by Jill Archer
For over an hour we tried to reason with Lamia as Nergal became more and more agitated.
What if, in return for her consent, Nergal built her more wells to the west and north of New Babylon?
She didn’t want more wells.
What if Nergal built Lamia a new subterranean vault in New Babylon to hold her non-viable urban offerings?
She didn’t want a new vault.
What if Nergal helped Lamia to establish a devotion cult centered around Blacken Ridge, Morkill Steppe, and some of the other western outposts?
She didn’t want more devotees.
What did she want?
When I finally thought to ask her, her answer was so unexpected, it left me breathless, like I’d been hit in the gut with the lance that had unhorsed Lucifer.
“I want a child.”
“What you want is impossible,” Nergal said, his voice laced with bitter magic. It hurt to hear it.
Lamia smiled sweetly at him, revealing a disgustingly sharklike double row of razor-sharp canines. An image of her smiling down at her infant—a second before she ate him—assaulted my imagination. How unfair, I thought. Were my desires that different from hers? Was I any better just because I had only a drop of demon blood whereas she was one?
Nergal fished in his pocket and threw a handful of something at Lamia. Two small objects hit the floor and broke apart. Husks of corn and strands of wheat shattered around her feet.
“Waxing magic can’t help you!” Nergal shouted. “Mederies can’t help you!” Suddenly, the room felt like a closed cab during summer solstice. “I want to be free of you, you mad, fat cow!” Nergal threw two more. One bounced off Lamia’s shoulder and fell to the floor; the other flew over her head and landed somewhere in the back of the room. Lamia cackled like a crow. I had a feeling Nergal’s next move would be to start throwing magic. I was afraid he would go apoplectic and spew his demon rage in one great big solar flare. I readied myself to leech massive amounts of oxygen from the room, thinking that would be the only way to control a sun demon like him. But before I could, Lamia’s cackling turned to coughing and the coughing to retching.
She pitched over in her chair and vomited on the floor.
I stared at the steaming mass of blood, tissue, hair, and half-digested grain products that Lamia had just disgorged from her innards. A cold, hard knot of fear formed in my belly and spread outward, drying my mouth and stiffening my limbs. Ari picked up one of the objects Nergal had thrown at Lamia. He studied it for a moment, his signature dimming, and then he started picking up the other ones. I beat him to the last one and clutched the tiny thing in my hand.
It was a Bryde idol. A corn doll. And Lamia had been eating them.
II
Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar
Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined;
Till at his second bidding darkness fled,
Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
—JOHN MILTON
Chapter 15
Spring rescued us from the clutches of winter. The snow melted, leaving the ground soggy and the sidewalks wet. I packed up my high-necked sweaters and heavy cloak. I moved my boots to the back of my closet. I started wearing sandals and even traded in my usual assortment of bulky black and charcoal gray wraps for a few body-skimming, above-the-knee tunics in burnt orange and deep purple. But I refused to go so far as to wear pastels for Eostre.
Once, after our initial client interview, Ari tried to talk to me about it. But I cut him off. For reasons both personal and professional, I told him if he ever raised the subject outside of class, I’d stop seeing him. He didn’t. But he did often wander into the secluded area of Corpus Justica where we’d first kissed.
Our amorous encounters there always left me feeling shaky. Like I’d reaffirmed some treacherous vow or risked an even deeper level of enchantment. Or, at the very least, fallen several more feet toward the simple act of falling in love.
But I never said the words. No further declarations were made. Clothes stayed on. Demon marks—and other places—remained frustratingly untouched.
I met with Nergal several times to discuss his case. He wanted me to pursue an insanity exception to the mutual consent requirement for divorce. There was no such thing. When I told him that, he started threatening. Threatening is a demon’s bread and butter, but his threats had a degree of candor and credibility that often turned my blood to ice.
