And a link back to the real world.
He just had to step into the right reality. Good thing he’d always had a grip on things like that.
With all his impassive analytical skill, Sid focused on each portal. But this time, he couldn’t use his Bookkeeper prowess alone; he needed his demon too. Whatever he had to do, whoever he had to become, he would get Alyce back where he could tell her again how he loved her. He wanted that—craved it. …
“Alyce,” he whispered.
This time, she stirred. “Sidney?”
Weirdly distorted screams—tenebrae or human?—drowned her out. Stinging shards battered his head, and he hunched his shoulder over her to protect her.
Glass. Broken window glass was tumbling through one aperture. That had to be the right portal—
Thorne pounced through the opening, still glowering, with the angelic sword raised high.
Yeah, that was the real world.
Sid swore and bolted to his feet. Alyce slung her arm behind his neck as he clasped her against his chest.
Okay, maybe he didn’t have as good a grasp on realm jumping as he thought. In retrospect, it wasn’t at all surprising that a bridge would go both ways.
Thorne’s impressive leap carried him well within the no-man’s-land that surrounded them, but then he staggered; clearly his djinni was as unsettled on the doorstep of hell as the repentant teshuva.
Only a quick thrust of his sword into the strange shifting surface beneath their feet kept him upright.
But the tenebraeternum didn’t like being poked with angel relics. The verge heaved around them. Alyce gasped in Sid’s ear and held him tighter. Red, yellow, and black lightning streaked through the gray, disrupting some of the orb portals.
Including the one Thorne had arrived through. He spun back, cursing, but the rounded window collapsed into a lopsided crescent, its view to the outside world fuzzed like an old tube television losing reception.
With the djinn-man occupied, Sid let Alyce slide down his chest to her feet, though he didn’t let go until he was sure she was steady, or at least as steady as one could be on the gateway into hell.
Thorne wasn’t taking their precarious situation well. His scowl creased the birnenston burns on his cheekbones into a frightful mask lit by the guttering sword. The angel relic wasn’t any happier than its bearer to be this close to the source of evil. “What have you done?”
Sid kept Alyce tucked close behind him. Hadn’t he said exactly that to the talyan the first time he saw the verge? Not that he wanted to sympathize with this particular devil. “You shouldn’t have followed us,” he reminded Thorne.
“This is the last time I forget that nothing good comes of following.” Thorne leveled the sword at them, but nothing happened—not even the pathetic solenoid rattle of one of Liam’s junker cars. “You could die here too. Get us out.”
Sid spread his empty hands. “I can’t. It’s up to Alyce.”
She blanched when Thorne rounded on her. “I can’t. … I don’t remember what I did.”
“Remember,” Thorne snarled, “or I’ll finish the games we’ve played all these years.”
Sid stepped toward the djinn-man, but Alyce hauled him back, her grip surprisingly strong. He didn’t pull away; he would never willingly separate from her again. “Maybe you can threaten her into being yours. Since all those years she was lost and alone, and you still couldn’t win her.”
Thorne recoiled. He squared his shoulders again, but that first flinch of hurt had been too quick even for his djinni to prevent.
“She’s yours now, Anglo. I grant you that.” His tone softened. “So you make her remember, and I’ll undo your possession.”
Sid froze.
With her hand still on his arm, Alyce must have felt his hesitation. Her fingers trailed down his arm, and she stepped away, her gaze bleak as the coming winter when he glanced back at her.
Unbidden, his gaze slid to the djinn-man in fascination. “You can’t. …”
Thorne waved the tip of the sword in a sinuous pattern near his feet. “I’ve already done it three times tonight.”
“And destroyed them all,” Alyce choked out.
Thorne shrugged. “Only the first one. The other two died on their own because they’d been too long possessed.” He smiled at Sid. “But you … Your teshuva has barely had time to unpack.”
As pages from league books he’d read came to mind, his life as a Bookkeeper flashed before his eyes. “It might still kill me. The flaw in my soul the demon exploited to possess me would be even more exposed when it left.”
Thorne shrugged. “A risk, true. But how much worse could it be than where you are now?” A sweep of the sword encompassed the gray. “And you’d regain all you had. I’m a gambling man. Are you?”
“I wasn’t before,” Sid said.
Alyce made a soft sound, like the malice cry of furious despair but only a single, human octave, low and mournful. The many mouths of the verge echoed the cry, including the hazy crescent view of the talyan battling the djinn-men, no more substantial than a dream.
Or a nightmare.
Thorne smiled. “Good man. You can take that with you from your short time as talya. A parting gift.”
“Go.” Amidst the demented whispers, Alyce’s quiet voice almost disappeared. “I think I can freeze the shifts long enough for you to slip away.”
Sid searched her eyes. He saw no trace of the teshuva’s fog, but just a pale sky blue down to her soul. “And what about you?”
“I can hold the verge steady on this side but not while I pass through myself.” She dropped her gaze. “I’ll stay.”
“No bets on your surviving here,” Thorne murmured. “Not even from a gambling man.”
Sid glanced at Thorne. “And still you think I’d take it?”
“I’d bet the house.”
“Then you’d lose your house. Again.” Sid faced Alyce and forced her to look at him; he forced her to look and hopefully see what was down at the bottom of his own soul. “And you’re crazy if you think I’d let you stay here.”
“Crazy?” Her eyes flickered, not violet, but with the faintest hint of returning life.
“And I’d be crazy to let you go. You’re my symballein mate, and that makes us two halves of something special.”
“Especially crazy,” Thorne snapped. He whirled the sword over his head. Its blessings might be twisted in this place, but the edge whistled sharply through the gray. “I’m not asking nicely.”
Alyce spun on him, as graceful as the blade. “Then don’t say anything at all.”
She swept her hands across her body and back again in a swirl. Ether fled from her gesture in chaotic waves through the gray fog.
Thorne disappeared in the shifting madness of shadows and warped portal views as the waves expanded. His shout of rage barely reached them, lost between the jumbled possibilities.
“Interesting.” Sid tapped his chin. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“It’s nothing, just delusion, reflected back at him. He’ll fight his way through.” She gazed up at him. “As you should. That’s one thing he was right about, Sidney—you could let your demon go.”
He reached for her, and her fingers were icy cold. “I could. I’d take the risk, but …”
“But nothing.”
“Exactly. I’d have nothing without you.”
She shook her head. “I saw those pictures in the archives of how much good my little demon can do. More than me, the league needs a Bookkeeper.”
“And I’ll be Chicago’s Bookkeeper. It’s what I am, and I don’t need anyone’s stamp of approval, not anymore. But not having you …” He tightened his grasp, willing the warmth of his skin into hers. “I need you. That illusion you seem to think I could fight my way through—that isn’t a theory or a concept to unravel. That is my love.”