Dark Light of Day

by Jill Archer

  How much blood had been swallowed by this ground?

  Peter consulted something, a pocket pedometer or compass, and kept looking around. Rain splashed off his head and face, dripping from his nose and cheeks. My linen shirt clung to me, feeling as heavy as Peter’s leather jacket had.

  “What now?” I shouted, spitting a mouthful of rainwater out. It tasted off here, like water from a contaminated well.

  “Look for the tomb,” Peter yelled, fighting to be heard over the roar of the storm. He motioned for me to go east while he went north. I wasn’t happy about splitting up, but figured the sooner we found the tomb the better. I stumbled along, hugging my arms close to my side, shivering.

  It wasn’t long before I lost sight of Peter. The rain was relentless. I kept my head down and wound my way through the mounds. The rain soaked my hair and dripped into my shirt collar and down my back. I shielded my eyes with my hand and searched for the tomb, or anything we could use as shelter from the storm. Peter had taken his light with him and I quickly realized I would find nothing on my own in the dark and the rain. I picked up a large stick from the ground and considered it. I was capable of making light and heat on my own. I didn’t have to search in the dark and the cold. Thinking to make a torch, I tried to light the end of the stick with magic.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried again. Still nothing. It was puzzling and frustrating. What was I doing wrong? With my power, it shouldn’t have mattered how wet the wood was. Yes, my magic control and consistency left much to be desired. Sure, I still inadvertently set things on fire from time to time. That was why this situation was twice as infuriating. Now that I actually wanted a fire, I couldn’t light one.

  I threw the stick to the ground and smothered the area around it with a light spray of highly combustible magic. I flicked my wrist toward it for focus and then spread my palm flat across the area hoping to ignite it, half expecting the whole area to ferociously explode in a blast of heat and light. I was even prepared to leech oxygen, so great did I think the conflagration might be, but no containment measures were necessary. The ground remained wet as a bog and my frustration level ratcheted up another notch.

  I continued navigating the mounds, swiping my sopping wet hair away from my face, and squishing through what was now inches of mud. Every moment, I half expected something to reach up out of the ground to catch my ankle and haul me to a place darker than Halja itself.

  Finally, I spotted a structure buried back in the rotten tangle of tree trunks and decaying vines surrounding the mounds. As I approached I realized it was an abandoned house. Half of it had collapsed. The other half, while still standing, bore gaping holes where windows should have been. The front door hung unsteadily by one hinge, banging against the side of the house in the wind. It was old, centuries old perhaps, but not as old as the Apocalypse. It was doubtful Lucifer’s final resting place was housed in this derelict shack. The feeling of the place settled over me like frozen mist. Ari hadn’t mentioned that places had signatures, but this one seemed to.

  The place felt like too much magic of too many sorts. Like waning magic, waxing magic, even spells, were bound up in the mist, trying to break free. I supposed that made sense. More demons and Angels, Host and Hyrke had died here together than anywhere else in Halja. It was as if the ground had gorged on magic as well as blood, become sick on its grisly feast, and then died before it could retch up the overabundance.

  Maybe I’d be able to light a fire inside, out of the rain. I strode purposefully toward the decaying house and entered, shutting the door behind me to stop the wind and constant banging. But the relative silence of the house unnerved me further. I squeezed the water out of my hair and let my eyes adjust to the dark interior. The house felt like an icebox, cold and still. I rubbed my hands together and blew into them for warmth, wishing desperately I’d brought gloves. How could it be this cold this late into spring? Slowly, I made my way down the hall, thinking to find the kitchen. My best chance of starting a fire would be in there.

  My desire to produce heat and light was almost palpable, and I had to focus on controlling my magic for fear I would burn the house down with me in it. But I found no kitchen, or any area of the house that might have been used for cooking. Maybe it was in the section that had collapsed, I thought. I continued searching for any safe area within which I might try to light a fire and, finally, at the end of the hallway, I found a room with a fireplace.

