by Izzy Shows
“Well…” I hesitated, glancing at the lift again. “I suppose if Mal isn’t coming home anytime soon, there’s no harm in it. I’ve had a hell of a day, and there’s nothing more I can do tonight, apparently. So, yeah, what the hell. Let’s have a girls’ night. I’ve never done that before.”
She grinned victoriously. “Yippee!” She pivoted on tiptoe, put her drink back on the cabinet, and danced into the kitchen.
She was truly breathtaking to behold now that she was in her element again. She’d had a sort of terrifying beauty when I first saw her, the kind you couldn’t look away from but was almost painful to look at. Now, she was practically glowing, her happiness emanating from within.
I could easily see how she could seduce entire kingdoms to her will with nothing more than a ‘how do you do,’ and she hadn’t even tried anything on me.
Thank the Gods for that. The last thing I needed was to fall into a succubus’ trap. That would be a fun one to explain to the Order.
Oh, Chancellor, I swear I wasn’t doing anything wrong. This succubus just happened to come upon me. Why, no, I wasn’t consorting with demons. What are you talking about?
It occurred to me that what I was doing here, with Lilith and Mal, was enough to get me killed. It wasn’t against the rules, so to speak, but it was certainly something they could twist into being something horrible.
Lilith returned with two large tubs of ice cream—rocky road and mint chocolate chip—and two spoons. My eyes gleamed.
“Oh, mint chocolate chip, please and thank you,” I said, throwing my head back and lifting my hands to press against one another as if in prayer.
She giggled. “I think I’ve discovered the secret way to your heart.”
“It’s not so secret that an impoverished woman would love food, is it?”
“No, I suppose it isn’t,” she said, sounding thoughtful. I supposed she’d never wanted for food, considering she could always take what she wanted from those around her.
We sat down on the couch together, and she reached for the remote.
“Oh, wait a moment, before I fry the telly,” I said, jumping up. I walked a circle around the couch, muttering incantations all the while and pushing my will into them at the very end. The oval formed around us as I sat on the couch again. “There you go. Safe and sound from the mage.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It stinks that you have to be so careful around technology.”
“I still don’t understand how magical creatures like you get to interact with things, but I can’t.”
She shrugged. “Just one of those things, I guess.” She turned on the TV and flipped through a few channels before she landed on what looked like some cheesy romance. I resisted the urge to groan. This was Lilith’s idea of a girls’ night, and I wasn’t going to take it away from her. She deserved a reward after all the hard work she had put in fighting her addiction.
I opened the tub of ice cream and dug in, moaning at the first taste. I didn’t get a lot in the way of luxury food, since I barely made enough from consulting with Finn to pay the bills. I lived on sandwiches and ready meals most of the time, splurging once a week to have lunch with Finn in our normal haunt. It was a real treat to get to eat dessert for once.
Lilith giggled beside me. “You look like you’ve been starved for a hundred years.”
“It’s been ages since I’ve had ice cream,” I said, then shovelled another spoonful into my mouth.
“Well, I’m glad I had this idea, then.”
We watched the cheesy movie in silence for a few minutes before Lilith turned to face me, sitting back on the couch with her legs crossed under her. “Soooooo.” She sang the word. “Do you have a boy in your life?”
I froze, the spoon midway to my mouth. I put it back into the pint. “Er, why?”
“Because this is what you do with a girls’ night. You dish about the secrets in your life. Mostly boy stuff, of course. Or girl stuff, if that floats your boat. I don’t judge, and I don’t discriminate, either.”
I frowned down at the ice cream before I huffed out a sigh. “All right. I guess I’m doing the whole girls’ night thing. Might as well. There is a guy, but I think it’s fizzling out. He’s not a part of this world, so he doesn’t understand a lot of it. I mean, he tries, but he’s never going to really get it, you know?”
She nodded. “There’s a saying in the almighty book,” she said, winking at me. “‘Be ye not unequally yoked.’ It, of course, refers to not being with a nonbeliever, but it applies to a lot of things, I think. In this instance, I don’t think it would ever work for you to be with someone who isn’t a part of our world. You need someone deeply entrenched in the magic of life, someone who understands the fight.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You read the scriptures?”
She laughed. “Honey, I am scripture. Or rather, I was, before they realised that I caused more problems than I solved. I don’t make a very good cautionary tale, I suppose.”
“Wanting equality shouldn’t be a cautionary tale,” I said.
“I would agree with that, obviously.” She spooned out more ice cream and swallowed it, then licked her lips.
“What about you?”
“Me?” She wrinkled her nose. “What time for dating do I have? I’ve been locked up in here.”
“Yeah, but you and Mal used to be an item. Have you…rekindled things?” I hoped I sounded nonchalant, because I really was dying to know if that was the reason Mal had turned away from me. Maybe he’d grown bored of waiting for me to come around and had moved on. I couldn’t fault him for that, if the only reason he’d been my friend was because he’d wanted something more from me. That made him a bit of an arsehole, but the moving on bit—that was natural.
