She rubbed at her arm where the malice had fastened its teeth. “Yeah, it was interesting, all right.”
“You wanted blood-and-guts action.”
She grimaced. “Not my own.”
His amusement faded. “I hope it won’t come to that. For the sake of both our souls.”
“You do what needs to be done, and so will I. You’ll just have to let go of the rest.”
He contemplated all that had slipped away from him over the years. “My soul?”
“Your hurt.”
The accusation rankled, unfair, not to mention pointless. “I thought you’d have figured out by now that the demon heals the wound but not the pain.”
“I’m not talking about the battle scars.”
Neither was he. “When you’ve fought as long as I have, see if you still feel the same.”
She raised her chin. “Who’s got that kind of time?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” The thought should have depressed him, being far too true. But somehow the snap in her eyes made him glad the nights were long.
Sera made him go another bout, retribution for that crack about their respective ages. If he wanted to play the wise old man, at least he could wheeze a little.
Too bad he was in such damn fine shape. But they were both breathing hard at the end.
“We’re through.” A glint of respect shone in his eye. “Save something for the malice.”
She rubbed her shoulder, wincing at the twinge. “How is Ecco supposed to catch one?”
“Oddly enough, or maybe not, he has a way with them.” From behind, Archer splayed his fingers over her shoulder. “Where does it hurt?”
Her breath, which had eased, jumped again at the contact. “It’s not bad. The teshuva is taking care of it.”
“Just checking.” His voice was soft, at odds with his firm hands.
She forced herself not to lean into him. “You were saying, about Ecco and his malice.”
“I found him once, covered in slime. They kept coming to their slaughter. I thought he might cry. He said it was like drowning kittens. Evil kittens, but still.”
She shivered, telling herself it was his story, not his touch. “I shouldn’t think poor malice, but somehow I do.”
“Hate the sin, not the sinner.”
“I think you mean, ‘Love the sinner, not the sin.’ ”
His hands fell away. “Same thing.”
“No,” she said patiently. “One is negative and one is positive.”
“I suppose, if you want to split hairs and not malice.” He stretched, a roll of muscle and sinew that made something inside of her leap in answering reflex. “The talyan won’t be back until early morning. You should get some rest before then.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to. Who knew what her dreams would be? Temptation, no doubt. “Let me know when you need me.”
The faint breathlessness in her voice made her squirm. Just the workout, she told herself. Anybody would have been breathless. It wasn’t just his body having that effect on her body.
Without waiting for his confirmation, she escaped to her suite.
Despite the long day, she couldn’t sleep. The talk with Nanette and the sparring—physical and verbal—with Archer had her brain in a whirl. She called and left a message for her physical therapist, canceling her appointments, saying she felt much better lately. It was too late to call her brothers or Wendy at the nursing home. She lay on the couch and wondered if, from now on, it would always be too late.
She must have fallen asleep, because when the knock came at her door, she was dreaming about an assembly line full of pie shells. À la I Love Lucy, she sealed squirming malice into the pies. But the pie shells were glass and she sliced her thumb. Suddenly, on the conveyor belt sat a huge, hulking feralis, its orange eyes fixed on her, drool from its overhung jaw burning holes in the crusts.
She staggered up at the second knock.
Zane waited at the door. “Archer said meet him in Bookie’s lab.”
She gathered a sweater, her bag, and a notebook—not sure what else one took to a malice execution—and followed him. “Will you be there?”
He shook his head. “I’m beat, literally, figuratively, you name it, it’s beat. You’ll be okay?”
“Just not sure what to expect.”
“You’ve done it already. Do it again.”
And again. And again. “ ‘ Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,’ ” she sang under her breath.
Zane picked up the next line. “ ‘ When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing.’ ” He shook his head. “I’d be pissed if my dinner started talking back. Speaking of dinner . . .” He gave her a wave and broke off at the kitchen.
Daylight gleamed through the windows, but the halls were quiet, the talyan having returned from their night’s work and now recovering for the next. As she headed down to the lab, the silence thickened, until she found herself holding her breath.
So she heard the low murmur of the men’s voices, then a thin blackboard screech that raised her hackles. The malice.
“You’re jumping to conclusions,” Bookie was saying.
“I got slimed for nothing?” Ecco’s petulant complaint was almost lost in Archer’s brusque reply.
“Testing a hypothesis is not jumping to a conclusion. You should know that.”
Bookie gave a sharp laugh. “I do, since I’m the one supposed to be creating the hypothesis.”
“Who cares?” Something rattled, and Sera imagined Ecco slapping his hand down on a tray of obscure implements.
“Easy for you to say,” Bookie snapped. “No one wants your job.”
Archer’s soft voice carried all the more clearly for its intensity. “Your rank is safe, Bookkeeper, always has been. If your father made you feel unwelcome in his studies, perhaps he wanted more for you than a lifetime down here.”
Sera winced, picturing Bookie’s expression. No one liked their familial failures laid out on the exam table. She should know.
She scuffed her feet and whisked around the corner, already talking. “Sorry I’m late.”
The three men moved away from the stiff stances they’d held. Archer nodded at her as she dropped her bag on the counter.
Between the men, a beaker topped with a gold seal held a flowing, inky substance of half liquid, half gas. She leaned closer, then recoiled with a gasp when a red eye spun across the inner surface of the glass.
“Don’t knock it over,” Ecco warned. “They’re a bitch to get out of the ductwork, and they always end up in my shower.”
She swallowed. “I didn’t realize you could fold them so small.”
“They’re like rats. They go wherever that eyeball fits. Still a pain getting them into the bottle, even with the etheric dissonance generator and the rogue-priest blessing on the glass.”
“I already have papers on malice morphology,” Bookie said impatiently.
“That’s not why we’re here.” Archer leaned his hip against the counter. “I want you to take an ESF and ion reading as Sera drains the malice.”
“Seems kind of unsporting at the moment,” she said.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel?” Ecco grinned. “We could let it out and you can try to drain it before it ends up in your shower. I’d hate to have to come after it.”
She grimaced. “I guess I’ll work up the nerve then.”
Bookie crossed his arms. “I have papers on malice dispatching too. Adding footnotes to studies already done is all very interesting, but—”
Archer straightened from his lazy stance.
Bookie fell silent. Even Ecco studied his fingernails with sudden attention.
Sera leaned over the beaker again. “I don’t know how I did it before.”