  But this fireplace was unlike any fireplace I had ever seen. For one, it was huge, taking up the entire back wall of the house. Second, it appeared as if it had been here first, with the house being constructed around it. It was also the wettest firebox I had ever seen. Everything about it felt wrong. I hugged my shoulders as I glanced around the room searching for something to burn. The room was littered with all sorts of stuff, but in the darkness I couldn’t tell what. Likely it was the abandoned domestic trash from several generations’ worth of grave keepers. I navigated the rubble and crept toward the fireplace with equal parts dread and anticipation.

  Through a gaping window, frequent lightning strikes provided unsteady light. A massive burst illuminated the room and I clapped my hands over my ears, preparing for the intense and immediate crack of thunder. Another splash of brightness highlighted ancient graffiti cut into the stones rimming the hearth. Deep swirls and slashes decorated every inch of stone, an uncanny silent cacophony of ciphers, glyphs, and symbols. The largest looked like a rudimentary drawing of the sun with triple-tined forked rays shooting out from it.

  In the center of the inner hearth, on the floor, was a circular stone door with a large iron ring on the top. I supposed a fireplace as large as this needed a huge ash pit, but there was something about the door that made me afraid. Maybe because it covered a hole big enough to fall into. I wondered how deep the ash pit went. I stepped closer, morbidly fascinated despite my growing sense of unease. In the flickering light of the storm, the hole seemed to breathe. Wetness seeped into the dirt around its edges and then disappeared again, like puffs of breath in the cold night air.

  Sometimes magic had a smell, like the way Brunus smelled of rotten onions. I smelled nothing now, but as I grew closer, I sensed something in the air. Something beneath that covered hole. Something deadly and poisonous. Hyrke miners often talked of air that was so old and so ancient that merely breathing it would kill you. I backed away then, stumbling over a pile of unseen rubble. I turned around to run, my desire for a fire completely gone. I just wanted to run, to get as far away from this place as possible. But before I could take two steps, someone grabbed me from behind. I opened my mouth to scream but a hand clamped over it first. I struggled, trying to shake loose my captor. I stepped back, stomped on their foot, and unleashed a bolt of magic. A voice cried out. I recognized it—and the protective spell—instantly.

  It was Peter.

  Luckily, he had blocked my magic, but unluckily, we were still standing in this vile place.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, no longer caring about the rain. Better wet from above, than wet with whatever was seeping out from below.

  But Peter didn’t move and he didn’t let go of me. His fingers dug painfully into my arms.

  “Noon,” he said, his voice pitched low, “do you see that center stone there? The one that’s slightly larger than all the others?”

  I shook my head. Still holding onto me so that I wouldn’t bolt from the room, Peter cast a light spell and pointed toward the hearth. In the blue light of Peter’s spell, the inky shapes of the glyphs seemed to leap from the surface of the stones. It was as if they were shouting. But, after so many millennia, only an Angel could hear them. And only one as educated as Peter could have guessed their meaning.

  “That symbol there,” he said, “the dark circle with six staves coming out of it… It’s the ancient symbol for Lucifer. Historians used to believe the circle represented the sun, but it represents another star—the Morning Star. And the six staves are rea
lly lances. Remember the legends? Lucifer’s lance was triple tipped?” Peter’s voice rose with his excitement. “You did it, Noon! This is it. You found the tomb!”

  At once, everything clicked into place. No wonder this fireplace was so unusual. No fire had ever been lit here. Suddenly the size, depth, and dampness of the area made sense. These stones didn’t mark an area to be used for light, warmth, and comfort. They marked an area reserved for death. And that meant the ash pit wasn’t really an ash pit. It was the entrance to Lucifer’s crypt.

