by Emma Scott
I winced as morning light pierced my eyes, as if the sun were extracting vengeance on me for some unknown crime. I lay back down and waited until the nausea faded. The dream tried to creep back into my thoughts, but I pushed it out or else I was going to be sick for sure.
When I trusted my stomach again, I got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. Moving like an old lady, I passed the window—open a crack—and grimaced at the sight of a fly skittering along the outside of the pane.
“Stay out of my dreams, you.”
I managed to get a glass out of the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap. My mouth tasted like the floor of a movie theater—I vaguely remembered the bartender at Mulligan’s had put a bowl of stale popcorn in front of us at some point during last night’s revelries.
My revelries. Despite drinking a gallon of wine, Cas had remained sober as hell.
I snickered and drank more water, facing my small, empty place. There were now several flies congregating outside my window. As I watched, one flew inside and landed on the bowl of fruit on my counter. The lone banana was about to go bad.
Another fly joined it. Then another.
“What…?”
I went cold all over to see a cloud of flies buzzing at the window, covering the pane, a writhing mass of little gray bodies. More and more…then they poured inside like smoke, swamping me. First in handfuls, then so thickly, I couldn’t see.
The water glass fell from my hands to shatter on the linoleum at my feet. I frantically—and uselessly—batted at the swarm.
This isn’t real this isn’t real this isn’t…
I stumbled and crashed into the tiny island counter. Trapped. I didn’t dare open my eyes or even breathe as flies covered my skin, relentless. The terror enveloped me, driving out rational thought. Impossible to imagine this was actually happening.
I started to sink to the floor when the air shifted. Like a current running through the apartment.
“Ma ki-ta!”
Through my fingers, I saw Casziel. The demon, Casziel. He stood in the center of my apartment dressed in his black clothing. But a huge sword was strapped between the rippling muscles of his back and shoulders, between massive wings covered in glossy black feathers that draped down on either side of him, long enough that their tips brushed the backs of his boots. Even in that horror-filled moment, the dark majesty of him stole my breath.
He thrust both pale, bloodless hands toward the window and beat his immense feathered wings, once. The gust of wind they created caught every fly and drove it through the open window. Within seconds, they were gone, again leaving my senses overwhelmed and grasping desperately for what was real.
A sob escaped me as I clutched the counter. Casziel turned his head at the sound, his black-upon-black eyes like onyx pits in the alabaster perfection of his face. I cowered at the cold dread emanating from them and sank to the floor where I curled up amid the shattered glass.
In the next instant, Cas was kneeling before me in his human form, his expression stricken.
“Forgive me, Lucy. Forgive me…”
He took my face in both hands and leaned in. For one crazed moment, I thought he was going to kiss me. But he pressed his thumb to my forehead and closed his eyes.
“Ñeštug u-lu…”
I blinked awake and a little cry flew out of my mouth. I was sitting on the kitchen floor, pressed up against the island instead of in my bed. Broken glass lay all around me in a small pool of water. I was so drunk last night. I must’ve tried to get water and dropped the glass, then…passed out?
My stomach roiled at the idea that I’d been so reckless.
Cas didn’t help.
Despite drinking a gallon of wine, he’d remained sober as hell…
“Whoa. Déjà vu.”
Gingerly, I stepped around the broken glass with my bare feet. My apartment was empty. I looked to the open window, wondering if Cas were going to fly in as a raven and decided if he was, I didn’t need to watch it happen. My poor brain didn’t need another jolt.
And there was something about the window…
I cleaned up the glass, sopped up the water, and tried again. This time, I made it back to my bed with a full glass and two Advil from my bathroom. I lay against my pillows, feeling my headache pound behind closed lids.
I’d just begun to doze when my phone rang. Groaning, I fumbled around until I found it on the floor next to my bed.
“If you care about me at all, you’ll whisper,” I said to my best friend.
Cole’s eyes widened in alarm from behind his black-framed glasses. “Are you okay? Are you sick?”
