by Jessa Slade
The league had been on foot, and there was no way they were going to summon a cab in this neighborhood. They made it only halfway down the block.
“I’m tired,” Dory repeated.
Liam glanced at Archer. “Find us a ride.”
“Around here, they’re probably already stolen anyway.” Archer disappeared down a side street with Sera in his wake.
Liam settled himself on Dory’s other side. “Let’s keep moving. I don’t like the way those malice are gathering.”
Jilly glanced up, the first hint of feeling coming back to her. A feeling of fear. “Can they get to Dory?”
“Without her soul, I don’t know why they would. Which is what’s worrying me.”
Jilly shook her head, trying to get some sense back. Of course he was right. The malice fed on negative emotions. Dory was just one limp noodle of indifference, not a meal at all.
Still, she kept an eye on the flittering oily shadows that paced them down the street. “I got in the way, didn’t I?”
“You were worried about Dory.”
She noticed he hadn’t said no. “I should have been focused on Corvus.”
He kept scanning the shadows. “Your impulsiveness is no more changeable than . . .” He hesitated. “I was going to say your eye color, but of course that changes, even more often than your hair, I imagine.” He rubbed his temple. “Don’t blame yourself.”
“Do you blame me?” Her voice sounded small in her own ears.
He was silent a moment. “Maybe I don’t know any more why we’re doing this. Is it to save our souls? The world? Or to save people like your sister?” He shook his head. “I’m as lost as you are, Jilly.”
And that was her fault, she knew. He’d led the league fine, one fight, one night at a time. Then she’d come barging in.
“I won’t make that mistake again.” She didn’t add that she had no more reasons to make that mistake. “I’ll be the perfect talya. I’ll do whatever you say.”
She bit back what sounded awfully like a sob. No need for her feelings to come back now. Just as well if they’d stay dead forever.
Liam didn’t respond, his gaze fixed on a car turning the corner ahead. “There’s Archer.”
She sagged, relieved he didn’t scoff. She wouldn’t blame him for deciding she was more trouble than she was worth.
The late-model Cadillac that pulled up next to them sparkled more than anything on the street, obviously well loved.
“There were plenty less flashy,” Sera was saying as Liam opened the door.
“Yes.” Archer drew the syllable out with teasing patience. “But he said he had anything I could possibly want. I wanted his car.”
“He meant the drugs or possibly that girl on his arm, obviously.” Sera quieted when Dory moaned. “How’s she doing?”
“You have solvo?” Dory’s voice was pitiful.
The pointless surge of fury almost made Jilly drop her sister into the car. She steeled her demon-amped muscles to guide the bowed blond head past the doorframe. “No more, Dory.”
Maybe she was worse than Corvus now, to withhold the only thing that would soothe her sister. A faster slide and deeper descent into nothingness.
There was plenty of room for the three women in the back, even with Dory sprawled across the seat. Jilly held her sister’s hand, but between the two of them, she doubted they could have melted an ice cube, given the coldness of their joined hands.
She let the cold seep deeper. Maybe it would kill the ache. Maybe it would finally harden her, sharpen her into the weapon Liam wanted her to be. “Stop at Laulau’s.”
Liam glanced at her. “The energy sinks around the warehouse should keep the salambes out.”
She didn’t call him on the “should.” “The league doesn’t care about soul-struck humans. If anyone can help, it will be someone like Lau-lau, another human who knows what we’re up against.” Jilly wasn’t that person—wasn’t even a person anymore.
Be hard, she reminded herself. Sharp. Don’t notice the way he stiffened. She wasn’t accusing him. He had his own fight. And she’d been on the wrong side of it too long already.
Liam nodded at Archer, who turned the car to Chinatown.
The light in Lau- lau’s shop window spilled djinni-yellow across the street. Jilly wasn’t surprised. How had she not noticed her landlady’s odd hours? Not like the strange smells and weird displays were such a great disguise. No, she’d just been oblivious. Because she had enough problems of her own. She smiled mirthlessly at her ignorance.
