He hadn’t looked at her again, but he said, “You are cold. I know a place we can wait.”
Wait for what? she almost asked, stupidly. Oh yes, for another version of these horrors to take her over.
The madness of what she was believing returned, made her stumble over nothing. Only Archer’s hand on her arm kept her from falling.
“Almost there,” he said softly.
She smelled the river, cold and dank, as they crossed the bridge. Her gaze locked on a rainbow sheen of gasoline coating the ripples.
Archer tugged at her. “Stay with me.”
Why? So she could become as cold as that water, like him? She shook him off. Her vision, blurred again, seemed already filmed by that rainbow glaze, edging toward the violet.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Gonna fight me again?”
His words sent goose bumps racing over her flesh. Not fear, but anticipation.
And for all his stance, he wasn’t indifferent anymore.
The violet light gleamed in his eyes too.
“Be careful which way you jump,” he warned. “You end up in the river, I won’t ruin this coat for you.”
“I don’t want to fight you. I just want this to be over.” She held up one hand when he drew breath to speak. “Not over-over. Just over for tonight.”
He smiled thinly. “It’s never even that over.”
“What? Dawn never comes?”
“I guess we’ll see.”
“Good Lord, I couldn’t have gotten a cheerful guru?” She stalked down the bridge. She might not know where they were going, but it wasn’t as if she had another choice. Going back had never been an option, had it?
He fell into step beside her. “Cheerful gurus, like musical montages, never tell it like it really is.”
“I like musical montages. ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ ‘Highway to the Danger Zone.’ ”
He whirled on her. “A minute and a half of strapping into your bandoliers and greasing your muscles? They don’t show you that the blood never comes out from underneath your nails and spring never comes back to your soul.”
She stared back at him wordlessly.
The violet glaze had vanished from his eyes. “As for that God you so casually invoke, he won’t listen to you anymore. You’re playing on the dark side now.”
CHAPTER 7
In silence, Archer led Sera to a cinder-block warehouse just off the river. A silver glow beamed from the roof of the building.
He punched a code into the lock, and the door unsealed with a pneumatic sigh. Warm air curled around him like welcoming arms. “Come on.”
She walked beside him warily, light on her feet, head raised, nostrils flared. The atavistic stance—the distrusting demon in her—sent a pang through him.
He hadn’t meant to tease or scare her with the malice sighting. He definitely hadn’t meant to reveal his own dissociation so clearly. “The humans,” indeed. When had he forgotten he himself was still—if not only—human?
More importantly, why had he remembered?
Almost against his will, he slanted a glance at the woman beside him.
They passed down a corridor, rounded a corner, and stepped out into the summer garden.
“Oh.” Her tiny sound of surprise sent another jolt through him, of pleasure this time. “A greenhouse. That explains the light from the roof.”
In the dark dreaming winter of the city, the plants glowed with fantastical clarity under the full-spectrum lights. A trickle of water drowned out the hum of the huge fans moving the balmy air, lazily stirring the leaves. Sera stared up at the understory of a tall banana tree, its wide-bladed foliage gleaming like a jewel against the black sky above.
She lowered her wide gaze to Archer. “This is yours too? Wow, demon slaying must have excellent net take-home.”
“Just no retirement plan.” He walked the path between two palms, leaving her to follow.
“My mom adored miniature roses. She nursed them through the winter on our kitchen windowsill before her depression got bad.” She shook her head, as if to shed the memory. “I can’t keep a cactus alive, much less roses.”
The twinge of her pain jolted a confession from him. “My father always said a brown thumb was the color of dung, and seeds sprout best in the richest ground.”
She smiled but her glance was sharp. “Your father sounds like a wise fellow.”
“He was a gentleman farmer, so he had a saying for every day of the season.” He regretted the slip into shared wistfulness. Had he made a mistake bringing her here? This place had a knack for dredging up memories—sometimes the dark earth seemed to swallow long-ago sorrows, only to sprout them again like weeds—but he’d never before had cause to speak them aloud.
She eyed him somberly. “He must have loved this place.”
“He never saw it. But he always aspired more toward the gentleman than the farmer part. At least he died before his only son was demoted from gentleman to garbageman.” Speaking aloud gave the old memories more weight than they deserved. “Come on. There’s a place to sit.”
She fell into step, quiet for a moment.
The luxuriant greenery pressed closer, the grow lights barely penetrating to the tiny clearing at the garden’s center. He flicked a switch at the corner of the antique Javanese daybed that dominated the space, and the strings of tea lights around the teak posters cast twinkling shadows among the orchids and ferns.
He almost missed her quick sideways glance, but he read the sudden uncertainty in the quirk of her brows and realized what the solitary bed, heaped with pillows, might look like. He tried to stifle the dull heat of a flush over his face. He’d never needed a second chair.
She crossed to the daybed. Tracing one finger across the flaking blue and red paint, she smiled up at the indolent figures engraved in the wooden canopy. Missing panels framed a view of the leaves above. “This does not look like you at all.”
“Just a simple Southern farmer’s son.” Once, the phases of decay and growth had filled his days along with the fragrance of rich earth. Now his mind was clogged with smog and gore and nights of destruction without end. The weight of the club in his coat dragged at him.
He wondered what memories of tonight would haunt his sanctuary.
“Simple. Right.” Her smile vanished. “So, why did you bring me here?”
He hesitated. The little stream coursing over pebbles out of sight murmured like a far-away crowd.
“And don’t lie.”
He scowled. “If tonight goes wrong, it will be easier to wash away your blood.”
She blinked. “Thanks for the brutal honesty.”
“You said—”
“You could’ve sugarcoated it a little.”
Inexplicably, he felt his lips twitch. “Why? I bet you don’t lie to your hospice patients.”
“I’m not usually the agent of their destruction either.”
“I don’t want to be.” The carved lounging figures appeared cruelly aloof, watching from on high, uncar ing that his choice had been to grow things, not destroy them. “But if the demon possessing you is djinn, you wouldn’t want me not to.”
She took a breath. “When will we know?”
“Not until the end, when the reven appears.”
She sunk onto the edge of the daybed, hands clasped in her lap. “How could I say yes to a bad demon?” She laughed softly. “Listen to me. Bad demon. Good demon. Does it matter?”
Hearing his scorn tossed back made him shift. “Repentant demon,” he corrected. “Or not. Teshuva or djinn. And yes, it matters.” At least to him.
Her gaze speared him. “Since you’ll be doing the mop-up if it goes bad.”
Possession offered no confirmed psychic powers. Yet she read him so easily, as if she knew all his tells; as if she knew him in ways he’d forgotten himself. “It matters to the tide of the war.”