“I don’t need indoctrination. Bookie won’t look past what he already knows. His father was a brilliant researcher and historian, but our current Bookkeeper doesn’t seem confident enough to follow the tradition.”
Sera thought him more frustrated than unsure, but she didn’t really know the man. “What can I do?”
“You have a good mind. I need that.”
He’d brought her up to his room for her good mind. With effort, she focused on the computer screen, trying to ignore the hot bulk of his body, the memory of how
he’d pulled her close as the malice unraveled. “So show me.”
He took a breath that ruffled her hair. “When we first registered the distortion in the Veil that meant a demon was crossing over, we also began recording an upswing in horde-tenebrae activity in this realm. The intensity of activity surpassed anything we’d seen before.” He opened a graph that showed the abrupt spike. A few more clicks opened demon-fighting strategies, historic battles, ancient prophecies, and oracular folklore. “Bookie believed a djinni was crossing. He said we should stay out of its way if we wanted to survive.”
“Sounds like reasonable advice.”
“I said we should destroy it before the possessed came fully into his power.”
She pursed her lips. “Sounds like your sort of advice.”
“Niall agreed with me, conditionally.”
“You threatened to do it without him.”
“I’m sure I phrased it more tactfully.”
“No doubt. So then I enter the picture.”
“Unexpectedly, a woman.” He ticked off on his fingers. “A repentant demon, but potent. Undiminished post-crossing activity.” He closed his hand into a fist, his gaze fixed on her. “And an unusually thorough technique for banishing demons.”
The coiled tension in him made her restless. “Which all means what, exactly?”
“I couldn’t understand why you seemed to be slipping back into the most dangerous hour of your possession when you drained that first malice. You were sinking into the demon realm. And then with the ferales, I almost followed you down. It seemed so peaceful, I almost . . .” He straightened, putting a short step between them. “Anyway, I hoped Bookie would confirm the technique, but I think your demon isn’t simply draining the
malice or locking them away in a stone matrix. I think it’s sending them back through the Veil.”
“How can that be?” If she’d been immersed in a beaker, the water around her would be boiling from the concentration in his eyes. “Everything I’ve been told so far involves the demons invading us, not the other way around.”
“You have a unique connection to the other side. What if the teshuva chose you for that?”
She grimaced. “I was demon fodder from the start? So my mom was right; they were after me.”
His gaze softened. “Or she was the start, your penance trigger. Ever since she took you for that last car ride, you’ve flirted with death and damnation. Is it surprising you wore a path to the demon realm that led the teshuva back to your door?”
She stiffened against the unfurling anger and wondered whether her eyes glinted violet anyway. “Don’t blame her. Or are you saying I brought this on myself?”
“What good is blame? I gave that up along with everything else a long time ago.” He paced the length of the room. “I’d rather think about a half dozen djinn crammed back-assward into one of Bookie’s beakers. We could take the war where it belongs.”
“And maybe you can ditch your demon while you’re there.”
He froze in midstride, anguish sharpening the lines of his face.
She cringed at the sting of cruelty in her words, but she couldn’t stop needling him for the self-immolation that lurked at the heart of his craving. “If my demon can uproot a malice from our realm, why not another teshuva? A cure for possession.”
“There is no cure. Possession is a terminal case. Except for the part where you never die.”
She wrapped her arms around herself—since no one else would. “You’ve said things are changing.”
“But we still don’t know how. Or why.”
“Well, that’s why you were testing me tonight,” she reminded him. “And why you told Liam you wanted to take on the next djinni instead of fighting horde-tenebrae on the sidelines as usual. Why are you so afraid of hearing you might be right?”
“Because what if I’m not?” His voice was low.
“Is hope that hard to grasp?”
“I can’t remember. It’s been so long since I reached for it.”
As a grim silence fell, she sensed the demon settle within her and wished she hadn’t provoked him or it. “Which battle was it, Archer, that began this war for you?”
