Torchlighters

by Megan R Miller

  “You didn’t know,” she said. “I see. You’re working for Trezza, then. My contact had implied you were with the Hellwatch. It doesn’t matter what your motives are, I suppose. We’re working toward the same goal. Come and sit beside me.”

  He did as she asked. When the princess makes a request, it is not up to a young criminal to refuse her.

  “Callum Trezza was only the second known in a line of cambion murders,” she said, and brought her notebook around to him. She flipped a couple of pages back from her star charts to a list she’d made. Names, bloodlines, times of death. She’d recorded both their biological sexes and genders, their blood types, their heights and weights, and there were notes on other details about them. “They took a half-gorgon, who wasn’t found until after he was but was confirmed murdered first. And then a half-asura. What does that tell you?”

  It told him it wasn’t personal. He felt hundreds of miles away from the conversation at that moment, but he answered her, anyway.

  “It tells me whoever is doing this is going to be looking to kill another cambion,” he said. “He’s got three of the big seven.”

  “And preta aren’t easy to come by,” Tess said. “Neither are afrite. Rakshasa put up a hard fight, or so I hear. None of this is going to be easy, and I still can’t wrap my mind around why anyone would want to.”

  But they didn’t have three. And they didn’t know that. Callum’s heart hammered like a piston.

  “So what do we do?” he asked, looking at her.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have a working database of every cambion in the city,” she said. “As a matter of fact trying to make every cambion register their bloodlines like that would be a massive human rights violation, so it’s probably a good thing generally speaking that it isn’t required, but that makes protecting them difficult. It also makes me wonder how the killer managed to find all of these and why he’s doing what he’s doing—if he is indeed a he at all. Which is why I wanted to talk to you. Anything you can tell me would be of great help.”

  There she was, telling him the thing he’d meant to tell her before he knew who he was coming to talk to.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, folding her hands in her lap. Her expression was one of infinite patience, the kind of look that wouldn’t have been out of place on a parent or a schoolteacher.

  “Why do you care about this?” he asked. “Callum was aristocracy, sort of, sure, but the rest of these people were no one.”

  Her face went from pleasantly calm to cold in a second.

  “My people are not no one,” Tess said. “Someone is picking them off, and I intend to do something about it. I have to care. I should care about their wellbeing if I’m going to lead here, someday. That’s something my father never learned and I won’t repeat his mistakes. I care what happens to them. If you need more of a reason than that to pursue the truth for the rest of them I’m afraid this isn’t going to get us very far.”

  “The killer used a glyphed dagger,” Callum said. “This is the sigil that was carved into it.”

  He drew the image he’d taken off of the Gater out of his pocket and set it on the table. Tess took it between her fingers and looked at it for a long moment.

  “How did you find this out?” she asked. Her eyes were only for the glyph and she sounded a distance off.

  “I talked to a witness,” Cal said. “Someone that saw it happen when he got stabbed. I’m afraid I don’t have much on the killer they were…out of sight of the witness in question to the best of my knowledge. But I do know the dagger and I do know that sigil isn’t for summoning cute little bunny rabbits.”

  “You’re right,” she said. She set the scrap of paper back down and started to copy the sigil into her notebook. “I’ve seen this sigil used in summonings before. I can’t recall off the top of my head what kind, but I’m not sure why it would be on a dagger. What else do you know?”

  “Not even as much as you do,” he said. “I only just learned there was more than one victim. And I think we can both agree that it would be best if no one else died.”

  “Because at best this is some kind of hate crime,” Tess said, “and at worst, it’s magic. And the kind of magic that requires this many sacrifices is not something I will have come down on my city.”

  She sounded fierce, then. Callum had grown up with his mother, Ophelia, who had been trained to the Hellwatch and could call down fire that burned hotter than any human was capable of on their own no matter how much fluid they had to aid them. He had grown up around hardened criminals. Torchlighter women who would cut you as soon as share a drink with you.

  Yet, in that moment, you couldn’t have paid him to cross Tess Cassander.

  “Meet me here tomorrow night,” she said. “We’ll see my contact at the radio station. He hears things, and he might be able to help us. Will you be here? I would ask you to ditch your facade but I don’t think that’s likely to happen.”

  He remembered Sam, and his promise that if this didn’t bear fruit he would go to tell his parents the truth. If he told them now they would never let him go. What Tess was going to lead him to? He needed to know.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

  That was just going to have to be that.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Flame

  “Unlicensed summoning: clear and present danger or natural next step to the ever increasing overreach of the aristocracy?

  You should know, I’m not allowed to talk about this without mentioning hundreds of people die in unlicensed summoning incidents every year. But no kidding, if people don’t know what they’re doing.

  The honest truth is, if we just—hold on, my boss is standing on the other side of this door gesturing at me to cut the feed. That alone should tell you how much of this they don’t want you to hear—”

  She found him in the sitting room with a novel open in his lap with their long-haired spotted black and white hound lying on his feet. Joey glanced up at her as she approached, and so did Ashes. Ophelia gave her best smile, scratched Ashes between the ears and took the chair across from him. Joey reached out to offer her a hand, and she took it and gave it a squeeze.