“I’m fine, just hungover.”
“You?” Cole cried and I winced. “Sorry, sorry,” he chuckled, then his concerned expression morphed into a delighted smile. “But did you get drunk on fruit wine from a local vintner who brings the musk melon goodness to his oak Chardonnay?”
“It was a lovely banana rosé.” I laughed, then winced again. Schitt’s Creek was one of our favorite shows and we never missed an opportunity to quote from it as often as we could.
“So?” he asked, reaching for his sketch pad. “Spill it. I want to hear all the dirty details.” He froze, a thought striking him. “Oh shit, are you alone? Am I interrupting the Morning After? Are you with that guy I heard yesterday?”
Yesterday? Yesterday was a hundred years ago.
“Yes. No,” I amended quickly. “He’s not here. But yeah, we went out last night.”
Cole’s eyes were practically popping out of his head, his hand working over his sketch pad. “Tell me. All of it. Who is he?”
“He’s a friend. I think.”
Cole sagged, lips pursed. “Don’t even.”
“I’m serious. He’s only in town for a few days.”
“And then what? Then he’s gone forever?”
Yes. He’s gone forever.
My heart suddenly ached as much as my head.
Cole’s hand stilled. “Luce?”
“Pretty much.”
“What’s his name?”
“Casz… His name is Cas. And you’ll be happy to know he’s going to help me with Guy.”
God, it sounded ridiculous saying it out loud.
“Okay, and how is this Cas going to help the Guy situation?”
“It’s a long story and I can’t talk right now. I love you, but if I don’t close my eyes in ten seconds, it’s going to look like The Exorcist in here.”
Oh my God, my life is all demons right now…
“Okay, okay, you can fill me in later,” Cole said. “I called to show you something.” He flipped his sketch pad back a page to show me another realistic drawing of me. “This is the one I did yesterday, remember? When your face lit up?”
“I remember,” I said softly.
Cole laid his pencil to the portrait that was lightyears from those he’d been doing lately. “Note the light in the eyes and the mouth, lips parted in a little bit of a surprise. As if a pleasant thought caught you off guard. Almost a smile but not yet.”
I swallowed hard. “I see it.”
“You weren’t thinking about Guy, were you?”
I shook my head, no.
“It was Cas. Right?”
I nodded a yes.
Cole’s smile was gentle. “So, my question is, Luce, if Cas makes you look like this, why would you need to think about Guy ever again?”
Ten
I kneel in front of Ashtaroth in the back room of Idle Hands. The lone black candle’s flame is pale white and doesn’t move. Under the settee, the huge serpent—also pale white—watches me warily. Lesser servitors creep underfoot, hoping for a drop of blood or lick of fear. But even in my weak human form, they scuttle back into the shadows at my snarl.
“Are Deber and Keeb on This Side?”
“Am I the twins’ keeper?” Ashtaroth muses, drawing his sword. “They are the girl’s demons.” He slices his sword across my arm, carving a new line into my skin, p
arallel to the first. “Perhaps they have come to play with her too.”
I search for a sign that Ashtaroth knows more than he is saying, but he turns his blade flat, and I shut my eyes with a grunt. The scent of my seared flesh almost overpowers the stench of his breath.
Almost.
“Go, Casziel,” he says when it’s done. “Hopeless infatuation and concern for that girl is writ all over you. It’s making me ill. If the twins plague her, they have my blessing. Begone.”
My hand itches for my own sword to slice the callous words out of his throat, but the game I’m playing is a long one and I can’t give up too early. I bow and head for the door.
“Oh, and Casziel,” Ashtaroth calls, idly stroking the head of his serpent.
“My lord?”
“Hmm, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.” He wears a smile I don’t like, his black eyes glittering in the black candlelight. “No matter. I’m sure it will come to me.”
I go out and draw on the armor that is my demonic form. The tavern is full; every demon minding their own business. Behind the bar, Eistibus’s gaze is averted. Good. He should fear me. They all should.