I lived in fear that Nergal would come to me in the night, while I was asleep and defenseless. His agitation since our first meeting tripled, which tripled my worry. Did Nergal have another demon lover waiting? Why else would he be gnashing his teeth over six weeks of strategy sessions when he had another six hundred years to live? Then it dawned on me that the demon lover might visit too, to serve her own version of a Motion to Compel. And if Lamia was any indication of the type of demon Nergal favored, I didn’t want to meet Nergal’s next bride. In the weeks following Bryde’s Day, I bit my fingernails to the quick, bought three new deadbolts (knowing they were useless), and sometimes made Ivy sleep at Fitz’s because I was convinced room 112 of Megiddo would see another demon attack.
My life continued in a tense, stagnant sort of way. I was terrified of Nergal and the potentially lethal “what ifs” and “don’ts” we discussed in the classroom part of Manipulation. I wanted to discuss it all with Ari, but he was the last person I could really confide in. Every time Ari “accidentally” ran into me in the library, Rochester’s voice boomed in my head: Avoid collaboration. Avoid even the appearance of collaboration.
Meanwhile, I made some headway in the Manipulation dungeon, which was what I’d started calling the basement of Rickard Building. I learned how to distinguish a war hammer from a hatchet, a battle-ax from a broadax, and a claymore from a rapier. A few times I was even able to shape my magic into something that vaguely resembled one of them. But most times the training sessions were as tortuous as that first one. I threw off large uncontrolled magic blasts when cornered, still inadvertently set things on fire from time to time, and had yet to master the technique of retracting my magic without a big fireworks show. My hand-to-hand fighting strategies improved only incrementally. Bloody noses became such a usual occurrence for me on Wednesday mornings that I started packing a med kit so I could dope and doll myself up before Copeland’s class at 9:00 a.m.
To his credit, Ari did the best he could to try and soften Wednesday’s blows, both literal and figural. When we weren’t reading, studying cases, or engaging in other nonacademic activities at Corpus Justica, he helped me with my magic. He still murmured advice or words of encouragement during training sessions in the basement. And he always walked me to the bathroom afterward and waited outside for me to clean up and pretend I was okay when I wasn’t.
Every Wednesday afternoon, I rang the Aster house hoping to reach Peter. But each time Mrs. Aster told me (in increasingly irritated tones) that she hadn’t heard from him either. Some Wednesdays, the only thing that got me through was knowing Peter was still in the Asters’ garden shed searching for the spell that would finally put an end to my misery.
One Sunday afternoon in Rign, Halja’s fourth month, Peter finally returned. Fitz had gone to see his mother and Ivy had gone shopping. I’d finished my morning reading on quit claims, quiet titles, and equitable conversion and was heading to Marduk’s, thinking I’d have the clam chowder with a side of asparagus. I was debating the merits of grilled versus roasted, when someone yelled my name from across Angel Street. I turned toward the voice and almost didn’t recognize the man waving at me.
Peter’s hair had grown longer than Ari’s, but, unlike Ari’s dark mane, Peter’s hair was so light it was almost white. He wore it gathered behind his head, tied with a simple black band. His canvas trousers were frayed at the bottom and his shirt, collared though it was, looked slightly wrinkled. He wore a bone-colored leather jacket that fell past his waist. I stared at him, my thoughts piling up on one another
like a ferry collision at dawn.
Did his appearance here mean that he’d found the spell? Living in the garden shed seemed to have freed Peter from more than just Mrs. Aster’s thumb. Wrinkled shirts? Leather? Long hair? And then…
Peter looked pretty good as a scruffy rebel.
We embraced, which was still a bit awkward, and stared at each other. We each spoke at the same time.
“Did you—”
“How are—”
I laughed and Peter smiled. He grabbed my hand—that was a first—and pulled me toward the Joshua School. In seconds we were sitting side by side on a firm white couch facing a huge glass window that overlooked Angel Street. Behind us was the boyish-faced man who guarded the Angels and their wall of cubbies. He’d been utterly expressionless and silent when Peter and I had walked in.
Peter sank down into the couch, his arm resting casually along the back of the sofa behind me. I perched on its edge, unusually uncomfortable about leaning back into Peter. He didn’t seem to sense my unease. Using his foot to gently push aside a fluted glass bowl, Peter stretched out his legs and rested them on the glass table in front of us.
