He was cold and cranky. He should go change before he caught a cold. Except being chilled didn’t actually increase the chances of viral infection with the common cold. And possession eliminated any chance at all.
Besides, he was curious. …
A quick search of Chicago mental health facilities in the 1970s yielded the usual hits of haunted insane asylums. The eager ghost hunters were more right than anyone might guess about restless spirits roaming the abandoned hallways of the old institutions. The overcrowded, underfunded facilities would have attracted heavy infestations of tenebrae. When the patients were released on their own recognizance, with the theory that some combination of mainstreaming, community services, and warm fuzzies would fix their problems, they would each have taken their burden of misery-hungry malice. And no doubt more than one frail, terrified patient—thrown suddenly out into the world—had fallen prey to voracious ferales.
But where had Alyce come from? If Thorne remembered her from one of the waves of deinstitutionalizations from the 1970s, would she have left behind evidence—say, a teshuva’s talisman—in her patient records?
It was a long shot.
An hour later, Sid admitted it wasn’t just long; it was impossible. Too many years had passed. The records of most facilities were lost or destroyed. Many of the buildings had been razed for apartment buildings and shopping centers. He wondered how much etheric agony lingered in the dimensions around the old places. It would be interesting to chart the decay over decades.
Extended sitting and disappointment crimped his muscles. It would have been nice to have found something to break the ice with Alyce.
“Like what?” he grumbled to himself. “‘I found your old yearbook. Here you are in a straitjacket.’ Lovely.”
He blanked his search from the computer. He had no more excuses. When had he ever less looked forward to talking?
An attacking horde would not go amiss right now.
“Westerbrook. You have a minute?” Archer stood in the doorway.
The talya male might be up for a fight. “What do you need?” Sid settled his hip on the edge of the counter. He wasn’t Bookkeeper anymore, but this was still more his territory than Archer’s.
The league leader prowled the edges of the room. “Where’s Alyce?”
“I don’t know.” At Archer’s sharp glance, Sid realized he shouldn’t have admitted it. “She went to her room.”
Archer grunted. “Or so you hope. I’ll check on her—”
“I’ll do it,” Sid snapped. “Later. What do you want?”
“I need to know your intent.”
“Well, I was thinking dry socks would be a start.”
Archer crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t play stupid now. What is your intent toward Alyce? And the league?”
“What do you care?” Sid matched the cross-armed stance. “For centuries, each league has been self-sufficient, and each talya has been, for all intents and purposes, an independent contractor.”
Archer’s lips twisted. “Sure. We take care of our own health insurance and retirement.”
“That’s the way it has always been.” Sid refused to squirm. He hadn’t made the rules. He had just learned them.
“That’s the way it was for me,” Archer agreed. “Half the time I wouldn’t even come back to the league headquarters after a night wrestling the horde. I’d just phone in my continued existence so Bookie could keep a plus sign by my name in the archives.”
Sid knew the slim volume Archer meant. Bound in some delicate hide, the first pages were speckled with the spatter from quill pens. The chart was kept on computer now, and it had more rows and columns than Archer implied. But the first column was still a list of league talyan, and the very last column was indeed full of check marks and a final “checkout” date. “I’m sure all your Bookkeepers have been thrilled to make note of your survival.”
Archer ignored the snide aside. “I was the first to find a talya mate. Having a place to return to means something now.” He fixed his dark gaze on Sid. “That is not theoretical or subject to dissection. I will annihilate anyone who gets in the way.”
“Then I don’t see what this has to do with me.”
Archer sighed with impatience. “If you don’t, then you definitely didn’t deserve to be our Bookkeeper.”
“Fine, I get it.” Sid tightened his grip across his chest. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“You have to love it. Love her.”
Sid recoiled, cheeks flaring hot. “I can’t believe you of all people just said that.”
“I love Sera with everything I am. And what I am now is much more than what I was, before the demon, before her.”
“If you sing, I will annihilate you.”
Archer’s smile turned a little vicious. “You should see the poetry.” Then his smile vanished, leaving only the vicious. “If you can’t love Alyce, leave her now. She’ll forget you.”
But she wouldn’t. Sid felt that as sure as he felt the muscles of his arms bunch under his clenched fingers, rejecting Archer’s blunt conditions. Maybe before she would have forgotten, but she had come too far to go back now.
Had he? And what did that mean?
He wanted to make a chart of his own—a nice flowchart, maybe, of how he’d gotten here and where “here” went next. But he feared he’d find only a thick gray haze shot through with violet sparks.
The despair had a dampening effect on any self-preservation instinct. He straightened, letting his arms fall loose at his sides as he met Archer’s challenging glare. “It’s between Alyce and me. The league can piss off.”
For a slow heartbeat, he wondered if the other man would swing at him.
Then Archer nodded. A trace of respect showed in the faint quirk of his lips. “If you need advice on either aspect …”
“I don’t.”
Archer shrugged. “Take good notes. Maybe the next symballein pair won’t have to struggle as much.”
Sid waited until the other man had gone before he slouched onto his chair again, uncertain what he should do next. It was a little early to call his father, and anyway, did he really want to have a conversation about his love life with London—or God forbid, Wes—any more than he did with Archer?
His thoughts spun wearily, the cogs barely engaged, the teshuva seemingly uninterested in helping him.
Was this what being a master Bookkeeper would have been like? Facing overarching metaspiritual conundrums alone in his lab? Archer was right; he had always thought he’d be studying the puzzle from above, not lost himself in the maze. How did he figure out where to go from here?
He pushed to his feet, hard enough to shove the chair back into the wall. Whatever he might have been before, now he was just hiding down here. Maybe, as Bookkeeper, he would have been as his father had explained—a separate conscience, keeping watch, making suggestions, shaking his head with distant dispassion.
Too late now.
He walked through the quiet hallways, his teshuva stretched out ahead of him like a blind man’s cane. Most of the talyan were out after tenebrae, seeking any clues they might find about the ahaˉzum. Only the few who’d manned the Shades of Gray were in the warehouse.
And Alyce.
He closed his eyes and let the demon guide him.
He found himself in the darkness of the top-floor storage. The last time he’d been standing in the doorway, only the intermittent bulbs and emergency exit lighting had given his human eyes hope to see. Now, the whole room was a wilderness of shadow and deeper shadow. The twisted shapes of old and broken salvage took on a strange if ominous beauty, like the modern art Alyce hadn’t appreciated.