His gaze strayed toward the window, the gray light bleak in his dark eyes. “The War Between the States.” His lips twisted. “Everyone notes the irony of the term ‘civil war.’ War is never civil. Of course, the Latin meant citizen. One citizen against another. The teshuva against the other legions of hell.”
She processed the time. A hundred and fifty years of fighting. “No wonder,” she murmured.
“I tried not to.”
“You really think a demon can open the Veil between the realms, that we can banish all the wayward evils that plague our world and end this war?”
He met her gaze, jaw flexing on words he wouldn’t say.
Her cell phone rang, and she almost jumped out of her skin. She ignored the muffled tone in her bag.
The ringing cut out as her voice mail picked up. After a moment, the phone rang again.
Archer lifted one eyebrow. “You going to answer that?”
“You going to answer me?”
He shrugged. The ringing stopped and started again.
With a curse, she grabbed her bag and dug out the
phone. What could possibly matter more than her role in the existential dimorphism of good versus evil?
“Hello?”
“Sera. Thank God you’re all right.”
For a second, she struggled to align the words with her life at the moment. She really wasn’t all right, and God didn’t have anything to do with it.
“Jackson?” Her oldest brother never called beyond confirming mealtimes for major holidays. “What’s wrong?”
“We just heard about your apartment. You hadn’t called us, so we didn’t know what to think.”
She frowned at his tone of mingled reproach and relief. “We got it all cleaned up.”
“Cleaned up? They said the building was a total loss. And all the dead . . .”
Her skin chilled as all the blood rushed to her pounding heart. “I’m sorry, what?” She nudged Archer away from the computer, found his Internet icon, and entered her keywords.
The picture bloomed on the screen. For a moment, disbelief and vertigo left her stomach roiling.
Flames engulfed the building, spreading
downward
. The two silhouetted firefighters looked small and helpless against the inferno.
SEVEN DEAD—THREE CHILDREN—IN FREAK APARTMENT BLAZE.
“Oh my God.” Her knees gave out at a nudge from behind, and she collapsed into the chair Archer had pulled out for her. With a quietly exhaled curse, he leaned closer to read the article.
“You didn’t know?” Jackson’s voice was incredulous. “Where have you been?”
“My apartment was broken into. I’ve been staying with a friend.” Her attention drifted as she scanned the article in shock and she reminded herself to guard her
tongue. No sense blurting out something even more disturbing.
“You could’ve stayed with me,” Jackson said.
She grimaced. She hadn’t moved in with her brothers even after the car accident. She loved them, but their mother’s fate had left them with an aggressive head-in-the-sand philosophy of life. Their father’s decline had focused them even more myopically on their ambitious careers, vigorous social climbing, and high-profile philanthropic projects. She was proud of them, and they drove her nuts with their single-minded attention to mundane matters.
“I told you it was a bad neighborhood,” her brother fretted. “Break-ins. Arson.”
Her world spun again. “Arson?”
Archer tapped the screen over the words “possible arson.”
“At least you’re safe.” Jackson paused. “Where did you say you’re staying now?”
“With a friend.”
“That Betsy has just been trouble, getting you that job—”
“Not Betsy,” she said. “No one you know.”
“Well, bring her over for dinner, as thanks for saving you.”
She slanted a glance at Archer. “I don’t think he’s ready for dinner with the family yet.”
Jackson was quiet. “He?”
“My sometime lover, Jackson.” She rubbed her forehead at the sputtering she heard on the other end of the phone. The room on her end was deathly silent. “I can put him on the phone if you want to thank him now.”
Archer backed away.
She imagined Jackson doing much the same. “Geez, Ser, some stuff I’m still too young to know.”
“Prude.” Affection for her brother welled up, as if the
images of fire had burned a hole through a lifetime of daily dross to pure emotion underneath.
“Nut. If you need anything . . .”
“I know.” Her gaze strayed to Archer, who stood looking out the window, legs braced, arms crossed.
