Sera winced, picturing Bookie’s expression. No one liked their familial failures laid out on the exam table. She should know.
She scuffed her feet and whisked around the corner, already talking. “Sorry I’m late.”
The three men moved away from the stiff stances they’d held. Archer nodded at her as she dropped her bag on the counter.
Between the men, a beaker topped with a gold seal held a flowing, inky substance of half liquid, half gas. She leaned closer, then recoiled with a gasp when a red eye spun across the inner surface of the glass.
“Don’t knock it over,” Ecco warned. “They’re a bitch to get out of the ductwork, and they always end up in my shower.”
She swallowed. “I didn’t realize you could fold them so small.”
“They’re like rats. They go wherever that eyeball fits. Still a pain getting them into the bottle, even with the etheric dissonance generator and the rogue-priest blessing on the glass.”
“I already have papers on malice morphology,” Bookie said impatiently.
“That’s not why we’re here.” Archer leaned his hip against the counter. “I want you to take an ESF and ion reading as Sera drains the malice.”
“Seems kind of unsporting at the moment,” she said.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel?” Ecco grinned. “We could let it out and you can try to drain it before it ends up in your shower. I’d hate to have to come after it.”
She grimaced. “I guess I’ll work up the nerve then.”
Bookie crossed his arms. “I have papers on malice dispatching too. Adding footnotes to studies already done is all very interesting, but—”
Archer straightened from his lazy stance.
Bookie fell silent. Even Ecco studied his fingernails with sudden attention.
Sera leaned over the beaker again. “I don’t know how I did it before.”
“Don’t think about it,” Archer said. “Just do what comes naturally.”
“Supernaturally,” Echo said. When they glared at him, he waved one hand. “Continue, please.”
Archer glanced at Bookie. “Do you have the equipment set up?”
Bookie gave a curt nod. “As you requested last night.” He wheeled a squat cabinet closer to the table. Sera was reminded of a hospital crash cart, only in this case, they were offing something, not saving it.
Bookie saw her attention and despite his pique, seemed unable to prevent himself from explaining. “The ether-spectral field detector will record emanations from you and the malice. Probably fairly consistent with readings
we’ve taken before.” He glared at Archer. “In our realm, lesser demons manifest as an etheric shell, if you will, containing spectral energy. When a talya captures a malice or incapacitates a feralis, the teshuva’s emanations overwhelm the lesser-demonic field, altering its pattern. Once closely enough aligned, the lesser energy is subsumed within the teshuva energy, leaving only the exhausted etheric shell—drained.”
“Like sucking down a beer bong and tossing the can over your shoulder,” Ecco murmured. “Without the burp.” No one looked his way.
“That’s why you don’t tangle with the djinn, only horde-tenebrae,” Bookie continued. “The teshuva can’t overcome the stronger emanations of the djinn.”
Sera pictured Nanette hefting a beer bong. “How do angels fare against the djinn?”
“God’s chosen warriors share nothing with us,” Archer said tightly.
For once, Ecco and Bookie muttered in annoyed agreement.
Sera shifted as Bookie aimed a palm-sized satellite dish at her. “So where does that energy go?”
“Anecdotal evidence from sensitive talyan”—Bookie’s scornful look eliminated the men in the room—“and untested theory indicate the matched demonic vibrations rejuvenate the teshuva and help maintain the human form over many years and otherwise fatal wounds. If improperly balanced, the energy could destabilize the teshuva, leading to unpredictable behavior in the possessed talya.” Another scornful, if carefully unfocused, look.
“Definitely seems like more research is needed.” Sera tried a smile on Bookie.
He stared back. “I suppose that’s why we’re here.” Amidst the reflected stainless steel in his glasses, the inky bottle of malice roiled like a second pair of pupils.
Her stomach followed the uneasy motion. “Okay then.”
She reached for the beaker. From the corner of her eye, she saw Ecco straighten, then subside when Archer shook his head.
She grasped the seal, half expecting it to burn or freeze or shock her. But the thin gold foil just flaked away under her fingers.
Behind the red eyeball, the malice boiled out like greasy smoke. The room filled with the stench of rotten eggs and worse gone putrid. Ecco swore. Bookie gagged.
