WHAT PART OF TOGETHER DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?
“Hardly your real name,” Byleth snorted. “You wouldn’t give me that kind of power over you.”
“Why not?”
“Duh. Because I’m what I am and you’re what you…” The onyx eyes blinked. “You did. Are you terminally stupid?”
“No. I hate being called Keeper, like I’m an earring or something. And you are?”
“Busy.”
“Yeah, and rude. Do you have a name or what?”
“Byleth.” She hadn’t intended to tell but there was power in trust as well. “Not that it matters,” she snorted, fully aware that the Keeper had been able to read the thought from her face, “only Demon Princes actually have names, I just borrowed this one.”
Diana shrugged. “Seems solidly yours now.”
“No way!”
“Way. You must’ve noticed how the form you’re in has changed you. If all you were was darkness, you’d have had this hole open by now and I’d be talking to you with my head up my ass.”
“I’m not sure you aren’t,” Byleth snarled.
“Nice. The point is, you’re not just wearing flesh, because of the way you created yourself, you’re wearing a fully functional human body, and it’s corrupted you the same way it corrupted…” She resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder toward the basement and Samuel. “Well, you know who.”
“You’re the bitch who changed the angel and exposed me!”
“Yeah, yeah, sticks and stones. Now, shut up for a minute and listen; we don’t have much time!”
Byleth’s lip curled. “Because all Hell is about to break loose.”
“Because my sister is right behind me.”
“Ooo, another Keeper! I’m so scared.”
“You should be. It’s her seal you can’t get through, and she could deal with you in a heartbeat.”
“It doesn’t look like it’s open.”
“That doesn’t matter.” Although the sidewalk and the steps had been shoveled, the driveway and parking lot beyond it had not. Dean pulled up as close to the curb as the snowbanks allowed. “I kept a key.”
“Dean, boy, well done.” The cat beamed at him as Claire shoved open her door. “It’s nice to know that even the most over-ethical has a tiny streak of larceny.”
“Mr. Smythe asked me to keep it.”
Sighing, Austin jumped down to the top of the snowbank. “So much for that bonding moment.”
“Byleth, you’ve become a person, and while you’re not Miss Congeniality, you’re not significantly different from at least half the kids I go to school with.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Actually, no, it’s just a thing and that’s what I’m trying to tell you, take away the darkness and there’s a person with the same potentials as anyone else, and that person deserves a life. I want to help.”
“Yeah, right. You’re a Keeper, you’re supposed to stop me.”
Hands on her hips, Diana exhaled emphatically. “Look, if I was supposed to stop you, I’ve have done it by now. Stopped you, sealed the site, and gone for mocha latte. I’m not here as a Keeper. I wasn’t even Summoned, I paid my own way with, I might add, money that could have been better spent on a new snowboard.”
“I should’ve known you were a boarder.” Her eyes narrowed on either side of the strand of hair. “I so don’t see the attraction in careening down a hill in a stupid hat.”
“I so don’t see the attraction in black clothes and bad poetry, so we’re even. Come on! You specialize in lies, you must know that I’m telling the truth. Have I touched a possibility since I got here? If you can’t sense that, Hell can.” Diana gestured toward the floor, keeping the movement as neutral as possible. This would not be the time or place to accidentally trace a sign of power in the air.
Door. Running footsteps. Another door.
Samuel was up on the shelf over the washing machine before the first set of boots appeared on the basement stairs. It was a pure cat reaction and by the time he realized he should have warned Diana, it was too late.
He recognized Claire immediately; not only did she emanate Keeper almost as loudly as Diana did, but there was a distinct physical similarity between the sisters. Beyond that, they shared the intensity that came from knowing they could, singly or collectively, explain British humor. Not to mention save the world. Unfortunately, Claire seemed as intently determined to send him back to the light as she was to send poor, confused Byleth back to the dark, and that made her someone he had to avoid.
Dean, who followed Claire down the stairs only because she held both handrails, refusing to let him by, seemed like the kind of guy who could be depended on to open the door seven or eight times an hour and pass down a sausage or two to keep a cat from starving.
Close on Dean’s heels, Austin stopped suddenly and turned, mouth slightly open. His one-eyed gaze swept over Samuel’s shelf like a pale green searchlight and kept going as though he’d noticed nothing.
Samuel wasn’t fooled. He knows exactly where I am. What do I do now?
There was nothing he could do except tuck in his paws and wait, hoping the possibilities would give him a chance to redeem himself.
“All right, so you’re here because you want to help me stay me. Big whoop. I’m here for the same thing.” Under the red sweater, Byleth squared her shoulders, wishing she could stand and stare this Keeper down but unable to lift her hands from the rock until the link was completed. “When I release Hell, I’ll gain the kind of notoriety that’ll keep me real no matter how things turn out.”
Diana sighed. She recognized bravado when she saw it. It was, after all, something she saw every day at school and occasionally in the mirror. Squatting, so that their eyes were level, she looked deep in the black depths and asked quietly, “Are you sure you want to do that?”
Was she sure? Confused, Byleth wondered how Diana’s question could sound so much like the question she’d thought she heard back before Hell decided to cooperate. Maybe…
Maybe it wasn’t too late.
Then the possibilities opened.
Claire entered the furnace room at a run, not having slowed in any significant way since she’d left the truck. She saw the demon kneeling in the center of the floor, hands pressed against the stone and knew what was happening. When the darkness in the demon reached through the pattern sealing the old hole and touched the ultimate darkness on the other side, all Hell would break loose. Which was an expression Claire had grown heartily tired of.
Banishing the demon down its own power stream and sealing the breach behind it would solve the problem nicely. A few minutes spent reinforcing things, and all but one of the embarrassing complications rising out of Dean’s first time would be taken care of and the other Keepers could just go back to saving the world instead of hanging about in metaphysical chat rooms speculating about her love life.
Halfway down the stairs, she reached into the possibilities.
Her focus split between the demon and the anticipation of dealing with that one remaining complication, she didn’t see Diana until her sister surged up out of a crouch, whirled around, and caught her power, stopping it cold a full three feet from its target.
The room, the house, and a three-block radius grew so quiet no one dared drop so much as a single pin. The point midway between the Keepers began to crackle and hum.
“I can’t let you do this, Claire,” Diana announced dramatically. “It isn’t right.”