by Jessa Slade
Thorne huffed out a laugh. “Idiot. He had money, power, and eternal life, and still he needed more. Why did—?”
“Our turn,” Sidney interrupted. “If you have everything you need, what do you want with the verge?”
Thorne’s lip curled. “Nothing. But the others do. And I wonder why.”
Sidney stiffened. “Who are the others? Where are they?”
“Ah, my turn,” Thorne said with singsong teasing. “Why is the league keeping the verge open?”
“Because nothing in our archives tells us how to stand on the edge of hell and ask it to go away.” Sidney fixed the other man with an unwavering stare. “Do you know how to close it?”
“No, and even if I did, I wouldn’t go up against the forces who want it.”
“And who is that again?”
Thorne leaned back in his chair. “Maybe I will call this hand.”
“We’re not betting,” Sidney reminded him. “We’re trading.”
“My people never got the best trades from your kind, especially when you have the gun. We’re doing better with the betting.”
“You can’t change the rules.”
“I’m the house.”
Sidney’s jaw worked on his irritation, chewing back words. And words were all they had against the djinn-man. They couldn’t actually shoot him, not with the unwitting passengers aboard; they could only force him to hold his djinni at bay.
Words were such little things—well, not all of Sidney’s were little—but Alyce had seen Thorne flinch from some of them more than at the threat of angelic bullets. “If you had my love, Thorne, would you turn from the dark?”
Despite the threat of the sphericanum bullets, demon energy swirled in terrible waves, prickling her skin.
Thorne sat utterly still. His face seemed carved from some otherworldly stone, harder, darker, colder. The stone split and his white-toothed laugh tore through the simmering ethers. “What a stupid question. Something old Corvus would have asked; he was likely senile even before his head was bashed in, you know.” He placed his hands in front of him, half hiding his mouth with his steepled fingers. “I told you I have no interest in following his path, especially if it takes me to the verge of hell.”
“Then stay away from his handiwork,” Sidney said, “or you might suffer his fate.”
Thorne stiffened. “We might have been able to trade, but you will not order me in my own territory.”
“Friendly suggestion only,” Sidney said. But Alyce heard the insincerity in his voice. Not that he tried particularly to hide it.
Thorne stood. “Unless you want to test that symballein bond, get out.”
“We’re in the middle of the lake.”
“I guess that is the path you chose. You can’t shoot me without a mess you don’t want to clean up either.”
He advanced on them, circling the desk, and the force of his reviving demon pressed them back. Behind them, a sliding glass door opened to a small deck, the overhang of the deck above leaving it deep in shadow.
A pitched fight didn’t work for either of them, but a no-fuss drowning … Left with no option, she and Sidney backed out the door.
She was glad for the floating lesson when she saw there was no rail around the deck but only black water a few feet down. She shivered.
Sidney must have seen. He turned back to Thorne. “We’ll wait to return to the dock. Then we won’t speak to you again.”
Thorne’s laugh was curt. “I notice you don’t say you won’t bother me again.”
“Depends on your definition of ‘bother.’”
“The definition where you decide I’m a threat and take me on as you did Corvus.”
“He brought that on himself.”
“And I told you I won’t.”
“We’ll just have to trust you.” Sidney’s answer was a sneer.
“Get off my boat,” Thorne snarled. The djinni added a rumbling roar to his timbre. “Now.”
Alyce took Sidney’s hand. He was more afraid for her than he was of Thorne, and that could make him do something bad. Fingers laced with his, she stepped over the side.
The tumble could have been more graceful. Her skirt went most of the way over her head, making it hard to relax and float. But Sidney untangled her as even the scant lighting of the River Princess pulled away.
Thorne waited at the edge of the deck a moment, then disappeared inside. The slam and crack of the glass door echoed above the churn of the engines. With the disappearance of the djinni, the teshuva revved up. The urge to flail her way to shore kicked her heart over, but she resisted the panic and drifted in Sidney’s arms.
“Well, he didn’t throw us overboard,” she said.
“You jumped. That’s taking control of your destiny.”
“You were going to shoot him, weren’t you?”
“You attacked him often enough, you said, and he didn’t seem to mind.”
“I don’t think he’d take a bullet from you. I was special, remember?”
“Yes, you are.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of his tone, so she just floated.
“Why the hell did you ask him that question?”
She stared up at the sky. It was gray, the low clouds blocking the delicate stars and reflecting the harsher lights of the city. It was almost as unknowable as the vast, dark depths beneath her where she’d never be able to stand on her own two feet. “It was an experiment.”
“In making me crazy?”
“Thorne wanted me, wanted to love me. But still he said I could not turn him from his path. Which tells me, once again, I am too weak. Not my demon this time, but me.”
“Alyce—”
“You didn’t want me to kiss you.”
“What?” His hands under her shoulders jerked.
She struggled not to stiffen and sink. “I said—”
“I heard you. I just don’t think that’s relevant at the moment.”
“No, I suppose not. That is what I realized. You don’t want to be bound to me. Like Thorne said, you had no choice.”
“I’m here,” he said, but his voice was defensive.
“You don’t want to let me drown. I appreciate that.”
