by Chloe Garner
“No, not always. I think Sam upsets Abby some. As he’s getting stronger, it gets harder for her to watch over us.”
“I can’t take that.”
She dropped it in his lap.
“I didn’t ask. This is the will. Getting ready for in case. Right?”
He picked up the chain and held the ring in the air in front of him.
“Okay.”
“Thank you.”
He put his arm along the window and leaned his head into the corner between the seat and the glass.
“What happened to making him choke on me?”
“The longer he takes to get ready, the better a plan he’s going to have, but the stronger you’re going to be.” She looked at him. “But I can’t stop him from taking you. All I can hope is that you make him regret it.”
He nodded.
“I can live with that.”
<><><>
“You do what you needed to do?” Sam asked as she pulled back out of the parking lot under Carter’s building.
“Yeah.”
“That’s it, though,” Sam said. “That’s all the protecting me you get to do.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“I’m not as weak as you two seem to think I am.”
“Neither of us thinks you’re weak. It’s a hostage situation. Brandt is going to take him, and you’re the only one who can pay the ransom. It doesn’t matter how strong or weak you are. You’re the only one who matters.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do to protect him?” Sam asked.
“I can’t keep him from getting possessed, not to mention attacked by a manifest demon. Up against a demon with a well-considered plan? No. He had just better have a good plan of what he wants to do after that, because when I find him again…”
“Why can’t you find him now?”
“A demon with his power can be anywhere. They aren’t trackable from the hell plane. No. When I pulled him back across to resurrect you, I knew he would be air in sand.”
“Air in sand…”
“You get the image?”
“Yeah.”
He put his head on his fist.
“You couldn’t just… go everywhere with him…?”
“Is that what you want?”
“Well, no, but…”
“We’ll keep moving. Unless he has a Porter, which I doubt, he won’t have anyone tracking us hellside. I’ll keep training him. We do what we do, otherwise. Did Simon have something?”
“Yeah. Something we didn’t catch last time,” he said.
“Good. We’ll leave this afternoon. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He watched stoplights and taxis edge by for a while.
“I thought no one drove in New York,” he said. Samantha ducked her head.
“I know. I just wanted a little more time with her.”
“We drive everywhere.”
“Gray demons keep private parking, and Carter gets to use it.”
“Not you?”
She licked her lips and leaned forward to look up at the profile of the buildings on either side of them.
“I do miss this,” she said. “Just a little, but there were moments I was happy.” She looked at him. “No. I haven’t laid claim to my right to it.”
“To parking.”
“To everything.”
“Are you weird? For… your people?”
“We’re all unusual. I might be a little more than some of them, but… Some of us haven’t been around regular humans in decades. More demon than human. I know one of us who runs a gray brothel. For the right kind of compensation, you can find a demon who will do anything you want. He doesn’t remember how to speak English.”
“How many of them wouldn’t claim benefits they were entitled to?”
She stopped at a light and leaned back in her seat.
“Not many go through with it and then decide afterward they don’t want it.”
“Go through with what?”
“Everything.”
“Uh huh.”
He watched out his window as she rolled across the next intersection.
“Interesting people watching here.”
She grinned.
“Yeah.”
She felt him weighing words, and let him take his time.
“It isn’t your fault.”
“Doesn’t change how I feel about it.”
“I know. I just had to say it.”
“I know.”
She finally pulled to one side, waving at a teenager who stood beside the ramp underneath the bar. She rolled her window down.
“I’m here to see her.”
“You’re not on the list.”
“I’m not playing this game with you, Trigger.”
The kid grinned. She leaned against the door and looked up at him.
“What did you do to get stuck on the door?”
“She’s shooting the messenger, Sam. I swear.”
Samantha bobbed her head back and forth.
“Eh. It happens. Gate.”
“You’re not here to make them mad, are you?” he asked.
“No. You’re in the clear.”
“Swear?”
“You have my word.”
He nodded, thin hair flipping around his ears, and went and lifted the gate into the garage. She went in. After parking, she looked at Sam.
“I should have dressed you myself,” she said.
“No complaints here,” he said.
“Shut up. We’re here to see Nuri and Kjarr. You’ll know them when you see them. You do not speak to anyone else. Right?”
“We did this before.”
“Yeah, I’m stepping up your game again.” She got out and rested her wrists on Justine’s roof for a second as he closed his door. “Look. Bad things happen here. Really, really bad things. There are rules, and as long as they’re inside the rules, it’s not our problem. Even if they were breaking the rules, I’m not enforcing with you here, and not with the promise I made to Trigger. Okay? You see something, you keep walking.”
“What am I going to see?”
“The day crowd isn’t as private,” she said, putting away her keys and leading the way to a small door and laying her palm flat against it. It swung inward and she glanced at Sam. He nodded.
