Banishing the Dark

by Jenn Bennett

  He didn’t need to adjust his schedule to stay up with me at night, as I discovered; he’d already been doing that in the hospital. Every night. Just in case my mother tried to slip into my brain and do something to me. When he told me this, I broke down. I mean, sloppy sobbing. He just said I’d do the same for him or Jupe.

  And I would.

  But if I was going to be around long enough to get that chance, I needed to get moving. And on my third night home, despite a few holes in my memories, I was feeling much better. My halo was back to normal, I could kindle Heka and walk without limping, and I was ready to tackle the problem of my mother.

  First things first: I had to find the name of the PI Dare had hired to investigate me. And after weighing all the options for procuring it, I settled on something Lon suggested.

  Or someone.

  Arturo Archard. One of the remaining thirteen Hellfire Club officers who made up the organization’s ruling “Body.” Since I’d offed both the club’s leader and the second in command, David Merrimoth, that only left eleven officers, including Lon. Arturo, Lon assured me, was one who could be trusted. Like Lon, he kept to himself and rarely participated in official Hellfire activities. To Lon, this meant Arturo stayed out of group politics. To me, it meant the guy didn’t participate in a monthly hedonistic Succubus/Incubus orgy in the Hellfire caves on the beach. Big points.

  Arturo owned a successful vineyard north of La Sirena, and his husband ran a swank wine bar near the center of town. The Lamplighter, much like Tambuku, was Earthbound-friendly. It was also closed on Mondays, and early in the evening of my third night back at home, Arturo agreed to meet us at the closed wine bar.

  Frankly, I was just thrilled to be going out into the real world again and would have been satisfied with a trip to the grocery store. But the universe wasn’t going to allow me the luxury of domestic bliss, so an interrogation it was.

  We parked in a short alley on the side of the building around nine. A handsome Earthbound swung open the delivery door as we got out of the car. “Lon Butler, you’ve gone native,” he said in an amused voice, gesturing toward the beard.

  “Itches like hell,” Lon said, running his fingers over it. “Arturo, this is Arcadia Bell.”

  The older man gave a quick glance at my silver halo and inclined his head. He was tan and carried a few extra pounds of bulk. His gray-streaked dark hair was crowned by a dark green halo. “I noticed you at Merrimoth’s funeral, but we didn’t get a chance to speak. I’m sorry about your recent attack. Reminds us how dangerous the city can be.”

  Lon’s cover-up story: I was attacked by one of the degenerates with amped-up knacks who were committing robberies over the holidays.

  “Where are my manners? Come inside.” After locking the door, Arturo led us past empty tables and oak barrels into a lounge area of the wine bar, where we sat on a plush couch in front of an unlit fireplace. “The boys are getting restless, Lon,” Arturo said as he took a seat across from us. “They want to know if you’re going to run the club.”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “If you plan to lead, they want a show of strength, or they won’t get behind you. And if they smell weakness, someone else will make a play for it. Tomkins or Warner are my bets. Tomkins wants his kid to take one of the two openings. Dare’s son is next on the list, then Sharon Wood. But it’s no secret that Sharon isn’t a fan of the Dare family.”

  “Question is, are you?”

  Arturo settled an arm on the back of the sofa. “You already know the answer to that. But if you want to poke around each other’s minds, I’m happy to oblige.”

  Lon had warned me about Arturo before we came. In the same way Lon could hear feelings, Arturo could see memories. Older ones were only possible if he was transmutated, apparently, and it was easier if you were thinking about them. But, unlike Lon, Arturo required skin-to-skin contact for his knack to work.

  No shaking hands with Arturo, in other words. But that was a pretty good rule of thumb when dealing with most Earthbounds, I’d come to learn.

  “As you’re aware, Ambrose didn’t like me getting too close,” Arturo said. “Sure, he was happy to use me when he wanted to shake someone down. Which is why I know a little more about the man behind the mask, so to speak. Dare had the Body’s allegiance, but he didn’t have our love. Half of the Body was sad to hear Dare had died. But it was the kind of sadness you feel when you hear a celebrity has died. You think, That’s a shame, then you move on, because you didn’t really know them, did you?”