Sera sunk her fingers into the writhing loops.
It never regained the vaguely animalistic shape of a roving malice. It only mewled. She couldn’t decide if pity or disgust moved her more.
She thought of her conversation with Nanette and remembered how Archer had accused her of talking the malice into oblivion. “Somebody told me that good and evil might be hopelessly intertwined.” She twisted the malice between her fingers, then glanced at Archer. “And somebody else hoped maybe they aren’t.”
Archer’s half-lidded gaze glimmered with a barely suppressed hunger, as if only they two stood in the room. He’d accused her of trying to psychoanalyze the demon, but whom was she trying to heal?
She folded the malice in on itself. “If terror and torture roam free as malice and ferales, where are the parallel shapes of beauty, joy, compassion?” Ether compressed like oily cobwebs under her hands. At most she could make a spit wad, not even a paper airplane. “How can I reshape one malice into a thousand origami cranes to make a wish come true?”
She’d heard the wary hope in his voice before, wondering if there might be an end to his fighting. That
she
might be the end.
But her past told her she could have hope or she
could have the end; the agony of hope unrequited or the peace of inevitable death. Not both.
The moment spooled out, the room fading to sketched monochrome lines, except for the violet streaks in Archer’s tarnished bronze eyes. In his clenched hand, tendons stood stark under the black of his
reven
, as if he could smash ether under his fist. With his demon’s help, he’d bound hope and death into one convoluted and ruinous wish.
In the empty, echoing space that linked them, she said to him, “I’m sorry, but I will not be your end.”
She spread her hands.
“Quit mooning at him,” Ecco snapped. He jumped forward to grab at the malice, jolting her. “You’re going to lose it.”
Before she could even flinch, Archer caught her. He pulled her close, his big body steady and unsettling at the same time.
His breath against her temple raised shivers down her spine, through the unseen marks encircling her thighs. “You trying to lose me again?”
He wrapped his fingers possessively around her arms, brushing her breasts. The shock she always felt at his touch leapt between them, and the fragile bubble where she’d spoken just to him imploded. Rocked on her feet, she held him fast.
The malice unraveled in a cascade of pitchy streamers until only the stench remained.
Bookie cleared his throat. “Very pretty.”
“Where did it go?” Ecco turned a tight circle.
Archer straightened with a growl. “I told you to let her do it.”
“She tried to let it go.” Ecco dragged in a deep breath, as if he could sniff out the malice through the stink. “If you hadn’t stopped her . . .”
Sera ducked away from Archer to stand on her own. “It’s gone, all right.”
Ecco blinked. “But there’s nothing left.”
She pinned Ecco with a gimlet stare. “If I’d known you
like
malice in your shower . . .”
Archer studied Bookie expectantly. The Bookkeeper fiddled with the dials on his machine, his brow furrowed. He muttered.
“Well,” Archer prompted.
“It happened so fast.” Bookie straightened his glasses, a faint tremor in his hand. “I can’t quite believe—”
Archer frowned. “Didn’t you get it?”
Ecco pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. Cloves masked the sulfur stench. “I’m not getting slimed again just because you forgot to push ‘record.’ ”
Bookie whirled on him. “It’s not that simple.”
“Demon here. Demon gone. Gone where?” Ecco peered over Bookie’s shoulder. “What’s this braid of light?” He pointed with the cigarette, the glowing cherry tracing the readout. “Here’s where the malice is draining, like usual. But here looks like the inverse, as if somebody wove it back together, except light instead of dark.” His brow furrowed. “When Archer grabbed Sera.”
Sera took a step around Archer’s big frame to see the screen. The spirograph pattern could have been the exploding malice’s good twin, the splintered strands winding back toward some bright, elusive center.
“Yes, it’s unusual,” Bookie said with cool reluctance. “I need time to decode and match against previous readings. Unless you can figure it out by yourself.”
“Whatever.” Ecco took a hard drag off the cigarette. “As always with you people, been fun.”
Archer waited until the talya’s footsteps faded down the hall. “About Sera’s necklace.”
