by Jessa Slade
“I didn’t care. Unlike your mother, I wasn’t driven by voices. There was no one left to speak.” He took a long breath. “But if I’d known about your mother before last night when you told me, I would’ve had Niall send someone else to talk you through possession.”
“Talk? How about sleep with me? Or kill me if my demon was djinn?”
“We did what we had to. I’m not asking for absolution.”
Did he mean the killing, or the sex? As sudden as a flash flood ended, her anger dried up, leaving her empty. “But you think I’d condemn Zane—or you—when I’ve ended up in the same place.”
She thought for a moment. “You said the reven highlights wound and flaw, both.” She smoothed her hands down her hips, as if she could feel the curving lines of the mark. “I was broken in my center, body, and identity. I’m the one people turn to for answers, but really I’ve only ever had questions. Why didn’t someone notice my mother was suffering from severe postpartum depression? Could we have prevented Dad’s decline? Why did that drunk bastard have to hit me? The demon promised me explanations. Instead I’ve had to face realities I’d never have believed before.”
His gaze had followed the path of her hands. “You catch on quickly. It took me much longer.”
Once again, she wondered how long. Zane, no older than his early twenties during the Vietnam draft, should have been past fifty. And he was the most recently possessed. That would make Archer—what?—eighty years old? One hundred?
Not that it mattered. He’d proved himself spry enough. Into the weary emptiness she’d thought an improvement over the rush of troubling emotions, a flush of heat sparked along her frayed nerves.
When he lifted an eyebrow in question, she realized she’d been silent too long. She gave herself a little shake. “I need to lie down for few minutes.” Just to get away.
He smiled faintly. “Have all these revelations made you stop thinking about what a bad night it’s been?”
He’d shared just to distract her? “I guess my stuff doesn’t seem so important when compared to . . .” She waved her hand, encompassing a wider view.
“Unless the break-in is part of it.” He echoed her all-inclusive gesture.
She grimaced. “At least, for once, I’m not trying to figure it out on my own.”
He took a breath as if to contradict her again, but he only sighed. “Zane and Ecco will keep watch on the perimeter. And I’m not going anywhere.”
She blushed. Then she was annoyed with the blush. “I didn’t mean you had to stay. I can be alone without feeling alone.”
“If the djinn-man comes back, you won’t be alone. I’ll be here.” He leaned back on the couch, out of place and utterly male. “So you can stop looking for a polite way to usher me out. I won’t be going.” His dark eyes shuttered. “But as I said, your possession is complete. You don’t have to worry about slipping into the demon realm.”
He thought she was looking for a way to invite him to her bed? And for so desperate and coldhearted a reason?
Such a reason would also be completely sensible and hard for any decent man to deny, came the wicked thought. The devil himself couldn’t have conjured more tempting images than the memories that scrolled through her mind.
She squashed them. “Are you sure you can’t hear the demon in your head?”
“Human and demon can’t communicate any more than God talks to people. Even when the demon appears to the one it intends to possess, it isn’t truly speaking. Only reflecting your desires so you reach out to embrace what you so badly want.” He lifted one eyebrow. “Why?”
More embracing. “Never mind.”
Why did she keep imagining a connection between them? Just because a demon had usurped her abandonment issues as easily as one had hijacked his sense of loss? Most people built their relationships around common interests like travel or raising llamas, not battling incarnations of evil.
He came to his feet as she edged down the hallway. “Sera.”
She halted.
“We’ll figure out what the djinn-man wants with you, and we’ll make him sorrier than his demon ever did.”
“Is that your version of ‘Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite’?”
He smiled. “Bite ’em back.”
She returned the smile and disappeared down the hall.
Only after Sera had gone did Archer let some of the tension leak out of his body. Despite his best intentions, his senses tuned to her when she padded softly across the hall from bathroom to bedroom. He heard the faint rasp of sheets pulled back, the quieter sound of fabric sliding up over her skin. His own flesh prickled, as if the warmth of her hand had swept over him.
He was surprised the demon’s fundamental devotion to its mission of repentance didn’t send him screaming from the room, given the myriad sins he conjured in his mind.
He’d never told his story. He’d never been tempted to open that particular vein, and talyan would never ask. Of course, a thanatologist wouldn’t shy away from deathbed confessions, even if no one had died in the end, at least not in the conventional sense.
He was starting to understand why the teshuva had chosen her. But she had her wounds too, and he despised himself for exploiting her weakness to absolve his. Just because she’d survived her mother’s suicide with her compassion unbroken was no reason to think she’d lavish that mercy on a stranger, even if his pain echoed hers—especially a stranger who’d ushered her into an existence where what remained of her humanity was only a burden.
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, hands tight on his thighs, to keep him from reaching for anything he couldn’t keep.
If he wasn’t looking for absolution, why was his every sense focused on the one woman uniquely qualified to forgive his sins?
An hour later, he heard Zane’s light rap. Ecco would have busted his way in. Archer opened the door to the younger talya, letting in the scent of rain, doughnuts, and coffee. “Nothing to find, I take it?”
