by S. M. Reine
Elise didn’t sleep, but James did. They curled up in a pile of their own clothing on top of mats dragged out of the storage closet that she used to use when she was working out, practicing her flips and kicks and throws. The mats worked as a bed about as well as they worked as a landing pad for her falls.
For hours, she watched James’s chest rise and fall with the deep, even breaths of sleep. Dreams danced through his mind, and though she couldn’t pick up any of the specifics, she knew it wasn’t pleasant. But the sleep was restful, and he desperately needed it. She didn’t want to disturb him.
She rested her cheek on his chest, and his heart thumped underneath the bone, steady and reassuring.
James awoke when the light outside the icy windows began to brighten. His eyelids fluttered open, and he grimaced at first. But his expression relaxed when he saw her beside him. “Good morning,” he said, voice thick and groggy.
She rolled onto her stomach. “Good morning, James.”
“What time is it?”
“I have no idea.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “I don’t really care.” James touched his lips to the curve of her shoulder. He was thinking about how beautiful she looked, and wishing that she still had freckles.
“Sorry,” she said.
“Sorry?”
Elise immediately wished she hadn’t said anything aloud. It was bad enough that he was going to skim it from the surface of her brain. “For my skin. And…everything else.” Her hair, her eyes, her demon heart.
“You’re still beautiful,” James said, and she could tell that he meant it. She could also tell that, despite the new absence of flaws, he preferred the way she used to be. He wrapped his hand around hers, toying with the bare spot on her thumb where she had worn the warding ring. “You’re also troubled. You didn’t sleep at all, did you?”
She made herself smile. “You probably know more about it than I do.”
The silence that followed was long and companionable. Neither of them wanted to break it.
James couldn’t seem to stop touching her, so she rolled onto her side to give him access. He traced the places on her body that should have had lines, but didn’t. Her ribs. Her concave stomach. Her hip. The sunlight filtering through the ash-caked windows warmed the parquet and turned the room a hazy shade of gold, so different from the all-consuming shadows of Hell.
But nothing could last forever. Not even silence. Questions hung over them, things unspoken, and Elise had to know.
She reached up to gently rub a knuckle against his jaw. “How long?” She didn’t need to specify what she meant.
“Always,” James said, barely above a whisper.
“When we were living together?” she asked, and she could feel that the answer was yes. “When Death’s Hand came back? When you moved in with Stephanie?”
“Always,” he repeated. There was nothing else to be said.
“Then what the hell have we been doing for a decade? Why did you keep rejecting me?”
The corners of James’s mouth drew down in a frown. “It’s complicated.”
Those two words were enough to make the warmth in the room fade just a few degrees.
He cupped a hand at the back of her head as he kissed her, tangling in the black hair that wasn’t hers so that she couldn’t pull away. Not that she would have wanted to anyway.
They pressed their foreheads together and didn’t move for a long time, breathing each other’s breath and feeling their hearts beat in rhythm. “We really need to go now,” Elise said, and the moment was gone. “We should have gone hours ago.”
James released her. Nodded. “You’re probably right. I’m hungry—I think I’ll see if Candace left any canned food upstairs. Do you want anything?”
She shook her head and stretched out on the mats to watch him dress. The view from the floor was pleasant. Seeing him naked was different now that she knew what it felt like to be against him, skin against skin, and remembered the salty taste of sweat on her tongue.
Even though she knew they still had to find out what had happened to Hannah and Nathaniel, it was hard to feel much urgency while watching James’s muscles flex and his body twist. He pulled his shirt on and his fingers slipped along the buttons one by one. Several of them were missing. Elise hadn’t been careful about undressing him. “Are you going to stay down there all day?”
She stretched onto her back, extending her fingers and toes to their maximum like a cat after a long nap. “It’s tempting.”
He knelt beside her with a half-smile. She knew that weird expression because she probably had the same one, herself: disbelief.
James handed her clothes to her. “I’ll see you upstairs,” he said, brushing her hair over her ear again. His fingers trailed over her temple, and a line formed between his eyebrows. His mind was a buzz of unreadable thoughts. “You should know that I love you, Elise. I’m sure you realize that now.”
Something about the way he said it didn’t come across as a romantic confession so much as an apology, so all she did was nod silently.
He lingered in the doorway for a moment, as though to give her some small amount of privacy as she dressed in the leggings and bustier. By the time she went searching for her spine sheath, he had gone upstairs and she was alone.
Elise stared at her unfamiliar reflection in the mirrors, twisting the ring on her thumb.
She didn’t look anything like she used to. She didn’t feel the same, either. It didn’t really matter if she was the daughter of Nügua, the daughter of Yatam, or the daughter of Hell—none of those names meant anything to her. What mattered was that she had changed, profoundly and irrevocably.
One other thing had changed, too. And he was upstairs making breakfast.
She found herself smiling as she laced her leggings again. It was stuck to her face, and she couldn’t have stopped if she tried.
