Pandaemonium (2 page)

One or two of them did stop on their own account, did try to stop me: “Excuse me, are you – ? Can I – ?”

Yes I was, and no they couldn’t. I just ploughed onward, ignored them utterly, brushed them off if they dared to touch.

I didn’t even need to reach for my Aspect. This much I could do just as myself: there’s not much that’s easier than self-pity, but self-contempt can crown it every time.

I couldn’t scrub his face out of my mind. Just after I’d cut away his amulet, his only protection; just as he realised what I’d done, just before I left him sitting stunned in the bath there and went downstairs to let his parents in.

That moment. Trust betrayed. He was naked and defenceless, I was booted and spurred and should have been his wall, his rock, his knight and guardian. It was what he expected of me, what he depended on.

Instead I opened the door to what he feared most. He knew it figuratively, he could see it, his amulet in my hand; he understood that I was about to do it literally.

I was still hoping that he would understand why, that too. But hope doesn’t cut it, can’t stand against guilt. There’s a hierarchy of emotions, like a periodic table, where some weigh heavier than others. Well, hell, of course there is. We build our interior lives to match the world we know, the way we know it works.

Well, hell. Hell needed its young prince. I’d just delivered him, and now I was running away.

N
O.

I
T WASN’T A
decision that I made, it was a state that overtook me. Took me a while even to realise that I was walking slower. That I’d stopped crying.

That I’d stopped moving, that it was only the river that ran by me now. Not the scenery, not the trees and the moored boats. I stood there in the path and stared at the water for a while, maybe hoping for a naiad to erupt and attack me; I could just use a good fight, a good excuse. It didn’t happen and didn’t happen, and in the end, inevitably, I turned and went back.

It was my house, best approximation of my home. He was... well, he was Jordan. Best approximation of my boyfriend. His parents were my guests, come at my invitation. Whichever way you slice that, I should be there.

And the worst should be over by now, so I could go on lashing myself for not being there. Guilt doesn’t like to let up.

Back I went, then. My boots had never felt so heavy, my skin had never crept so cold, but I did go back.

T
HERE WAS NO
body hanging from the balcony, head down and bleeding out. I’d gone far enough, been slow enough, missed the main event.

No sodden spot beneath the balcony, no mud of blood, no spillage. Perhaps they caught it all in a bucket, perhaps they kept it. Perhaps it had a use. I didn’t know.

I could ask, I supposed. If I could speak.

If he could.

I found his parents in my little sitting-room. Sitting. It all seemed almost normal, almost human, until you remembered who they were. You don’t think of Pluto and Penelope doing normal human things. Sitting down. Waiting. Things like that.

Contentment sat on them both like a layer of light. She almost smiled at me; he cocked a wry eyebrow.

“He’s upstairs,” he said. “Getting dressed.”

Keeping them waiting. It really was very nearly human, the whole scene. If you didn’t know quite how long they’d been waiting for this, quite what they’d paid for the moment.

Quite what he’d paid, what they’d taken from him, what they’d given in return. The Overworld can be like that: wealth and power and immortality, sure, but it all comes at a price. Even if you’re born to it, as Jordan was. Me, I was just as glad to be human yet, albeit human-with-benefits. And Jordan of course had clung and clung to the last precious moment of his humanity, stepping out of normal time to do it, holding himself that one day short of eighteen for years uncounted, only to avoid his birthright. This.

“I’m glad you came back,” his father said. “Go on up, I expect he’ll be glad of the company. It’s not his parents that he needs right now.”

That was... unexpectedly insightful. I nodded – well, actually, I almost bowed. It was hard not to; they held such authority, just sitting there on my sofa side by side. Paisley fabric and white plaster under a low beamed ceiling, and they still looked enthroned.

The stairs creaked beneath my boots. Never mind what my skin was doing, there was no point in creeping now.

The bedroom was empty. I found him where I’d left him, in the bathroom with the door wide open. Not in the bath, not now. Not conspicuously getting dressed, either, or not in any hurry about it. He’d pulled on a pair of jeans, but was still bare-chested and barefoot, standing with his back to the landing, looking into the mirror on the cabinet door.

It’s a small cabinet; I don’t need much in the way of medicines. Or mirrors. I know what I look like. It’s a side-effect of what I am, that we have a better idea of ourselves. Or you could say that the other way round, that we’re not so good at self-deception. Whichever. Small mirror, in a dark corner; I couldn’t see what he was seeing. Only the lean back and the smooth shaved skull, and...

“Jay?”

My voice had a shiver in it, that I heard and hated. He’d need me to be strong now if ever, confident, certain of the right. It was a new world now, for both of us. Hand in hand, we could face it down and find the joy in it. There did have to be joy. Yes.

If he hesitated a fraction before he turned, it was only for effect. He knew I was there. But then, if he was looking in the mirror it was only habit, unless it was vanity. He knew what he looked like, better than I did; how could he help it, now? It’s a hierarchy, and he’d just overleaped me by a long, long way.

He turned, and now I knew what he looked like too.

He’d always been pale, it was the only reason his white eyebrows didn’t stand out more startling than they were. Now he was – well, bloodless. Colour would come back, I knew; his brother had gone this same route before him, and he’d been golden. Suntan? Did they tan, could they, in the mere sun? Helltan, I guess you could call it else.

The gash in his throat gaped red and hot and dry. I wanted to offer him a safety-pin, to stitch it all together. A whole pincushion of safety-pins.

I had no idea what they had put into his body, in lieu of blood. Hellsand, or something like it. Perhaps that would come to account for the golden glow; perhaps he’d be tanned from the inside out, no need for sunshine here.

He looked at me, and for a moment I thought he had nothing to say. Then I realised that his lips were moving lightly, only that there was no sound. Like a TV with the mute on.