Zane shook his head. “Chatted up some of the neighbors on their way to work earlier. Checked the nearest businesses for security cameras. Walked the block a few times. Ecco’s keeping watch from a roof across the street.”
“Most likely trying to get a peek in Sera’s bedroom window.”
Zane sighed. “Can you blame him? The only female talya . . .” Then his eyes widened. “Not that he was peeking.”
Archer shook his head. “She’d just better not catch him. Enigma-class still packs a helluva punch.” He rubbed his arm where he’d almost forgotten the bone bruising she’d dealt him in the alley.
He glanced over at Zane and realized he shouldn’t have mentioned Sera in bed or in battle. The expression on the younger man’s face smacked a little too Knight of the Round Table as Guinevere walked by.
And look where that had gotten them.
What to do with a smitten swain? Send him off on a nice quest. “She’s still recovering from possession, so she’ll probably sleep until nightfall, but we’ll need to keep her quiet and out of trouble when she wakes. Get Bookie to give you some of his longest histories on the teshuva.”
Zane wrinkled his nose.
“Sera’s a nerd. She likes books,” Archer said quickly. “And getting materials out of Bookie’s hands will be a trick. He won’t give me the time of day.”
With the swain suitably mollified and sent on his errand, Archer hacked the password on Sera’s computer—as if he couldn’t have guessed she’d choose Hades—to log on to his home system. He virtuously kept his digital hands to himself, ignoring her e-mail, documents, and downloaded music. Legally downloaded, he noted. God, she was such a good girl. He wondered how the demon had ever found a crack.
Oh, that’s right, when her bones and the rest of her orderly world had cracked.
She’d resisted the lure of her mother’s insanity, held firm against the riptide of her father’s illness. Even when she was mortal, she wouldn’t have had time for a worn-out soldier like hi
m. Since he wouldn’t die, he couldn’t even have aspired to her professional touch at the end.
Could his soul be any more damned for the furtive, selfish gladness at her demon’s coming?
The sky was darkening, barely late afternoon in a Chicago November rain, when Niall called.
“I’m sending Jonah to relieve Ecco, and Raine will bring the books Zane ordered from Bookie,” Niall said. “I’ll send—”
“I’m fine,” Archer broke in, sensing the next replacement in juggled personnel.
Niall huffed his annoyance down the line. “You’ve been awake going on three days. And the possession can’t have been easy.”
“I’m fine,” Archer repeated. He didn’t want to think about her possession. He definitely wasn’t going into details despite the questions he heard in Niall’s voice. “I have the Bookkeeper’s roll of known djinn-men and a register of angelic possessed.”
“The angelic host think less of our existence than the djinn,” Niall mused. “And that’s saying something.”
“Which is why they’re both on my list.”
Niall was quiet. “What is going on here, Archer? All this other-realm force, focused on our fresh talya. Why?”
“We’ve been the metaphysical garbagemen for centuries, taking out the tenebrae trash. Maybe it’s time to think about the source of the pollution.”
“Not our job,” Niall cautioned.
“Says who? The demons possessing us that can’t speak? A few cobbled-together treatises? You’re the one who said we’re losing this war.” The water went on in the bathroom. “Never mind. I’m under control here. I have things under control here. Don’t send anybody to replace me. We’ll talk later.”
“Are you stuttering?” Niall’s querulous voice came down the line. “I thought you were fine.”
Archer disconnected as Sera stepped barefoot into the living room, her face soft and her hair still rumpled from sleep.
He wished he hadn’t said “under control” twice in a row. Made him sound out of control.
“My alarm clock is smashed.” Her voice sounded husky. “What time is it?”
“Dinnertime.”
She glanced past him. “Any doughnuts left?”
“That’s not dinner.”
“That means you ate them all without me.” She pursed her lips.
He really was out of control if that tiny pout raised his pulse. “I mean we need to get some real food into you.”
She plucked at her pajama bottoms. “My clothes were trashed too. I don’t have anything to wear.”
Ah, he wished. He let out the breath he’d been holding, then inhaled again to catch her honeysuckle scent. “Niall’s sending over reinforcements. They can pick up dinner on the way.”
“I feel useless. I can’t even cook since I don’t have dishes.”
“You can still do laundry,” he said helpfully. “And, with some training, destroy unholy apparitions.”
“There’s a career path.”
“In a line of work this gory, we call it multitasking.”
She blinked at him owlishly and wandered back into the bedroom.
By the time Jonah and Raine arrived with Thai food and books, Sera had shuttled a few loads of laundry to the basement with Archer as mule and escort.
She stuffed handfuls of earth-toned cotton and satin into the trash chute.
“Um,” he said, not helpfully.
She glared at him. “Some creep had his hands in my underwear drawer. I’m not wearing them.”
“I wasn’t going to insist, really.”
She shoved an empty laundry basket at him. Even setting her up with a heaping plate of pad thai and a monstrous tome while he cross-referenced his list of angels and djinn couldn’t distract him from wondering what she was wearing under the flannel pajama bottoms and baggy T-shirt.
“I think I should go hunting with you.”
That distracted him from her clothing or lack thereof. “No.”
She speared the last spring roll with more than necessary force. “I heard Jonah tell Raine babysitting me is taking fighters off the streets.”
