So he followed the league leader in silence down to the lab.
Liam stopped at the counter and peered down at the shard. “Is it part of a bowl?”
“Nim found it at the Shimmy Shack.”
Liam’s gaze arrowed to him. “She went back there?”
Jonah gave a sharp nod. “So unless the ferales have retired to pottery . . .”
“Or glassblowing.” Liam lifted the piece, and the glass glinted.
“The rest is turtle shell.”
Liam grunted. “We didn’t have turtles in Ireland.”
“We ate them from the jungle rivers.” Jonah shook his head. “There’s no way any of the people in the club took a chunk from a feralis. The tenebrae must’ve been on a rampage.”
Liam scowled. “Andre blamed them for hurting Jilly.”
“That is what they do,” Jonah murmured. Which was why he’d wanted to keep Nim safe, leaving her behind while the talyan hunted. How could she not understand that?
“The glass is a strange addition.” Liam smoothed his thumb over the etched surface.
“We know Corvus liked glass sculptures,” Jonah said. “He had captured the etheric emanations of birds in glass when Archer and Sera tracked him down the first time.”
“He already has control—somewhat—of the ferales, so what is he capturing now?” Liam straightened. “I’ll wake Archer and Sera, see what else they remember from the glassworks. You get Nim. I want to know what else she found.”
Jonah hesitated, and Liam rubbed his temple where the black lines of his reven curled around his eye. “Fine. You get Archer and Sera. I’ll collect Nim after I get Jilly. She’ll be furious if I leave her out.”
As they separated to their tasks, Jonah wondered how the league leader had forged such a close bond with a woman as bold and independent as Jilly. The two—like Archer and Sera—were fitted as close as blade to fist.
He and Nim only raised sparks.
His knock at Archer’s door went unanswered, so he called the other talya’s cell and got a curt message to leave his number. “We have another hint to Corvus’s location,” he said. “Liam wants you.”
Before he’d disconnected, a call was ringing through. He answered with, “Screening your calls?”
“Consider yourself lucky I had to piss, or I wouldn’t be up at all.”
“Where are you?”
“Had to get away for a day.” Archer’s voice lowered. “It’s easier to keep Sera out of trouble if we’re away.”
Jonah wondered how far out in the Shades of Gray he’d have to take Nim. “Trouble is back.”
Archer sighed. “And we will be too. Give us twenty minutes.”
“Trouble isn’t usually so accommodating.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen. Hold down the fort.” Archer disconnected.
Jonah shook his head. Was that a vote of confidence from the other talya? Considering they’d always circled each other warily, Archer’s nihilism clashing with his own objective moralism, this might very well be the end of the world.
With heavy steps, he made his way to the lab. He slowed when he heard Nim’s voice.
The grim and decidedly untrusting Archer trusted him, but his own talya mate did not. She had gone off alone to the tenebrae slaughterhouse rather than seek his help.
Even at half speed, his feet carried him close enough to hear her say, “So, Detective Ramirez said—”
“Wait,” Liam interrupted. “There was a cop?”
“But we didn’t tell him anything,” Nim said quickly.
“We?” Liam’s voice rose a notch.
“Me and Cyril Fane, the angel-man.”
Jonah closed his eyes. She hadn’t come to him, but she’d gone to the angelic possessed. And a cop too, apparently.
He stepped into the lab. Liam and Jilly were shaking their heads in sync, though he doubted they noticed, so aghast were their expressions.
“Nim,” Jilly said. “You shouldn’t mess with the sphericanum.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Nim protested. “He came here.”
“What?” Liam’s voice dropped to a rumble, with demon tones riding the lows. He whirled on Jonah. “Did you know about this?”
Nim took a step forward, bringing Liam back around. “He didn’t.”
Jonah didn’t move, but he gave her a long look. “Do you think that sounds better for me that I didn’t know?”
Her cheeks darkened, and she hunched her shoulders. “If you’d let me tell the story in order, it wouldn’t sound so bad, because I’d get to the part where now we have a clue how to find Corvus.”
Liam said nothing, so Jilly gave a curt, “Fine. Start at the beginning.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Nim said. “You know, since we haven’t been doing anything, stuck here at the warehouse. So I got up. . . .”
By the time she’d finished explaining, with only a few more muffled exclamations from Liam, how she’d summoned the lost souls, located the shell fragment, distracted the detective, and taken the angelic possessed to a lingerie store—“So I’m pretty sure we’re safe from the sphericanum hearing anything about this”—Archer and Sera had arrived.
The two other bonded pairs stared at her as if she’d sprouted a second head, one that was spouting insanity. Of course, the only reason she didn’t have a second head was that she’d left Mobi upstairs. After she’d taken the snake on her adventure.
Jonah stiffened against the proof of how much she didn’t want him as partner. But with Liam and Jilly and Archer and Sera eyeing her with such consternation, he had no choice but to step up beside her. “Moving on,” he said. “What do we really have here?”
Nim murmured an almost inaudible “Thank you.” He didn’t respond.
Liam set two fingers against the reven at his temple and sighed. “I sent a message to the Beijing league. If anyone has archives deep enough to find a reference that might help, it’s them. If anyone wants to help, that is.”
Archer flipped the shell fragment in his hand. “You’re right about it being turtle. I caught them all the time when I was a boy.”
“A million years ago,” Sera murmured. She tucked herself under his arm to peer at the shard. “When Corvus took me to the lair he was using in his solvo-dealing days, he had the glass bird sculptures, but nothing etched like this. The birds were really quite beautiful. This . . .” Her finger hovered over the seam between shell and glass. “The way he’s melded the demonically mutated husk with the glass is just odd.”
“We know art holds the tenebrae at bay,” Jilly said. “And we know Corvus wanted to be free of his djinni. Maybe he’s building a trap.”
Liam wrapped his fingers around the knot-work bracelet at her wrist and pulled her close. “A trick you taught him, perhaps?”
The sight of them, so synchronized, one to the other, stabbed through Jonah. He closed his eyes to focus on the task at hand. “Corvus might have believed tearing through the Veil would set the forces of hell directly against the gates of heaven and free him from his slavery to the djinni. But once he fell out of that high-rise where he took you”—he opened his eyes to look first at Sera, then at Archer—“because you pushed him out the window, the djinni took over what’s left of him. And the djinni wouldn’t be interested in containing the tenebrae.”
“True,” Sera said. “Since glass isn’t a solid or a liquid, it has crossover properties that might have appealed to Corvus while he was messing with the Veil between the realms. Birnenston is a demonically altered form of hydrofluoric acid, which can etch glass. So maybe the ferales were just adding extra trash to their husks. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”