Archer parked in front of the shop. Liam helped ease Dory out from the backseat. She moaned but made no effort to hold herself upright.
Jilly scrambled out. “I’ve got her.”
Liam didn’t release his hold. “Get the door.”
She set her jaw. “I know you want to go after Corvus.”
Archer didn’t actually rev the engine in agreement, but he might as well have. Liam never moved. “Archer, Sera, recall a talya with a scour-class teshuva and get a line on Corvus’s trail. Jilly, you get the damn door.”
With a muttered curse, she did, calling out a greeting as she went in. She pushed a smoking brazier out of the doorway. The ginger-scented unguent inside looked like the mess Lau-lau had been cooking down earlier. Jilly hoped it was having some effect on keeping demons at bay.
Liam followed, with Dory swung up into his arms. Jilly knew the strength and comfort of that embrace. Just as she knew it wasn’t doing her sister any good at all.
Lau-lau emerged from the back room. Her expression was nearly as blank as any haint’s. “Why have you brought her here?”
Jilly stumbled over her own feet, weariness and shock at the rejection almost bringing her to her knees. And Liam already had his hands full. But he stepped forward. “She needs help.”
“She needs a soul,” Lau-lau snapped. “Wouldn’t have hurt to have a spine earlier either.”
Liam shook his head. “Don’t judge, wu-po.”
Lau-lau narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been doing your homework.”
“I like to know what I’m up against.”
A sudden grin split the old woman’s mask of censure. “ ‘Witch’ is such an old-fashioned word. But there might be hope for you yet.”
Jilly shifted impatiently. “Done?”
Lau-lau glanced at her. “You already guessed I might not be able to help.”
“Better than nothing.” Jilly knew the weak exhaustion was in her tone. But if she couldn’t let her guard down here, she might as well walk out onto the street and open herself to the malice.
“Nothing is right, all right,” Lau-lau said. But she gestured for Liam to slide Dory into the office chair behind the counter. Dory slumped there, jaundiced and pallid as the burn-etched bone fetish beads hanging by the register.
While Lau-lau poked at Dory, Jilly rounded on Liam. She hissed, “You thought calling her a witch would inspire her to help us?”
“I thought calling her a witch only made sense, since she is one. Plus, she obviously thinks it’s cute that I’m trying to learn your ways.”
“My ways? Would that be the demon slaying? But you already knew those ways—better than me. My abject failures? You already knew that too.” More cruel words caught in her throat and she choked. He reached out for her—as if the Heimlich maneuver could dislodge her demon or the lump in her throat—but she flinched away. “You can go now. There’s nothing more you can do.” He had to go before she lost it completely.
He dropped his hand to his side in a fist. “There’s nothing you can do either. So we’ll stay until we know for sure what nothingness looks like.”
But he went to the door, staring out into the night. Maybe watching for salambes or something worse, she thought. Or maybe wishing he could go. In tense silence, they waited for Lau-lau to finish her exam. Although what there was to see, Jilly didn’t know.
Lau-lau shuffled into the back room for a few minutes, waving away Jilly’s anxious questions. When she ret
urned, she carried a small wand.
Witch. Liam mouthed the word at Jilly.
Lau-lau held the wand over Dory. “In some black magics, sorcerers draw the soul from the body and prevent its return using charmed objects.”
“Dory had nothing on her,” Jilly said. “She didn’t even have a coat.”
“Nothing on her,” Lau-lau murmured.
It wasn’t really a wand, Jilly saw, but more like a dowsing rod, bent slightly off the true. Lau-lau balanced the rod between her fingers. The end dipped toward Dory’s forehead.
The furrowed skin at Dory’s brow split. But instead of blood, a gleam of white ichor beaded like a pearl.
“Solvo.” Jilly’s breath caught painfully as the bead welled up, broke, and wept across Dory’s forehead. The solvo hardened into a small asymmetrical star. “Can you get it all out?”
“I don’t know.” Lau-lau let the rod wander again. It brushed over Dory’s chest and hovered above her heart.
Dory arched upward, and Jilly closed her eyes. She didn’t have to see Lau- lau nudge aside the neckline of Dory’s shirt to picture the spreading rays of solvo.
