Dark Light of Day (28 page)

I sighed. It was going to be a long negotiating session.

Ari got the ball rolling by explaining, as if they didn’t already know, what their positions were. Nergal wanted a divorce but his only legal option, absent Lamia’s consent, was a separation. In short, under demon law, Nergal was stuck with Lamia until she said otherwise. Her debts were his debts; her sins were his sins. Demon lovers who married were bound by magic. They lived—and died—together, unless both agreed to end the marriage.

For over an hour we tried to reason with Lamia as Nergal became more and more agitated.

What if, in return for her consent, Nergal built her more wells to the west and north of New Babylon?

She didn’t want more wells.

What if Nergal built Lamia a new subterranean vault in New Babylon to hold her non-viable urban offerings?

She didn’t want a new vault.

What if Nergal helped Lamia to establish a devotion cult centered around Blacken Ridge, Morkill Steppe, and some of the other western outposts?

She didn’t want more devotees.

What did she want?

When I finally thought to ask her, her answer was so unexpected, it left me breathless, like I’d been hit in the gut with the lance that had unhorsed Lucifer.

“I want a child.”

“What you want is impossible,” Nergal said, his voice laced with bitter magic. It hurt to hear it.

Lamia smiled sweetly at him, revealing a disgustingly sharklike double row of razor-sharp canines. An image of
her smiling down at her infant—a second before she ate him—assaulted my imagination.
How unfair,
I thought.
Were my desires that different from hers? Was I any better just because I had only a drop of demon blood whereas she was one?

Nergal fished in his pocket and threw a handful of something at Lamia. Two small objects hit the floor and broke apart. Husks of corn and strands of wheat shattered around her feet.

“Waxing magic can’t help you!” Nergal shouted. “Mederies can’t help you!” Suddenly, the room felt like a closed cab during summer solstice. “I want to be free of you, you mad, fat cow!” Nergal threw two more. One bounced off Lamia’s shoulder and fell to the floor; the other flew over her head and landed somewhere in the back of the room. Lamia cackled like a crow. I had a feeling Nergal’s next move would be to start throwing magic. I was afraid he would go apoplectic and spew his demon rage in one great big solar flare. I readied myself to leech massive amounts of oxygen from the room, thinking that would be the only way to control a sun demon like him. But before I could, Lamia’s cackling turned to coughing and the coughing to retching.

She pitched over in her chair and vomited on the floor.

I stared at the steaming mass of blood, tissue, hair, and half-digested grain products that Lamia had just disgorged from her innards. A cold, hard knot of fear formed in my belly and spread outward, drying my mouth and stiffening my limbs. Ari picked up one of the objects Nergal had thrown at Lamia. He studied it for a moment, his signature dimming, and then he started picking up the other ones. I beat him to the last one and clutched the tiny thing in my hand.

It was a Bryde idol. A corn doll. And Lamia had been eating them.

S
pring rescued us from the clutches of winter. The snow melted, leaving the ground soggy and the sidewalks wet. I packed up my high-necked sweaters and heavy cloak. I moved my boots to the back of my closet. I started wearing sandals and even traded in my usual assortment of bulky black and charcoal gray wraps for a few body-skimming, above-the-knee tunics in burnt orange and deep purple. But I refused to go so far as to wear pastels for Eostre.

Once, after our initial client interview, Ari tried to talk to me about it. But I cut him off. For reasons both personal and professional, I told him if he ever raised the subject outside of class, I’d stop seeing him. He didn’t. But he did often wander into the secluded area of Corpus Justica where we’d first kissed.

Our amorous encounters there always left me feeling shaky. Like I’d reaffirmed some treacherous vow or risked an even deeper level of enchantment. Or, at the very least, fallen several more feet toward the simple act of falling in love.

But I never said the words. No further declarations were made. Clothes stayed on. Demon marks—and other places—remained frustratingly untouched.

I met with Nergal several times to discuss his case. He wanted me to pursue an insanity exception to the mutual consent requirement for divorce. There was no such thing. When I told him that, he started threatening. Threatening is a demon’s bread and butter, but his threats had a degree of candor and credibility that often turned my blood to ice.

I lived in fear that Nergal would come to me in the night, while I was asleep and defenseless. His agitation since our first meeting tripled, which tripled my worry.
Did Nergal have another demon lover waiting? Why else would he be gnashing his teeth over six weeks of strategy sessions when he had another six hundred years to live?
Then it dawned on me that the demon lover might visit too, to serve her own version of a Motion to Compel. And if Lamia was any indication of the type of demon Nergal favored, I didn’t want to meet Nergal’s next bride. In the weeks following Bryde’s Day, I bit my fingernails to the quick, bought three new deadbolts (knowing they were useless), and sometimes made Ivy sleep at Fitz’s because I was convinced room 112 of Megiddo would see another demon attack.

My life continued in a tense, stagnant sort of way. I was terrified of Nergal and the potentially lethal “what ifs” and “don’ts” we discussed in the classroom part of Manipulation. I wanted to discuss it all with Ari, but he was the last person I could really confide in. Every time Ari “accidentally” ran into me in the library, Rochester’s voice boomed in my head:
Avoid collaboration. Avoid even the appearance of collaboration.