Bookie jerked his head up. “She told you?” He frowned at Sera. “I thought we agreed to wait until I could convince the league not to kill you out of hand.”
“I’ve pissed him off once or twice, but I took a chance Archer wouldn’t slay me without better cause.”
Bookie didn’t smile. “Possession of the
desolator numinis
is more damning than you know.”
“So explain,” Archer said. “Is the stone how she destroys the malice?”
Bookie hesitated. “From what I’ve read, the
desolator numinis
is like the energy sinks we use to ward league dwellings from the negative emotions that attract horde-tenebrae. Except the matrix seizes the emanations we call souls.” He glanced at the spirograph. “It seems likely she’s doing the same with demonic ethers.”
Sera’s skin prickled as if the pendant squirmed against her neck. She resisted the urge to tear it off.
Archer let out a slow breath. If she hadn’t spent the last few days as his living shadow, she might have missed the carefully buried disappointment in his voice. “Then it’s just a kinder and gentler garbage can for dumping demonic trash, not a one-way ticket back to the demon realm.”
Bookie laid one hand on the spirograph machine as if steadying himself. “Is that what you hoped for?” His tone rose incredulously. “An opening into the tenebraeternum?”
Archer’s expression blanked. “And why not?”
“You can’t just rip through the Veil as if it were some petty malice.” The historian sputtered, as close to a laugh as Sera had heard from him. “It’d be chaos. Actual chaos.”
From Archer’s predatory stillness, Sera didn’t think he was particularly amused, especially when he asked softly, “Are we not teetering on that edge already?”
Any semblance of laughter fled Bookie’s face. “Not that close, as far as most of us are concerned. Bringing on the apocalypse for your own sense of closure seems arrogant, even for a talya.”
Hoping to ease the spiking tension, Sera cleared her throat. “The
desolator numinis
might be just another prison, but it could still hold a hint.”
“What hint?” Bookie’s lip curled, nothing like a smile but not quite a sneer.
If anyone was arrogant . . . From Bookie’s sudden pallor, she knew her eyes flared violet. “The hint inherent in all prisons. A way to escape.”
She remembered Zane’s comment about the temptation of calling on the demon, and shame pricked her. Bookie, acerbic comments and all, was part of the league, not the enemy.
“A way out might be a way back in. If the stone holds demons, just like the demon realm, what we learn from one could apply to the other.” She relaxed her fingers, fisted around the pendant. “Who besides you can tell us what other hints the Bookkeeper archive holds?”
Bookie inclined his head in grudging agreement. “More than one person could discover in a lifetime. A mortal lifetime, anyway. But I’ll let you know what I find.” He clicked off the spirograph device, and the machine powered down with a descending hum.
“On that note . . . ,” Archer murmured.
Sera grabbed her things and followed him out. “I thought nerds were charming these days.”
Archer propelled her down the hall with a hand at the small of her back. “He is not the man his father was. I suppose that is true of us all.”
In the elevator, she turned to him. “What did you think you’d find today?”
“Something, anything we didn’t know before. Which is plenty.” His gaze rested on her with a hint of the unruly need that kept flaring between them. “But I think you’re even more rare than the secrets in Bookkeeper histories.”
She wanted to kick herself for the hiccup in her heartbeat.
Rare indeed.Two-headed calves and meteor strikes were rare too. Rare didn’t always mean desirable.
When the elevator stopped on her floor, he held her back. “I want to show you something. Come up to my room.”
Actually, meteor showers were beautiful, awe inspiring, and only very rarely killed people. And who wouldn’t want a two-headed calf?
She followed him up.
CHAPTER 16
His room had a better view of the city than hers, but about the same level of personality—which was to say, none. She wished she hadn’t made fun of his Spartan loft. She could’ve saved those zingers for now.
He must’ve seen her expression. “I don’t stay here often. This way.” On his desk, a computer idled, the league’s @1 insignia scrolling randomly. “I want to show you what Bookie won’t acknowledge.”
She leaned over the laptop beside him, inadvertently bumping his wide shoulder. “But I’ve finished less of the Bookkeeper backlist than I have malice and ferales.”