Her steady gaze pinned him like a petrified insect to corkboard. Even though he was a scientist, those had always seemed sinister. “It’s not. Don’t use so many words.”
“This isn’t the time or place—”
“Does that matter?”
He didn’t think he could brush her off with a relativistic joke about time/space and matter, about how if it mattered, matter would change the geometry of space/time and inevitably—gravitationally—draw them together. … Yeah, that was not the direction the conversation needed to go.
“A crisis relationship seems more intense because the situation escalates so quickly—”
“I’ve been waiting three hundred years.”
“And emotions are under such pressure—”
“Because that never happens anywhere else.”
He frowned. She didn’t do sarcasm very well. “Do you want me to explain or not?”
“Not. You came to Chicago to delve into the symballein bond, but you won’t even talk to me.”
“I talk,” he protested. “All the time, or so you’ve said.”
“At me.”
That wasn’t true; he’d told her things he’d never said aloud to anyone. Over her one bare shoulder, the lights of the city blurred with distance and the dark glass—disappearing, like his escape options. “I came here to write a paper, not become the subject of one.”
She released his hands, and the abruptness set him back a half stride. “Is that what I am to you? A question for you to study?”
“Of course not.” This time his protest wavered. Because she had been that, in the beginning. “But I was taught all along, a Bookkeeper needs the detachment, the distance to see clearly.” He tried to smile. “Even if he wears glasses.”
She didn’t reflect the smile, and her eyes were darker than the night behind her. “Then your father must be very proud of you.”
A champagne glass stiletto twisting in his chest would be less painful. “I came to Chicago because my father has doubted me since I got engaged.”
Her hands went to her throat but stopped short, tangling in the white scarf instead. “Engaged.”
“To be married.”
She took a long breath, but her question was short. “Why?”
“The usual reasons. Because I thought I loved her. Because I thought I knew better than my father, thought I could do what he hadn’t done: be a good Bookkeeper and a good husband.” He hesitated, then added, “Maybe that last part isn’t quite a usual reason.”
“What happened?”
“A year ago, Maureen and I had a fight about where I’d been all night. I was behind in my records because the horde had been unusually active. …” He frowned. “I wonder how that corresponds to Corvus’s first attempt to rupture the Veil—” He cut himself off. “Anyway, I stormed out. I was on the street outside league headquarters when I stopped swearing long enough to realize she had followed me.”
Alyce’s voice drifted, thin as the scarf. “Like your mother.”
“Nowhere near as bad. The feralis killed my mother. Maureen just asked me to choose.”
“And you chose Bookkeeping.”
“Dad couldn’t give Mum what she needed. She followed us partway down the Bookkeeper path, and she died. I wasn’t going to let that happen to Maureen.” Again, he hesitated, longer this time, but the unsaid truth ate through his heart. How did Alyce do it? With a few words and her quiet stare, she dredged up secrets he’d buried even from himself. “Honestly, I wasn’t going to let that happen to me again either.”
“I understand.”
“I saw the light on in Dad’s office. It must have been painfully obvious what was going on. When Maureen left, I went up to see him. He told me I’d done the right thing, that he wished he’d left Mum before. …” He dragged one hand through his hair. “I am—was just a Bookkeeper. I don’t have it in me to survive that again. Look, we can talk about this more—”
“But we don’t need to,” she said.
“—when we aren’t facing our possible deaths.”
She never even blinked. “Okay.”
He hesitated. “Okay. Okay as in ‘all is good with the world’?”
“It doesn’t just mean that, though, does it? It also means you don’t want to say anything else.”
He studied her opaque gaze. If being with her was like heading into an Arctic adventure, he was definitely standing with a foot on two different ice floes. That couldn’t end well.
To his vast relief, the other couples had risen and were heading toward the stairs, which would break up their little chat. “I think it’s action time. We should get down there.”
“Okay.”
He ground his teeth. “That’s why we’re here. And don’t say okay.”
She didn’t say anything.
They followed the other couples down and found most of the guests drifting toward the lower deck with soft murmurs and expectant laughter.
Could there be any fewer lights? Only the glow of rope lighting under the treads kept the stairs from being a death trap. Once he’d thought death trap, the hairs at Sid’s nape prickled. As he’d told Alyce, he suspected Thorne wouldn’t blow up his golden geese just to roast a couple talyan. Even djinn-men had expenses.
In the main room, the green felt tables glowed like emeralds under the pure lights, and the cards shone with the matte gleam of pearls as the dealers opened fresh decks and began to shuffle. The usual blackjack and poker tables were set around the larger roulette and baccarat areas. There was even a table set with a stark chessboard, though no one seemed to be interested.
The crowd seemed to know where they wanted to be, which edged Sid and Alyce to the outside of the milling group. They paused along one wall beside a large recessed fish tank. The tank housed only two gorgeous yellow fish. Just a few centimeters long, the fish patrolled the middle of the tank like soldiers on parade. Sid realized a thin sheet of glass separated them.
“Betta splendens,” he said. “Siamese fighting fish. I wonder if Thorne bets on cocks and dogs too.”
Alyce leaned closer, one finger hovering near the glass. “He would not hurt these. He is vain, and they are the same color as his eyes when his djinni ascends.”
Sid scowled, but he had to admit, the fishes’ flowing, rounded fins were unmarred and beautiful. He turned away. “What’s at the back there?”
Alyce followed close behind him as he made his way across the room. “Are there basements in boats?”
“Probably not. But back rooms …” He pushed at the closed door, the same dark wood as the rest of the wall.
No one turned their way, but Alyce and he both flinched at the sudden belling wave of etheric energy.
“Waving the white flag, are you, Anglo?” The drawling voice held no amusement. “Surrender her, then, and maybe I’ll let you go.”
CHAPTER 19
In the presence of Thorne’s djinni, Alyce felt her demon shiver, as if someone had shaken the champagne bubbles in her stomach and the deflating fizz had exited through her bones. But she stood straight against the internal quaking. Just because she felt the cold now didn’t mean she had to respond. “Don’t shoot.”
Thorne lounged in his hard-backed chair. “Save it for someone who might listen.”
“Just trying to save you the inconvenience, the blood, the screaming. …” Sidney tipped one hand palm up.
Thorne smirked and echoed the gesture: They were two friends sharing a wry amusement. “And I admit, I’m too curious to shoot you yet.”
Alyce winced at the “yet.”
“Plus … ,” Sidney continued. He held out his other hand, and this one pointed a gun. “I’d have to shoot back.”
“Sidney,” Alyce whispered.