A hundred and fifty years since he’d heard the voices of his family. No wonder he hadn’t let himself care for anyone since, knowing the people he came to love would die while he went on.
Assuming she survived so long, would she be the same? Were the mysteries that the demon had promised to reveal as important as seeing her father through his last days, as watching her nieces and nephews grow up?
For once, the answer didn’t matter. How could she willfully narrow her worldview again to birthdays and Christmasses, even the solemn rites of deathbed vigils, knowing a war raged in the shadows without her?
“I love you, Jackson,” she said softly. “Talk to you later.”
“Yeah. Sera, would Dad have liked him?”
She closed her eyes,Archer’s silhouette etched starkly on the back of her eyelids. “Probably. Before.”
Before her father lost his mind. Before Archer’s possession.
Jackson sighed. “Just keep being safe, okay?”
A little late for that. “Okay.”
As she disconnected, an updated photo showed blackened stalagmites, all that was left of the building. She could almost smell the sour stench of burned insulation and electrical wiring. The article said no definitive cause for the deadly blaze had been found.
The chill that had briefly left as she talked to her brother crept in again. “What are you thinking?”
Archer turned from the window. “That it’s a good thing you were here.”
“Was it my fault?”
“Did you set the fire?”
She pushed herself up from the desk. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s a long step from breaking and entering to fatal arson.” He hesitated. “Unless you’re a djinn-man. Then it’s as easy as breathing. The pattern of the fire in the photo isn’t natural.”
“Seven people,” she whispered.
“I’m concerned about the security hardware we installed in your unit.”
She looked up in horror. “You think it short-circuited and started the fire?”
“No, but it should have triggered an alarm here.” He ran a hand over his head. “Something else to talk to Bookie about.”
“I should have called the police about the break-in.” She rose to pace.
He watched her, expression shuttered. “There’s nothing they could do against a djinni.”
“What can
we
do? We have to stop him. How can we—?” She raised her head. “What’s that smell?”
He shook his head. “You’re just . . .” Then he sniffed and must have caught the same drifting scent of smoke. “Fuck.”
He raced to the door and threw it open without checking the handle for heat. The demon’s healing powers gave him leeway, but she couldn’t help thinking of the people in her building who hadn’t had that luxury.
She followed him into the hall just as he slammed the glass on the fire alarm. At the piercing shriek, she clamped her palms over her ears.
He grabbed her wrist and hauled her toward the stairs. He flung open the door and shoved her in. “Go. Get out of the building.”
She clung to the railing and whirled around when he started up the stairs. “Where are you going?”
“Remember that picture of the fire? The flames dripped down. I need to check the roof.”
“You think he’s still up there?” Without another word, she started up the stairs, three at a time.
He jumped half the flight above her, eyes whirling violet with his ascendant demon. “No heroic-buddy-movie-of-the-week shit.”
“Heroic, my ass. First my apartment. Now here.” She passed him. “It’s only paranoia if someone isn’t after you.”
They raced for the roof. Archer burst through the access door with a squeal of torn hinges.
The vast roof was an asphalt wasteland broken only by knee-high vents. One, missing its cover, sent up a curl of yellowish smoke.
Sera’s gaze skipped across the surface, drawn by another movement. “There. Behind the AC unit.”
Archer bolted across the roof, leaving her heart in a tailspin. They’d been sparring unarmed; she knew he didn’t have his axe.
A commotion arose farther down the stairwell as the other talyan reacted to the alarm. She shouted back through the doorway, “Up here.”
Archer was halfway across the roof, in pursuit of a figure clad in charcoal gray, almost invisible against the asphalt.
The gothic crenellations that decorated the roofline were only steps away.
The intruder reached the edge and clambered into the open space between the merlons—and jumped.
Sera gasped as the intruder disappeared from sight. It was a certain death fall. Even with a demon, she’d known that last night standing on the penthouse balcony.
Archer must have known the same. He skidded to a halt at the edge and peered down.
Just as two winged ferales burst over the crenellations.