Meanwhile, I made some headway in the Manipulation dungeon, which was what I’d started calling the basement of Rickard Building. I learned how to distinguish a war hammer from a hatchet, a battle-ax from a broadax, and a claymore from a rapier. A few times I was even able to shape my magic into something that vaguely resembled one of them. But most times the training sessions were as tortuous
as that first one. I threw off large uncontrolled magic blasts when cornered, still inadvertently set things on fire from time to time, and had yet to master the technique of retracting my magic without a big fireworks show. My hand-to-hand fighting strategies improved only incrementally. Bloody noses became such a usual occurrence for me on Wednesday mornings that I started packing a med kit so I could dope and doll myself up before Copeland’s class at 9:00 a.m.

To his credit, Ari did the best he could to try and soften Wednesday’s blows, both literal and figural. When we weren’t reading, studying cases, or engaging in other nonacademic activities at Corpus Justica, he helped me with my magic. He still murmured advice or words of encouragement during training sessions in the basement. And he always walked me to the bathroom afterward and waited outside for me to clean up and pretend I was okay when I wasn’t.

Every Wednesday afternoon, I rang the Aster house hoping to reach Peter. But each time Mrs. Aster told me (in increasingly irritated tones) that she hadn’t heard from him either. Some Wednesdays, the only thing that got me through was knowing Peter was still in the Asters’ garden shed searching for the spell that would finally put an end to my misery.

O
ne Sunday afternoon in Rign, Halja’s fourth month, Peter finally returned. Fitz had gone to see his mother and Ivy had gone shopping. I’d finished my morning reading on quit claims, quiet titles, and equitable conversion and was heading to Marduk’s, thinking I’d have the clam chowder with a side of asparagus. I was debating the merits of grilled versus roasted, when someone yelled my name from across Angel Street. I turned toward the voice and almost didn’t recognize the man waving at me.

Peter’s hair had grown longer than Ari’s, but, unlike Ari’s dark mane, Peter’s hair was so light it was almost white. He wore it gathered behind his head, tied with a simple black band. His canvas trousers were frayed at the bottom and his
shirt, collared though it was, looked slightly wrinkled. He wore a bone-colored leather jacket that fell past his waist. I stared at him, my thoughts piling up on one another like a ferry collision at dawn.

Did his appearance here mean that he’d found the spell? Living in the garden shed seemed to have freed Peter from more than just Mrs. Aster’s thumb. Wrinkled shirts? Leather? Long hair?
And then…

Peter looked pretty good as a scruffy rebel.

We embraced, which was still a bit awkward, and stared at each other. We each spoke at the same time.

“Did you—”

“How are—”

I laughed and Peter smiled. He grabbed my hand—that was a first—and pulled me toward the Joshua School. In seconds we were sitting side by side on a firm white couch facing a huge glass window that overlooked Angel Street. Behind us was the boyish-faced man who guarded the Angels and their wall of cubbies. He’d been utterly expressionless and silent when Peter and I had walked in.

Peter sank down into the couch, his arm resting casually along the back of the sofa behind me. I perched on its edge, unusually uncomfortable about leaning back into Peter. He didn’t seem to sense my unease. Using his foot to gently push aside a fluted glass bowl, Peter stretched out his legs and rested them on the glass table in front of us.

“The Etincelle search went well, Noon.”

“It did?” My heart beat faster.

Now that we were four months into the semester, the stakes for casting the Reversal Spell were getting exponentially higher. For one, I’d declared my magic and started training to be a Maegester. Attempting to reverse my magic now, absent the Demon Council’s permission, would be risky for both caster and castee. For another, Ari had made his thoughts on the Reversal Spell clear. He didn’t think I should let Peter cast it over me—ever. I was determined not to live my life making decisions based on what a guy would want
me to do, but Ari had become a lot more than just “a guy” to me. Ari reminded me time and again that there was nothing wrong with me, that my waning magic was unique instead of abhorrent, that Manipulation would get easier. He reminded me that Mederies were the weak ones. There had been no attacks or abductions since Bryde’s Day (Seknecus had even removed the alert he had posted at the beginning of the semester), but the sins were unsolved. The
rogare
demon who’d burned Bryony, attacked Laurel Scoria at the train station, and likely abducted Amaryllis Apatite and Peony Copperfield was still at large. Ari often asked me, if I were ever to encounter the
rogare
demon who’d committed the unsolved sins against the Mederies, would I rather have waxing magic or waning?

Six days of the week I leaned toward waning. But every Wednesday I changed my mind.

Peter was explaining how he had searched every inch of the Aster archives. He’d found no further copies of
Last Stand
and no mention anywhere of the Reversal Spell either directly or indirectly.

“But I know where Jonathan Aster might be buried,” he said. “I found a copy of his Last Will and Testament, including a codicil indicating his burial wishes. If he died in battle, he wanted to be buried on the field.”

I scoffed. “That’s hardly helpful. Armageddon’s battlefield was the whole of New Babylon. If he died in battle, he could be buried anywhere. He could be buried right out there under Angel Street for all we know,” I said, motioning toward the street.

“Yes,” Peter said patiently, “and if we had nothing more to go on, I might agree that continuing to search for the spell by attempting to locate Jonathan Aster’s remains might be futile. But…”