All That Falls (3 page)

Exile.

Lysander knew all about exile. But he was hoping to make his own a distant memory.

Movement below caught his eye.
There’s a child on that roof.

A little girl. Eleven or twelve perhaps?

With an unsteady gait she wobbled across the concrete.

It’s dark. Why is she there alone?

She climbed onto the ledge. Bare feet shuffled over the faded artwork that someone had painted. He hovered in the clouds.

“Be careful,” he whispered.

She rubbed her arm and swayed.

He held his breath. Archangels weren’t allowed to consort with humans. As an
arcanon
—a fallen angel—Lysander wasn’t barred from it, but he avoided people out of habit. He also avoided them to resist the temptation that beautiful women presented.

The girl teetered.

She’s not my responsibility. I’ve let myself get too entangled with human beings lately. I shouldn’t—

She pivoted too fast and stumbled, her eyes wide with shock and terror as she fell.

He dove, a torpedo through the air, until he caught her. Her eyes rolled back and her head hung toward the concrete street that would have destroyed her skull.

She’s unconscious and barely breathing,
he realized.

Opium-scented breath emanated from a fragile body. She was small, but not a child after all. He landed and laid her on the doorstep under a large awning.

“Opium tastes like heaven, but isn’t,” he said, resting her head gently against the step. Her bleached hair fell away from an unlined forehead. Under cherry lipstick her lips turned dusky blue.

She goes,
he thought. “You’ll see the difference soon.”

The click of heels in the distance made him look over his shoulder. He recognized the cadence of those footfalls.

Cerise.

Lysander straightened, very tempted to stand his ground, to wait for her to arrive. No law forbade him from talking to her.

The scuff of other shoes was paired with her heel strikes.

There’s someone with her.

Who? A man or a woman?

He ducked around the building into shadow and waited.

From a roof’s edge, an icicle hung like a dagger ready to fall. Spring had arrived but then receded, like a virgin clambering
under the covers on her wedding night. Two days of freezing rain had claimed the Etherlin, but a new warm front was steadily melting the ice.

As Cerise walked with Hayden, she drew her shoulders forward, huddling against the chill.

I’m so cold.
Why is it always like this when I think about Griffin?

Memories of him gushed like a flood…Griffin’s sandy brown hair and the crooked smile that could transform his expression from angelic to devilish in an instant. The collection of vintage rock T-shirts that he and Cerise had shared between them. The “morning” coffee they’d drunk upon waking at 6 p.m.

Cerise dug her nails into her palms.
He’s been dead almost ten months. You have to deal with it and move on.
The problem was she couldn’t.

The final night with Griffin was a hazy blur that haunted her. And the holes in her memory stretched back insidiously. She couldn’t remember the songs they’d worked on. She couldn’t remember their last fight, though she was sure they’d had one.

Worst, and most important, her magic had been damaged. The power she used to inspire people had melted like so much snow. She’d been faking it since then, kept expecting it and her memory to return after the pain receded, but they never did. After ten months, she felt worse than ever.

Some of her aspirants suspected, and it was only a matter of time before the council realized, too. If only she could unlock her mind. If only she could review the steps she’d used to tap into her power in the past.

I need Griffin’s missing songbook. I need to see the flow of ideas, to relive the way the magic worked. The missing pieces are on those pages. I know it.

Instincts more powerful than any she’d ever felt outside of her muse magic were driving her to find the book. She dreamed about it constantly.

Unfortunately, she and the band had been searching for Griffin’s songbook since they buried him. The journal had contained all the songs that Cerise and he had worked on during his last year. There were thirty-seven songs in total, including several that Cerise had known would be number-one hits.

After Griffin died, Cerise couldn’t remember a single lyric or melody from all that work, which had left Griffin’s band, the Molly Times, without their lead guitarist and unable to record new material. They’d begged Cerise to work with them, to inspire them, to come to rehearsal and jam with them. But without her magic, Cerise couldn’t help. It broke her heart. Hayden and Jersey had lost their brother; they should’ve at least had his final musical legacy. Cerise couldn’t even help them retain that much.