“Alyce—”
But with the return of her demon, she felt a lucidity long lost returning too, as if the teshuva had a view of both the sky and the murk underneath and was willing now to share with her. “I’ve never been a burden before.”
“You’re not a burden. I can hold you up with one hand—”
“I’ve always toiled, on my parents’ farm, for my master, with the demon. I won’t be a burden to you.”
“Alyce—,” he said, trying again.
But she pulled out of his arms. She’d unwrapped the white scarf from her neck as they stood at the stern of the boat, and now she waved it over her head. She started to sink, but with one paddling hand, she kept herself upright and signaled with the scarf again.
Out of the darkness, a halloo echoed. A single thin light skipped across the waves and struck the white scarf like a blink of lightning.
“It’s the Shades of Gray,” Sidney said.
“They said they’d be behind us.” Alyce lay on her back again, looking up, as Jonah’s boat pulled closer.
Archer leaned over the railing, one hand outstretched with a large orange ring on a rope. “You said you’d be thrown overboard, Westerbrook. Must be nice always being right.”
“Get Alyce.”
“Done.” Archer dropped the ring to her, and it landed with a splash. She grabbed at the float. Archer and Gavril hauled her up.
Gavril wrapped a towel around her shoulders. “Should we get Westerbrook too?”
She gave him a look, and he turned back to the side with Archer.
Another moment and they had hauled Sidney into the boat.
“Got ’em?” Jonah called from the wheel.
“All aboard,” Gavril said.
Archer sat on the seat that lined the pointe
d prow. “Did we learn anything useful?”
Sidney toweled his hair, and, with a shake of his head, the brown waves fell into place. “That an assembly of djinn-men is called an ahaˉzum, and the ahaˉzum is interested in the verge. That Thorne isn’t interested in either. And that he doesn’t know what to do with any of it any more than we do.”
“So, nothing much we didn’t already guess.”
“We learned that I was insane,” Alyce said. Her hair dripped in lank strands over her bare shoulder.
Archer and Gavril suddenly appeared very interested in the pretty city lights.
Sidney cleared his throat. “Just because Thorne remembers you with the other deinstitutionalized patients doesn’t mean—”
She whirled on him. “Nothing much we didn’t already guess.”
He gave her an admonishing look. “Don’t. Whatever you were is not what you are.”
“I guess you would know.” The cruelty of the reminder struck her before the last words cleared her tongue. Did she taste a whiff of sulfur? She turned away, drawing the towel tight around her shoulders.
They stood with the width of the small boat between them, and she felt endless miles apart. Any hope of finding the teshuva’s talisman withered to nothing. Thorne had known her longer than anyone else, and he had nothing to offer. When she hadn’t known she was missing the talisman, it hadn’t mattered, but now … No wonder Sidney didn’t want to be bound to her.
Despite his kind words, since he’d found her, she hadn’t changed at all. She was still damaged goods—out of control, untutored in the simplest aspects of the talya mission, and not even powerful.
She wasn’t sure she liked this new clarity.
No, not true. The clarity made very clear to her that she didn’t like it at all.
Archer was quizzing Sidney on the configuration of the River Princess and any details Sidney might have noticed. Sidney was scowling as he estimated the number of passengers, how much money might be changing hands, whether a swimming talya could sneak onto the back of the boat through Thorne’s lower deck, and what sorts of explosives might best sink her.
Jonah turned the Shades of Gray toward the city, and the lights starred on the tears in the corners of her eyes. She ducked her head into the folds of the towel. She didn’t like crying either.
What was she? Not just human; not true talya. The only one who might understand her suspension between worlds was … Sidney. And she did not want to speak to him of her failings. She might never speak to him again.
CHAPTER 20
At the warehouse, Sid returned the revolver and angel-point bullet to the lab. Alyce had not spoken to him the rest of the ride back to the marina where Jonah kept the Shades of Gray, nor had she thawed during the car ride to the warehouse.
He’d hurt her. But damn it, what was he supposed to have said? That he might have … feelings for her in return? All his life he had trained to be a Bookkeeper, and Bookkeepers didn’t deal in feelings. Feelings were uncharted territory. He’d never found a single fucking chart on feelings anywhere in the London league offices—not once.
He threw himself into his computer chair, ignoring the squelch of his lake-soaked pants. Liam had asked for his notes on the relic shard and possible uses, not to mention jurisdictional issues with the sphericanum. His fingers rested on the keyboard without typing.
He was cold and cranky. He should go change before he caught a cold. Except being chilled didn’t actually increase the chances of viral infection with the common cold. And possession eliminated any chance at all.
Besides, he was curious. …
A quick search of Chicago mental health facilities in the 1970s yielded the usual hits of haunted insane asylums. The eager ghost hunters were more right than anyone might guess about restless spirits roaming the abandoned hallways of the old institutions. The overcrowded, underfunded facilities would have attracted heavy infestations of tenebrae. When the patients were released on their own recognizance, with the theory that some combination of mainstreaming, community services, and warm fuzzies would fix their problems, they would each have taken their burden of misery-hungry malice. And no doubt more than one frail, terrified patient—thrown suddenly out into the world—had fallen prey to voracious ferales.
