“Cranial hemorrhaging?” she asked James as they sneaked out of the hospital that evening. They weren’t supposed to leave without completing her paperwork, but they wanted to avoid the inevitable questions that would be posed once the hospital’s translator arrived. “You didn’t mention that part.”
James shrugged. “I didn’t know. I’m not a doctor; I’m a witch. I attempted to heal your entire body. Apparently it worked.”
“Humble talk from someone who saved my life.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t take much credit for that.” He yawned, and his foot caught on a rock sticking out of the street. He tripped.
Elise steadied him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m tired. Too much magic and not enough sleep.”
She didn’t let go of his arm. “What’s happened with the killings? Have any other bodies been found?”
“It’s moved north again. Malcolm is tracking it. Don’t worry; I gave him the number for your answering service when he visited in the hospital, and he promised to send updates.”
She blinked. “He visited me?”
“Professional courtesy, I’m sure.” His voice was very dry.
They returned to their hostel, and James slept for two days straight.
Elise tried to do the same, but she slept fitfully without the assistance of his magic. Dreams of Samael, beautiful and radiant in His garden, were interspersed with the Samael she had seen in the church, fallen and wretched. She kept waking up in a feverish, frightened haze.
When she awoke for the fourth time, she gave up and decided to call her answering machine.
Malcolm had indeed left them several messages. He had tracked Samael out of Brittany, north into Belgium, and now over to Denmark. Samael must have been moving quickly.
Each of Malcolm’s updates was punctuated with the reminder that Elise owed him a drink.
She stared at the phone in her hand. What was wrong with this guy?
Elise glanced at James where he slept in the bottom bunk. Their room at the hostel was intended to sleep four travelers, but they bought out all the beds, which gave them a door that locked and plenty of space. His feet hung off the end of the bunk. One arm was flung across his eyes, and he snored.
Elise wondered if his offer to do the binding ritual had been a dream.
Her father had always made it clear that he didn’t want her to have an aspis, and he hadn’t trained her in strategies with the help of a witch. Elise wouldn’t have known what to do with one. She also assumed that James was still waiting for the opportunity to leave. He had never really
behaved
that way, but that was what she expected.
In reality, he had been dogged in staying close to her side. But binding constituted a promise that they would run together for the rest of their lives. She had heard her mother say it once: more permanent than marriage, more fatal than family, and closer than the oldest of friends.
It wasn’t a vow. It was a warning. A binding gone sour could kill both kopis and aspis. Trying to separate was impossible—until one of them died.
James mumbled in his sleep and rolled over, pressing his face into his pillow. He was still wearing that jacket. It didn’t look comfortable.
She shifted him to peel off his coat and hang it from the chair. He didn’t stir.
James had a life, didn’t he? Didn’t he ever want to go back to the coven, his family, his friends? He had already spent two years following Elise around. Did he plan on doing that until she died?
She rubbed her fingers over her gloved knuckles, pondering the new gray hairs on his temples.
And what did it mean if James wanted to bind?
Elise didn’t get any more sleep after that. She took to the fenced courtyard behind the hostel and exercised, though it was the middle of night and the air was heavy with damp fog that rolled off the ocean.
After limbering her body, which had been in repose for days, she found herself in relatively good condition. Her punches were swift and her kicks were still powerful. Once she warmed up, her muscles responded as though she hadn’t been damaged at all.
James had healed her well. Very well. And healing magic was among the most difficult.
A nagging voice spoke from the back of her mind.
What kopis would be crazy enough to refuse the partnership of such a powerful witch?
When she finished, she took a knife into the bathroom and trimmed her hair, leaving the curls longer than normal. Then Elise sharpened her swords, ran around the village, and repeated the process until James woke up.
She was waiting for him in the opposite bunk, cross-legged and jiggling one foot, when he finally opened one eye to a slit. He didn’t seem startled to find her staring at him.
“Good morning, Elise. You look… fresh.”
“It’s evening. And I’ve been awake for a while.” She couldn’t hold back the question that had been bothering her for thirty-two hours. “Did you really suggest binding as my aspis?”