“I don’t know what’s going on with Jersey. She
knows
the songs,” Hayden said as they walked. “She hears a lyric once and remembers it. Always has. Do you think she’s screwing up on purpose?”

“No.”

“Not even subconsciously? As a way to get back at him for dying?”

Maybe,
Cerise thought and flushed. Hayden wasn’t only asking about Jersey now. “I don’t know. I’m not a psychiatrist.”

“I wish she’d let me take her to one. She needs to talk to someone about how she really feels. It might help.”

“Maybe,” Cerise murmured, reflecting on her own failed experience. She’d seen a therapist in secret, hoping that through hypnosis the woman would be able to unlock Cerise’s memories and free her muse magic. For a few moments of their session, Cerise had seen a glimpse—a very unsettling glimpse—of the past, but then it had deteriorated and Cerise had been back in the dark and more troubled than before.

Cerise pressed her fist against the side of her thigh. When Griffin had died at twenty-seven, he’d deprived Cerise of more than her favorite aspirant; he’d been the guy she was crazy in love with, the one with whom she’d been having a secret affair.

That Griffin’s death might have been partly Cerise’s fault was a detail that no one knew—except Cerise, who could not get over it. She never let on how much she still hurt, but the pain was there, just below the surface.

“I’ve been writing,” Hayden said.

“That’s great. I can’t wait to see what you’ve been working on.”

“Yeah, sure…” He paused.

“What?”

“Dorie’s cool. I thought maybe I’d show my songs to her.”

Cerise’s gaze slid to him. He wanted to replace her with Dorie? Cerise’s blood ran cold. “Is that right?”

“Well, she’s a muse, too. And I thought—”

She raised a brow, but said nothing. He flushed and clenched his teeth. She might have admired the way he was trying to assert himself if he hadn’t been stabbing her in the back in the process.

“Look, we can use all the help we can get right now. Things are falling apart. You and Griffin were amazing together, but talking to you doesn’t light my mind on fire like it did his. If anything, it brings me down and makes me feel—I don’t know, exhausted. Kind of like I’m hungover or something.”

The words crushed her, but before she could respond, she spotted Jersey’s body. Jersey was the same blue color Griffin had been that morning at the bottom of the ravine. Cerise recognized it as the color of death.

To distance himself from the frenzied attempt to save the girl, Lysander had flown to the roof. He stood at the edge looking down, unable to tear himself away. The girl’s death was bringing Cerise pain, which made him want to comfort her, to touch and reassure her.

Don’t interfere.

He stepped down from the ledge so he wouldn’t be able to see Cerise any longer, and in doing so noticed the graffiti. There was very little of it in the Etherlin, but the place where the girl had tread so unsteadily was covered with elaborate artwork. The white ledge had been painted with the tangled green of a woodland scene. He studied it and within the tendrils of vines, he spotted a blackbird. He froze for a moment, unable to believe…But yes it was there.

He flapped his wings and rose, hovering above so he could see the entire thing at once, could stare at the swirling patterns, and he spotted what was buried. A message woven into the vines. The letters emerged in one long string.

Sadly talks the blackbird here. Well I know the woe he found: No matter who cut down his nest, For its young it was destroyed. I myself not long ago Found the woe he now has found.

The verses were from a ninth-century poem called “The Deserted Home.” Lysander knew who and what had inspired it. Reziel.

Lysander’s muscles locked, and his gaze darted side to side as if expecting his former brother to appear. But of course Reziel wasn’t lurking nearby. Lysander would’ve known, would’ve felt him. Still, there was the message…

Had the demon invaded the dreams of an artist? Or maybe one of Reziel’s followers lived in the Etherlin. It didn’t matter how Reziel had accomplished it. What mattered was that it was part of the prophecy:
Watch for a sign. The message left by your betrayer marks the beginning of the end.

With stunned triumph ringing in his ears, Lysander thought,
This is it. After thousands of years of waiting, the prophecy has finally begun.

The largest tombstone in Iron Heart Cemetery was also the newest. Twelve towering feet of carved marble announced that Cato Jacobi had been laid to rest in the fresh grave. No one mourned him more than his sister, Tamberi.

