Bookie didn’t smile. “Possession of the desolator numinis is more damning than you know.”
“So explain,” Archer said. “Is the stone how she destroys the malice?”
Bookie hesitated. “From what I’ve read, the desolator numinis is like the energy sinks we use to ward league dwellings from the negative emotions that attract horde-tenebrae. Except the matrix seizes the emanations we call souls.” He glanced at the spirograph. “It seems likely she’s doing the same with demonic ethers.”
Sera’s skin prickled as if the pendant squirmed against her neck. She resisted the urge to tear it off.
Archer let out a slow breath. If she hadn’t spent the last few days as his living shadow, she might have missed the carefully buried disappointment in his voice. “Then it’s just a kinder and gentler garbage can for dumping demonic trash, not a one-way ticket back to the demon realm.”
Bookie laid one hand on the spirograph machine as if steadying himself. “Is that what you hoped for?” His tone rose incredulously. “An opening into the tenebraeternum?”
Archer’s expression blanked. “And why not?”
“You can’t just rip through the Veil as if it were some petty malice.” The historian sputtered, as close to a laugh as Sera had heard from him. “It’d be chaos. Actual chaos.”
From Archer’s predatory stillness, Sera didn’t think he was particularly amused, especially when he asked softly, “Are we not teetering on that edge already?”
Any semblance of laughter fled Bookie’s face. “Not that close, as far as most of us are concerned. Bringing on the apocalypse for your own sense of closure seems arrogant, even for a talya.”
Hoping to ease the spiking tension, Sera cleared her throat. “The desolator numinis might be just another prison, but it could still hold a hint.”
“What hint?” Bookie’s lip curled, nothing like a smile but not quite a sneer.
If anyone was arrogant . . . From Bookie’s sudden pallor, she knew her eyes flared violet. “The hint inherent in all prisons. A way to escape.”
She remembered Zane’s comment about the temptation of calling on the demon, and shame pricked her. Bookie, acerbic comments and all, was part of the league, not the enemy.
“A way out might be a way back in. If the stone holds demons, just like the demon realm, what we learn from one could apply to the other.” She relaxed her fingers, fisted around the pendant. “Who besides you can tell us what other hints the Bookkeeper archive holds?”
Bookie inclined his head in grudging agreement. “More than one person could discover in a lifetime. A mortal lifetime, anyway. But I’ll let you know what I find.” He clicked off the spirograph device, and the machine powered down with a descending hum.
“On that note . . . ,” Archer murmured.
Sera grabbed her things and followed him out. “I thought nerds were charming these days.”
Archer propelled her down the hall with a hand at the small of her back. “He is not the man his father was. I suppose that is true of us all.”
In the elevator, she turned to him. “What did you think you’d find today?”
“Something, anything we didn’t know before. Which is plenty.” His gaze rested on her with a hint of the unruly need that kept flaring between them. “But I think you’re even more rare than the secrets in Bookkeeper histories.”
She wanted to kick herself for the hiccup in her heartbeat. Rare indeed.Two-headed calves and meteor strikes were rare too. Rare didn’t always mean desirable.
When the elevator stopped on her floor, he held her back. “I want to show you something. Come up to my room.”
Actually, meteor showers were beautiful, awe inspiring, and only very rarely killed people. And who wouldn’t want a two-headed calf?
She followed him up.
CHAPTER 16
His room had a better view of the city than hers, but about the same level of personality—which was to say, none. She wished she hadn’t made fun of his Spartan loft. She could’ve saved those zingers for now.
He must’ve seen her expression. “I don’t stay here often. This way.” On his desk, a computer idled, the league’s @1 insignia scrolling randomly. “I want to show you what Bookie won’t acknowledge.”
She leaned over the laptop beside him, inadvertently bumping his wide shoulder. “But I’ve finished less of the Bookkeeper backlist than I have malice and ferales.”
“I don’t need indoctrination. Bookie won’t look past what he already knows. His father was a brilliant researcher and historian, but our current Bookkeeper doesn’t seem confident enough to follow the tradition.”
Sera thought him more frustrated than unsure, but she didn’t really know the man. “What can I do?”
“You have a good mind. I need that.”
He’d brought her up to his room for her good mind. With effort, she focused on the computer screen, trying to ignore the hot bulk of his body, the memory of how he’d pulled her close as the malice unraveled. “So show me.”
He took a breath that ruffled her hair. “When we first registered the distortion in the Veil that meant a demon was crossing over, we also began recording an upswing in horde-tenebrae activity in this realm. The intensity of activity surpassed anything we’d seen before.” He opened a graph that showed the abrupt spike. A few more clicks opened demon-fighting strategies, historic battles, ancient prophecies, and oracular folklore. “Bookie believed a djinni was crossing. He said we should stay out of its way if we wanted to survive.”
“Sounds like reasonable advice.”
“I said we should destroy it before the possessed came fully into his power.”
She pursed her lips. “Sounds like your sort of advice.”
“Niall agreed with me, conditionally.”
“You threatened to do it without him.”
“I’m sure I phrased it more tactfully.”
“No doubt. So then I enter the picture.”
“Unexpectedly, a woman.” He ticked off on his fingers. “A repentant demon, but potent. Undiminished post-crossing activity.” He closed his hand into a fist, his gaze fixed on her. “And an unusually thorough technique for banishing demons.”
The coiled tension in him made her restless. “Which all means what, exactly?”
“I couldn’t understand why you seemed to be slipping back into the most dangerous hour of your possession when you drained that first malice. You were sinking into the demon realm. And then with the ferales, I almost followed you down. It seemed so peaceful, I almost . . .” He straightened, putting a short step between them. “Anyway, I hoped Bookie would confirm the technique, but I think your demon isn’t simply draining the malice or locking them away in a stone matrix. I think it’s sending them back through the Veil.”
“How can that be?” If she’d been immersed in a beaker, the water around her would be boiling from the concentration in his eyes. “Everything I’ve been told so far involves the demons invading us, not the other way around.”
“You have a unique connection to the other side. What if the teshuva chose you for that?”
She grimaced. “I was demon fodder from the start? So my mom was right; they were after me.”
His gaze softened. “Or she was the start, your penance trigger. Ever since she took you for that last car ride, you’ve flirted with death and damnation. Is it surprising you wore a path to the demon realm that led the teshuva back to your door?”
She stiffened against the unfurling anger and wondered whether her eyes glinted violet anyway. “Don’t blame her. Or are you saying I brought this on myself?”
“What good is blame? I gave that up along with everything else a long time ago.” He paced the length of the room. “I’d rather think about a half dozen djinn crammed back-assward into one of Bookie’s beakers. We could take the war where it belongs.”