imaginable: dining, bedside, coffee, picnic… pedestal, folding, drafting, nested… oval, square, rectangular, round… The cabinetmakers were just as varied, but one thing the people and pieces they stood beside had in common was that each and every one of them was extraordinarily beautiful.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to give your dormater som
ething else? Surely, there’s something here that would please her?”
I choked back a sudden burst of laughter, imagining Miss Bister’s reaction. Would she accept a Rockthorn Gorge objet d’art in lieu of her eleventh-century heirloom? Maybe, especially if it was delivered and installed by one of Cliodna’s Adonis craftsmen.
Cliodna’s moniker should have been the Mistress of Temptation.
“And the price?” I asked.
“Spend the night of Frigore Luna with me.”
Fara gasped. I stared. I wasn’t even remotely tempted now. But Cliodna laughed. “It’s not what you’re thinking. In fact, I promise, right here, right now, in front of all of these witnesses, not to touch you.”
I frowned. That still left poison, explosives, waning magic, and attempting to induce madness as possible murder weapons. But she seemed to sense the direction of my thoughts and said, “I also promise not to harm you, or attempt to harm you, in any way.”
My frown deepened. I couldn’t figure her out. What did she want?
Again she motioned toward her artisans and their wares.
One night with the Mistress of Temptation in exchange for something that might buy me another year on campus with Ivy at Megiddo – was it worth it?
I shook my head.
“Your collection is beautiful,” I said. “But I don’t want anything in it.”
Fara breathed a sigh of relief, and Cliodna’s signature dimmed.
“I want a new table built from the old pieces.”
Fara shouted no at the same time Cliodna said done.
Indeed, I thought. What had I done?
14
DOMESDAY WEAPONS
It was a bit eerie, staring at myself.
I squinted at the familiar figure – a 22-year-old female wearing black pants and a short wool cloak. She stood beside a barghest, a tiger, and a nymph, but though her companions were unusual, my gaze was drawn to her weapon – a fiery pepperbox that flickered dangerously in the hazy greenish-gray mist. Hopefully, the woman and her companions wouldn’t flicker tellingly as well. Fara and I had argued about the weapon, but she’d insisted the gun would look the most confident – if only because it was the most unpredictable.
The spell was called Simulacrum. Fara had recently learned it and suggested we use it this afternoon for our meeting with Acheron. Considering that the river demon had chosen the Memento Mori dam site as the venue for our meet, I’d readily agreed. Even if my father hadn’t warned me to use “extreme caution” when meeting him, I would have anyway. After all, this was the place where a dozen people had lost their lives only three short months ago.
The Hyrke workers who were normally on site had been sent home. Tonight was Frigore Luna—the night I’d promised to spend with Cliodna—and the Hyrkes were more than happy to have the afternoon off. In their place, hidden in the cliffs, was my team from this morning’s melee – three bunyips and one argopelter. Never one to neglect details, Fara had also brought white thorn and marshmallows. (Acheron was a magnus stilio. White thorn was a natural stilio repellent and marshmallows were a nice, non-bloody, offering.)
“Maybe he’s wary too,” Fara said. “Of coming out into the open. If he senses a handful of demons lying in wait around his suggested meeting spot, what do you think he’ll think?”
“That he should have met us at the rotunda tonight,” I grumbled. The viaduct was fifteen miles southeast of Rockthorn Gorge. It’d taken us over an hour to get here via handcar on the riverside rail tracks. Acheron hadn’t specified that we come alone, but he had specified “middle of the bridge.”
In the middle of the viaduct, Fara’s nymph simulacrum scratched Virtus beneath his chin while mine raised the pepperbox, took aim, and pretended to shoot a mountain raven. I groaned.
“What is it doing? I don’t act like that.”
“I think the spell’s wearing off,” Fara said. “Do you want me to recast it?”
“No,” I said, rising up from my crouched position. “Give me the marshmallows. I’m sick of waiting.”
Fara, glamoured in the same way as her nymph simulacrum, looked as though she might argue but then relented and handed me the lunch pail Tenacity had given us. After a moment’s hesitation, I stepped out from where I’d been hiding and walked toward the viaduct. I stopped when I got to the end, though. I wasn’t going to walk out onto it until Acheron showed himself.
Luckily, I didn’t have to wait long.
I felt him before I saw him. His signature was sluggish, but also powerful, like the relentless rise of a river during a flood. He crept closer, but I couldn’t see him. I whirled around, instinctively shaping my preferred weapon, a simple sword. But the only person standing behind me was Fara, who’d also come out of hiding. She murmured a few words and our simulacrums disappeared just as a giant lizard crawled up over the side of the viaduct. He slithered to the middle, shifted into humanoid form, and waited for us to join him. We had little choice, since meeting with demons like Acheron was part of the job.