“Jonah has a big mouth.”
She frowned at him. “But is it true?”
“There aren’t enough of us at the best of times. That’s why these are the worst of times.”
“Do you think these are the worst?” She pointed her chopsticks at the unbound manuscript. “Parts of the Dark Ages sound grim, and the Second World War. It says demonic activity intensifies during times of war, since incidents with strong spiritual resonance in this realm draw the other-realms. That explains Zane during Vietnam and you during . . .”
“Where do you think the phrase ‘War is hell’ came from?” He fixed her with a grim stare in case she thought she’d be getting a more personal explanation.
Her lips twitched to one side in irritation. “Anyway, if you need to hunt, go. I’ll just watch. I’m not stupid enough to get in the way.”
“You fought the feralis. You fought me—”
“That was different,” she protested.
“And you wanted to go after the malice.”
“But I didn’t.” Her triumphant tone implied she’d made her point.
“You don’t have any clothes.” He sighed to himself.
So he hadn’t been as distracted as he’d hoped if he defaulted to that argument. “No. No hunting for you.” When she drew breath to keep arguing, he said with brutal finality, “I know thanatology is the study of death, but do you want someone to die to satisfy your curiosity?”
She swallowed. “Why would my going with—?”
“Leave them to fight in peace.” He shook his head at the irony. “Protecting the weak and innocent is what gets a man killed.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m neither weak nor innocent. I’m demon-ridden too, remember?”
As if he could forget. “Possessed, yes. A warrior, no.”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe never. We don’t know what you are yet, why you’ve been possessed.” He gestured at the manuscript. “That’s why you’re studying—”
She smacked her hand on the page, lifting a puff of dust. “I’ve studied one of the greatest mysteries of all—up close, in person, for years—and it didn’t get me anywhere. Why continue down that dead-end road?” She smiled humorlessly at her own joke.
“You might as well, because I’m not taking you hunting.” He pushed to his feet and stalked across the room. “Excuse me a moment. I need to have a word with Jonah and his big mouth.”
He’d never been one to run from a fight, so he merely walked out quickly. Why he thought he’d won just because he’d had the last word, he wasn’t sure. He knew she wouldn’t be satisfied. So after he assigned Jonah and Raine their tasks for the evening, he returned to the apartment to mollify her with some suitably grisly tales of old hunts. If worse came to worst, he’d tear open another vein to his past. That had kept her quiet.
He stepped into the kitchen, wondering why he was so looking forward to another quiet night at home. Then the quiet really hit him.
Sera was gone.
CHAPTER 11
“Stay home, cook, and clean.” Sera stomped through the front door of the nursing home. “Oh, it’s okay if I don’t cook? Well, screw you, old fart. How ancient are you anyway? Cro-Magnon?”
“Hardly a day past ninety-ish, missy.”
Sera rocked to a halt. “Mrs. Willis. I didn’t see you.”
“So who’s the blind one around here?” The frail figure on the bench curved as if time were shaping her back into the brown ball of clay from which her maker had formed her. When Sera shut the door, a scrap of the quilting in her basket wafted to the floor.
Sera bent to retrieve it. “Lost one.”
Mrs. Willis gripped her hand. “My sisters would be sad. We’re all working on it together, you know.” Her cataract-filmed gaze drifted. “You might not cook, but you can finish a piece for your sisters.”
Sera gently untangled herself and tucked the colorful bits of material into the basket. “I only have brothers, Mrs. Willis, remember?”
The old woman shook her head. “So who’s the blind one around here?”
Sera stifled a sigh as she checked in with the evening nurse, then went to her father’s room.
She tapped at the open door. “Hi, Dad.”
He didn’t move from his seat beside the window where the square of darkness completely surrounded him. She braced herself against the jolt of pain and walked in.
She tugged another chair into place beside him. “Wendy said you liked the chocolate I brought while you were sleeping a few days ago.” She hesitated. “I guess it’s been more than a few days. A lot’s changed lately.”
She studied his face. Not much had changed here. Still the same, strong-planed features she’d watched twice a week at the pulpit for years. More gray around the temples, but far too young for this place.
“You could come live with me again,” she murmured. “You’d never notice I wasn’t getting older.”
The unfairness twisted inside her, threshing up the anger that never really settled. She could counsel her hospice patients to peace all day long and never feel it herself. What stillness she found had only ever been some paralyzing mix of doubt and confusion.
“Oh, Dad, I never wanted to talk to you about God, about death and Mom. About boys.” She lowered her face into her hands, her lashes a dry prickle against her fingertips as she closed her eyes. “And now, when I need you, I never will.”
How pathetic and stupid and childish to run away from her apartment. She’d boasted to Archer that she never backed down from a challenge. But how could she join the fight to save the world? She hadn’t saved her mother, couldn’t save her father, and had done a downright terrible job of saving herself.
Finally she looked up. The rain had started again, the first drops streaking the window, smearing the streetlights into watery stars.
Her father stared directly into her eyes. “Who are you?” His voice was low.
“Daddy?” She forced a smile. “It’s me, Sera.”