  “I’ve sent word around,” she said. “Mirin came back with a lot, this time. It seems like there’s already a line drawn in the sand and everyone is quick to take a side.”

  “Where is that line drawn?” he asked, sitting up. “And who is on our side of it?”

  “Between here and Gate Street,” she said, “if you couldn’t have guessed. We’ve got the Black Cats, because we’ve got the docks. They can’t thrive without the drug trade and if we cut them off they’ll starve out fast. But the Fallen Angels are backing the Gaters because there are more of them.”

  “No loyalty in hell, I guess,” he said.

  “You say that like the Fallen Angels owed us any to begin with,” she said, sighing.

  “Trying to make light of it, love,” he said. “Demons, fallen angels, quite a bit in common.”

  “The point is Gate Street has the numbers here,” she said. “We’re going to need a hell of an ambush to pull this off.”

  “They had the numbers when it was just me and Danny, too,” Joey said.

  “And the two of you were underground at the time,” Ophelia said. “The Hellwatch wasn’t watching you like they are now. We’re going to need the aristocracy on our side if we want them to call off their dogs and let us work.”

  “We’re gonna want ‘em on our side if we’re releasing demons, too,” Joey said.

  “So I’ll go and speak to them,” Ophelia said. “I’ll secure their cooperation and see which ones are willing to work with us. To make the streets a little bit safer, of course. It’ll look good on them if they buy it, but they’ll probably see right through it and regardless they aren’t going to do it for free.”

  “People like that don’t care about the kind of money we have. What did you have in mind?” Joe
y asked. He shut his book without marking it and set it on the table between them.

  “I’m not sure yet what they’re going to want,” Ophelia said. “We have a lot of pull in the underground and that might be enough to entice a few of them to an alliance. There’s also the matter of me being what remains of the late House Nostra. They might want to pull us back into the fold somehow, but…you’re not going to like how they tend to do that.”

  “Oh?” he asked. His brow raised, and his jaw set slightly the way it did when he suspected something rotten. The irony of that would have made her smile if it hadn’t been so serious.

  “We might be lucky and find one that’s willing to settle for some kind of business merger or an illicit service or two that we can provide them. I know House Revel has needed the aid of smugglers occasionally. We do have the docks and that will get us some pull,” Ophelia said. “But…political marriages didn’t disappear with the new era.”

  “We’re not gonna play their pedigree games. They’re either on our side or in our way,” Joey said.

  “I agree,” Ophelia said, straightening. “I’m simply telling you what they’re going to expect. These things are usually on the table and that is going to make things difficult.”

  Aside from that, she thought privately, it might be harder to get them to accept that sort of alliance knowing her children had demon’s blood in their veins. Sam and Ely were both nephilim, which meant none of it was manifest, but the perceived stain of their demonic lineage might still be apparent to some of the more judgmental nobles.

  Of course, she wasn’t about to say that to Joey.

  “Things have always been difficult, what makes this any different?” Joey asked.

  “We still need them,” Ophelia said. “And we need a back up plan to convince them to cooperate if I can’t entice them with honey. So what’s the vinegar?”

  “I hear they’ve got these printed summoning circles in Charon,” Joey said. “They’ve got docks, too, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take much to get them to ship some our way. It’d really be a shame for the aristocracy if those started pouring into the hands of the public here. You know, if they suddenly weren’t useful anymore.”

  “Send word,” Ophelia said. “The Asteri’s might still want something from us, but they’re new money so it’s less likely to be, as you put it, pedigree games.”

  “Mhmm,” Joey murmurred.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked.

  “I’m keeping myself busy,” he said. It was a flat tone, one that denied any agitation, but she knew better.

  “And what about in those moments where it isn’t possible to do that?” Ophelia asked, softly.

  He sighed, an exhale through his nostrils.

  “It still doesn’t feel real,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. “Sometimes it does. Sometimes it hits me like a truck in the chest and I can’t breathe. Sometimes, though, it still feels like he’s going to come sliding down the banister and I’m going to have to yell at him not to run in the house.”

  “When’s the last time you even did that?” Joey asked. There was a shadow of a smirk on his face, now.

  “Three weeks ago,” Ophelia said. “He was in a rush to get somewhere. Never did tell me where.”

  There was a pause between them, a little silence that Joey finally broke.

  “Do you think I work too much? Don’t spend enough time with the kids?”

  “I think what you do is necessary, love, and the kids know you love them,” she said. “You being here wouldn’t have stopped what happened.”

  Was that true?

  “I guess you’re right,” he said. She squeezed his hand.

  “If you’re worried about it, we’ll make it a point to spend more time together as a family,” she said. “We can do it, organize that kind of thing more often. Let Danny take the wheel some.”

  “I guess we’ll see where we’re at once the dust settles,” he said. She nodded and got to her feet. He joined her there and pulled her into a hug. Ashes took his seat the moment he vacated it, curling up on the cushion.