He greeted us with a series of clicks and croaks, which we were prepared for. Stilios spoke Ripian, an Aquaian river dialect. They understood the common tongue, but they didn’t speak it.
I presented Tenacity’s lunch pail to him, suddenly worried it wasn’t the right offering. Maybe I should have brought him fish or venison. He raised the pail up to his snout and sniffed. I couldn’t be sure he smiled – his grin was permanent after all – but his signature felt pleased and a moment later he clumsily dug out the pail’s contents: one s’more, two crispy rice cakes, and a flask full of melted chocolate and marshmallows. He tipped his head back, downed everything in two big gulps, and noisily bleated a half-dozen trumpet calls into the air.
“He liked it,” Fara interpreted unnecessarily. Acheron shifted his attention to her then, looking very much like he wanted to eat her next.
“Your nymph glamour may have been a mistake,” I told her sotto voce. But she scoffed at my warning and introduced us.
Even though I’d been working alongside various demon species for months now, I’d never met a stilio, let alone a magnus stilio. When they shifted into their “human” form, they retained their reptilian hands, head, and tail. His nether region had familiar parts though and, since it appeared that Acheron wanted his body to be as unadorned as his river, I made sure my gaze stayed on his leathery face. The same couldn’t be said for him. His beady-eyed gaze roamed freely over my body, lingering here and there. At the end of his mildly offensive perusal, he leaned over and thrust his sharp-toothed snout in my hair.
I nearly thrust my sword in his gullet. Thankfully, sanity prevailed. Ripian was a rudimentary language. Stilios often supplemented it through magical, chemical, and tactile means. Acheron’s signature rubbed against mine as he smelled my hair.
Why hadn’t I thought to steep last night’s bath water with white thorn bark?
His snuffling intensified and the pointy end of one of his teeth scratched my neck. I started to raise my hand, in order to push him away, but then thought better of it. No need to risk losing my sword arm.
Instead, I formed a fiery nose ring in the river demon’s nasal septum. The revolting smell of burned flesh told me I’d gone too far seconds before Acheron reached out and grabbed me.
Suddenly, everything and everyone was gone. Fara, our beasts, and my backup team. The riverside railroad. The viaduct and soon-to-be dam.
All of them – gone.
There was only Acheron, me, and the river.
We stood, or rather levitated, a hundred feet above the lower falls. A moment ago, there’d been a solid viaduct beneath our feet. Now, there was only thin air. Before, there’d been a silent heap of dry rocks in the riverbed below us – because the river’s water had been diverted during the dam’s construction. Now, the formerly dry riverbed gushed with rushing white water. Still holding the delicate chain that I’d fashioned from waning magic and fastened to Acheron’s nose ring, I turned toward the river’s newly unfe
ttered upper falls.
Rising almost three thousand feet into the air, the waterfall’s massive top tier was staggering to behold. It roared louder than a gale-force wind and threw more mist than a Maegester throws magic. A ferocious, unending rumble stuffed my ears and rattled my head while colorful prisms assaulted my eyes. The scattered light beamed in cheerful, wild, riotous contrast to the somber green of the surrounding forest as a seemingly unstoppable flow of water cut a slow course straight through solid rock.
Shocked by the marvel before me, I momentarily forgot to wonder where – or even when – I was, how I’d gotten there, or who I was with. I turned back to the only other living creature I could sense, bursting with the rawness of the place.
Its potential.
Its power.
I nearly dropped the golden chain then, but thankfully, my other senses reasserted themselves and I realized Acheron was still holding me by the arms. He wasn’t gripping me tightly or hurting me. But it seemed as though he didn’t want to let go.
Me neither.
“Where is everyone?” I asked, fighting the urge to yank his chain as panic began to replace awe. “Where did the viaduct go that we were standing on? The railroad? Where are my companions?”
But Acheron just smiled with that changeless grin of his. And then, with a violent, abrupt shake of his head, he ripped the nose ring out and snorted, spraying me with blood. He looked me straight in the face, bared his teeth, and growled.
Once, during my first semester, a demon had pulled me with him into the ether. When we’d emerged, we’d been in a different place. But this didn’t feel like that. (For one, I wasn’t on my knees puking.)
But if Acheron hadn’t dragged me through the ether – where was I? Was this place real? Were we in the past? Or was this simply a vision of what Acheron hoped the future would be?