He scrubbed a hand down his face, then through his hair, and rolled over to check his watch. His eyebrows lifted. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
“Hold that thought.” He gathered the blankets around him and stumbled into the hall to use the bathroom.
Elise waited as patiently as she could. Her toes drummed against the bedpost.
When he returned, he had splashed water on his face, and the three days of beard growth shadowing his jaw was damp.
James sank to the bed across from her and rubbed the scruff on his chin. “Binding is a serious decision, Elise. I did suggest it, and it’s something I’ve been considering for some time, but you shouldn’t feel pressured to—”
“Okay.”
He blinked. It took him a moment to catch up. “Okay?”
“Let’s do it.”
His puffy eyes narrowed, and a knot gathered in her stomach, along with a powerful certainty that he was about to change his mind.
Then he smiled. As exhausted and haggard as he looked, it brightened his face, and the tension was instantly gone. “Great,” he said with a laugh. “That’s, uh… great. Excellent, actually.”
She grinned, but tried to hide it by ducking her head. “Yeah.”
“When do you want to…?”
“As soon as possible,” she said. “Before I find Samael again.”
“Very well. Then I suppose we have some work to do.”
P
ART
F
OUR
Open Borders
V
NOVEMBER 2009
T
he red strobes
in Eloquent Blood pulsed like a heartbeat, enveloping Elise and reducing the motions of the clubbers to a jerky, stop-motion play. Bass throbbed through the floor and the metal railings encircling the walkway overlooking the dance floor.
She shoved past the sulfur-crusted tables and leaped over the bar, tripping the stripper that whirled around the pole.
“Hey!” Andrea protested, barely catching her balance on six-inch heels. Then she saw who had struck her. “Oh my God, I’m sorry.” Her voice was barely intelligible over the music’s volume.
Elise ignored her and kept going. Anthony and Nukha’il were already in the hallway behind the bar.
She stripped off her jacket and tossed it into her boyfriend’s arms. “I need you to run to the manager’s office. Get your shotgun and my charms out of the closet.” She faced Nukha’il without waiting to see if Anthony would obey. “Get behind the DJ booth and block the elevator. Nothing goes down without me—and don’t let anything up, either.”
Nukha’il swept off to follow her orders, but Anthony hesitated. “What happened under Rick’s Drugstore after I left?”
“Nothing.” She snapped her fingers. “Shotgun. Charms. Go.”
Anthony’s mouth drew down at the corners. “I’m not a soldier for you to order around, you know.”
Elise slammed into the dressing room.
Neuma had become used to having Elise barge in on her and barely registered surprise at her entrance. She twisted her arms around to hook her leather bra.
“Water,” Elise said.
“Just a sec.”
“
Now
.”
Neuma rolled her eyes, dropped the bra, and poured a glass at the bathroom faucet. Elise swirled it around in her mouth and spat it out. The taste of ash was still thick in the back of her throat.
“You okay, doll?” Neuma asked.
“Someone’s in the Warrens.”
What little color was left in the bartender’s porcelain skin drained to gray. “How?”
“I’m about to find that out.”
The phone on the wall rang, and Neuma answered it as Elise dropped all the climbing equipment in the closet. It was impossible to tell the difference between Elise’s rigging and the bondage gear that the half-succubus wore onstage.
She limbered her muscles, stretching her arms over her head and then touching her toes. Then she washed her hands in the sink and took another drink of water.
Neither action helped. After walking through the caverns under Rick’s, she still felt… slimy.
“You got a visitor, Elise,” Neuma said, hanging up the phone.
“I don’t have time for a visitor. Get me a knife—any knife, I don’t care.” The bartender tossed her a dagger from the dressing table, and Elise rucked up her jeans to tuck it into her boot.
“You’ve got time for this one. I already told Cass to send him down.”
“You did
what
?”
Neuma’s mouth stretched into an expression that could have been a smile or grimace. “Sorry.”
