“My demon—my teshuva—found you last night,” she corrected. “It showed me the signs and told me something was different, something …”
“That it was finally ready to be part of the league?” He gave her an indulgent chuckle and pushed carefully to his feet. He held his good hand down to her. “Better late than never.”
“I think … I saw …” Her shoulders tensed with frustration over whatever she was trying to say, then sagged. “It wasn’t just my demon. It was more than that.”
“There is much more,” he said. “But you don’t have to worry about it all at once. Let’s go meet your teshuva’s distant cousins, and they’ll show you where to start.”
He thought she would try to argue again, but she only sighed and put her hand in his. “Where to start worrying?”
“Leave that part up to me. That is what Bookkeepers do.”
He should actually do more of that—worrying—especially about the easy, instinctive way she fit against him when she stood up, as if that part of him had been missing all along.
That part was supposed to be missing. He’d excised it very carefully from his life, as any good revisionist historian cut apart the past and rearranged it, cleaner, simpler, and with fewer innocent victims.
“You know,” he said. “I really am happy you can nip off heads when necessary.” She would never fall victim to impossibilities. She was an impossibility.
She might be nestled under his arm at the moment, with her shy smile, ferocity leashed and surprisingly soft, but she was utterly out of his reach, just as she should be.
Turning her over to the talyan was a necessary step so he could step away. To observe, analyze, and bear witness, a Bookkeeper needed distance. And if he feared the distance might tear something fragile—not in Alyce, but in him—well, as he’d told her, better now than later.
She was immortal; she’d survive. Ultimately, she didn’t need him any more than Maureen had—or maybe a little more, for the moment, for what he could teach her. But that would fade, as he would. At least Alyce would still be there, fighting for the light. He’d take consolation in that, since he’d never have it for himself.
CHAPTER 6
Alyce followed her Sidney to another phone box at a busy little building. She tucked herself behind him to avoid the rush of cars in and out of the white-lined parking lot, but she couldn’t escape the stink of burned coffee and the sweet-tart perfume of the garish candy wrappers swirling in the lee of the brick wall.
She winced at the strain in his voice while he spoke. “No, Dad, really, you don’t need to send money. Everything’s under control here. … Yes, I’ll be careful.” They waited while the call was patched through to the devil-men from whom she’d freed him.
For him, she would step back into that hell.
“Liam,” Sidney said. “You found Ecco?”
Coming through the phone box, the brusque voice hit her ears clearly. “Hard to sleep through his swearing.”
“Maybe you could send someone else to meet us then.”
“Us?”
Sidney smiled at her reassuringly. “Alyce is with me.”
“And you’re still in one piece?”
Sidney’s smile faltered. “As good as before.” He rattled off their location.
The other man grunted. “I’ll come.”
The flat tone raised Alyce’s hackles, and the remnants of Sidney’s smile vanished. “Send Sera.”
“You think she won’t judge as impartially as I would?”
Sidney ran his hand down the back of his neck, and Alyce wondered if his hackles were up too. “We don’t need a judge. And if we did, I’m impartial. Sera has been your Bookkeeper until now, and I value her insights. More important, she has tight control over her teshuva.”
“Archer will insist on being with her.”
“Not as jury and executioner.”
There was no answer for a moment, just a muffled discussion even Alyce’s sharp ears couldn’t decipher. “They’re on their way.”
Sidney slammed the phone onto its hanger, the hand on the back of his neck clenched tight until his fingers bleached his skin. “Damn him.”
Alyce touched his arm. “Never say that.”
After a moment, he turned to her. “You’re right. It’s not my place.”
“But, if you say he is evil, I can kill him.”
“Alyce!”
“I was teasing,” she said solemnly.
As they waited, the October clouds thickened until the sky, the concrete, and the steel buildings were all one shade. A few errant raindrops spattered the sidewalk and the pigeons pecking nearby.
“Their wings are brighter than the sky,” Alyce said. “Maybe that is how they can fly.”
“That and lift, thrust, angle of attack, aerodynamics—”
She moved her forefinger from his sleeve to his lower lip, and he stopped talking. “Do not be nervous.”
“You think I’m nervous?”
“Your heart races. You avoid my eyes. You talk too fast.” Yet she rather liked the velvety rub of his lip against her fingertip.
“You already said I talk too much.”
“To hide. I hide in silence.”
He took her hand and squeezed it. “Sometimes you make sense.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s good if Liam thinks you’re lucid instead of a loose cannon.”
“We’re not on a ship.”
He sighed. “So much for making sense.”
She gave him an admonishing look. “Loose cannons are bad on a ship in battle. They roll over sailors and knock holes in bulkheads. But I think on land, a loose cannon would be more useful than a cannon that couldn’t move.”
He pursed his lips, and she wished her finger were still there—or her lips, against his. “Maybe you’re right. But do you mind if I do the explaining to Sera and Archer?”
“You have the words,” she agreed.
He eyed her, a furrow between his brows, as if she were one of those old books in his room where the ink had faded and run into strange new shapes.
She waited. This was how his books must feel, glad for his hands upon their pages, willingly giving themselves up to his serious brown regard with a soft, rustling sigh. No one else had cared to open them. They could only trust his focus would yield some satisfaction.
The thought of satisfaction—his and hers—finally made her shift, and he blinked. “I don’t think anyone has shut me up as often as you do.”
They stood in silence until a white car with large rust spots pulled up to the curb. A blond woman in a cherry red coat rolled down the passenger side window. “Hey, guys. Liam said you might want to get some lunch.”
Her voice was pitched to friendly, and her slender arm hung out the window with relaxed carelessness. Nothing about her said devil.
When Sidney opened the back door and gestured Alyce inside, she found the devil—black-haired and stern-faced, his dark brown eyes hard as frozen earth—waiting in the driver seat.
She started to back out, but Sidney bumped her hip from behind. “Who’s nervous now?”
The woman in the passenger seat punched the devil-man’s shoulder, hard enough for the thud to reverberate through the worn fabric under Alyce’s fist. “Quit it, Ferris. You’re scaring her.”
He flinched. “I’m just sitting here.”
“You’re glowering all over the place. It gets in the upholstery.”
“Sera, she almost ripped Ecco’s leg off.”
“And you haven’t been tempted more than once?”
The man—Alyce thought the surname Archer fit his sharp eyes better than the purr of Ferris—pinned her with a purple-tinged glare for a moment. Then he grinned. The humor warmed his whole face like spring. “Good point. C’mon in.”