by Chloe Garner
Samantha raised an eyebrow.
“How so?”
“I can think of so many things I would do with that.”
“Most anything he isn’t doing is because of the limitations,” Samantha said. “It’s hardly as simple as it sounds.”
Isobel shrugged, scanning Sam once more, then going to sit in his chair.
“I’m going to go,” he said. Samantha frowned, and he jerked his chin at Isobel. Be nice to her. She’s had a hard few days and needs a friend. Samantha mentally glowered at him. She didn’t need him to push her at someone, a woman no less, and try to make her be friends. She took care of people well enough, but all evidence aside, she didn’t make friends very easily.
“Are you going to spy on us while you’re gone?” Isobel asked. “Because if you are, you may as well stay.”
“I can’t help but know, either way,” Sam said. “It doesn’t make it better for me to be here.”
Isobel looked at him with damped curiosity and Samantha despaired as Sam removed himself, giving her another mental shove at Isobel. She growled at him and he gave her a sharp response. Isobel needed someone. She was alone.
Samantha looked at Isobel with some reserve.
“You’re safe here,” she said.
“If Raef was willing to leave me here, I don’t question it,” she said. “We’ve been running a long time.”
“Running from who?” Samantha asked. Isobel shook her head.
“I’ve never known. Civilization, mostly.” Her eyes grew distant. “The things I’ve seen.”
“And you never knew who was hunting you?” Samantha asked. “Did you even know your husband was an angel?”
Isobel looked at her as she would have looked at a child.
“I have the wisdom of ages. I’ve seen more than you can imagine.”
“I doubt it,” Samantha said. “If you didn’t know he was an angel, and I bet you don’t know about demons.”
“What are those to me?” Isobel asked. Samantha laughed in disbelief.
“They’re going to be the last thing you ever see, if you aren’t careful.”
“What did your… young man mean about knowing, regardless?”
“He’s my husband,” Samantha said, not sure why the other woman made her feel so prickly, but feeling it all the same. “Do you know about magic?”
“Magic,” Isobel said slowly. “I’ve been called a witch my entire life. Rafa can pull a castle out of plain rock, then put it back when we’re through with it. I don’t need anything more than that.”
“If you say so,” Samantha said. “There’s much more, but most people don’t need it.”
“Who built this structure?” Isobel asked.
Samantha looked up at the ceiling, feeling all the more testy and difficult.
“Contractors, sub-contractors… heavy equipment,” she said.
“Is it so strong?” Isobel asked. “Are you?”
“Yes,” Samantha said. “And yes. I will keep you safe, and this structure is warded to keep demons from entering. You should stay inside for a while until I figure out just how far they’re going to be willing to go to get to you.”
“No one limits my movement,” Isobel said.
“That’s fine,” Samantha said, growing angry. “You can leave any time you like. And I’ll try to get you back when they take you. But they will take you. I should let you talk to my brother-in-law Jason, see what you think of what happened to him.”
“You failed to protect him?” Isobel asked.
Samantha gritted her teeth.
“He went out without me, thinking he could defend himself. And he’s powerful. Very powerful.”
“Then what hope have I?” Isobel asked. “Why spend any more time here than I already have?”
“You said you trusted your angel’s judgment,” Samantha said.
“You don’t seem to trust your own ability,” Isobel said.
Samantha felt her eyes fly open. She’d said no such thing. Had she? She went back through the conversation, trying to find what she’d said that might be misconstrued as inconfidence.
“How does your husband intend to spy on us? More tricks?”
“No tricks,” Samantha said. “He’s psychic and…” she scolded Sam for tipping his hand, and he scolded her for being defensive. She argued mentally that she wasn’t being defensive, Isobel was just insufferable, and Sam sent her exasperation. She could do better than this. She gritted her teeth again, reminding him that he’d made this mistake before. There was a moment of self-questioning, then he dismissed it. She was where she was. She needed to do the best she could. Isobel was watching her. Obviously thinking that Samantha was a bit slow. “We share a bond,” Samantha finally continued. Isobel looked unimpressed. “That’s a technical term,” Samantha said, hearing the defensiveness in her own voice and feeling even more defensive. “It means I can feel where he is and what he’s feeling, no matter where he is.”
Isobel yawned and Samantha tipped her head.
“You don’t believe me.”
“Does it matter whether I believe you?” Isobel asked.
Yes. Yes it did. Because Samantha had been entrusted with Isobel’s safety, and if she was going to keep the woman safe, Isobel needed to trust her.
That was the good reason.
Mostly, it just bothered Samantha that Isobel didn’t see her as an authority.
She was an authority.
She was.
Sam was somewhere in the back of her head, quietly reaffirming that she did know what she was talking about, that she was the authority here, and it just made it worse.
Somehow she felt like a teenager again, the one who had shown up at Carter’s apartment all those years ago looking for answers.
“I’ve met a great many girls in my life,” Isobel said. “I have no doubt that you are very capable in your own corner of the world. But you need to understand that nothing you do is ever going to impress me. I’ve seen much too much in my life.”