Elise found an old jacket in the closet and tugged it over her shoulders before opening the front door. There was more snow outside than she’d expected. James’s footprints led around the side of the building to the apartment’s stairs.
But everything vanished the instant she crossed the threshold.
She was surrounded by gray void—inside and outside.
Elise couldn’t turn back to the studio. There was no studio, and she had no body to turn. She couldn’t scream without a voice.
And she wasn’t alone in the void.
He had come.
Elise, He said in a voice as massive as His presence, I have missed you so very much. It’s time to come home.
She wanted to cry, to flee, to scream a thousand furies at the nothingness. But it was too late. Pale hands engulfed her, cradling nonexistent flesh and enclosing her in chains. All she could see was flaming light.
James! Elise shrieked without lungs.
And then she was gone.
The apartment above the studio was just as quiet and empty as it had been downstairs. The last occupant had been one of the former instructors at Motion and Dance. Candace and all of her most important belongings were gone—photo albums, her laptop, some knick-knacks that James remembered being on the bookshelf. Candace and her husband must have evacuated.
James couldn’t hear Elise moving downstairs, but he could feel her. His last image of her was when she had twisted her arms to adjust her leggings, and he could still see the way her scapula jutted from her back, the line of her spine, the curve of her hip, and the spill of her hair like ink on snow.
That was how he wanted to think of her. Bare shoulders and a hint of a smile on her lips.
He didn’t open the pantry to search for canned food when he got upstairs. He braced his hands on the counter and stared out the dusty window. The street beyond was normal, aside from the emptiness. It was going to be a beautiful morning.
James felt Elise approach the front door. Something shifted when she crossed the warded line that separated the entryway from the lawn.
An instant later,
she vanished.
Though he didn’t see it happen, he felt it as surely as he had felt her body under his hands the night before. All their years of running and hiding—and all of their struggles to keep her safe from His searching gaze—had ended in one swift moment.
God had come. He had Elise.
All the tension drained from James’s muscles. He sagged against the counter.
“Finally,” he sighed.
Defying Fate
Book Six
I
The Garden
Colorado – April 1993
Landon checked his watch again. Six fifty-eight in the evening—almost time.
He forced his aching body out of the lawn chair, pressed his hands against his lower back, and leaned his pelvis forward until his spine popped. A satisfied groan rumbled through his chest.
“Need a better chair,” he muttered.
There wasn’t much of a chance that this would be the night that James Faulkner returned, after two months’ worth of nights, so Landon was eager to escape the musty old cave and return to his wife on the surface.
In the seven weeks that had elapsed since James stepped through the door, things had been pretty quiet among the coven. The esbats had been uneventful. The witches noticed that James was missing, but their worries were easy to dismiss.
Hannah was the only problem. Hardly a day passed without her calling to demand to speak to James, no matter how many times Landon told her that he was on a business trip and unreachable. It wasn’t even a lie, really, although it was a serious understatement of the gravity of the situation. Regardless, Hannah didn’t believe him. There were reasons that she had been kicked out of the coven, and her ham-handed attempts at “magic” were only part of it.
Clouds of dust billowed through the air when Landon moved the lawn chair to its usual resting place in the back corner. He dissolved into a coughing fit.
Maybe Holly was right—maybe it was time to give the chamber the thorough washing it had probably needed for two or three generations. But Landon rejected the thought as soon as he had it. Cleaning the cave would mean spending far more time around that blasted door, and a few minutes a night was far more than enough for his tastes.
The door was an ancient marble monstrosity with black lines carved into the frame. The silver handle emanated a distinct sense of unwelcome, so Landon avoided touching it. The cave was meant to be a ritual space, with the door acting as a source of power, but he had never used it for that purpose. Frankly, he wouldn’t have even if he could.
But he hovered a hand over the silver lever for a moment tonight, tempted to open the door and see what was taking James so long.
It wasn’t a very strong temptation.
He jammed his hands back into his pockets and backed away again.
His watch beeped. Seven o’clock.
As usual, silver-gray light appeared around the edge of the door. Landon put on a pair of aviators.
Through the sunglasses, he could see all of the ethereal lettering around the door illuminate. It sparkled as though stars were trapped within the frame, though Landon suspected that what waited on the other side was far less romantic than that.
Come on , he thought, glancing at his watch. As soon as sixty seconds passed, the light would fade, silence would fill the cavern, and he could go eat supper.
But a minute passed, and then two.
The light only grew brighter.
The door swung open, pouring gray light over Landon. A human figure stood silhouetted in the arch, and Landon took a step backwards before he remembered that he was meant to be the door’s steward, for better or for worse. He gathered what little courage he had and stood strong.
“It’s just the boy,” he muttered as the shape approached, growing larger with every step. “It’s just the boy.”
The silhouette resolved into a familiar figure. He was over six feet tall with the lean, muscular body of a dancer. Black hair shaded his eyes. There wasn’t a hint of beard growth on his jaw, even though he couldn’t have used a razor in a long time.