“Goddamn it, Neuma, I have to get down to the Warrens
now
, I can’t—”
The door opened. Music from the club spilled into the dressing room.
Elise knew, an instant before she saw him, whom Neuma had decided was important enough to bring downstairs. She probably would have felt him coming much earlier if she hadn’t been so distracted. Instead, James’s presence rolled over her like a heat wave coming off pavement, and it shocked her into silence.
He edged into the room and shut the door again. She stopped in the middle of tucking the knife into her boot.
James seemed uncomfortable in a club filled with flowing alcohol, pulsing music, and sweaty bodies, and he wore his composure like a shield. In a white button-down shirt and dove-gray slacks, he looked professorial, which was entirely too tasteful for somewhere like Eloquent Blood.
For all that they had been glimpsing one another’s lives through the active bond, it had been weeks since Elise had talked to him face-to-face. It hadn’t been a pleasant conversation. Although neither of them had raised their voices, they didn’t have to yell to argue anymore. She could feel his annoyance through the bond without a single cruel word being uttered.
In fact, she felt a lot when James was around—grief, fear, guilt, and all the things she normally blocked out. The bond was like a raw, open wound, and having James in the same room was as good as salting it.
That was why she had told him she wouldn’t do the accounting for his business anymore. It was also why she had told him to stop calling her. He hadn’t taken that well.
Elise busied herself with arranging the knife in her boot. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood to visit Stephanie.” He glanced around the dressing room with a furrowed brow. “You haven’t been coming to see me, so I thought I should try visiting you instead.”
Neuma mouthed
sorry
, hugged a costume to her chest, and snuck out the door behind James. He caught her movement out of the corner of his eye and jumped away from the door, careful not to let his skin brush against hers. Elise picked up a glimpse of his thoughts—
It’s that thing that kept trying to flirt with me…why does Elise always have to be around demons…smells like whiskey and pot smoke in here
—and it took all her strength to tune him out.
She didn’t realize she had backed into the dressing table until her hip hit it. The dressing room was large, meant to accommodate a dozen girls at once, but standing on the opposite side of the room from James still wasn’t far enough to dampen their bond.
“I told you earlier, I’m kind of busy,” she said, voice strained.
James ran through a dozen options of things that he could say to her, which skimmed over the surface of the bond for an instant before he spoke. “You’ve been ignoring all my calls.” And below that:
You’re avoiding me
.
“That’s because I told you not to call me.” It felt stupidly redundant to speak aloud.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Listen, Elise…”
I miss you
.
“This isn’t a good time for that conversation.”
Exasperated, James took a notebook from his back pocket. “This is too difficult. Wait a second.” He flipped through the pages, and she saw the designs he had drawn sliding through the air before he picked one out.
James flicked the spell into the air and spoke a word of power. A cool mist sprinkled down her skin, from the crown of her head down to her toes. Radiating calm followed it—and silence.
Elise worked her jaw around, trying to clear her ears. Nothing happened. But she could still hear the thudding bass in Blood, could still hear her own breath.
It wasn’t her ears that had been dampened. The silence was inside her skull.
She tried to listen to James’s thoughts, but they were a muffled undercurrent—not entirely gone, but inaccessible. “How long have you been able to do that?”
“A few days now. I put a charm on my home office so I can do magic without disturbing you, and it’s holding up well. This particular spell will only last an hour or so.” James crumpled up the page and dropped it in the trash on top of an empty box of condoms.
“If a spell exists that can mute the bond, does that mean you’ve found someone who’s been through…this?”
“No. I had to design the spell. It’s the first one I’ve made in years.” He gave a sheepish smile. “I’m a little rusty.”
She tugged on her earlobe again, even though she knew the silence wasn’t really in her ears. “This doesn’t really change anything. I’m still too busy to talk.”
James’s eyes tracked over the costumes, the makeup cases, Neuma’s favorite riding crop, and the knives that Elise kept on an empty vanity. He moved to touch a chain hanging by the door, but seemed to think better of it. “Busy with… what, exactly?”