Why would Samantha want to impress her? Why would she assume that? Why did Samantha want to impress her? It was maddening.
“Stay in the house,” Samantha said. “I can’t protect you if you leave, and if you get abducted, there’s almost no chance I’ll be able to find you. All right? If you get taken… I don’t know what happens. They try to get you to talk, for one, but they could decide that you’re good for potions, too, and they start cutting you up. All right? Just stay inside.”
“And how long do you intend to keep me under house arrest?” Isobel asked.
Samantha stood.
“As long as it takes. Look. I don’t care if you and I like each other or not. I don’t care if you want to be here or not, or if you believe I’m protecting you.” Making it impersonal helped. She found the break and took it, stepping away from what Isobel was feeling and just going with what she knew. “You need to stay here. The things you know make you dangerous to me and to people I care about, and if you decide you’re just going to take off, I will use force to keep you here. I have the means and I am willing. Is that clear?”
Isobel looked unmoved.
“House arrest it is,” she said. “It isn’t the first time.”
But it will be the first time it happens that you don’t have an angel at your back, Samantha thought, immediately regretting it. The fact that Isobel had pushed her buttons didn’t give Samantha legitimate reason to antagonize her. Not like that. She’d be as forceful as she needed to be, but she didn’t need to be mean.
“You aren’t immortal anymore,” Samantha said. “You need to take that into consideration.”
“I’ve died more times than I can count,” Isobel said. It itched, Samantha wanted to know about that so badly, but she kept it to herself. She wasn’t going to put herself out like that, for Isobel to step on her enthusiasm. Instead she just shrugged.
“So we understand each other.”
“Who is the woman you’re looking for?” Isobel
asked.
“Demon,” Samantha corrected. “She’s running…” Samantha paused. How to describe a hellfactory to someone who had no background in things demonic? “Demons do bad things to people, and she’s trying to set up an assembly line for it.”
“Sounds bad,” Isobel said. Samantha couldn’t tell if she was being earnest or not.
“It is,” she said, uncommitted.
“How are you going to find her?” Isobel asked.
“I have two very talented psychics looking for her, and apparently all of New York knows I’m looking, too, so eventually I’ll get a tip and when I go chasing it down, she’ll be there.”
“What happens in the meantime?” Isobel asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Is what he said true? She’ll continue to kill people?”
Samantha paused.
“Once she gets set up, yes. I believe she killed all of her lowest minions to get away, so she’ll have to replace them. That will take some time.”
“How much?” Isobel asked.
Samantha considered it. Getting the porter back and forth would take very little time at all, so long as she had the power to cross the squashlings. Would she have porter contacts? Generally, they were a high-level asset, one only the power demons had, but this was the third time Samantha had burnt down a hellfactory. She had to have some way to get the demons across that she needed, after Samantha kept killing them.
“A few days,” Samantha guessed. “Probably not more.”
“And how long to set up?” Isobel asked.
Digging. Samantha would have put that at a huge undertaking, even for demons built for it, but the demon had exploded the ground out from in front of her. It seemed unlikely that digging a hole was going to be that burdensome to her.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Probably not long.”
“And then finding people?” Isobel asked. Samantha frowned. Why was Isobel so good at this?
“Depends on where they are.”
“I’d set up in Detroit,” Isobel said.
“Why is that?” Samantha asked.
“Good place to walk off with people who aren’t going to be missed any time soon. Houston is good, too.”
“And why do you know that?” Samantha asked. Isobel gave her a wan look.
“The things I’ve seen, child. I knew Romans.”
Again, Samantha fought off the surge of interest.
“And yet, you missed out on some of the most important stuff going on,” she said, overreacting, and shaking her head. “Look, I’m sorry. I need to get back to work. Simon was helping me sort out what to do next, when you got here. I need to get back to that.”
“I’ll help you,” Isobel said. Samantha started to walk away, pausing.
“That’s okay. I don’t expect you to.”
“No,” Isobel said, her voice thick with the sound of authority. Ages of authority. Samantha stopped, despite herself. “I will help you. Their lives are lost because mine is gained. This is not an offer.”
Samantha didn’t turn back, but she nodded.
“All right. You know where Simon’s room is?”
“The one the rest of them call David?” Isobel asked.
“Yes,” Samantha said. “I have one more thing to do, and then I’ll meet you there.”
Without turning back, Samantha left.
<><><>
His wife was angry. This shouldn’t have surprised him, and yet it often did. The intensity of it sometimes scorched him, passion he only rarely felt on his own behalf, a fountain streaming, unstoppable, across the bond. Tonight it wasn’t as bad as it often was, but she was angry all the same. He nodded at Abby, trying to signal to her from wherever she was, off looking for an underground collection of demons.
He bumped into her with his vision and she came back.
“She’s coming,” he said.
“I know,” Abby said.
“You were watching?” Sam asked. Abby’s eyes grew distant.
“You know I can talk to you while I’m out,” she said.
“I know. It’s just… weird.”
She laughed.
