His cell phone rang with the urgent call of a hoot owl.
She turned away, but he ignored the call. “Alyce, I would rather have died than hurt you.”
Then her phone rang like a church bell. She answered.
“We found Thorne.” Jonah’s voice was curt, flat, and all the more terrifying because of it. “He’s calling tenebrae through the verge. In the middle of a Halloween parade.”
CHAPTER 24
As he and Alyce raced back to the car, Sid cursed himself with every bootfall.
He’d officially failed at everything he’d come to Chicago to do. Finish his Bookkeeper training? The teshuva had derailed him, and he’d become a novice talya. Analyze the consequences of the symballein attachment? Alyce had sent him one icy-eyed glance, and he’d lost all objectivity in the bond. Determine the nature of the tenebraternum verge?
Now Thorne had beaten him to the punch.
Punching something had never sounded so good.
Baird and Amiri were pounding back from the other direction. Baird slid across the hood in fine action-hero form and had the engine started before the rest of them had piled in. He sent the car squealing out of the alley in a bumper-thumping bottom-out that left sparks in their wake.
It was a quick ride down Wacker to the pier, faster still with Baird at the wheel. It would have been even quicker if not for the milling crowd meandering across the streets between the little fountain green space that marked the entrance to the pier and the parking area.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Baird growled as the traffic cop whistled at him and held out a hand to stop the car. A veritable herd of costumed children scampered in front of the car—half of them leaving, half just arriving—the princesses and miniature comic book characters in sugar-fueled accord with the little horned devils and rubber-faced monsters.
The marquee over the pier announced COSTUME PARADE AND TREASURE HUNT. PAINT A PUMPKIN!
“Oktoberfest,” Baird said. “It’s all craft beer and Halloween masks—perfect for talyan.”
Alyce craned her neck to peer out the window. “With a midway carnival. Thorne likes games of chance.”
“A djinn-man who plays ringtoss for a chance to win goldfish …” Sid shook his head.
“The place is crawling with people,” Amiri said.
“I’m sure there will be enough pumpkins for everyone,” Sid said. “Whether there will be a parking spot, however …”
Alyce’s fingers dug into the back of the car seat. “If the tenebrae come forth, with all these children around … We can’t let them see. They don’t deserve to know evil.” Her face was drawn, her gaze stark without a trace of bracing violet.
Sid eased her hand from the tears she was making in the cheap vinyl and laced his fingers through hers. “We won’t let them see anything. The only nightmares they’ll have tonight will be of high fructose corn syrup.”
Her grasp tightened. “You can’t say that, not for certain.”
He looked at her without blinking. “I just did.”
After a moment, her death grip eased, and she nodded.
Then she turned, opened the car door, and bailed out.
Sid choked on a curse and scrambled after her. “Baird, ditch the car and find us.”
“Right behind you,” Amiri said.
They raced for the diner at the end of the pier.
The amusement park was packed, with the Ferris wheel and the miniature golf course at full capacity, the carousel’s calliope tune a cheerful counterpoint to the screams of the children on the Tilt-A-Whirl with their manufactured fear of being flung violently into space.
“This is bad,” Amiri said as they dodged the crowds. “Really bad. Last time we knocked big holes in Navy Pier, there was no one here.”
Sid glanced back over his shoulder at the six-story Crystal Gardens that glittered behind the park. The shine of the amusement park lights, distorted on the atrium windows, worried him. “If Thorne calls through the tenebraternum, the raw demonic emanations will subvert the glass and metal of the atrium: a larger version of Corvus’s soul bomb. The verge could expand to several hundred times its current size.”
Amiri took a stumbling step, and Alyce stared at Sid in horror.
“Maybe you could hold off on the good news until we’re surrounded by pure evil,” Amiri suggested.
Sid shrugged. “Consider it a motivational speech.”
Amiri let out a bark of laughter. “You are finally talya.”
Sid didn’t slow, though the pronouncement rattled him.
He was talya. He had the demon to prove it. Now he just had to prove it to himself.
They skidded up outside the diner.
And halted, nonplussed. There was a line to get in.
A young man in a starched apron offered a tray of toothpicked meatballs. “Good evening, sirs and madam. A sample while you wait?”
“Thank you.” Alyce plucked a toothpick from the tray. She rolled her eyes at Sid and Amiri when they stared at her. “For energy.”
Sid backed away a few steps, pulling them with him. “Would Jonah’s team have gone in without us? Against Thorne and how many tenebrae?”
“Not enough to spill out,” Alyce said reasonably. “Not enough to swamp our teshuva.”
Right. He was letting his dread run amok. He peered at Alyce. Despite her weakness, despite centuries of not knowing what had happened to her, her fear had always been for others—horror at what had happened around her, fear for what she might do. It had never been fear for herself.
Even now, after learning of the endless mission they faced, she met the challenges without flinching. She did not question, did not dither, did not hesitate.
She was everything he was not.
He was suddenly fiercely glad he had turned her away. If she felt the momentary pain of rejection, that was nothing compared to an eternity of dreading her bond to a man who feared even love.
A sharp whistle from across the pier distracted him. Nim balanced on the far railing, one hand braced on the deco lamppost beside her. Alyce was already on her way, Amiri behind her.
Sid fell into place. He should have taken one of the waiter’s toothpicks for a backup weapon. Thorne’s Saturday Night Special hardly made a dent at the small of his back where he’d shoved it into the waistband of his jeans. Encased in the round’s lead jacket, the splinter of the angelic relic wasn’t even a blip on his teshuva’s vigilant radar.
“Therese called,” Nim said without waiting for their questions. “A man identifying himself as a sewer inspector came by the diner. Nobody remembers him leaving. You see where this is going.”
“Thorne is down there,” Alyce said.
“Right. You win an all-expenses-paid trip to the demon realm.”
Beside Nim, Jonah shifted restlessly. “Pitch and Gavril are in the diner. They’ll run interference if any ferales are drawn to the uproar. We can’t hide a full-scale demonic invasion, but we might prevent a few human deaths.” His expression was bleak.
“Where is everyone else?” Sid asked.
“En route. You four were closest.”
“We can’t wait,” Alyce said. She glanced at Sid. “Thorne isn’t like you. He isn’t patient or thoughtful. He’ll force the verge wider, whatever he has to do.”
Nim shuddered. “What could he want from the tenebraeternum? There’s only one thing there: a helluva lot more demons.”
“That’s what he wants,” Alyce said. “More tenebrae.”
Jonah paced a few steps. “Corvus was the worst the league ever encountered, and even he didn’t try to amass a demon army from the other side.”
Alyce said softly, “He’s not the worst anymore.”
As the others argued, Alyce shivered at the chill threads of the devils all around her: the muted background of the city’s tenebrae; the sharper strands of the teshuva nearest her; and somewhere not too far, the harsh power of djinni.