A tug at her arm made her open her eyes. Liam was staring down at her. “Come on.”
She resisted. “Where?”
“Just come sit with me.” He led her to one of the planter stands and pressed her down before pulling over another of the heavy ceramic stools. He handled it as if it weighed nothing. Which, of course, it didn’t. Not to him. Nothing stood in his way or resisted his might. How nice for him. How nice for the world, even if it didn’t know about him.
How nice for her, if she could stand to let go of her own obstinacy.
The crowded shelves blocked her view of Dory, and as her visceral horror eased a bit, she realized that had been his intent. “I’m fine.”
“I wasn’t.” He rubbed his temple, then seemed to realize what he was doing. He settled his hands on the grip of the war hammer half veiled in his coat. “The solvo has marked her just as we are marked by the teshuva coming up through the flesh.”
Did that mean an eternity for Dory, locked in soulless limbo? “And I thought being damned was bad,” Jilly murmured.
“There are fates worse than death.” Liam’s voice was low and grim.
He stared blindly ahead. Where the reven reached the corner of his eye, pale violet sparks arced across his pupil. Never at rest. That was a terrible fate.
Straining against the ache in her body, as if unshed tears had frozen in her muscles, she reached across the space between their stools. She took his hand from the cold steel and laced her fingers through his.
That focused him.
“No demons,” she murmured. “Just us.”
He squeezed her hand, and his gaze was purely blue.
They sat in silence like that until Lau-lau came over. “I lured out a few more strands of solvo.” She gestured vaguely at her forehead, navel, and pelvis. “But the dowser never stopped moving. It’s still in there.”
Jilly stood to pace. “Because good news just might stop my heart.” She wrapped her arms around herself, her hand—still warm from Liam’s—pressed under her breast.
“And only the good die young.” Liam rose to stand behind the older woman. “Do you have any other secrets for us?”
Lau-lau shrugged. “I’m old.”
Jilly scowled. What was that supposed to mean? That her landlady was one of the bad guys? Liam let it pass with a nod, so she just huffed out a breath. “Then what next? How do we retrieve Dory’s soul?”
He stared at her. “You’ve seen the soulflies. There’s no way we could hunt them all down around the city, capture and reassemble them. Presupposing that’s even possible.”
She set her jaw. “If we can help Dory, we can stop the salambes. Stop Corvus.”
She knew she was reaching. Who said there was a connection anymore between Dory and Corvus? Just because Dory imagined herself in love with an immortal demon- ridden gladiator didn’t mean the feeling was mutual. How could a being of pure evil and the soulless body it inhabited even feel love?
Lau-lau sighed. “I’ll see what I can find. Most cultures believe that lost souls are always drawn back to their homes.”
Liam chuckled without humor. “Most cultures also think higher forces are keeping watch, trying to save them. Which just goes to show you.”
Lau-lau raised one eyebrow and swept him head to toe with a glance. “And aren’t they right?” She blew out a long breath that hollowed her cheeks. “There’s nothing more I can do for her. Go now. And put the brazier back. Who knows what else will blow in tonight without it?”
She turned away, looking more like an old woman than Jilly had ever seen. She bit her lip and glanced at Liam. He shook his head and went to lift her sister from the chair. Dory’s bleached hair tumbled around her face to hide the solvo that marked her as blatantly as the teshuva’s reven.
“We’ll take her upstairs to your apartment,” he said.
Jilly hesitated. She should be glad to be home, just like those lost souls Lau- lau had mentioned. But it didn’t feel right anymore. “Let’s go back to the warehouse.”
He studied her a moment in silence, then nodded.
Since he’d put all his people on the hunt, Jilly called for a cab. As they headed out to the sidewalk, she glanced three stories up over her shoulder at her apartment window with its peeling red trim and wondered if she’d ever see it the same way again.
Or if she’d ever see it again, period.
She played the drunk girl with passed- out friend for the cabbie’s benefit as they settled in the backseat with Dory. Liam pulled her close for maximum show.