“The Etincelle search went well, Noon.”
“It did?” My heart beat faster.
Now that we were four months into the semester, the stakes for casting the Reversal Spell were getting exponentially higher. For one, I’d declared my magic and started training to be a Maegester. Attempting to reverse my magic now, absent the Demon Council’s permission, would be risky for both caster and castee. For another, Ari had made his thoughts on the Reversal Spell clear. He didn’t think I should let Peter cast it over me—ever. I was determined not to live my life making decisions based on what a guy would want me to do, but Ari had become a lot more than just “a guy” to me. Ari reminded me time and again that there was nothing wrong with me, that my waning magic was unique instead of abhorrent, that Manipulation would get easier. He reminded me that Mederies were the weak ones. There had been no attacks or abductions since Bryde’s Day (Seknecus had even removed the alert he had posted at the beginning of the semester), but the sins were unsolved. The rogare demon who’d burned Bryony, attacked Laurel Scoria at the train station, and likely abducted Amaryllis Apatite and Peony Copperfield was still at large. Ari often asked me, if I were ever to encounter the rogare demon who’d committed the unsolved sins against the Mederies, would I rather have waxing magic or waning?
Six days of the week I leaned toward waning. But every Wednesday I changed my mind.
Peter was explaining how he had searched every inch of the Aster archives. He’d found no further copies of Last Stand and no mention anywhere of the Reversal Spell either directly or indirectly.
“But I know where Jonathan Aster might be buried,” he said. “I found a copy of his Last Will and Testament, including a codicil indicating his burial wishes. If he died in battle, he wanted to be buried on the field.”
I scoffed. “That’s hardly helpful. Armageddon’s battlefield was the whole of New Babylon. If he died in battle, he could be buried anywhere. He could be buried right out there under Angel Street for all we know,” I said, motioning toward the street.
“Yes,” Peter said patiently, “and if we had nothing more to go on, I might agree that continuing to search for the spell by attempting to locate Jonathan Aster’s remains might be futile. But…”
He leaned forward and pulled a slim leather case out of his jacket pocket. He flipped it open. Inside was a folded piece of parchment paper, obviously very old.
“What’s that?”
“I found it in the archives, in a cabinet marked ‘Correspondence—First 100 Years.’” He laid the case on the table and looked expectantly at me.
“May I?” I asked, reaching for the paper.
“Of course,” Peter said. “I brought it here for you.”
I picked up the paper and gently unfolded it. Scrawling lines of script blurred and blotched their way across a page faded and stained with time. I squinted, straining to make out the uneven writing.
Dearest Cousin—
It has been difficult settling among the Host. They are not cruel, but the memories of war are not soon forgotten.
The baby will come soon. Next month, the Host midwives (or Mederies as they call them here) say. I fear, however, that my rash actions this morning may have dangerously hastened what was to have been a natural and uncomplicated birth.
Grief and loneliness compelled me to visit Jonathan’s grave one last time before I became housebound with an infant. I woke early, dragged a skiff to the river’s edge, and rowed to the north shore. From there I walked east, around the abandoned fort, to the battle site.
I wasn’t the only mourner on the field. Nor am I the only one still grieving over what was lost. Hundreds walked the field placing small markers where loved ones died. Servants cried or sang. Angels prayed and Lucifer’s warlords wept. In my madness, I threw Jonathan’s Prayer Book into Lucifer’s tomb and crept away.
It is my child’s only inheritance. Should you retrieve it, cousin, I would be most grateful. With love and affection,
Mary Aster
I frowned, not following what clues this letter provided or why this information should be important. From a scholarly perspective, it was fascinating. I found myself wishing Mary Aster had written more letters, or that Peter might have found a personal journal of some kind. This young woman had lived during the single most important event in our history, the Apocalypse. Few personal accounts of the days following Armageddon had survived.
“What happened to her?”
“Other records indicate that she died in childbirth.”
“Oh,” I said, inexplicably saddened by this woman’s death though she was a stranger. Then something occurred to me. “Why is her letter still in the Aster Archives?”
