“You’ve mentioned this war before. And I’m going to be a soldier?”
Or cannon fodder. “On one side or the other.”
She laced her fingers together and straightened. “Can I choose? You said those men at the bar could’ve denied the malice’s influence.”
“You chose. The night you let the demon in.”
The memories flitted across her face, expressive even in the uncertain glimmer of the tea lights.
“I wish it hadn’t come to your looking like me,” he said softly.
Her chin lifted, but the faint rise of a blush in her cheeks undermined the nonchalance. “It would’ve promised me anything I wanted, right?”
And she’d wanted him?
The thought raced through him like the demon’s battle fever, fearsome and irresistible. Without his conscious will, his body canted toward her. He couldn’t even blame his teshuva, latent at the moment, for the lapse in restraint. He wrapped his arm around a palm tree—anything to hold himself back.
“Still,” he said, “I would not have wanted to be part of your possession.” At least not in the demonic sense. The ancient text Bookie had found referenced a talyan bond. Assassin/victim was a bond too. Sort of.
“Yeah, you must have pissed someone off to get this duty.”
“No one made me.” As if anyone could.
“Then why?”
“I knew it was coming. It echoed, somehow, in me so I couldn’t sleep.” He shrugged impatiently.
“My demon snoring kept you awake, so you get to kill me? Let me guess: no bunkmates at summer camp.”
How could she tease him, when he might have to . . . “It may not come to that. Your demon may be teshuva.” Then she’d only have to fight until she died, rather than die right away.
“Oh sure, get glass-half-full on me now.” She leaned back. He’d memorized every angle of what she was seeing, staring up at the broken canopy or maybe the dark sky beyond the arching leaves. “If fewer pieces were missing, this box could be a coffin.” She ran her hand up along one post.
Archer twitched as if each finger were tripping up his spine. “I won’t let you die.” He hated himself for having to add the coda, “Not from the demon.”
“Our culture buries its dead,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “Or cremates. I studied this, you know. Some cultures floated their dead out to sea. Others left the corpses exposed on raised platforms so their sky gods could claim them. Functionally, that meant carrion-eating condors.”
Her voice dropped. “I’ve almost died twice already. After the car accident, I coded in the emergency room. And before that, my mother . . . She disappeared when I was ten, but she died when I was thirteen. She came back just long enough to try to take me with her when she committed suicide.”
The word congealed the blood in his veins. A solitary violence that had rippled outward. No wonder he’d been so strangely attuned to her unbound demon. “What happened?”
“I was walking home from school. She drove up next to me and asked if I knew her. Of course I knew her. She’d been gone three years, and every day of that three years I knew she’d come back. I got into the car. We talked. And then she drove us into the river.”
He couldn’t stop himself. He left the shelter of the tree to move closer.
She didn’t even glance at him. “The water flooded through the vents so fast. I pounded at the door. She kept grabbing at me, telling me to stay. I hit her until she let go.” Finally, she tilted her face toward him, eyes bleak. “Maybe I should have let her hold on.”
“No.” He wanted to explain his conviction. But the breath had gone out of him as if he were stuck in that sinking car.
She gazed upward again. “I’ve always tried not to think about it, but maybe that was the trigger, my penance trigger. Because before she drove us into the river, she said the voices told her to do it. What if the voices were real? Like the demon. And what if they were right?”
Fists clenched, he at last dredged up his voice. “I’ll make sure it won’t hurt for long. Not if it’s djinn.” The words were ragged in his ears.
She didn’t respond. The twinkling lights paled next to the violet glow in her gaze.
He swore. The end was here.
CHAPTER 8
The world wasn’t gray, but silver, shot through with glittering threads, bright as lightning, elusive as snowflakes. Sera reached out to hold the threads, but they slipped through her fingers, unraveling into a darkness she couldn’t bear to face.
“ ‘When you too long stare into the abyss . . . ,’ ” she quoted.
“Damn it, no Nietzsche. I’m the nihilist around here.”
The darkness belled up to meet her, and she saw herself reflected in Archer’s bronze eyes. “I wasn’t even looking into the pendant.”
“It’s not the damn rock. The last stage of possession is coming to complete the link between you and the demon. When it’s over, I want you on this side of the Veil. So stop drifting on me.”
“I wanted to hold on.” She tightened her fingers around his wrists.
He sat beside her on the daybed. He twisted his hands so he mirrored her grasp in a rescue hold. “Yes. Hold on.”
“To the other side.”
“No,” he said with strained patience. “To this side. Not to the past, not death, not damnation. Life. Now.”
“Why?”
He lifted one eyebrow.
“You’re the nihilist,” she reminded him.
“I thought you were unconscious. Only people who aren’t thinking quote Nietzsche.”
She grimaced and released him. Her palms slid past his as he let her go, his callused skin rasping on hers.
As their clasped hands parted, every molecule in her screamed as if torn asunder. She felt her essence shred like mist in the wind. The world faded again in a haze of ice on ash on starlight on cold, wet stone.
She clawed upward, icy fear swamping the air from her lungs.
Archer’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “Sera?”
“I keep going and coming back.” She tried to keep her tone level, but she heard the hitch in her voice, almost a sob.
“Stay with me.”
“Maybe it’d be easier if I just went away.” Had her mother been right all along? “You wouldn’t have to—”
“Now you want easy?” His fingers dug into her flesh. When she whimpered, he loosened his grip.
And the ice crept back. She tasted ash on her tongue. The twinkle lights seemed very far away.
“Ferris,” she cried out.
His arm snaked behind her shoulders, dragging her up against his chest. “Stop it.” His fingers under her chin forced her gaze to his. “Stop wavering.”
She clung to his solid bulk. “The last time I almost died, after the car accident, I almost wanted to.” She feared the void inside her would pull him down too, unless she could fill it.
“Your soul stays here,” he commanded. “Flawed maybe, but fight for it.”
“Not black and white. Gray.” As if she’d conjured it, the gray crept up again. She gasped for breath as the otherworldly chill spread. If she could see her soul, would it be rimed with ice, flaking ash, winking out like an ancient star?
“Sera.”
“I can’t. . . .” The cold reached her heart.
Archer cradled her and whispered her name again. His breath on her skin stopped the chill. She echoed his whisper with his name.
His mouth over hers spread heat in an almost-painful wave, branching out along her nerves in sudden desire. Desire for warmth. Life. Desire for him.
The kiss the feralis interrupted had been angry, challenging. This kiss tasted of desperation.
For a heartbeat, she longed for a touch mild and sweet as spring in this pretend garden, tinted with roses and laughter. Then his lips slanted against hers, delving deep, and her thoughts upended in a violet-tinged haze.