  “What about the other half of the Body?” I asked. “How did they feel?”

  “Honestly? Relieved. We knew too much about his dark side.”

  “Then why didn’t you do anything about it?”

  “A fair question,” Arturo said thoughtfully. “My husband asked me the same thing many times. I suppose I told myself I was too jaded to care about club politics. When I was your age, it was a little more glamorous. Now I mainly just want to be left alone. And Dare usually complied. As long as I attended most of the meetings and showed my face at the Hellfire caves every now and then, he seemed satisfied. But now that he’s gone, I wonder just how strong his knack really was.”

  Dare’s knack was known as Rally: the ability to inspire—or coerce—a group of people.

  “Ambrose Dare had us all under his thumb,” Arturo added. “Even those of us who should’ve known better.”

  Lon murmured to himself.

  I twisted the silver double-serpent bracelet on my wrist, a Christmas present from Lon. Maybe the guy was right. I should have known better myself. I mean, I dutifully did magical work for Dare for weeks before I finally had the sense to give him the middle finger. And look what it got me: a whole month of my life beaten out of me.

  “Dare was investigating me,” I told Arturo. “Did you know that?”

  “I heard rumors that he seemed . . . preoccupied with you, shall we say?”

  “And what exactly was he telling the Body about her?” Lon asked.

  Arturo looked at me. “That you’re special. Different. Someone we wanted on our team. He said you might be more useful to the Hellfire Club than a hundred other magicians. But he needed to test you first. He was suspicious of your loyalties.”

  “Are you?” I asked.

  “I’m suspicious of the manner in which Dare perished. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m going to call for a witch hunt. For the first time in years, I can go to sleep knowing I won’t get a phone call at three a.m. telling me to drive out to some back alley and rifle through a guy’s memories—only so Dare can put a bullet in his head the second I drive away.”

  “Dare was using a private investigator to dig up things about my past,” I said. “I need to find out who that investigator was.”

  Arturo held my gaze for a long moment. “Why would I know that?”

  “Because people trust you,” Lon said.

  Arturo shrugged, not denying it. “They know if I really wanted to see what’s on their minds, I can brush their fingertips.” He gave me a pointed look. “Having a gift is all well and good until people decide they want what you’ve got.”

  No truer words . . .

  But I wasn’t afraid of the Hellfire Club. Not anymore. Arturo said the Hellfire Club wanted to see a show of strength, or they wouldn’t follow him. Maybe he’d be more inclined to give me what I wanted if he had a clearer picture of who I really was.

  “I killed Dare.”

  The confession hung in the air like a plastic bag caught in dead branches.

  “If it matters, it was self-defense,” I added.

  “Your ‘attack,’ ” Arturo said softly.

  “He had a gun and three men, and he was trying to teach me how much power he had. He might’ve temporarily broken my body, but I turned them all into ash, just like that.” I snapped my fingers.

  Arturo flinched and mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

  “I have no beef with the Hellfire Club,” I to
ld him. “Frankly, I just want to be left alone, too. But if I can find out who Dare was using to investigate me, that would make me extraordinarily happy. Please.”

  Arturo said nothing for a moment. Then he crossed his legs and exhaled. “I saw a memory when I bumped into Dare at a holiday party. He’d been telling someone that he’d just flown back from L.A. And when I touched him, he was remembering sitting outside by a pool talking to an Earthbound named Wildeye. Don’t know his first name. All I can tell you is that he looked to be in his thirties or forties and had an aquamarine halo. He was giving Dare a packet of papers that had ‘Duval/Bell’ scribbled on the outside.”

  Outside the wine bar, Lon and I thanked Arturo and watched him drive away in an expensive sports car.

  “He wasn’t lying,” Lon said before I had a chance to ask. “And we can trust him.”