The downstairs hallway was purple, lit by bulbs behind the trim along the floor. Heavy red curtains hung in the doorways on either side, but red light spilled out of several where they had failed, or declined, to close the curtain. Samantha didn’t look. There was no good to be had, looking. She felt Sam look and sicken. She sped up. Wet sounds. Screams, muffled with exhaustion. Demonic laughter. At least Sam wouldn’t recognize that part. She got to the stairs and looked at the wizened old woman sitting on a stool there.
“No tailgating,” she said.
“Ariel,” Samantha said.
“You may go. If he doesn’t belong, I feed him to them,” she said, eyes gleaming. Samantha fought back a sharp response as Ariel put her hands out to Sam. “Come, boy.”
She met Sam’s unspoken question with an unsaid confirmation. This was the next step. He gave her his hands, and she stabbed his wrists with thick, crooked nails as she wrapped her hands around his. Sam pulled away, but she didn’t let go. No blood. She would not shed blood without cause. Samantha watched. Waited. Eventually, Sam stopped fighting her and stood, staring. Angry. Angry was good. Ariel cackled.
“Go on, then.”
Samantha jerked her head at Sam to follow, and she went up the stairs.
“She did that to me every time I came here, until Carter claimed me,” Samantha said. “If it makes you feel any better. She even turned me away a dozen times or so.”
He nodded, still preoccupied with what he had seen, apparently. She couldn’t blame him.
They went through the black-lit bar, now mostly empty, and down the hallway to the offices. A stranger was standing guard.
“She’s out,” he said.
“And who are you?”
“Renouch,” Samantha said. The look dropped off his face and he looked from her to Sam and back, then glitched. Samantha pushed the door open to the main office and went to sit in the visitor’s chairs, indicating which one was appropriate for Sam. There was music, here, but softer than during the night hours. She sat and listened to her own breath for a while, then the door to the back room opened.
“She’s coming,” Kjarr said. “A bit occupied, but happy you’re here. We heard you brought one of your boys with you.” Kjarr pulled Sam from his seat with a strong handshake. “Sam, you must be. Good to meet you. Good to meet you. We’re certainly interested in anyone Sam would bring here with her. You’re the psychic one, aren’t you?”
“What do you call Jason?” Sam asked. A slow, broad smile spread across Kjarr’s face.
“The other one.”
Sam retrieved his hand and nodded.
“You must be… I’m sorry. Are you Nuri or Kjarr?”
Kjarr threw his head back laughing. Samantha was shocked at how he dwarfed Sam.
“I’m Kjarr. Nuri is my wife.”
“I’m… it’s…”
Before Sam could figure out what it was he intended to say, Kjarr was over to Samantha. He pulled her off her feet and held her, crushed to his chest, for a fourcount.
“I assume she’s here to speak to me,” Nuri said, behind him. “Let her breathe, love.”
Kjarr put Samantha back down on her feet and joined Nuri. The dark woman, taller than Sam - nearly as tall as Kjarr - regarded Sam for a long moment, then turned and offered her hands to Samantha. Samantha took them and knelt.
“What do you seek, child?”
“I seek a blessing,” Samantha said, standing.
“Many I have offered,” Nuri said.
“I wish you to declare me mage,” Samantha said. Nuri’s eyelids rose a fraction and she tilted her head.
“On what evidence? Would you have me test you?”
“I have brought my evidence,” Samantha said. She turned to indicate Sam. To his credit, his face didn’t betray his confusion. Nuri drew breath.
“Ah. I see now.”
“What is it, love?” Kjarr asked.
“Life, where it was not,” Nuri said. “How?”
“Meeting of three magics,” Samantha said.
“Who were the players?” Nuri asked.
“A demon named Brandt, who wants to possess him, myself, and his twin brother.”
Nuri cast a slow glance at her, then continued to take in Sam.
“Twinning magic. Very interesting. You constituted light?”
“Yes.”
Nuri walked to within inches of Sam and looked him in the eye.
“What do you remember?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“You should not lie to me,” she said.
“He cannot lie without me knowing, because of our bond,” Samantha said. “It is the truth.”
Nuri turned her head to look at Samantha.
“How is your bond?”
“Damaged. Dampened.”
“That’s why you’ve taken him as suitor?”
Samantha wondered how the woman had known.
“Suitor is too strong,” Samantha said. Nuri smiled with the slightest hint of mischief.
“Just lover then.”
“Not that, either,” Sam said. Nuri looked back at him, still closer than even a packed elevator would have found socially normal.
“She is a woman of virtue, your Shaman. Isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“And yet, she engaged with a demon to raise you.”
Sam looked at her. Samantha shrugged. It was true. Sam took a breath.
“Yes.”
Nuri turned and went to lay on her couch.
“While I would love to probe the morality of that decision, I am simply called to judge its significance and success. Five, I know of, have been raised by this method. Two died within hours of failed hearts. How did you feel, when you woke?”
“Like I’d never slept so well,” Sam said. Nuri nodded.
“Samantha, I declare you a mage,” she said. “I’ve known for some time you were capable, but I’d believed your unwillingness to use dark magic would keep you from it. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Nuri,” Samantha said, bowing. Kjarr swept her up and spun her before she had completely straightened, and tossed her at Sam.