“Oh, that,” she said. “No, that was over a long time ago. We were involved with someone else as well, and when she left—well, it caused a lot of unnecessary stress on our relationship, I think. She didn’t realise it, but she performed a lot of emotional labour for the both of us, and without her, we couldn’t survive.”
“Why did she leave?” I tilted my head to the side, unable to hide my curiosity.
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “I wish I did.”
Was she the same girl Mal stole the earrings for? I wondered, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t know if Lilith knew about that, and no matter what terms I was on with Mal just now, I didn’t want to spill anything that he had meant to remain a secret between the two of us.
“Why is he being such a dick?” I had to ask at last, because I was at a total loss now if it wasn’t because of Lilith.
“Another thing I don’t know,” she said. “He’s acting like his old self, like the Mal he was when I met him.”
She didn’t sound too happy about that.
“All I know is, he was gone for a few days, and when he came back, he was cold and distant. He was always like that, back in the old days, keeping me at arm’s length. That was all right, all things considered, though I was jealous sometimes.”
“Jealous?”
“The other woman. She made him laugh in ways no one else could dream of. Me too, of course. Her mischievous nature knew no bounds, and she was always pulling me into this prank or the other. She was such a delight to be around, a force of nature you couldn’t help but be mesmerised by,” she said, sounding far away for a moment. She had spoken with a dreamy quality to her voice, clearly remembering her time with the other woman quite fondly.
A force of nature. Wasn’t that the way Mal had referred to the woman he’d stolen the earrings for? An ocean cannot love you back. It had to be her.
I shifted in my seat, the ice cream in my lap half-forgotten. “What was she like?” I didn’t dare ask what her name was. I figured that too many prying questions would leave Lilith refusing to say a word.
“Tricky, of course,” she said with a wry smile. “She never told a lie, but she never quite told you the full truth, either. She was passionate and loyal—she’d die for h
er friends and for her kingdom. I never knew a person who adored what they did quite as much as she. She was never bored with the day-to-day minutia she had to go through, though it all went over my head, for the most part. At the same time, she wasn’t above fleeing her duties for a day to have some fun. And no one ever held it against her. That was part of her charm, that she could get away with murder.”
“I wish I could have known her,” I said.
Lilith tilted her head to the side, smiling softly. “I think the two of you would have got on well.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I don’t see why. She sounds so…so much. I don’t know how else to put it. Intimidating. I’m sure I’d be so in awe of her, I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“Yet you had no difficulty speaking to me,” she said, clearly teasing me.
I laughed. “Well, that’s different. You weren’t yourself when I met you. I’m sure if I’d met you like this, or at the height of your power, I would have been much more skittish.”
She tittered, lifting a hand to cover her mouth. “Yes, I suppose I wasn’t myself when we met.”
“Lilith…what happened to you?” I said tentatively, dropping my gaze from hers for a moment. I was afraid the question would offend her.
She was quiet for a long time. “It’s difficult to talk about, but I think you have a right to know. If it happens to someone else—I hope it doesn’t, but there’s no ruling it out.”
I waited for her to continue, curiosity burning brightly within me.
“I was tainted by something. I don’t know what, and I don’t know much about the how of it. Something came to me in the night. I woke up in the middle of the night with this intense hunger and the feeling of being violated. After that, I lost myself.”
My wrist began to throb, the mark coming to life. It felt like a warning. I rubbed at it absentmindedly.
“What’s wrong?” Lilith narrowed her eyes, looking down at my wrist.
“It’s the mark,” I said. “I need to get rid of it, but I’ve no idea how to go about doing that.” I didn’t want to change the subject, but it wouldn’t stop burning. I wanted to ask her more about the taint, what it had felt like inside her, if she could think of anything that would point to the culprit who had done that to her, but I couldn’t concentrate through the burning.
“Well, why don’t you ask Mal? He can get rid of it.”
My jaw dropped, and my eyes almost popped out of my head. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Now it was her turn to widen her eyes. “No.”
“That bastard,” I said, snarling. “He trained with me for months, and he never mentioned he could get rid of it!” I jumped to my feet, the ice cream spilling onto the floor. Energy was buzzing within me at a dangerous level. “I’ll rip his bloody throat out.” It wasn’t just a sugar rush from the ice cream, that was for certain.
“I’m sure he had a good reason.” Lilith started to defend him, but trailed off. She probably had realised it was no use. There was no changing that he had intentionally left me with a mark and a power I hadn’t wanted to hold on to. That he’d left it tainting me.
Had he known it would speak to me, tempt me to further degradation? Had he hoped I would turn to his way, allow myself to be possessed by his mark?
That fucking arsehole. I was going to kill him.
“Blair…”
“What?” The word came out too sharp, too angry.
“You need to calm down,” she said slowly, carefully. “I know it’s bad, what Mal did, but you can’t kill him. That’s not a ‘you shouldn’t’ but a ‘you can’t.’ If you don’t calm down, you might do something that’s going to backfire badly.”