  “I figured you would’ve stopped me if we couldn’t. I guess now we’ll need to hunt down a PI named Wildeye in L.A.”

  Lon tapped the back tire of his SUV with the toe of his boot while digging his silver valrivia cigarette case out of his jacket pocket. “We need to be careful. Don’t know if this PI is loyal to Dare. We can fly down there tonight if you want. Better to talk to him in person so I can hear his emotions when we question him.”

  “What about Jupe?”

  “He’ll be fine with the Holidays. With any luck, we can take care of this in a matter of hours, then turn around and come back home. You feeling all right?”

  I nodded. “Can I have one of those?”

  He looked appalled that I’d even ask. “Absolutely not.” He snapped his valrivia case shut. “Neither one of us needs it.”

  I frowned. “Meany.”

  He grunted, pocketing the case. “You still want to drive into the city?”

  I’d asked him to drive me to Tambuku so I could see Kar Yee. She didn’t know. Lon had called her the day before to tell her I was home but requested she hold off visiting until I was better recovered. “If we’re flying out tonight, maybe we should stop by on our way to the airport. Would save us—”

  A very distinct familiar feeling stole my attention.

  “Cady?” Lon said.

  But someone else was talking inside my head. May I show myself?

  I glanced up and down the alley. No cars. No people. The whole area was fairly dead, and it was dark. “Yes,” I told him. “Come, Priya.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Lon mumbled as a ball of white light shimmered in midair. The light flickered violently, and a gray-skinned boy with black wings exploded into view.

  We backed up in tandem to give him room to land. A smoky black halo trailed over his haystack black hair as his bare feet touched the pavement. His face lit up when he saw me. “Mistress!” he called out, snapping his wings shut behind his back. “I am so relieved to see you!”

  “You, too, Priya.” And I was. Despite his physical and personality changes, he was still the same spirit who had watched my back since I was a teenager.

  He grinned with a mouthful of pointy silver teeth and started to reach for me until he spotted Lon and drew back. “Kerub,” he said in greeting, inclining his head politely, if not begrudgingly, before speaking to me again. “The demon boy has told me of your progress. You look well.”

  “Getting there. Has Jupe been summoning you a lot?”

  His eyes narrowed before darting toward Lon. Yeah. He still didn’t like Lon. And whatever he’d wanted to say, he’d definitely thought better of it. Instead, he made a funny sort of shrug as he gestured awkwardly. “We have been getting to know each other.”

  Yeah, I’ll bet. I was going to have to have a talk with Jupe about using Priya like his own personal chat buddy. “Why are you here?”

  “I have urgent news about your mother.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  “She has killed the demon Lord Chora and fled his fortress with a group of slaves.”

  “Dear God.” Lord Chora, grand duke and commander of two legions of Æthyric warriors. That demon had torn down my house wards, flown away with Jupe, and nearly killed Lon. He was highly skilled with Æthyric magick—not a demon to screw around with. But my mother had killed him? “I thought he was helping her. Jupe said—”

  “He was,” Priya insisted. “I do not know what went wrong, nor do I know whether she’s discovered the magick she needs to cross the planes. But you should assume the worst and be on guard. She could take possession of your body at any time.”

  “Like right now?” I said, glancing up at the night sky as if she might tumble down.

  “Today. Tomorrow. A few days. I do not know. But the sooner you can reverse the Moonchild spell and sever the bond with her, the better. Perhaps it’s best you seek the protection of your order until you do that.”

  I shook my head. It was natural for Priya to assume that a group of magicians could protect me; Hermeneus spirits and magicians had been allies, if you could call it that, for centuries. In Priya’s mind, magick was power—and that was true. But magick wasn’t infallible, and I couldn’t sit around twiddling my thumbs while my order kept me from the inevitable.

  “I’m not going to Florida right now,” I told Priya. “Lon and I just uncovered a trail we need to follow. Someone who might have information about my past.”

  “We don’t even know if it’s safe in Florida, now that the caliph is dead,” Lon added.