“That’s a pair for the ages, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Only the ages can tell us that,” Nuri said. Samantha bowed again.
“With gratitude, I beg your leave. Your time is very valuable,” Samantha said.
“And your mind is other places,” Nuri said. “I am happy to have seen you, Sam. Some day, we must speak again as we once did.”
“Yes,” Samantha said, struck with longing. Kjarr hugged her again, then shook Sam’s hand.
“Wherever you go, give ‘em hell,” he said.
“Yes, Sir,” Sam said. Kjarr laughed, and Samantha took Sam’s elbow, steering him out of the office and out of the bar as quickly as she could.
“I don’t get it,” he said as she started the car. “Clearly you love them, and they love you. And they run that place?”
“They’re demons, Sam. Gray, sure, but they’re demons. You can’t ever forget that part.”
<><><>
They made it to Columbus around midnight. Darin left the door unlocked. They crashed in their normal rooms. Samantha slept on Sam’s chest, but woke to find him sitting in a chair next to the bed. He was antsy. Upset.
“What’s up?” she asked, alert from many years of early-morning drills with Carter that left her with no warm, happy transition through mid-sleep.
“We shouldn’t drag this out,” Sam said.
“What do you mean?”
“The longer we wait, the harder going back to how we were is going to be.”
She swallowed.
“Oh.”
He turned his face away.
“Look. Tell me I’m wrong. Say no, not yet, come back to bed. Just… Tell me I’m wrong.”
“I can’t.”
He dropped his head, his hair dropping away from the back of his neck and the peaks of his shoulder blades.
“Then we should just do it.”
She sat up.
“Okay. Yeah,” she said, standing. “Yeah. I just… Let me set up. Okay?”
“Whatever you think,” he said. He stood, swaying away from her when he got too close, and she sighed. He scratched the back of his head.
“I know.”
She closed her eyes and bobbed her head, trying to collect fragments of thoughts into whole ones.
“I need my bag… I need… stuff.”
She finally went down to the Cruiser to get candles out of the cabinet in the back of it, bringing them upstairs and setting them up in the bathroom. Sam leaned against the doorframe.
“Candles and mirrors.”
“Light multiplied,” Samantha said, lighting them. “Grab the light?”
“We use them to catch ghosts,” he said. “There are ghosts you can only see in candlelight.”
“Makes them as human as they can be, I suspect,” Samantha said. Sam flicked the light off, and orange curves of light sprung up on the bathroom’s white walls. “Stand next to me.”
He came to join her, where they could see each other in the mirror. She looked away.
“Don’t be weird.”
He laughed.
“Really? After everything else…?” He rolled his eyes and tipped his head dramatically away. She took her pajamas off, standing in the random bra and underwear she had put on the previous morning. She scolded herself when a stray thought wished she had planned better.
“You done?” he asked.
“Pants,” she said. He stepped out of them, looking up at he
r.
“Why do you sleep in that?” he asked.
“Modesty,” she said. He started to argue with her, but thought better of it.
“That’s not normal,” he finally said.
“What about me is? Are you ready?”
He drew a deep breath.
“Yeah.”
She picked the piercing ring up off of the counter and handed Sam a towel.
“Do I kneel, lay down, anything?”
“No. I’m using the mirror this time,” she said. “Just… standing. In the most human of all lights - it symbolizes truth - where we can both see both of us. We know what we’re agreeing to.”
“Eyes wide open.”
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
“Yeah.”
She put the ring on her finger and wrapped it around her wrist, puncturing the spot over her artery, then, as blood spilled down her wrist, she held out the hand to Sam to take the ring, focusing on not dripping blood on the white bath mat. In the orange light, her blood took a deep, rich color. She glanced in the mirror once as she worked it over her fingers to see Sam doing the same. She closed the cloth around her arm and dropped her shoulders as she looked at him now, waiting. He took another moment, then they were watching each other in the mirror.
Pain. The pain they echoed back and forth between them was… exquisite. Perfect. No regret. No struggle. Just a simple acknowledgment of pain. She turned to face him, and he faced her. His right hand, her left, their off-hands across their chests holding the towels on their wrists.
“My love, my life, my loyalty. Without question, without hesitation. I pledge them to you,” Samantha said.
“I’m yours. My love, my life, my loyalty,” Sam answered. There was the small task of crossing arms to reach each other’s chests, and Samantha felt the slick of blood against skin.
She dropped her head as the hammer of recognition hit her.
That was what it had been like. Ideas passed back and forth between them like darts of light, concepts, overwhelming in their vagueness and their volume. There was nostalgia and surprise and delight, twined together. He had missed her being close like this. There was the warm of her hand on his skin. There was sadness and fear and loss. There was hunger. There was an opening space as he listened to her. His mind opened as he attempted to listen harder. She blinked and raised her head to look at him.
The hunger changed kind. She turned away, finding her pajamas with her toes and pulling them up in range of her hand. She dropped them again, remembering the blood on her hand, and blew out the candles.