Especially any who dare hurt Lucy.
I close my eyes at the memory of her terror, the flies swarming her—a nightmare come to life. The helpless anguish of watching her suffer brought back our last night in the ziggurat—her eyes full of tears and love, mutely begging me for help I could not give. The flash of a blade and then the hot wash of her blood… I succumbed to Ashtaroth’s servitude all those years ago because I never wanted to feel like this again—chest torn open, heart laid bare and at the mercy of that relentless agony called love.
Eistibus senses my mood and approaches slowly. “Wine, my lord?”
I nod and he sets a glass in front of me. I drain it, then hurl it at the shelf of bottles behind the djinn where it shatters.
“Ambri, to me!”
My call reverberates through Idle Hands, into the ether of This Side, across the Veil, and to the Other Side. Within moments, the tavern door opens, and my second-in-command saunters in wearing a lazy smile, black eyes set in a devilishly handsome face. His blood red jacket is as immaculate as always, his gold hair perfectly coiffed. He shows no weariness from Crossing Over; his wings—black feathered like mine—are high and arched as he stands at attention and gives me as sharp bow.
“Lord Casziel. How may I serve?”
“You’re on This Side,” I observe.
“Well…yes.” Ambri tugs at the cuff of his velvet jacket. “I was tending to my affairs here in the city, making sure my flat and finances are all in order—”
“You were fucking humans.”
He grins. “Maybe just one. Or two. Or…five.”
“It’s not an auction.” I gesture at the stool beside mine. “Sit.”
Ambri moves aside the sword strapped to his narrow waist and takes a seat with the grace of a hunting cat. Eistibus places two more glasses of wine on the bar and leaves us.
“I have a task for you,” I say to my second.
“You have only to name it and it is done.” Ambri’s voice still carries his human accent—he’d been a wealthy British lord some three hundred years ago and spent his brief life traipsing around Europe, spending money, bedding anything with a pulse, and generally being a living embodiment of lust, sloth, and gluttony.
Not much has changed.
I sip my wine; it tastes sour. Or perhaps it’s the words in my mouth. “I want information on a human. Guy Baker.”
Ambri arches a perfect brow. “Guy? Are the humans running out of names?”
I smirk despite myself. Ambri is my favorite of my servitors and the closest thing to a friend. If one can call a demon who’ll stab you in the back if it furthered his own ends a friend. But I can’t judge—I was once just like him. My path to the top of the hierarchy is littered with the bodies of those who stood in my way.
“I want a full report,” I say. “Who his demons are, his history, his natural weaknesses and vices, everything.”
“Consider it done. Anything else?”
“If there were anything else, I’d have named it.”
“Aye, my lord.” He watches me over his wine glass with onyx eyes.
“Speak your mind, Ambri,” I snap irritably.
“Are you not curious as to how your legions are faring on the Other Side? Maras is commanding them well in your absence, but they’re still your servitors, my lord.”
My servitors can go to Oblivion for all I care.
How much better would the world be without them? Without me?
But it’s futile—and pathetic—to think my departure will atone for my sins. Maras, or any number of other demons from the Brethren, will rise to take my place. War and strife will continue as it always has. So long as humans harbor a spark of malice for each other, there will always be demons to stoke it into an inferno.
Ambri’s shrewd, black gaze narrows on me.
“Very well,” I grit out. “Tell me.”
He relays news about conflicts in Myanmar, in Eritrea, in Sudan. I’m hardly listening, and he notices.
“You seem a tad distracted, Lord Casziel. Is everything well?”
They plagued her with flies…
I bite back an order for Ambri to send a battalion after Deber and Keeb, to rend the twins limb from rotted limb, then transport them back to the Other Side in pieces.
“Everything is well,” I mutter into my wine.
