He blinked again, fascinated by the spangles that danced off the blades. How had he never noticed the way a beam of light poured down a finely honed metal edge? Certainly the Bookkeeper side of the equation had nothing so compelling. No dusty, stretched sheepskin, scrawled in ancient warnings, could match that shivery curvature of steel through air.
He blinked a third time and realized Liam was finally watching him, blue eyes steady and impassive.
Sid straightened, and the officious snap of his spine cut off the wayward fascination. “I would have been eaten by that feralis if not for the rogue female talya who came out of nowhere and saved my arse.”
While he quickly recapped the encounter, Liam’s gaze sharpened to rival the knife in his hand, as if Sid had finally shown himself to be interesting. “A rogue. In my city.” The blade glittered as he spun it between his fingers. “And female at that.”
Sid tensed at the threatening movement, and his shoulder protested, though he kept his voice level. “An invaluable find.”
“For a Bookkeeper,” Liam countered. “A potential nightmare for the league. Do you know what that unbalanced energy does to the demons in this city? Repentant demon or tenebrae, it won’t matter in the face of such beguiling madness.” The teshuva’s mark at his temple flared violet with his heartbeat.
Sid averted his gaze before his own pulse could match the violence. From the time his father had inducted him into the Bookkeeper mysteries, he’d been taught not to follow the talyan in their torquing furies. Each had their place in the battle against evil; to confuse their roles was stupid, pointless, and often fatal—at least for the Bookkeepers.
So he tried to knock the sharp edge off his tone. He might have succeeded if he’d had a hammer bigger than Liam’s. “I don’t see how one woman—and she was tiny—makes things worse.”
Genuine amusement crinkled the reven next to Liam’s eye. “Didn’t your father exile you here because of a woman?”
The casual reference sliced through Sid like the multiple points of the deer horn knife, each one sharper than the last.
His father had told someone about that? Told a talya, of all people, even knowing the penalty of indiscretion?
“I would never reveal league confidences.” The words peeled from him as rusty and laced with pain as the soiled bandages back in his room.
Revealing himself had been the only thing Maureen asked for. Twenty-three months into their planned two-year pre-engagement cohabitation, they’d both been shocked and appalled to discover that, without divulging the league secrets, he had nothing left to share.
Liam’s smile flattened. “As Bookkeeper, you understand how outsiders are so disruptive.”
“A rogue is not technically an outsider,” Sid pointed out. Not the way he’d always been an outsider, even for those twenty-three months before he’d come to his senses.
“Lucky she was. Any rogue existing under our radar has a highly developed instinct for self-preservation.” Liam frowned thoughtfully. “Unless Bookie did know about her.”
Sid had gathered the gist of what had happened to his Bookkeeper predecessor. Suffice it to say, embezzlement had been the least of his crimes—not merely crimes, but sins. An image of his own unwritten rap sheet flashed in Sid’s brain. The “retired” Bookie might think himself the better man of the two.
“If your last Bookkeeper made note of a rogue, I’ll find it,” he promised.
“No need.” Liam’s words dropped to a growl. “Because we’ll find her.”
The implied menace curled Sid’s fingers as if around the haft of some imaginary weapon. “You can’t hurt her.”
“We do what we have to,” Liam said. “You can note that in your archives.”
“She’s no threat,” Sid insisted. In his memory, her pitiless hunter eyes blinked in slow disbelief.
Liam pursed his lips. “Tell that to the feralis she tore apart.”
“She’s fighting on your side. Every league needs all the weapons it can gather,” Sid countered.
“Not if those weapons are double-edged.”
Sid looked pointedly at the deer horn knife in the league leader’s hand, all its curves treacherously sharp.
Liam sighed. “Right. Most of them do have a regrettable tendency toward slicing off the hand that feeds them.”
“You asked for London’s help,” Sid said.
“No, I asked for access to your archives,” Liam corrected.
Sid pushed the specs higher on his nose. “I am London’s archives. With Alyce as a baseline, I can do what I came here to do.”
“Alyce? You already named her?” Just the corners of Liam’s lips curved upward. On a lesser man, it might have been a smirk. “I suppose you have to keep her now.”
“If I can find her.”
“We’re on it.”
“You’ll be careful? You won’t scare her?”
Liam gave him a lowering look. “That fever must be spiking. Get some rest.”
Probably it was immortality that gave his voice that paternalistic edge. But Sid already had a disapproving father figure, thanks anyway.
Sera followed him back to his room, like a silent blond wolf watching for him to falter from his path.
He paused in his doorway, trying for a casual lean, though the jamb grated against his aching shoulder. “You wouldn’t let them hurt her.” When she didn’t answer quickly enough for his comfort, he added, “You could be her. Imagine possession—the conflicting energies, the impulse to violence, the isolation—without the structure and restraint of the league. Without that, the teshuva is only one long step from being djinni.”
Her gaze flickered with violet streaks, pupil and iris submerged beneath the demonic overlay. “You think I don’t know that?”
The waves of pain thinned his patience. If he wanted to win the respect of the talyan, he couldn’t keep backing down. Plus, he was more than ninety percent certain she wouldn’t hit an injured man.
“I think you were possessed less than a year ago,” he said. “I think I have almost three thousand years of written histories at my fingertips and another couple thousand of oral tradition on my tongue. So hand-to-hand, you might win, but in a debate I will wipe you out.”
With a quirk of her lips, all signs of her demon vanished. “Well, hopefully the next feralis is willing to argue the finer points of possession with you. I’ll just tell you, this alleged rogue female isn’t a science experiment.”
“Of course not.” A proper science experiment would be easier, tidier, and already under lock and key in the lab. He tried a little wheedling. “Don’t you want to know how the symballein bond works between you and your mate?” Women—even demonically possessed women—always liked to talk about their relationships.
She snorted. “That’s not going to show up on any spectral analysis.” But her expression softened.
He wondered if he could achieve the same tempering response if he asked Ferris Archer, Sera’s other half, about the bond. He rather thought his odds of not getting hit would drop well below the halfway point.
But since Sera seemed to have mellowed, he might have a chance. “I want to go with the talyan tonight when you look for Alyce.”
“Liam will let you know.”
That wasn’t a yes. But it wasn’t a no either. “I’ll be much improved by a nap. See you tonight.”
She inclined her head, again neither yes nor no. He supposed ambivalence was as much a symptom of teshuva possession as violet-shot eyes. “Sleep well,” she said.
He’d sleep like the dead. Or someone who’d narrowly avoided death. He nodded back and slipped into his room.