He brushed his lips over the crown of her head. “Almost there.”
Almost home. A bubble of laughter caught in her throat. She choked it down for fear it might sound hysterical. Home. All that awaited them was a jumbled maze of old furniture and even older and more-confusing demon-fighting warriors.
But she couldn’t stop herself from leaning into the shelter of his embrace.
The warehouse was quiet and dark. Since Liam hadn’t taken any calls, she guessed the Corvus chase and tracking Envers and his feralis had been an absolute bust.
They took Dory to her old room. Liam bent the window frame so it wouldn’t open, in case Dory thought to reunite with her lover, while Jilly redressed her sister in a clean T-shirt. Dory was smaller than some of the teens whose bruises, tears, and rages Jilly had tended at the halfway house, as if her very presence had been sucked inward by the solvo that gleamed with eerie beauty, strung along her median line like tiny starfish made of pearls.
Jilly stood back with a sigh. Liam guided her out of the room and locked the door behind her. Side by side, they walked to the kitchen. He flicked on the light and went to the stove.
Jilly contemplated the dirty dishes in the sink. She’d have to put up a sign pointing to the dishwasher. Not that the technique had helped with her siblings. Maybe this time she’d decorate it with pictures of her pointy knives.
A minute later, Liam retrieved her from her paralysis. He seated her with a cup of coffee and a brownie. “We’ll do whatever we can.”
She twisted the words back at him. “We can’t do anything.”
He reached out and took her hands to wrap them around the coffee cup until her fingers warmed between the ceramic and his skin.
“Liam?” Jonah stood in the doorway, his thickly bandaged arm in a sling. “Thank God you’re back.”
Liam stood. Jilly was half a heartbeat behind him. “What is it? You found Corvus?”
“Oh yeah.” Jonah’s lips curled. “He’s out front on the street. And he brought his army.”
CHAPTER 29
Liam leaned over the edge of the warehouse roof. The wind tugged at his coat, worried at his hair. He hadn’t had good luck with roofs lately, but it was the best location to get a feel for the scope of what Corvus had arrayed against them.
On the street below, th
e haints stood in ragged rows straggling out into the shadows, a dozen deep. Salambes smoked between them, their numbers unclear as they phased in and out. The oily ink of malice formed a black-curtain backdrop to the whole display, while pinpricks of perfect light—aimless soulflies—highlighted the scene.
“It’s like a Bollywood dance number,” Ecco noted. “But with way-less-cool costumes.”
“Could be worse,” Liam muttered.
Ecco slanted a glance at him. “Than a musical in hell?”
“Could be on ice.” As he spoke, a soft rain began to fall.
Ecco laughed.
The rain closed in around them, isolating the warehouse from the rest of the city. An illusion, Liam knew, yet painfully accurate. No one would be coming to help them.
But it had always been that way. They were trapped with no escape.
The line of haints peeled back to leave a clearing in their center. Corvus stepped into the void. To Liam’s roused teshuva, Corvus’s shaved head reflected the flicker of the salambes’ unholy light.
“Take a note,” Liam said to no one in particular. “The league needs to invest in rocket launchers.”
Such mundane methods wouldn’t disrupt demonic emanations—might even feed them—but a well-placed cluster bomb would take care of the haints. He couldn’t let himself remember that they’d been human once. And that he had been too.
Corvus stared upward. He threw back his head, arms spread wide. “Where is my better half? Bring me my woman.”
Augmented by the djinni, its powers unfettered by the anchor of a human soul, his voice vaporized the rain so his words carried to the warehouse in a cone of coiling smoke.
“Good special effects for Ice Capades,” Ecco said. “I can’t believe even djinn-men have girlfriends these days. What does he have that I don’t? At least I have half my soul.” When no one answered, he sighed. “Should I get Dory?”
Liam had left Jilly with her sister. “Of course not.”
Jonah, silent until now on Liam’s other side, shifted. “If that’s all he wants, we might give her to him and hope he goes away. She got herself—and now us—into this mess, believing she loved him. We can’t stand against that crowd. We are too few.”