  Priya’s brow furrowed. “You should not gamble with her life, Kerub. Your associations got her injured. Put your faith in her own people now.”

  Oh, boy. I didn’t have to look at Lon to know that the horns were coming out. I could feel the transmutation in my bones like an esoteric platoon of soldiers marching to war. But when I lifted my hand to hold Lon back, something caught my eye: threads of pale light.

  I’d seen threads emerging from my hand before but not quite like this. And when Priya leaned closer to have a look himself, the gossamer strings brightened like fluorescence exposed by ultraviolet light. Priya’s Æthyric halo was making them visible.

  When Jupe had secretly, and stupidly, tattooed my sigil on his body, it created an invisible thread connecting us. One that lit up bright gold when he was in danger, much brighter than it was now. And when I first summoned Priya in his new body, my guardian reestablished our link and created a second thread, a black cobweb that anchored him to my Heka signature, even across the planes.

  Two threads. But now there were four.

  Four wispy filaments of light growing out of my palm, waving in the wind like dandelion tufts. My gaze followed the black thread to Priya. And a second pale gold thread that trailed off beyond the alley: Jupe’s.

  The third thread was pale green. I followed that . . . right next to me.

  To Lon.

  I grabbed Lon’s hand and saw its endpoint, right in the middle of his palm. Just like Priya’s. “What did you do?” I said, confused. Lon hated tattoos. And I hadn’t seen every inch of his skin since I’d come home from the hospital, but he had no reason to want my sigil on him.

  His mouth fell open, but no sound came out. I looked back at my palm to the fourth thread: a white line that on first glance seemed to be sprouting from my palm like the others but on closer examination was a little bit different. It splintered from the green thread connected to Lon, and it headed . . .

  Down.

  To my stomach.

  But that couldn’t be right. That meant . . .

  Goose bumps pimpled my arms as my world tilted. The oncoming rush of memory made me feel as if I were strapped to a railroad track with no chance of escape, watching a train barreling toward me. I remembered Dr. Mick forcing Lon to leave the surgery room. Mick leaning over me, telling me the news . . .

  The baby survived. I’m not sure how—you’re badly bruised, and your hip is broken. But it showed up in the blood work, and I can detect the heartbeat with my knack.

  You’re about seven weeks along, I’d guess. Maybe eight.

  “Leave us,”
Lon barked at Priya, his angry voice snapping me back into the moment. “Return when you have news.”

  “Mistress—”

  “Go!” I shouted.

  Priya disappeared, and in his absence, the threads quickly faded until they were invisible. I looked up at Lon, blinking into the fire flaring from his halo. His eyes were wide, his brows drawn together. The shock I felt was mirrored in his face.

  “You knew,” I whispered accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’ve been trying, asking if you remembered Mick telling you.”

  “But I didn’t. You should’ve—”

  “I didn’t know how you’d react,” he said, suddenly becoming animated. “You have no idea what I’ve been through. None at all. When I walked into Tambuku and saw you lying on the floor in a pool of blood, I thought you were dead. You damn sure felt dead in my arms. Your pulse was so weak I couldn’t hear it. And even when I got you to the hospital, I didn’t know if you’d make it. And if you didn’t make it”—his eyes glazed over as grief lanced through his features—“I didn’t know if I could handle that,” he ended in a broken voice.

  “But I made it,” I whispered.

  “Yes.” He blinked rapidly and pulled himself together. “But you had trouble remembering, and Mick said to take it slow. To let you remember on your own, or it might be too upsetting. I just . . . did the best I could.”

  I heard what he was saying, but it was all just too much. I strode away from him, to clear my head. To breathe and get some perspective.

  So . . . I was pregnant.

  Fuck.

  How the hell had that happened?

  I went through the same list of symptoms I’d gone over the first time I’d been told, remembering things I’d ignored over the holidays. All the crying and getting tired at weird times. My breasts getting bigger. I glanced down. Pfft. Not anymore. I must have lost it all in the coma.