A vicious kick launched the flowers that lay at the base of the headstone. Cato couldn’t have cared less about dead plants, and Tamberi didn’t want anything touching Cato’s grave that she didn’t put there herself.

From her tote bag, she extracted a one-of-a-kind Venetian vase, created nearly a hundred years ago. She clenched her jaw and flung the vase against the headstone. Shattering, its shards rained down like multicolored tears and joined the pile of fragments from what had once been Tamberi’s quarter of a million-dollar Italian glass collection. Since she’d buried Cato, she’d smashed a piece each day against his headstone, marking time, creating a testament to the fact that nothing else mattered except that her brother was food for worms.

Tamberi shoved her bangs back from her eyes. She liked to keep her black hair buzzed to an inch or two long, but she’d vowed not to cut it until her brother’s death was avenged.

She snagged a half-empty bottle of bourbon from the wet sod. She swigged deep, then while she caught her breath between swallows, she poured a generous amount onto the grave.

“Do you think the third time’s a charm?” she asked, splashing
drops of bourbon over the headstone. “A new demon contacted me,” she whispered.

The sound of a throat being cleared startled her, and she went still and silent. She inhaled and recognized the cologne.

“So you’re the one who’s been killing the grass,” his voice said.

She didn’t bother to look over her shoulder at the interloper. “Hello, Dad.”

“I’ve left you a lot of messages,” he said, his voice low with fury. “Given the mess you and your brother made, I’m under a lot of pressure. Invading the Etherlin? You must have been out of your minds. At least you were hopped up on morphine, but what the hell was Cato thinking?”

She turned slowly, her eyes narrowed to slits. “He was thinking that Merrick was never going to bring us that muse that we needed for the syndicate’s plan—your plan—to work. Cato was thinking that we’d go in and get the job done ourselves.”

“And he got himself killed.”

“Yeah, he did. But at least he had the balls to try to get out from under their thumb.”

Victor glowered, his lips retracting to show his glistening fangs. “If you don’t want to get thrown in a fucking cell, you’d better straighten up. And I’ve already told you there cannot be a blood feud. Not now. So Merrick and that bitch muse are off limits until everything quiets down.”

“I wanted the rock-and-roll muse. If you’d agreed to let us snatch Cerise Xenakis, the wrong portal would never have been opened. Cato would still be alive.”

“The North girl was the smarter choice. She was more isolated. And Cato would still be alive if he hadn’t gone off half-cocked into the Etherlin.”

“That plan worked,” Tamberi hissed. “We slaughtered every Etherlin Security officer that we came in contact with. There are no living witnesses to prove we were there.”

“The choppers were seen.”

She shrugged.

“And Alissa North could testify.”

“Not if she dies before she gets the chance.”

“I’m so fucking sick of fighting with you about this!” Victor snapped. “It’s like you’re deaf, and—” The words that would’ve followed choked and died on his lips as two V3 bullets ripped through his heart.

“I heard you. Every time,” Tamberi said as he crumpled backward, clutching his chest. She slid the gun she’d whipped out back into the pocket of her coat.

She walked behind the headstone and grabbed the sword whose blade was buried to the hilt. She unsheathed it from the earth, sending clumps of dirt flying.

She stalked to her father. Victor’s eyes were wide with shock, his bloodless lips moving silently.

Her jaw was set. “I’m tired of fighting about this, too,” she whispered. “You think it’s only about Cato, and it mostly is about him. He’s dead, so they need to be dead, too. But it’s also about something that started a long time back. And I can’t afford to have you or anyone else getting in my way anymore. You always said you can tell how committed someone is to a goal by what he’s willing to give up for it.” She swung the sword and didn’t let herself blink as her father’s head rolled free of his body. The bullets probably would’ve killed him, but decapitation was certain.

She swallowed hard and retrieved the bourbon bottle she’d dropped on the ground. She swiped the dirt away and took a burning swig, glancing up at the overcast sky. After a moment, she forced her gaze back to where blood pulsed, then trickled, and finally oozed from her father’s severed neck.