But where had Alyce come from? If Thorne remembered her from one of the waves of deinstitutionalizations from the 1970s, would she have left behind evidence—say, a teshuva’s talisman—in her patient records?
It was a long shot.
An hour later, Sid admitted it wasn’t just long; it was impossible. Too many years had passed. The records of most facilities were lost or destroyed. Many of the buildings had been razed for apartment buildings and shopping centers. He wondered how much etheric agony lingered in the dimensions around the old places. It would be interesting to chart the decay over decades.
Extended sitting and disappointment crimped his muscles. It would have been nice to have found something to break the ice with Alyce.
“Like what?” he grumbled to himself. “‘I found your old yearbook. Here you are in a straitjacket.’ Lovely.”
He blanked his search from the computer. He had no more excuses. When had he ever less looked forward to talking?
An attacking horde would not go amiss right now.
“Westerbrook. You have a minute?” Archer stood in the doorway.
The talya male might be up for a fight. “What do you need?” Sid settled his hip on the edge of the counter. He wasn’t Bookkeeper anymore, but this was still more his territory than Archer’s.
The league leader prowled the edges of the room. “Where’s Alyce?”
“I don’t know.” At Archer’s sharp glance, Sid realized he shouldn’t have admitted it. “She went to her room.”
Archer grunted. “Or so you hope. I’ll check on her—”
“I’ll do it,” Sid snapped. “Later. What do you want?”
“I need to know your intent.”
“Well, I was thinking dry socks would be a start.”
Archer crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t play stupid now. What is your intent toward Alyce? And the league?”
“What do you care?” Sid matched the cross-armed stance. “For centuries, each league has been self-sufficient, and each talya has been, for all intents and purposes, an independent contractor.”
Archer’s lips twisted. “Sure. We take care of our own health insurance and retirement.”
“That’s the way it has always been.” Sid refused to squirm. He hadn’t made the rules. He had just learned them.
“That’s the way it was for me,” Archer agreed. “Half the time I wouldn’t even come back to the league headquarters after a night wrestling the horde. I’d just phone in my continued existence so Bookie could keep a plus sign by my name in the archives.”
Sid knew the slim volume Archer meant. Bound in some delicate hide, the first pages were speckled with the spatter from quill pens. The chart was kept on computer now, and it had more rows and columns than Archer implied. But the first column was still a list of league talyan, and the very last column was indeed full of check marks and a final “checkout” date. “I’m sure all your Bookkeepers have been thrilled to make note of your survival.”
Archer ignored the snide aside. “I was the first to find a talya mate. Having a place to return to means something now.” He fixed his dark gaze on Sid. “That is not theoretical or subject to dissection. I will annihilate anyone who gets in the way.”
“Then I don’t see what this has to do with me.”
Archer sighed with impatience. “If you don’t, then you definitely didn’t deserve to be our Bookkeeper.”
“Fine, I get it.” Sid tightened his grip across his chest. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“You have to love it. Love her.”
Sid recoiled, cheeks flaring hot. “I can’t believe you of all people just said that.”
“I love Sera with everything I am. And what I am now is
much more than what I was, before the demon, before her.”
“If you sing, I will annihilate you.”
Archer’s smile turned a little vicious. “You should see the poetry.” Then his smile vanished, leaving only the vicious. “If you can’t love Alyce, leave her now. She’ll forget you.”
But she wouldn’t. Sid felt that as sure as he felt the muscles of his arms bunch under his clenched fingers, rejecting Archer’s blunt conditions. Maybe before she would have forgotten, but she had come too far to go back now.
Had he? And what did that mean?
He wanted to make a chart of his own—a nice flowchart, maybe, of how he’d gotten here and where “here” went next. But he feared he’d find only a thick gray haze shot through with violet sparks.
The despair had a dampening effect on any self-preservation instinct. He straightened, letting his arms fall loose at his sides as he met Archer’s challenging glare. “It’s between Alyce and me. The league can piss off.”
For a slow heartbeat, he wondered if the other man would swing at him.
Then Archer nodded. A trace of respect showed in the faint quirk of his lips. “If you need advice on either aspect …”
“I don’t.”
Archer shrugged. “Take good notes. Maybe the next symballein pair won’t have to struggle as much.”
Sid waited until the other man had gone before he slouched onto his chair again, uncertain what he should do next. It was a little early to call his father, and anyway, did he really want to have a conversation about his love life with London—or God forbid, Wes—any more than he did with Archer?
His thoughts spun wearily, the cogs barely engaged, the teshuva seemingly uninterested in helping him.
Was this what being a master Bookkeeper would have been like? Facing overarching metaspiritual conundrums alone in his lab? Archer was right; he had always thought he’d be studying the puzzle from above, not lost himself in the maze. How did he figure out where to go from here?
He pushed to his feet, hard enough to shove the chair back into the wall. Whatever he might have been before, now he was just hiding down here. Maybe, as Bookkeeper, he would have been as his father had explained—a separate conscience, keeping watch, making suggestions, shaking his head with distant dispassion.