  A feeling of dread washed over me. If Jonathan Aster’s spell book had been thrown into that hole, I wanted no part of going after it. But Peter released me and, instead of walking toward the tomb, he looked around the room with awe. I saw now that the room wasn’t crowded with the detritus of former grave keepers; it was crowded with votive offerings. In former times, the location of Lucifer’s tomb had been far from a mystery. Piles and piles of books—not just spell books, but anti-war treatises, genealogies, and personal journals—lined the room. Pieces of cloth and hair, dirty old ribbons, scribbled notes, dead flowers, corn dolls, and even rice littered the floor. There were life-sized cradles and miniature carvings, tarnished bells, rusty blades, and bowls full of what looked like dried blood. It was all very macabre and very disgusting, but it was also very much the way Halja grieved—by offering the grave anything and everything that represented life.

  Peter gave a whoop of laughter that sent chills racing up my spine. It was so out of place here. He bent to the task of searching with glee, oblivious to my lack of shared enthusiasm. I stood mute, watching as he sifted through what must be centuries of offerings. Despite his marked show of enthusiasm, Peter handled each relic with respect. Angels were the archeologists of Halja. Even in his search for the greatest spell of all time, he took care to disturb as little as possible.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d had since we first discovered the graveyard outside, that the sooner we found the spell book and left, the better. So I too started sifting through the rubble. I wasn’t quite as careful as Peter though, and not nearly as interested in what I was sifting through. The rotted top of a large coffin leaned against the wall in one of the room’s corners. I shifted it a few inches so that I could peek around behind it. There, protected by the coffin lid from the layer of dust and grime covering everything else in the room, was a stack of a dozen books or so. It didn’t take long to scan the titles.

  Somehow I knew I would be the one to find it and not Peter. I suddenly had the urge to push the coffin top back into place. Peter would assume I’d checked this corner and the spell could stay hidden forever. But I couldn’t. I’d spent all night—well, really my whole life—searching for this spell. The letters on the spine of the book were old and faded, some half-missing, but I knew what it was: Prayers of Deliverance by Jonathan Aster.

  I reached for it.

  Chapter 17

  Monday dawned bright and hot, promising all the light and heat I’d sought last night. We’d discovered within minutes of finding it that Jonathan Aster’s spell book was written in Anglentine, an ancient scholarly text favored by Angels in the first and second centuries following Armageddon. Peter wasn’t fluent in Anglentine, but it wouldn’t take him long to translate the book and identify the correct spell. He’d left for the Joshua School last night with the book tucked safely under his arm and I’d trudged back to Megiddo and crawled gratefully into bed.

  When my alarm bell went off at the Luck forsaken hour of seven in the morning, I considered trying to melt it but didn’t want to frighten Ivy. So instead I practiced my magic control by trying to boil water for tea. The fact that the water boiled, and nothing else burned, was a significant victory for me, especially considering last night’s failure to light even a single spark.

  I sat on my unmade bed, clutching my tea, willing my eyelids to feel less like sandpaper, trying to remember the Sin and Sanction cases for this morning. We’d been discussing murder, a crime consisting of only two elements but one which had dozens of defenses and an unlimited means by which it could be committed.

  “How was shopping yesterday?” I asked Ivy, expecting her to launch into a solo shoe debate concerning the merits of jeweled slip-ons versus ribboned platforms that would take my mind off of the bludgeoning, garroting, and staking cases we’d be discussing later today. But Ivy gave me a guarded smile and walked over to her closet. She rummaged around for a few moments and then pulled out a dramatically low-cut, deep emerald evening gown made of silk, organza, and chiffon. If I’d been looking for a fashion distraction from all the gore, this dress was it.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “But a bit dressy for class, don’t you think?”

  She barked out a mock laugh to let me know she didn’t think I was very funny. “It’s for the Barrister’s Ball.”

  “The Barrister’s what?”

  “The Barrister’s Ball,” she repeated. “Every year, just before the Beltane break, the Joshua School hosts a ball for the St. Luck’s students over at Empyr. It’s a really big deal. Have you ever been to Empyr, Noon?” She didn’t pause long enough to let me answer, but instead continued in a rush of words. “They make apple wines and infuse them with magic. Fitz said the sommelier has been working on the spells for this year’s ball batch since the summer solstice.”