I saw him realise it himself, and figure out the problem; and lift a hand to cover the wide hole in his throat, like a stoner covering the choke-hole in a bong to channel the flow of smoke.

He said, “Desi. Why are you still here?”

It wasn’t his voice. I wouldn’t have recognised it on the phone, this rough grating difficult sound, picking its cold, careful way from one word to the next; I didn’t recognise it even face to face. It was like he was lipsynching, live and close-up.

“I came back,” I said, which was really a confession:
I went away
. “Of course I came back.” Defensively. “I couldn’t leave you to go through all of this alone, everything that’s coming now. You’ve been alone too long already.”
You’ve got me now
– that’s what I wanted him to hear and remember and think about. Not the way I’d left him to go through the worst bit on his own.

Especially not the way I’d forced him into it.

Sometimes? You just don’t get what you want. Sometimes you don’t stand a chance.

He drew air in, pushed it out again; you couldn’t call it breathing. Then he shaped the air into sounds again, and you could hardly call it talking, but the words came out savagely clear. “You’re not safe here.”

I said, “Your parents won’t harm me. I think I offended them, a bit, maybe, but...” But I was still the girl who had handed their precious remaining son back into their care. They owed me for that, and they knew it. They’d still be grateful. Gratefulish.
Noblesse oblige
: they’d enjoy that, being the obligated nobles. Patronising the peasantry.

“Not my parents,” he said. “You should run. Seriously.”

“What? Why? Jordan, whatever comes at me now, your parents are downstairs. We don’t need to run anywhere.”
Not any more.

“My parents,” he said, “won’t lift a finger. However grateful you think they ought to be.”

Oh. Finally, I was beginning to understand him. I said, “Jordan...”

“If you run, right
now
,” he said, “they might stop me coming after you. No promises, but I’m guessing they won’t let me out of their sight for a while. For a
little
while.”

“Jay, no. Don’t...”

“Did they pay you?” he asked, almost conversationally, if a raw vicious flaying can be conversational. “Thirty pieces of silver? Like that, is it? Were they the ones you were working for all this time, your secret employer?”

“No. Not that. Not any of that.” I felt sorry for them, though I couldn’t conceivably say so. “They’d had enough heartache, don’t you think, losing Ash that way? And you couldn’t run for ever, it wasn’t doing you any good...”

I wasn’t doing myself any good, I knew that; this wasn’t an argument you could win by arguing. Only, I wasn’t prepared. I hadn’t expected to find us arguing at all. I’d come back to hold his hand, to stand by him, to see him through.

“You think this has been good for me, do you?
This?
”

His hand would be as hot and dry as his voice, wind over sand. If I reached to touch him now, I realised, he would tear me apart. Very literally, and very quickly.

On the thought, I was reaching for my Aspect – and then deliberately not doing that. Letting it go again, letting it fray out of my grip; facing him as I was, human and nakedly guilty.

It was only a moment, but he’d seen. He said, “You’ll need that. It won’t do you any good, but you’ll need it anyway.”

Of course it wouldn’t do me any good. I was a human with a gift, but he was a true immortal, a prince of Hell newly come into his power. Tinfoil armour would be about as much use against a crossbow bolt.

That wasn’t why I’d set my Aspect aside, though. I just didn’t want anything between us except the truth: the core of him and the core of me. Only one of us was truly human now, with all the limits that implies. All the fears and weaknesses and loss. The part of him that was raging and betrayed, the Jay I’d known and slept with, the Jay who’d maybe loved me, that boy was human too – but that was only an echo now, a memory, a false step off an inevitable path.

Right now, that boy wanted to kill me for making a man of him – but he was torn, still half in love and half himself, not a boy who went around killing people. The other half, the man, the prince of Hell, oh, he would without a second thought – but he had no reason to. He had power in his fingertips and fire in his bones, all thanks to me.

Between them they were giving me the chance to run, while they both knew full well that they’d chase me. Chase me and catch me, that too. Not in a cat-and-mouse way, they weren’t playing games here; he was at war with himself, my all-too-human boy, while the ascended immortal was barely more than an audience and a vehicle for now. That wouldn’t last. My Jay would be subsumed, swallowed up, assimilated – and then, if I’d run far enough and fast enough, if I’d been clever, I’d be all right. Maybe. Jay loved me and wanted to kill me for what I’d done to him, both at once; if I was lucky, Jordan wouldn’t care.

But I really did need to go now, while Jay could still hang on to enough of himself to let me, before the cold rage got the better of him.

“We need to talk,” I said; and then, “Keep your phone charged. I’ll text you.”

And then I turned on my heel and was out of there, down the stairs and into the day with not a moment wasted, not a word of farewell to his waiting parents, nothing.

CHAPTER TWO

O
NTO THE TOWPATH
and turn downstream as though that would be easier, as though it would carry me along. No boat, no bike; so one foot in front of the other and just run, all too literally. I wasn’t sure if that was what he’d meant – Jay himself had used buses mostly, when he was being a teenage runaway, until I caught up with him – but this was my thing. I always was a runner. Even when I was a kid, when I was Fay: cross-country champion, school and county.

Now? I could run all day. I could probably run for ever.

That day, it felt like I might need to.

I was shrugging on my Aspect as I went, like a girl shrugs on a coat: something well-worn and familiar, shaped to her body by time and use and care. I didn’t need to think about it, even. I had hard running ahead of me and a hard threat behind; I needed all the help I could get.

Black denim and boots is not the ideal running kit, but that didn’t matter now. I wouldn’t be working up a sweat. Not with my Aspect on. Henley to London is forty-odd miles by road; along the river path it’s probably fifty. Even so. No sweat.