“What the hell can I do?” I said bitterly. She was right; I couldn’t kill Mal. He was Fallen, and I was a pathetic, puny mage. Not yet a Wizard, not yet anything. “I’m stuck like this, and it’s going to get me killed!”
“What do you mean?” She frowned.
“I can’t talk about it,” I said, grimacing.
She nodded, not pushing the subject. “Have you explained it to him?”
“You saw, you heard, when I came here last time. He doesn’t care. He said that’s just what mortals do: we die. He doesn’t care if he gets me killed. He doesn’t care what happens to me anymore. Which is just so bloody infuriating, because he used to!”
To my horror, her expression turned to pity. “I’m sorry, Blair, but that’s what the Fallen do. They play with mortals.”
“I should have known,” I said, disgusted with myself. “I’ve got to go, Lilith. I just…I can’t be here right now.” I thrust my arm to the side, breaking the circle.
“I understand,” she said. “I hope that just because you and Mal aren’t on good terms, it doesn’t mean we can’t be. I owe you my life, and I’d hate to see you gone from it.”
It wasn’t a good time to ask me such a question, because right now I didn’t want anything to do with anything even remotely related to Mal. And she was a walking reminder of the time when he’d been kind to me.
“Lilith—I just need some time,” I said. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all I can ask,” she said. She lifted her hands as if she was going to reach out and hug me, but she lowered them a moment later. She’d thought better of it, I supposed.
I should have known better than to get attached. It wouldn’t have hurt so Gods-damned much.
Twenty Eight
It was a long, difficult drive home. Not because of any traffic—that was OK for once—but because I couldn’t get my head clear. I couldn’t believe that Mal had known how to get rid of the mark the entire time. He’d lied to me! He’d told me he didn’t know how to get rid of it. He’d said he didn’t know what the effects would be. And damn him, if he’d known how to get rid of it, that meant he’d witnessed it before. That meant he knew how it worked and what it would do to me. That bastard had left me like this, knowing exactly what would happen.
How could he do this to me?
That’s what the Fallen do. They play with mortals.
Lilith’s words haunted me. I had been a game to him. I should have known that. I should have guarded myself better. I should have … should have … fuck, there was so much that I should have realised, should have done.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Nothing to do about it now but go forward.
I didn’t know what that meant for me, where ‘forward’ was. I had to get rid of the mark, and Emily couldn’t do it herself. Only Mal could get rid of it. The mark had known that too, and had said it didn’t see that happening. The mark was a part of Mal, so it knew him better than anyone ever could. It knew what he would or wouldn’t do.
Did I trust a demon’s mark?
A sound escaped me, perhaps laughter, but too harsh.
I couldn’t trust Mal, so I certainly couldn’t trust his mark. Of course, his mark would say that it couldn’t be removed. It didn’t want to be removed. It didn’t want me to try.
It was too late for me to try tonight, and besides, I didn’t trust myself to go back to Mal’s flat just now. I’d had to get out of there immediately, before I decided to stay and wait for him and demand that he get rid of it. I was in no condition to see him right now.
I’d just get myself killed.
Would he really kill me?
Why not? He doesn’t care what happens to you. Why would he hesitate to kill you, now that he’s done with you?
My mind taunted me. What was worse was that it was the sensible side of myself, the same side that had told me not to get involved with him, and look how right it had turned out to be. Gods, this would have hurt so much worse if we’d become something.
Would he still have turned on me if I had given in?
But that was a train of thought I couldn’t follow, because I wasn’t willing to trade my body for friendship. Not now, not ever. I had no regrets as far as that decision was concerned. In fact, as of right now, I considered it the best decision I had ever made.
In fact, the mark was the quietest it had ever been. No, this rage was all me, all about what Mal had done to me.
That bastard.
I dispensed with my jackets and made my way downstairs, each step infused with all my hatred and anger. Fred was seated at the table there, and he turned to me with a pleasant expression that quickly turned concerned when he saw the look on my face.
Without greeting him, I stomped over to one of the workbenches, grabbed the athletic tape and wrapped my hands as quickly as I safely could. Somehow, I still remembered to be safe, even though I didn’t want to care about anything right now.
As soon as I was within distance of the punching bag, I threw a sharp kick to the side, followed by two low jabs of my fist. I started out careful and controlled, focusing on having a good stance and striking as if the bag were a human I meant to wound. But within a few minutes, the workout turned to me pummelling the shite out of the bag. My hands moved like a blur, hitting the bag again and again with renewed anger and force, never slowing down. I slammed my body into the bag, curled an arm around it to hold it in place, and proceeded to sucker-punch it a thousand times.
I was panting, and every breath hurt, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t done yet. There was so much pain, so much hurt, inside of me that I didn’t dare stop.
Gods, I didn’t want to feel right now.
I was vaguely aware of the sound of someone sobbing, and then, with much horror, I realised it was me. Me crying while I slammed my fist into the bag. My hands felt wet, and I knew I had overdone the workout. I was bleeding. My knuckles would be bruised and swollen for days to come, but I didn’t care.