His shadow rippled as he entered the cave and the door slammed shut behind him. All of the light vanished.
James Faulkner had come home.
Landon’s face relaxed into a smile as he extended his arms. “Welcome back,” he said warmly. “We’ve missed you.”
James took two steps before collapsing. He spilled to the ground bonelessly, and the sound of his head connecting with the ground made Landon wince.
“Careful, there. You’ve been out of it for quite some time now.” Landon grabbed a blanket out of the corner, tossing it over the young witch’s shoulders. James’s flesh was soaked with sweat and softer than an infant’s. He steamed faintly in the cool air of the cave.
Shivers wracked his body. He curled his knees to his chest. “What…who…?” His teeth were chattering too hard for him to speak. James gripped his chest, and Landon pushed his hand gently aside to see a healing wound over one breast in the shape of a star. It looked like a brand—nothing that a couple of well-crafted poultices couldn’t help.
Landon rubbed his shoulders through the blanket. “Give yourself a few minutes. Deep breaths. You’re all right.”
James tried to get to his knees and fell again, this time face-first on the ground. Landon adjusted the blanket to keep him covered. He hesitated when he saw the boy’s back.
Deep red gashes marked the skin between his shoulder blades, like fresh orifices were forming there, glossy and red and struggling to heal. Bone peeked through the slices, but the wounds weren’t bleeding. It would take much more than poultices to fix that up.
“You’re all right,” Landon repeated, pulling the blanket to cover the swollen gashes.
“Where—where am I?”
“This is the basement under my house. You departed from here. Remember?”
His brow creased. “No, I don’t…” He shivered again, and he bowed his head to his knees to ride it out. Landon didn’t know what to do but keep rubbing James’s shoulders and wait until he was calm enough to go upstairs.
But James didn’t calm down. The shivers kept building until they were almost a seizure. His face was screwed up with pain.
Landon stepped to the mouth of the stairs, leaning through the door. “Holly! Get down here, and bring my satchel!”
“Landon,” James said.
He kneeled beside him again. “Yes, son?”
James reached up to grab Landon’s shirt, dragging his face down. “What the hell has happened to me?” James’s voice shook with the effort it took to speak. The words were as ragged as his changed back, as though he had never spoken before in his life.
But it wasn’t the gashes or the tremulous voice that gave Landon pause.
James Faulkner’s eyes were a very bright shade of blue.
“Ah,” Landon said. “So it’s done.”
II
The Haven
1
California - May 2010
Conan O’Brien cracked a bad joke on TV. The audience’s responding laughter was shrill, harpy-like, almost screaming. Hannah wanted to throw the remote through the screen. But late night programming was the only thing that had kept her son quiet lately, and she couldn’t afford to replace the television, so she only dug her fingernails into her palms, gritted her teeth, and tolerated it.
Spring in Half Moon Bay smelled like saltwater and seaweed. The steely ocean rippled outside her window, unsettled by a coming storm, and the wind was just on the wrong side of cold. Hannah didn’t close the guesthouse’s window. She hadn’t been in Hell for months, but she still hungered for cool, moist air.
Another joke, more shrill laughter. Her nails dug into her hand.
“What do you want for dinner?” she asked.
Nathaniel didn’t respond.
She stepped into the kitchen. In the refrigerator, she had an open box of baking soda, half a liter of milk, a few slices of bread. The coven would have plenty of food if
she wanted it—they were only a phone call away. But admitting that they had burned through Hannah’s paltry savings was more than she could handle.
Hannah braced her hands on the granite counter and let her head hang between her shoulders. She could see a sliver of the television screen through the doorway. Conan O’Brien was dancing. The audience roared, but Nathaniel’s expression never changed. He had spent all night, every night, sitting in that same position. The couch had all but molded around his body now.
Zoning out was still better than what he had been doing with his days.
The phone rang, startling Hannah.
“Phone, Mom,” Nathaniel said without looking up.
A corded handset was mounted next to the refrigerator. She pulled it into to the dining room. The table was covered in books, papers, stones, crystals, pens, candles—everything a growing witch needed to cast magic.
She pressed the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Hannah,” replied a man, whose voice she recognized.
She let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding. Hannah hadn’t heard from James Faulkner, her former fiancé and father of her son, since she had left him in the City of Dis last December. After so long without word, she had started to think he must have been dead.
There was a time when Hannah had fantasized about James getting killed—the times when she had been trapped at home with Nathaniel when he was a raging toddler, and James was off saving the world. But Nathaniel wasn’t a child anymore. He was an almost-teenaged witch who was drawing runes in his own blood. The idea of losing James—maybe the only witch powerful enough to control Nathaniel—had been haunting her for weeks.
“Where are you?” she asked in a low voice, gripping the receiver in both hands until the plastic creaked. “I thought you were going to contact us as soon as you got back.”
“You need to meet me at Pamela’s old house in one week. We’re going to go to the Haven.”