“Because it was never sent. The baby must have come prematurely as she’d anticipated. She must have died shortly after writing the letter.”
“So, if the letter was never sent…”
“Then Mary’s cousin never knew to search for the Prayer Book.”
“Right.”
“Noon, do you know what a Prayer Book is?”
“A book of prayers,” I said, trying not to sound sarcastic. I may not have been given an Angel education like Peter but I wasn’t stupid.
“Yes,” Peter said, his smile a little too patronizing for my taste. “But no one calls them that anymore. ‘Prayer’ is an antiquated term from the pre-Apocalyptic days. In modern day, prayers are called spells.”
So Jonathan Aster’s spell book was in Lucifer’s tomb. If his spell book contained the Reversal Spell, no wonder no one had cast it in thousands of years. The location of Lucifer’s tomb was one of the greatest mysteries of all time.
The Joshua School’s equivalent to Marduk’s was Empyr. But comparing Empyr to Marduk’s was like comparing blown glass to the forge it was fired in. Empyr was located thirty-three floors above New Babylon on the top floor of the Joshua School. All of the walls were floor to ceiling windows and, rumor had it, the views were majestic and splendid. Certainly the Angels had Heaven in mind when they built it. It was all lightness and glass, the décor modern and gleaming, the staff exceptionally courteous yet reserved, attentive but unobtrusive. The tables were covered with crisp white linens, fine china, and real silver. Empyr served wine in crystal goblets and the only fire was the tiny flame at the top of their myriad beeswax candles. Any wood burning fireplace would have generated far too much smoke. In Empyr, what wasn’t glass was covered in white.
Sometime during our discussion on Jonathan Aster’s spell book, Peter had asked if I wanted to go to dinner. Fitz was having dinner with his mother, and Ivy was likely still shopping, so I agreed and mentioned that I’d been headed to Marduk’s just before I ran into Peter. But Peter balked at Marduk’s. It could have been the uninspiring menu but I suspected Peter didn’t relish another run in with Ari. I didn’t either, at least not with P
eter in tow. So Peter suggested Empyr and, I have to admit, I was excited not to have to eat clam chowder or, Luck forbid, another Innkeeper’s Pie.
Empyr was a private club. The Joshua students ate there, just as the St. Luck’s students ate at Marduk’s, and all Joshua School alums were lifelong members (so long as they paid their fees). But the real reason Empyr was such an exclusive, privileged club was that most of the Divinity were members there too. It would be like eating a minced ham sandwich at Marduk’s with a demon from the Demon Council. I couldn’t even imagine it. But for one night, I thought glamming it up would be a welcome change from the everyday slumming I did at Marduk’s. The only problem was that I wasn’t dressed for the occasion.
Still seated on the white couch looking out across Angel Street, I glanced down at my outfit. My trousers were less worn than Peter’s, but they were still made of canvas. I’d never been to Empyr, but if the dress code was anything like my mother’s, pants for dinner would be a mistake.
“Should I change?” I asked Peter.
“What for?” he said. He got up and offered me his hand. I raised an eyebrow. The old Peter would have suggested we both change. I linked arms with him. He led me across the lobby, nodding at the boyish-faced man behind the counter. The man nodded back, his eyes resting briefly on me before turning his attention back to his duties.
As we walked into the lift, Peter slid his arm down so that he was holding my hand. We rode up to Empyr in silence. Peter held my hand loosely between us and I tried not to feel uncomfortable about that, neither squeezing back, nor letting go. In seconds, the lift door opened and we stepped into Empyr’s waiting area.
The place smelled divine. Like warm bread fresh out of the oven, with hints of honey, almond, and peaches. My stomach growled in response. I smiled at the tall, regal woman who greeted us. She had hair that was a shade darker than mine, almost pitch-black. She wore it straight, long and loose, but not a piece of it was out of place. Her clingy floor-length dress was absolutely spotless and bright white. She gave us a smile that was as white and bright as her dress and I knew instantly that any member of Empyr would be welcomed regardless of whether they were dressed in flawlessly draped silk or fraying canvas.