How much was a soul worth anyway?
Bookie took her downstairs. He explained how the league had converted the old hotel to their private retreat. Past generations of talyan, she was informed, had made sound investments during their long, ascetic lives.
In the basement, the lab was a clutter of hardware, steel cabinets and glistening glass pipettes, sheaves of papers and a bottle of red wine.
He saw her roving gaze land. “Would you like a glass?”
“Are the tests going to be that bad?”
“Ironically, considering that intoxication lends itself to many sins, I’ve never seen a talya drunk. The demon-quickened metabolism never falls behind.”
Again, that didn’t exactly answer her question. But when he patted an exam table, she hopped up. He photographed her eyes and showed her the pictures of her enlarged irises. Then he showed her a second set.
“Under ultraviolet,” he said. “Flowers must look beautiful to you when the demon is ascendant, like they do to a butterfly.”
“I haven’t seen any flowers since my possession.” The last flowers she’d seen had been in Archer’s greenhouse. And she’d been otherwise occupied.
She wrenched her wayward thoughts back as Bookie continued. “It’s an endless source of amazement to me, all the ways demonic energy shows itself in our realm, right down to the changed structure of your bodily tissues.”
“There are other changes too,” she murmured.
He cocked his head, then turned away to gather the materials for a blood draw. “Yes. The immortality, the aptitude for violence.”
She’d meant the weary, wary eyes, the hesitation at every touch, the loss of faith in hope itself. But she supposed those didn’t show up in blood work.
“Liam thought you might have some insight into why this demon chose me, a woman, and what that might mean . . . ,” she said, hesitating, then finished, “to the league, to the war between good and evil. And repentant evil, I guess.”
He didn’t look up from threading a large-bore needle. “I couldn’t really say. I’m little more than a secretary around here. Roll up your sleeve.”
She dragged her sweater back. “Liam values your opinion. And Archer also suggested I talk to you.”
“Archer? He’s one of the few who sends me his demon depletion counts with any regularity, although he’s always stingy on the details.”
“Maybe he’s not the sort to brag.” She managed not to snort since then she’d have to explain herself.
Bookie pressed the needle against her skin. “That’s right, you’ve fought with him. Twice.”
More than that. Of course, Bookie was talking only about demons. She grimaced as he drove the needle in.
“I’ll be glad to share my experiences,” she told him in some desperation. She needed guidance here.
He huffed out an aggrieved sigh. “Then I’ll share my thoughts. Mostly that I don’t have any. No idea why the demon chose you. No idea what you will offer the never-ending battle. If I knew . . . maybe I’d finally make the talyan pay attention.”
In silence, they watched her blood pour into the syringe.
“I want to get a biopsy of muscle tissue too,” he said at last. “Take off your sweater.” She hesitated, but he turned away to stow the syringe, saying, “I’d give you a local anesthetic, but the demon would neutralize it as fast as the alcohol. You’ll just have to tough it out this time.”
This time, right. Because so far possession had been such a cakewalk. She stripped off her sweater, sitting in just Archer’s T-shirt.
Bookie turned back with an even larger needle—and froze, his gaze fixed on her chest.
Somehow, she didn’t think the unflappable historian acted this way around Ecco’s chest. “Something wrong?” Annoyance flickered through her, and the room wavered toward a black-light tinge.
She fought back the rise of irritation since demonic intervention seemed somewhat extreme. Until Bookie reached out to touch her. She caught his wrist, arresting the stereoscopic possibilities where he touched her, and then she broke his arm.
The possibilities collapsed into one when he finally looked into her eyes. He went limp. “I don’t—”
“Definitely don’t.” She forced herself to release him.
“That stone. I’ve never seen another—” He drew back, rubbing his wrist. “Where did you get it?”
She narrowed her eyes, demon-fueled suspicion warring with her customary yearning for answers. “It came with the teshuva. Why?”
“It’s dangerous. You shouldn’t go waving it around.”
She hadn’t been waving it. “What is it?”
“Desolator numinis.” He clutched the biopsy needle. “A djinn weapon.”
The stone burned icily against her skin. “Djinn? Why do I have it?”
His gaze shifted away.
“I am not evil,” she said softly.
“Good and evil are such subjective terms.”
She couldn’t help herself. She laughed.
Bookie didn’t. “The league would laugh at me too. Right before they tore you to pieces as a djinn traitor.”
That shut her up. “But I don’t even know what it is.”
“Most talyan don’t.” He scowled as if he resented the need to enlighten her. “It’s in our league records, from long ago, if they’d read. The stone is fluorspar, common in old hydrothermal vents. Lots of occlusions in this sample, more like the material used in fluxes than the refined stuff used in making glass.”
“Demons wear jewelry made from ancient volcanic events. Explains why people thought hell was in the bowels of the earth.”
He gave her an approving nod. “Underground was the closest our ancestors could come to envisioning the tenebraeternum, the eternal shadow that is the demon-realm.”
She remembered what Archer had said. “So it’s ugly, yes, but that doesn’t make it evil.”
“When saturated in your demonic emanations, it undergoes an etheric mutation. It becomes a desolator numinis, a soul cleaver, a metaphysical solvent that dissolves the link between body and soul.”
Okay, that was definitely evil. She would have ripped the pendant from around her neck, but she didn’t want to touch it. “Should I tell . . . ?” Whom? Archer had already separated himself as far as he could from her. No cleaver necessary.
“What? Tell them to read the archives they’ve had for the past two thousand years?” Bookie let out a long-suffering sigh. “Let me find out what this means first.” He hesitated. “Do you want me to keep it here?”
She grasped the stone, cold and oily slick. In her years of work, she’d presided over a great many spirits set free from failed flesh. To cut a soul from the still-living body . . . She swallowed back a flash of sick horror. “No. I understand you owe your loyalty to the league, but will you come to me first?”
He nodded. “Meanwhile, let’s get that biopsy done.”
His touch stayed as professional as any she’d endured during her surgeries and therapy, but she felt the weight of his gaze on the stone.
“Speaking of long-ago stories,” she said, “Archer mentioned a—a mated-talyan bond.”
He smoothly extracted a core of her flesh. “Bond? Hmm, yes, it’s around here somewhere. Bookkeeper archives have more old stories than anyone can remember.”
She tried to quell the twinge of disappointment that Bookie didn’t think it was important either. Why was she so eager to find yet another place where her life had become not her own? Archer had told her the demon dwelled in the emptiness of the talyan soul. Apparently there wasn’t room for anything else these days.