  Ordinarily, Joey would have pushed him off or told him to get lost, but right now neither of them seemed to care. Ophelia rested her head on his shoulder and pulled him tighter to her.

  “I didn’t think this could be harder than it was the first time,” she said. “I didn’t know how wrong I was.”

  Her voice broke a little bit against the fabric of his suit.

  “You didn’t really get to know that one, I guess,” he said.

  “I felt like I did,” Ophelia said. “I didn’t know better. I guess…I’m almost glad the first time happened now because if it hadn’t I think this would break me. It still might.”

  “I don’t think anything could break you,” he said, pulling away just enough to look at her face. He ran the pad of his thumb along her cheek, brushing away tears she hadn’t realized she’d shed.

  She leaned up and kissed him softly.

  “Not while you’re here,” she said. His cheek twitched with a little smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  There was a quiet hollowness to his face that caught her heart and held it. This was heavy, and he couldn’t carry her through it. He was going through this too, with her.

  Well, she couldn’t carry him either.

  They were more like a pair of legs. They had to hold the weight together. One step at a time.

  “Then I guess you’ll never break,” he said.

  “Never,” she said, and brushed his lips, featherlight, with hers.

  Ely sat on the dock, listening to the water roll in and out with Martin sitting beside her as she went over his notes.

  “So this is where you think the entrance is?” she asked.

  “It’s more than a hunch,” Martin said. “I’ve been there, saw the door. There’s a drawing on the next page.”

  She flipped papers and ran her fingers over the graphite drawing. It was large, and appeared heavy, with sigils inlaid along the stone.

  “There’s no demon bound directly into it,” Martin said. “An imp or a wisp wouldn’t have been enough, anyway. Do you see that glyph at the top of the arch there? They inscribed it to tap just a little bit of power from one of the bigger ones.”

  “One of the big seven?” Ely asked, turning the page to get a slightly different perspective on the door.

  “Bigger than that,” Martin said. “There are some things it’s not safe to call down on your own.”

  “And they have the kind of power to do that?” Ely asked, glancing up at him and raising an eyebrow.

  “Not as such,” Martin said, folding his arms. “It’s not a summon, it’s a siphon. They teach you to do it at the academy. Problem being if you do it too much the being you’re siphoning from will notice and if these sigils get out where the layfolk can see them there’s a real danger they’ll try to summon with them.”

  Ely made a sound of acknowledgment.

  “They’d do it, too,” she said. “That’s a pity, really. If someone took the time to educate them in the basics they’d have some idea of what was too much for them to attempt.”

  “If they did that the summoners couldn’t tax people for the wisp lights,” Martin said. “House Revel would be out of a lot of money and might not be able to keep their hundred-room house.”

  He sounded bitter with that exaggeration. Ely lowered the drawing and looked at him.

  “You know my family aren’t summoners, right?” she asked.

  “Anymore.” Martin said. “How do you think House Nostra got all that money in the first place? How your mother ended up a nephil?”

  He was puffed up for a second, air in his chest making him appear larger. He seemed to realize what he’d done almost immediately because he deflated under her gaze and dropped his eyes to the concrete floor.

  How your mother ended up a nephil?

  She had a flash of the seventy-seven eyed wheel of arms from the academy.
/>   “Martin,” Ely said, finally.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to imply anything like that, I just got riled up, please forgive me.”

  He looked pathetic for a moment. She’d shown no signs of aggression and yet he was afraid. Fear came so easily to other people, she’d noticed. They all broke so easily. And he was so much older than she was! She needed him in one piece.

  “Martin,” Ely said again, forcing calm into her voice. She was aiming for a soothing tone and apparently it worked because he glanced up at her. “I’m following. I want you to tell me the rest of what you were trying to say, please. About House Nostra, and my mother.”

  “They were summoners until your mother took the house,” he said.

  “I know that,” Ely said. “But my father is a cambion, and he grew up in the dock district back when it was considered a slum. Nona Trezza wasn’t a summoner.”

  “And Joey Trezza isn’t a nephil,” Martin said. “He’s a cambion. They aren’t the same thing.”

  “Speaking as a nephil myself, with every reason to want to think we’re objectively better, I can say from experience. Afrite are every bit as powerful as seraph. Nephil don’t have it any easier,” Ely said. She kept most of the bite out of her voice. She didn’t appreciate the sentiment that somehow she had it better than her brother had. Not when he was Dad’s favorite. Not when they grew up in the same house.

  “That isn’t what I meant,” Martin said. His face went scarlet and he dropped his eyes again. Ely inhaled silently through her nose and exhaled, taking her time so it wouldn’t make a sound and startle him even more.

  “Martin,” she said, a third time. “I want you to explain this to me. The whole thing in its entirety. What exactly are you saying?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “It’s bothering you,” she said. “It matters. Please, go on, I promise I won’t be angry.”

  Frustrated, yes. She was already that. She was also good enough at schooling her face that she was confident he’d never know it.