by Eva Chase
Lady Northcott was sitting at her desk when we pushed into the office. Her secretary startled, but the head of the Assembly made a reassuring gesture, and he settled back in his station near the door. She took in me and my consorts with an inscrutable expression.
“You’re looking well, Lady Hallowell,” she said. “I’m glad to see yesterday’s efforts haven’t set you back too far.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to contribute more,” I said, with a fresh pang of guilt thinking of my failure yesterday. “I’ll be more prepared next time. What’s the current status of the demon?”
She frowned, glancing at the phone sitting face-up on her desk in a way that made me suspect she’d recently gotten an update from the observers in the field. “It’s continued cutting a path straight toward Portland. Not very quickly, but still faster than before. It looks likely to reach the suburbs sometime tonight if we can’t redirect it.”
“What are your plans at this point?”
Her mouth tightened. “We’re still discussing the options. Our first two gambits seemed like our best bets. We were able to retrieve some pieces of the cage, but they were damaged—it looks unlikely we could have them in working order in time, if we could even hope a second attempt might work.”
“I can get in there and start helping with that as soon as we’re done here,” Seth said. “If that’s where you think I’d be most needed.”
My spirits had lifted. We had some time; we could make this work. “I think we can hope a second attempt would go better,” I said. “We came right to you so you know—my consorts and I took the soul-bond this morning. My spark has never shone brighter. I can’t promise I’m strong enough now to push back the demon as much as we need, but I’ll have a much better chance of it.”
My voice faltered on the last few words. Lady Northcott’s whole face had gone rigid, her gaze fixed on me in a stare that looked almost horrified.
“You did what?” she said in a low choked voice.
I’d expected perhaps some surprise and maybe raised eyebrows at my decision, but not this distress. “We conducted the soul-bound consorting ceremony, with Lady Ainsworth’s help,” I said, as if there was any way she could have misunderstood my meaning. My right hand turned outward instinctively, displaying the scar like a tiny starburst on my palm where Thalia had healed the dagger’s scratch. “The magic we’ll be able to create together now is purer, stronger—I can already tell I’ll be able to do more. Withstand more.”
Lady Northcott pushed to her feet, the wheels of her desk chair rattling over the linoleum floor. She motioned me to a door at the back of the room, the entrance to her magicking room. “I think we’d better talk just the two of us, witch to witch.”
My legs balked. “My consorts are my equals in this decision,” I said. “I wouldn’t be here without them.”
“Nonetheless,” Northcott said, “I would speak with you alone. Consider it a direct order from the highest position in the Assembly. Are you refusing that order?”
The crispness of her tone suggested that if I did, I’d find a host of enforcers taking the decision out of my hands. I swallowed hard.
“No. But I follow it under protest.”
“Noted,” she said dryly, and swept her arm for me to come.
“We’ll be right here if you need us,” Gabriel said, both a promise and the closest he could get to a warning for Lady Northcott.
The magicking room for the head of the Assembly looked pretty similar to mine back home: pale hardwood floor, blank white walls without a single window, a single clear light fixture on the ceiling. A hint of cedar incense lingered in the air. Instead of a cabinet, hers had a built-in cupboard. Northcott didn’t make any move toward it, though. We weren’t in here to cast a spell. The soundproofed walls to prevent distraction would also keep my consorts and her secretary from overhearing our conversation.
“What were you thinking?” she snapped, spinning to face me the moment the door had closed with a thud. “The soul-bound ceremony, with not one but five unsparked men?”
I’d already been tense, but at her words I bristled even more. “We were thinking that the only thing that stopped us from caging the demon was my power faltering. It won’t falter as soon now. We’re committed to each other. We all knew what we were getting into.”
Lady Northcott made a jerky motion with her hand. “There’s a proper process for any consorting. A department to consult with, approval you’re supposed to gain first. Especially in the case of a higher form.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. I shouldn’t have laughed, but the sound spilled out of me before I could catch it. Was that all she was worried about? Whether we’d filled out the proper forms?
“I didn’t have approval to consort with them in the first place,” I said. “Circumstances made that impossible, in case you’ve forgotten. Strangely enough, we thought finding the strength to push back the demon was more important than getting some paperwork filed.”
“They’re bound to the entire witching community now,” Northcott went on, ignoring the point I’d made. “There’s never been a soul-bound consorting with an unsparked man before.”
“How do you know? We have no idea how many records have been destroyed, evidence covered up. Have you even looked into who else in the Assembly might have been supporting those efforts, even if they didn’t know about the demons?” It wasn’t hard to imagine all sorts of witches and witching men might have wanted to encourage a more restricted view of consorting—out of ideas of purity, or control, or who knew what else.
“No,” Lady Northcott said tightly. “We’ve been rather occupied with the demon problem.”
“Exactly!” I gestured toward the doorway, to the guys waiting on the other side. “So let us help fix that problem. I’ll do whatever I can. My consorts, unsparked or not, care just as much as anyone here. You’ve got no reason to distrust them.”