  I could understand the appeal of Empyr. I’d felt the same way not twenty-four hours ago. But then I considered the significance of everything that had occurred post-Pippins last night—wandering around an ancient graveyard in the wind, rain, mud, and muck, possibly defiling Lucifer’s lost tomb by removing one of the offerings, Peter kissing me and his declarations.

  One bite of the apple seemed like one too many the morning after. But Ivy walked over to her closet and pulled out another gown, a real showstopper. It was made of taffeta and had a laced brocade bodice decorated in a swirling pattern that could evoke flames or flowers. Like the emerald dress, it was full length, but this one had a small train of cascading silk. The color, however—a blazing orange shot with red and gold—was all wrong for Ivy.

  “Definitely the green one,” I said, draining the last of my tea. I placed the empty cup on my desk and started to get up to shower.

  Ivy’s face fell. “You like the green one better?”

  “The orange dress is spectacular, but with your hair… I just think the green will set that off best.” I grabbed my soap bucket and prepared to walk down the hall.

  “Oh, good,” Ivy said laughing. “I thought you meant you liked the green one better for you. I agree. I bought the green one for me and the orange one for you.”

  I paused, soap bucket in hand. I didn’t know what to say. I was extremely grateful and touched that Ivy would think to buy me a gown. It was extraordinarily generous. And I’d never been to a formal dance. For one thing, I’d never dated anyone seriously enough to get invited. Second, and most importantly, it was an impossible wardrobe challenge. This dress proved why.

  “Um,” I started, not wanting to hurt Ivy’s feelings, but also not knowing how to explain my discomfort in baring my décolletage. “It’s very revealing.”

  “That’s the point,” Ivy said, making an emphatic gesture. “Can you imagine Ari’s face when he sees you in this? It’s perfect!”

  “I can’t. Look, I don’t want to… I don’t celebrate Beltane,” I finished lamely.

  But Ivy just snorted. “You don’t celebrate anything.”

  “And besides,” I continued as if I hadn’t heard her. “I can’t go with Ari. Remember? He’s opposing counsel.”

  Ivy gave me a look that told me she thought all bets were off at Beltane. That the usual rules didn’t apply.

  “You can go with me then. Come on, I can’t go with just Fitz. He’s my cousin.”

  “I don’t know, Ivy,” I said, torn. The dress was amazing and a part of me wondered what it would be like to wear something so provocative. There would be nowhere to hide in that dress. Its color meant a
ll eyes would be on me and its cut meant my demon mark would be front and center, for all the world to see. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. I shook my head and hung the dress back in Ivy’s closet.

  “I hope you still have the receipt,” I said turning back to Ivy.

  She stared at my chest. I realized I’d been self-consciously rubbing my demon mark through my pajama top. As if I could rub it off.

  “We all know you have waning magic and the mark to prove it, Noon.”

  “Yeah,” I lowered my hand, feigning confusion. “So?”

  “So,” Ivy said, exasperated, “you don’t have to hide anymore. You’re out. You declared. It’s time to show off.” She walked over to her closet and took the dress out again. “You’re beautiful. You’re strong.” She walked over and firmly placed the dress on my bed. “This dress is perfect for you.”

  I swallowed. With everything else I had to be afraid of, was this dress really something to fear?

  I didn’t try it on, but when I put it away, I put it in my closet.

  How was dinner last night?” Ari asked.

  I was standing on the second floor of Corpus Justica, next to the study carrel I used on the nights when I met Ari. This area of the library was far from the main door and students didn’t usually come back here unless they were looking for something in particular. An unlikely event on any given night since we were in the tithing and tax section. People usually put off a visit here for as long as possible.

  Tonight’s quiet was the rule rather than the exception and, in fact, there was an almost complete lack of sound coming from the floor below because most students had packed up and left for the night. It was twenty minutes to close. I’d been packing up and preparing to go when Ari had appeared from behind one of the stacks.