“I only inquire because you haven’t shared with me, your loyal second, why you’re on This Side, taking a leave from your command.” He nods at the door of the back room. “Lord Ashtaroth is here too, or so I smell. Did you get in a bad way with the old man—?”
My hand snakes out and closes around Ambri’s throat. I haul him close, my hard glare boring into his wide black eyes.
“Watch yourself, Ambri,” I hiss. “Control your wagging tongue or I’ll cut it out of your human mouth and leave your bedmates sorely disappointed.”
“F-forgive me, m-my lord,” he chokes out but knows better than to struggle.
I release him with a snarl and drain my wine. “Guy Baker. Tomorrow night. Go.”
Ambri straightens his collar. “Yes, my lord.”
He makes his way through the tavern and out into the night.
Eistibus is at one end of the bar, giving me a wide berth. Ba-Maguje is here again tonight, lying slumped at the other, working his influence. His wet lips move as if he’s talking in his sleep, cajoling his humans to have another drink. It won’t hurt anyone. Just one more…
Disgusted, I turn my gaze to the demons in the rest of the tavern. A motley collection of vile devils with misshapen bodies—talons, matted hair, scales—wallowing in their revolting fluids while having a drink or two. Taking a break from stoking their humans’ misery, apathy, or perversions.
I down the rest of my wine and give Eistibus a parting nod before storming out.
Just a little longer, I think as I take to the air in my raven form. A few more days and it will all be over.
And Lucy?
Hatred for my fellow demons is a joke. I’m no better than they. Worse, even. The world will not mourn me, and neither will Lucy. How could she? The man she knew is dead. He died in the bowels of the ziggurat nearly four thousand years ago, and everything she loved about him died too. Corrupted and ruined beyond redemption.
There is no love left in me.
Only a stubborn, lingering hope that she be cared for after I’m gone. That she finally finds the love and happiness that was stolen from her. From us.
Because she still has a chance, even if it’s too late for me.
Part II
The devil doesn’t come to you with a red face and horns. He comes to you disguised as everything you’ve ever wanted. —Oscar Auliq-Ice
Eleven
When Casziel returned from wherever he went at night, he brought back a foul mood that permeated the entire apartment li
ke a fog and lasted for the rest of Sunday. He refused to tell me what was wrong and snapped at me when I tried to make conversation. All the warm words and longing looks from the pub must’ve been my imagination. It was hard to believe he’d stroked my hair or told me my happiness was worth everything. Worth risking his soul…
When I felt recovered enough from my hangover, I went grocery shopping for the week, buying a mountain of food for the remaining nine days of Cas’s “visit.” I tried not to think about the days ticking down, but the thought wouldn’t leave me alone. I wondered how you could miss someone—someone you’d just met—before they were even gone.
My earlier conversation with Cole didn’t help. But even if Cole were right—and he wasn’t—what could I do? Casziel was leaving. Permanently.
I returned from the store to find my demon sprawled on the couch, a slant of late afternoon light falling over him. He was watching TV while stuffing his face with frozen peas straight from the bag. An empty jar of mayonnaise and a spoon littered the coffee table.
Breakfast of champions.
“So…I guess we need to talk about tomorrow when I go to work.” I set the two grocery bags on the kitchen counter. “Is ‘fake relationship’ really what we’re going with, or did I conjure that in my drunken stupor?”
“It is the best plan,” Cas said, not looking up from his show. Dr. Phil, by the sound of it.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Because—”
“That’s the plan, Lucy Dennings. There is no other.”
I frowned and put a new head of lettuce into the fridge. “It’s just that…I’m worried about you. It’s super nice that you want to help me out with Guy, but this is your eternal soul we’re talking about.”
“Super nice,” Cas said icily. “Yes, that’s exactly what I am.”
I grit my teeth and wished my father were there to ask for advice. Then I remembered he was, in a matter of speaking.
“What does Dad think of our plan?”
For long moments, there was only the crunch of Cas’s frozen peas, then his toneless reply, “He’s in accord.”