Northcott’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I’m most concerned with trusting them? This consorting was based on your judgment. You have the demon’s taint in you, and you’ve brought yourself even more power.”
A chill ran down my back. So this wasn’t just about unsparked prejudice then. She was still wary of me.
“I can’t help that,” I said, my voice dropping. “It happened before I was even born, Lady Northcott. But I’ve never done one thing to hurt anyone who wasn’t already attacking me. Your own enforcers can tell you how close we were to capturing the demon yesterday, how much I put into that effort. Maybe that power is a weapon, but I decide how I use it, and there’s no taint in my mind.”
She gazed back at me, frowning, as if she weren’t entirely sure she believed that. Then she sighed and folded her arms over her chest. “I suppose it is what it is now. You can’t take back the binding.”
“No, I can’t,” I said. “So are you going to let us help or not?”
Her lips pursed. She inclined her head. “Move back into the office we set up for the six of you here. We may need to call on you without much notice. Your consorts can continue contributing however they were before. You… For now, why don’t you look in on the witches who were caught up in this faction. It seems you’ve made some progress with them. They have the experience—they may be the ones to shift the balance.”
“They’re traumatized,” I said. “If we ask too much of them too quickly, we’ll just open those wounds more before they’ve had a chance to heal.”
“They won’t heal at all if the demon gets its claws into them,” Lady Northcott retorted. “You wanted to help. That’s how I’ll accept your help right now.”
She grasped the doorknob without waiting for my answer. I let her usher me back into the main office space. My consorts were standing where I’d left them, Damon scowling, Kyler’s gaze searching as if he were trying to read the outcome of that talk from my face.
I caught both their hands, and all five of us slipped into the hall. “Rose?” Seth said, sounding concerned
. I guessed my face wasn’t completely unreadable.
“She’s not happy,” I said. “But she’s at least letting us return to the things we were doing to help before. Not that they’re sure any of it will do much good.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “I don’t think anyone in this building has a clue how we’re going to stop that fiend.”
Chapter Seventeen
Jin
Rose had said she needed to go, but she wavered by the door to our Assembly office after that announcement, her mouth twisted with uncertainty. I moved to her side automatically, reaching for her hand and twining my fingers through hers.
“You don’t have to do what Lady Northcott said,” I reminded her. “It’s not as if these heads of witching society have had the answers before now.”
“I know,” she said. “But I should see what I can do for the witches in recovery. And honestly, I agree with her. It might be so much easier if they could stand beside us against that thing. I just hate to ask it of them.”
“So you won’t,” I said. “You’ll help them find their strength, and when they’re strong enough that they can handle it, of course they’ll want to pitch in. They’ve already said that, haven’t they?”
The corners of her lips curled upward until I had a real smile. “How do you always know how to find the bright side of a situation, Jin?”
I shrugged, grinning back. “Just my special talent. You can’t be an artist unless you know how to look at things from all the different angles.”
A shadow crossed her face again. “I wish the Assembly wasn’t looking at us from the cynical angle they’ve picked.” She shook her head. “They’ll shun me for having you, and you for being with me. It can’t get any more tangled than that.”
“Ah, who needs them, anyway? We defeat this demon and then say sayonara to the bunch of them. We do just fine when it’s only the six of us.”
In a sort of demonstration, I raised her hand and twirled her around beneath my arm, like one of the moves in the consorting ritual’s form. A soft laugh escaped Rose’s lips as her hair fanned out with the movement. A glow had formed behind my ribs during that ceremony, and it quivered happily at the sound.
I’d felt connected to Rose from the moment of our first consorting, but this new bond… I wasn’t sure how much I even believed in souls, but I could feel the energy that flowed between us now like a gentle wash of light, illuminating and filling every lonely place I might have had left inside me.
Beautiful. Like watching the sun rise over the ruins of an ancient city with all the colors flaring into vividness, except it stayed. It wasn’t just a single spectacular moment, but a constant I’d be able to count on as long as we both lived.
“I’ll be in the same building the whole time,” she said. “And I’ll come back as soon as I can. I… don’t like the feeling of being apart from you all right now.”
“We did this for a reason,” I said. “And part of that reason is so you can find ways to kick demon butt—ways that we probably can’t help with. Do what you need to do.”
She bobbed up for a quick kiss that sent fresh warmth through the glow of our bond, and then she ducked out. I turned back to my fellow consorts.
Kyler had dropped straight into the chair at the desk, setting the laptop he’d grabbed from our hotel suite into its former position. From the hazy look in his eyes, he was already immersed in the files. Seth had spread some of his blueprints on the other side of the desk, leaning over as he frowned at them. Gabriel, standing nearby, shot me an approving smile when our eyes met. I suspected he’d been listening to my conversation with Rose.
Damon stalked from one end of the office to the other. His jaw had been clenched since Lady Northcott had ushered Rose away from us with disapproval that couldn’t have been more obvious. Now his back was rigid too.