“You have so much to get used to,” she said. “And you’re kind of an idiot, you know that?”
“Why?” he asked.
“You don’t ever push her into something like that,” she said.
“How did you know?” he asked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“I know my girl,” Abby said. “I know she would have never tried to talk to her like that if you hadn’t told her to try. I can always see when you’re influencing her.”
“It’s not like that,” Sam said, troubled.
“No,” she said, twisting her head. “Didn’t expect that.”
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m watching a fair in Indiana. The prize-winning pig wasn’t the one I thought.”
He raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t expect her to see it.
“No, it’s not always a bad thing,” Abby said. “You make her a lot stronger and a lot better.” She was watching him again from her own eyes now. “It’s funny. Even from as close to inside her head as you are, you still don’t understand why people are so hard for her.”
“And you do?” Sam asked.
“Oh, no,” Abby said. “I’ve just learned to expect it.”
He thought of following Samantha on a shopping trip, any shopping trip, in New York. Her confidence as people swarmed her. Everyone knew her, everyone wanted just a minute of her attention. She was so confident. So in her element.
He didn’t understand what was different, here. Abby’s eyes told him that she knew he didn’t understand, and she knew there wasn’t anything she could say to change that. This frustrated him, and Samantha quieted her anger enough to be confused at what was going on. He felt her close enough to touch the door, only feet away from where he sat, the woman he loved, the woman he often only barely understood, and she paused, taking a moment, feeling the buzz on the link between them, the flurry of near-instantaneous communication, knowledge.
He loved her so hard his chest hurt.
She opened the door and the moment ended.
“Can you find all of the demon envoys we’ve got wandering around?” she asked. He nodded and stood.
“What went wrong?” he asked. She shook her head.
“I just don’t like women. It’s fine.”
He glanced at Abby, avoiding stating the obvious, and she gave him a nudge.
“I need to talk to them,” she said, sitting down cross-legged in front of Abby. “And then I need to go talk to Simon. Can we talk tonight?”
“I like your friend,” Abby was saying as Sam left. Sam listened passively as Abby and Samantha discussed Simon and his wife. Abby had very few boundaries; she watched everyone all the time. It was such long-ingrained habit it seemed insensitive to ask her not to do it. He was beginning to do it, himself.
He expanded out to see the entire mansion, feeling the cool of the stone, smelling the beginning of dinner from the kitchen. Mostly, he didn’t look for the other senses when he used his vision, but recently he’d been experimenting with it again, finding that they were easier than he’d remembered, and the skill coming to him quickly. It was odd, being able to feel the inside of the great stones that constituted the walls of the mansion, even as he couldn’t see anything in them.
He identified the demons and went to find them, one by one, sending them back to Samantha and Abby. She waited for the last one, then stood, going to rest with her back against the wall as Abby continued searching. The woman was indefatigable after many long years of searching things out for Carter. The fact that the country was simply too big to find something like what they were looking for by chance didn’t daunt her at all.
“Two days ago, someone came into my protection. It took you lot less than forty-eight hours to leak that far enough that I’m getting bids for her life. I’m not going to ask who did
it, because I suspect you don’t actually know which of you resulted in Spasm showing up today, but I don’t intend to let the mistake I’ve made happen again.” Samantha looked at each of the seven demons gathered there in Abby’s room, and they watched her, edgy, as demons were wont to be. These particular demons were in a tough spot. They’d be bound to powerful demons around the country, ones that they still reported to frequently, but they also had to deal with Samantha and her temper. More often than not, there wasn’t going to be a good solution, as far as these individuals were concerned. No one spoke for a moment, and Samantha continued. “I need to see each of your contracts, in writing. Complete, unaltered. Know that I will test each of you for truth when you give them to me, and that I’ll send you away and not allow a replacement, if I find out that anything about your contracts has been concealed. Is that clear?”
There were mutters from the demons and they glitched away one at a time. Samantha spoke quickly to Abby for a moment - Abby didn’t come back from whatever she was looking at - and then she left, indicating to Sam that she was going to David’s room. He met her there.
David answered the door when Samantha knocked.
“She said you were on your way,” David said, stepping out of the way to reveal Isobel sitting on the couch. “I’ve got something for you. Jenny and I found something.”
Sam followed Samantha into the room and to the kitchen table. David called Jenny into the main room of the suite, and the woman appeared with Ash.
“I don’t want him hearing this,” Jenny said.
“I want to know what’s going on,” Ash said. Sam felt the indecision mixed with admiration Samantha always felt when she looked at the boy, right there on the edge where Jason thought Sam should have felt jealous about it. Sam knew that it wasn’t attraction in the way Samantha had seen Alexander, or even Jason sometimes, and there was nothing in him that even suggested he should feel jealous, but he understood what Jason was seeing.
“He can stay,” Samantha said. “If he wants to.”
There was a glance around the room exchanged by the adults, one that Ash clearly saw and resented in his good-natured way, and then it tipped and they sat.
“We’ve been going back through the kill board,” David said.
