Lounging on her belly at the edge of the fight, propped on her elbows, Nim pouted. “How come I didn’t get instincts?”
“You did,” Gavril said. “You talk over them.”
“True.” She coiled her legs around to sit. “Enough ass-kicking for today?”
“Until tonight,” Gavril said. “And then it will be for real.”
Despite the saucy tilt of her head, Nim’s eyes were serious as her gaze slid from Alyce to Gavril. “Speaking of talking … You won’t mention any little symballein spats, right? Just between us girls?”
Gavril grimaced. “Any of the others could have chosen to be up here to enjoy your indiscretions. They are not brave enough. So they will get no advantage from me.”
“Great.” Nim bounded to her feet. “Let’s have ice cream.”
Alyce looked over with interest. “What is ice cream?”
Nim hooked her arm through Alyce’s elbow. “Sweetie, let me show you heaven.”
Gavril shook his head and stalked away.
Down the stairs to the main floor, Nim was silent. But when they got to the kitchen, she paused before reaching into the freezer. “It’s not easy being symballein. I used to get stark naked in front of strangers, but nobody saw my soul.”
She spooned out a bowl of ice cream for herself, then solemnly handed Alyce the carton and the ladle. “Go for it.”
“I tried that. I said I loved him. He, the man of many words, said nothing.”
Nim winced. “I meant go for the ice cream.”
“Oh.” Alyce stared down into the chunky chocolate depths. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“To me or dumbfuck? Sweetie, you can tell a girlfriend anything. A man, not so much.” She shoved her spoon into the ice cream as if the frozen lump were a particularly unfeeling heart.
Alyce took a bite and waited while the confection melted across her tongue. The demon stretched one last time, tightening and relaxing every muscle in a long ripple; then it was quiet. “I frightened him. I saw it in his eyes.”
“I’m sure you did. They are easily scared that way.”
“Not Jonah,” Alyce said. “Not Liam or Archer.”
Nim laughed. “Not now. But before … As quick as they are to run to trouble, a talya male is twice as fast running from the symballein bond. Which is just silly, when the two are fairly synonymous.”
“But what should I do?”
“What do you want?”
Alyce contemplated the chocolate on her spoon. The sweet darkness made her hungry for more. “I want him.”
“Remember when I said it wasn’t easy?”
Alyce inverted the spoon over her tongue and nodded.
“Well, you won’t be, not anymore. Let him fight for it.”
“Fight?” Alyce swallowed, and the sugared cream raced through her system. “But we were talking about love.”
“The only thing worth fighting for,” Nim said. “Are you strong enough?”
“My teshuva—”
“Not the demon. You.”
Alyce hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“Fair enough. Maybe you don’t really want him.”
Denial reared up in an instant, the demon a heartbeat behind in solidarity. Alyce narrowed her eyes.
Nim smiled. “You’re strong enough. But it could get ugly. If he resisted that white satin underwear …”
“He didn’t.”
“But he managed to break free of the lace.” Nim tilted her head in thought. “Well, maybe he is stronger than I thought too. We’ll have to enthrall him well.”
“He likes puzzles. I’m too simple.”
Nim snorted. “No woman is simple. He was just blinded by those pretentiously nerdy glasses. You’ll show him. Tonight, when the league goes out. Come to my room at sundown. We’ll see who’s chasing whom.”
Alyce bit her lip. “But what if—” A jagged bolt of energy not her own seared across her awareness.
She found herself on her knees, Nim beside her, hand on her shoulder. “Alyce? How hard did Gavril hit you?”
“Didn’t you feel—?”
Nim stiffened. “Everybody’s suddenly on attack. The warehouse sinks aren’t dampening it all. Let’s go.”
The other woman really did think she’d be a help, Alyce marveled. And she would be, she swore to herself, if only she could stop clutching her temples.
The leashed uproar was worse in the foyer, etheric energy sparking like lightning in the cool, rain-scented air. The wall-to-wall black of the talyan split around one redheaded angelic-possessed.
“Nanette.” Nim hurried forward to join Sera in the seething morass of motionless talyan. How they managed to do both—seethe and be still … Alyce crept up behind Ecco. His bulk seemed to absorb some of the furious energy.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Nanette was saying. “Help Cyril.”
The sphere warden lay sprawled on the floor, his face a disturbing shade somewhere between the concrete and the white of his pristine linen shirt—pristine except for the blooming crimson across his belly.
Sidney shouldered between the talyan. “Put pressure on that. Stop the bleeding. His angel isn’t like the teshuva; it won’t do the work for us.”
“Typical angel,” Ecco mumbled.
Alyce slipped out from behind him and went to Sidney’s side. He had flipped up Fane’s shirt, and she held back a gasp at the vivid, vicious wound surrounded by ichor scorch.
“What happened?” Nim had brought a towel to her workout. She tossed it to Sera, who made a thick pad and pressed it to the gaping red gash.
“A djinn-man,” Nanette said. Her shoulders shook until Nim wrapped an arm around her. “I was closing the church when Cyril came, bleeding. He said he’d been attacked and told me to bring him here.”
From the woman’s blank stare, unmindful of the way her red hair dripped rain around her cheeks, Alyce knew she was picturing the moment again, probably superimposed over her husband’s attack. Alyce wondered if she would ever go back to the church again.
Blood seeped through the towel between Sera’s fingers. “We need to get him to the hospital. Now.”
“No,” Fane rasped. “They’ll come for me there.”
Sidney half rolled the warden to check his back for an exit wound. “The djinn-men?”
Fane hissed like a curse: “The sphericanum.”
The talyan shot one another mystified glances.
“He lost his abrasax,” Nanette said. When they only shrugged, one after the other, she added, “His blesséd weapon.”
Ecco’s eyes bugged. “He lost it?”
“Didn’t lose it,” Fane growled. “Djinni fuck took it.”
“That’s why the sphericanum will”—Nanette swallowed hard—“not be forgiving.”
Ecco scratched his close-shaved head with a sound like sandpaper. “Huh. I always thought the side of goodness and light automatically included forgiving. Like, ‘If you order now …’”
Sidney interrupted. “If we’re saving his life, we need to get him down to the lab. Ecco, help me carry him.”
As they trooped downstairs, Sera sent various talyan peeling off on other errands: to inform Liam, to recon the church, to patrol the warehouse roof in case a maddened army of angelic-possessed came to reclaim their fallen.
“They won’t care,” Nanette murmured as they positioned Fane on the exam table. “No one from the spheres came to Daniel’s funeral but Cyril.”
Nim and Ecco herded her to one side of the lab while Sidney and Sera washed their hands and consulted over Fane’s belly.
“Gut and bowel aren’t involved,” Sera said.
“This isn’t a full ER suite.” Sidney glanced over his shoulder, his brown eyes fierce as the seething talyan but in a different way, focused thought and brisk action welded together. “Alyce, my hands are clean. Can you push the crash cart over here? Thank you.”