“We can’t let them get away with this,” he said. “We’re supposed to stand by Rose, so let’s fucking do it. These assholes can’t shove her off to the side after everything she’s done for them, just because they don’t like us.”
“They gave us the office back,” Gabriel said mildly. “Lady Northcott told Rose how she’d like her to help. I’m not sure they have any better ideas for what any of us can be doing.”
“Then they should be listening to us, to Rose!” Damon said with a slash of his hand. “Hell, I could come up with better plans in two seconds than they’ve managed so far. Maybe we should track down some heavy firepower. Guns might not do the trick, but I could probably figure out who to go to if we wanted some missile launchers or shit like that. Let’s see the demon face off against those.”
Seth looked up at him with an eyebrow raised. “There are some ways to solve problems that don’t involve blowing them up,” he said, and turned back to his blueprints. “Maybe I can find a method to strengthen the cage even more… Or disguise it somehow. It doesn’t do us any good unless they can move the demon onto it and then into it. There’s got to be something I’ve missed.”
“I can take another look at them too,” I offered. “Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes…”
He nodded with a grateful glance my way. “I appreciate that, Jin. Although I think I’d better handle any final adjustments. Maybe one of the other workers slipped up without me noticing. We’ve got to be so careful with this.” He rubbed his mouth.
“With all these records of the faction’s dealings with the demons, you’d think there’d be something else in here we could work with.” Ky grimaced at the laptop’s screen, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “If I could get into the private areas of the Assembly network—of course, they’ll be even more pissed off with us if I hack in.”
“You don’t think they’d let you in if you asked?” Gabriel said.
Ky shook his head. “Already did. They weren’t comfortable with it. Said there couldn’t be anything in there that’d relate to the demons anyway, since they never even knew the demons existed. I just want to know everything there is to know about the community, about magic—the more I understand, the more it’ll all come together.”
“What do they care about what you might see in there?” Damon said. He came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the room. “There’s a fucking monster on the horizon and they’re too busy looking down their noses at us to give us the tools we need to fight it. If I could just give those smug pricks a piece of my mind—”
Gabriel clapped his hands, straightening up into an authoritative posture. “We’ll work with what we have. We’ve made it through plenty of horrible situations in the past with a lot less than we’ve got now. We just keep working to our strengths, and there’ll be an answer somewhere.”
His words jarred loose something in me. For a second, it felt as if the glow inside me had seared right up to my eyes. I blinked, taking in the room, the four guys I’d known since we were little kids, and all I could see was how predictable this all was.
There was Kyler, digging up every fact he could. There was Seth, plotting a thoughtful careful course. There was Damon, trying to slam and blast his way through the mess. And Gabriel, always the leader, trying to corral us.
But maybe this wasn’t the right corral. Were we playing to our strengths or just stuck in a rut? We’d been spinning our wheels just like this for days, and the demon was still out there. Rose still felt that stopping it rested on her shoulders alone.
The realization struck me like a jab to the gut. Words collected and jarred in my throat. Who the hell was I to tell the rest of them they were doing things wrong?
Oh. That was my rut, wasn’t it? Jin the optimist. Going with the flow, letting the worries roll off my back, always looking on the bright side, like Rose had said.
Maybe it was time I pointed out some other sides to this situation. If I wanted to see us all out of our ruts, I had to start with myself. Even if the thought of criticizing my best friends to their faces made me wince inwardly.
I squared my shoulders. Damon was just launching into some more of his
rant. “We’ve got to stop letting them push us around. We have to demand we get what we need. March right back into that office and—”
“No,” I said, loud enough that my voice filled the room. I did wince then. But the gazes of the other four guys snapped to me, startled, and I knew I’d gotten their attention. I forced myself to keep going.
“Look at us,” I said. “We’re doing the same old things we always do. Approaching this problem the same old ways. But it’s not enough. Can’t you see that?”
“What are you saying, Jin?” Gabriel said, quietly but without any hostility.
“Just that—Rose is pushing herself to her limits, stretching herself in ways she never had to before, to tackle this thing. Because it’s not like anything we’ve ever had to tackle before. If we want to support her, we’ve got to do the same thing. Think outside the boxes we’re comfortable in. Look at what’s really happening and where we can make a difference even if it’s hard—with eyes wide open, without any blinders. Stop running in circles we already know haven’t gotten us anywhere.”
For several seconds, the others kept staring at me. Then Ky let his hands come to rest on the desk. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m just covering the same ground over and over again here.”
“So what does that mean?” Damon demanded, but even he looked a little subdued compared to his earlier furor. “What exactly should we do?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just think it needs to be different. Bigger. Better. Maybe… Maybe we need to start by getting out of this room and actually interacting more with these Assembly people. They’re the ones Rose has to be working with. We’re pissed off that they don’t respect us, but we haven’t encouraged much of an alliance between us either, have we?”
“No,” Gabriel said grimly. “We haven’t.”