What use was a talya afraid of death? Sera, always the guide, had shown him the answer.
The e-mail time stamps said she’d been gone almost an hour, but he imagined the frost she’d let in still lingered. He returned to the garden’s center to yank on his jeans. The scent of lily, sex, and Sera drifted around him.
She’d made him no promises—nor he to her. How could he before, knowing his immortal life was not his own, when eternity had been given to him only so long as he waged the teshuva’s war.
And how could he now, knowing she didn’t feel the same. The bond between them when they banished the demons had been an illusion as fleeting as a Chicago spring.
He’d forgotten the only way the garden could survive in this harsh place was behind thick walls and iron restraint. Letting someone in had been a mistake, one he wouldn’t make again.
Sera walked until the falling snow stopped melting on her bare arms. Let the demon keep her from freezing if it wanted. She couldn’t go to the league hotel before her appointment with Bookie. She didn’t want to answer their questions about Archer.
She wondered how much trouble he was in. The talyan were independent and wayward souls, and Liam steered them with a light hand. But even his relaxed management style couldn’t allow outright revolt.
Her willing return might take the sting out of Archer’s mutiny, especially when they needed all the fighters they could get. She had more reason to be angry with Archer than the league did. She was the one lured away under false pretenses.
A rebellious part of her mind asked, what pretense? She knew he hadn’t wanted to see her broken like Zane. Whether his motivation was guilt, simple humanity, or . . . something else, didn’t change the fact she almost welcomed his intervention.
Archer would confront Corvus without hesitation. She’d just have to keep that boldness in mind when her turn came. Of course, it’d be easier if she had his death wish too.
Her aimless steps brought her to the nursing home. She stood across the street, half hiding behind a parked truck. Two days ago—only that long?—she’d called Wendy to say Nanette would check on her father, but she’d never heard how the encounter had gone.
Lights on the porch gleamed warm and welcoming, but Sera didn’t approach. If her father had sensed the repentant demon in her and wanted her banished, she could only imagine how he’d feel about her releasing all the demons of hell. Not exactly a distinction to make a papa proud.
She pictured the honor student bumper sticker peeling off under a bloodred scrawclass="underline" MY CHILD IS IGNITING THE APOCALYPSE.
She turned and kept walking.
By the time she’d fully tested whether the demon would let her die of exposure, or only wish hypothermia would stop her shivering, she found herself outside the hospital. The emergency room offered heat and a seat. Unless she was spurting copious amounts of some bodily fluid, nobody would look twice.
As a place to contemplate her possible demise, with the gray linoleum tiles, beige plastic chairs, and the stench coming from the vending-area coffee machine, it could double for purgatory any day.
“Sera?”
For a heartbeat, her world felt surreally normal, as if this were the start of another workday in her old life—her old, old life.
“Betsy.” She stood up too fast and swayed as the blood rushed out of her head.
“Whoa.” Betsy put a hand under her elbow. “Damn, girl, you’re freezing, and you’re whiter than . . . You’re always white. Where’s your coat?”
“I lost it.” She realized she sounded vague and shook her head.
Betsy steered her toward the admitting area. “Are you in trouble?”
“Hey.” One of the waiting patients held up his hand. “I was next.”
Betsy scowled over her shoulder. “Yeah? What’s the problem?”
“I was putting up my Christmas lights, and the hammer tacker put a staple through my thumb.” He waved the digit in question.
“Right. Give me a minute to set up an OR for amputation.” Betsy pushed Sera into the nurses’ lounge. “We finally get a break from all the solvo crazies—it’s weird, they just disappeared; are they all getting high together somewhere?—and back come the normal crazies to fill the gap. Now, tell me what’s going on. How’s my patient?”
Sera dropped onto the worn couch. “Buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Southern Illinois.”
Betsy let out a long breath. “It’s that one big guy you were with, the one with the scary eyes. He looked like trouble incarnate, and now he’s got you mixed up in it.”
Sera couldn’t argue with the physical description. But she shook her head. “I mixed myself up in it. And those guys will help me make it right.” Just not the one big guy.
Betsy sat down beside her. “Honey, I know you never believed this, but the weight of the world isn’t on your shoulders.”
“It wasn’t before.” She could admit that, now that she knew what the real weight of the world felt like.
“You need to get out, save yourself.”
Sera bit her lip. “It’s complicated. I didn’t mean to bother you. I didn’t know you were on today.”
“I’m always on.”
Had she subconsciously remembered her friend’s schedule? Sera wondered what she’d hoped to find here. “You’ve seen the worst that people do to one another.
Do you think . . .” She remembered the two men lit by the neon bar sign, the shadow of the malice darkening them. “Do you think they mean to do it?”
“What’s my other choice? Every shooter, beater, and user is clinically and legally insane?”
“Maybe they are driven to it by . . . ,” Sera said, hesitating again, then finished, “by their demons.”
“We all have demons. The trick is not listening to them. That’s what I think.”
The nurse wasn’t speaking literally, Sera knew. She wondered what the other woman would say if she found out that she was right.
She had an advantage, seeing what everyone else thought was allegory, if they bothered thinking about it at all. Wouldn’t everyone fight evil if they saw what she’d seen?
She rose. “I have to go.”
“You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”
“I did listen. I’m going to fight my demons.”
She just wished she knew which were the most dangerous.
When she left, Betsy insisted on handing over her coat. Sera wanted to promise she’d bring it back. But she didn’t like to lie. Now seemed a good time to start keeping her soul as pure as possible. She remembered Archer’s insistence on the truth. Right up until he didn’t like the truth, of course.
On her way, she stopped by the hospital chapel, a non-denominational room with a lone stained-glass panel ripping off Monet’s water lilies. The orange throats of the lilies looked like a drained feralis’s fading sulfurous eyeball. That mental image probably didn’t haunt most visitors to the chapel, but she knew she’d find no peace, regardless.
If she was honest, she’d admit she never really sought peace in her faith. After her mother’s disappearance, she’d wanted answers, which wasn’t the same thing at all.
Looking around at the conscientious trappings of watered-down spirituality, she knew she still wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to be consoled or calmed. She didn’t want a conviction someone else handed her, however prettily or practically it might be packaged, like a bouquet. She wanted it to grow from within. Until it did, she’d go without.
Outside, the snowfall had thickened, and the low, heavy clouds hushed the city night. Whirling flakes glittered in streetlights come on early in the gathering darkness. She arrived at the league hotel a little before the hour and thought she’d wait in the doorway until Bookie came looking for her. But when she rattled the door, it opened.