Ruled by Steel (The Ascension Series #3) (17 page)

She opened the bag and turned it upside down.

One of Devadas’s severed hands splattered to the ground.

Nine

Neuma followed Elise
back to Abraxas’s room. “What do you want?” Elise asked, glancing at Neuma over her shoulder as she unlocked the door.

“Do I gotta want anything? It’s my room, too.” Neuma bumped the door open with her hip and stepped through. She stripped off her body armor as she walked toward the bed, dropping it on the floor piece by piece.

Annoyance knotted in Elise’s chest. Knowing that whoever had killed Devadas was the same person that had freed Belphegor wasn’t doing anything for her mood. The fact that Neuma had only found one of Devadas’s hands outside the House wall—meaning that one of his hands was still unaccounted for—also wasn’t helping. And now she was going to have to sneak into the Palace in disguise to figure out what the fuck Vassago’s murderer, Belphegor, and Aquiel had to do with each other.

That meant she needed a disguise—a glamor, with James’s help—and contacting James willingly was the cherry on top of Elise’s bad mood sundae. She didn’t necessarily need privacy to work with James, but there was something very intimate about getting into his head and letting him into hers. Elise didn’t want a spectator.

“I told you, I want you to keep watch on the wall,” she said. “I’m leaving the House again in an hour, and we’re vulnerable to another attack until I find Devadas’s other hand.”

“Yeah, I know, but I’ve been running hard since I got here. Baby needs rest once in a while.” She pushed through the office doors to the bedroom and left it open as she crawled onto the bed.

“That wasn’t a suggestion, Neuma.”

“And you’re not my boss, Elise,” she said with a sharp edge to her voice. “Lighten the fuck up. I found a hand today, I’ve been carrying furniture to the kennels, and I’m tired. Unlike you, I’m still halfway human. I can’t go without sleep unless I’m feeding a ton. And I’m in the middle of a heckuva dry spell.”

“So feed,” Elise said.

Neuma smiled coyly. “Is that an offer?”

She had made it clear on numerous occasions that she would be happy to feed off of Elise. But unlike with Elise, swapping blood wouldn’t be enough to cut it—Neuma was a half-succubus. She needed sex.

Elise ignored her seductive sprawl and searched Abraxas’s shelves for paper and pencil. “Go feed somewhere else.”

She turned and was shocked to see Neuma right behind her. But she wasn’t looking at Elise. Her attention was on the desk. Neuma picked up the envelope of money with two fingers, sighing heavily. “Elise…”

“Don’t you dare start with me,” Elise said.

“I’m just disappointed, is all.”

“I have much bigger things to worry about than playing mailman.”

Neuma dropped the envelope. “This isn’t about the money at all, is it? This is about your issues.”

“Yes, it’s about my ‘issues,’” Elise said, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “I’m trying to save the world from war, and my issues don’t have time for your issues.”

“Look, I know you think you gotta push me away or something, but you don’t,” Neuma said. “I was a bartender a long time before I was a stripper.
Long
time. I know what misery looks like on a woman. You’re punishing yourself for sins I bet you didn’t commit.”

She was too close to the mark on that one. “You’re wasting my time.”

“Don’t bullshit me.” Neuma’s black eyes were earnest. “We were friends when you were still all squishy and pink and human. I remember when you thought that getting your CPA license was the coolest shit ever. I
know
you, I know people, and—”

Sudden rage gripped Elise. She grabbed Neuma by the neck and shoved her against the wall hard enough to make her head bounce. “You don’t know me,” Elise hissed, shaking her hard. “You need to lose this idea that we’re friends, that there’s something
special
between us, just because I need your help to save the world. Do you understand?”

Neuma should have gotten angry. She should have fought back and told Elise to go screw herself and stormed away. But she still looked so fucking earnest. She rested her hands over Elise’s. Neuma’s long, lacquered nails left slight indentations in Elise’s skin.

“I get it,” Neuma said softly. “You were retired when we started hanging out. Not just human. You were
done
with this. You didn’t ask to be made a demon, you didn’t ask to be in charge of stopping a war. It’s okay that you’re pissed. I’d be pissed, too. You’ve gotta take it out on someone, and I’m in arm’s reach.”

Elise drew back a fist. The mental image of punching Neuma was so clear—unleashing all of her frustrations across a face so similar to her own.

Neuma didn’t flinch. She stared at Elise unafraid. “Go for it. I’ve been hit by bigger bitches than you and liked it.”

Elise’s fist slowly unclenched. She dropped her arm to her side.

“I’m not delivering your money,” she said.

Neuma pretended not to hear her. She peered closely at Elise’s eyes and gave her cheek a hard pinch. “I’m not the only one that’s gone too long without feeding. You’re looking drained.”

She was right about that. Casting spells, being zapped with a Taser, the intermittent exposure to sunlight through the fissure—her skin was losing its glow. It wouldn’t be long before she needed to eat again.

“Your temper’s gonna get worse the hungrier you get.” Neuma had dropped the sympathetic tone and gone for matter-of-fact, more like the way she used to talk to her employees. “You’ve gotta address the hunger, Elise. You gotta find a way to eat that you can live with. Dimension hopping to do me a favor ain’t the problem here, although it’s gonna become one.”

“Jumping to Earth and back would use a lot of energy, and I’ll need to figure out how to feed sooner,” she said. “This isn’t the time for that. I have to prioritize.”

“Your priorities are fucked up,” Neuma said.

“Out of the room. Now.”

Neuma grabbed her clothes off the floor. “If you want my help knocking over the Palace, you’ll deliver that money. I don’t need you as much as you need me. Maybe you should think about that before you try to shove me out of your life.”

She left and slammed the door behind her.

Elise gathered everything
she would need to cast the spell and spread it out on Abraxas’s desk: a large sheet of paper, a charcoal pencil, and one of the bottles of whiskey. Elise filled a tall glass and drank half of it before sitting down.

She gazed into the amber depths of the whiskey, enjoying the bitter burn on her tongue as much as she could. It was hard when she could see Seth’s shrouded body on the other side, distorted by the curve of the glass, and Neuma’s envelope on the corner of the desk. Abraxas’s office had become the worst place for her to hide from that which annoyed her.

The clock chimed, stirring her from her thoughts.

Elise took another drink of whiskey and let her eyes fall shut.

She didn’t have to concentrate. She only had to relax for the vision to come over her.

The darkness behind her eyelids began as senseless noise swaying from side to side, almost like waves—no,
exactly
like waves. Their white peaks became clearer. As soon as she realized what she was seeing, she could hear the rush of wind, too, and the water slopping on the side of the carrier. It was a foggy night, but the moon peeked through the clouds, radiating pale rays through the mist.

James was still on the ship, but the shore was visible as a murky black line. The carrier skirted along it, heading south to their destination.

She knew that James would be standing beside her before she looked over her shoulder. Either he had dropped his glamor or Elise could see right through it, because he was completely white-haired with a strangely smooth face. The backs of his wrists were marked with faint brown lines of tattoos. He wore a cable knit sweater and dark slacks.

Elise felt like she was standing beside him on the deck, because, in a way, she was. The fissure was only growing wider and their bond was growing stronger. Without the warding ring to protect her, there was nothing between her mind and his but distance.

Chills rolled down her shoulders. She moved to rub her arms, then realized she was holding the charcoal pencil in the dream, just as she was in reality.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” James said. He was holding a pencil and notebook, too.

“I need the glamor. I have no choice.”

He made a noncommittal noise. “We should have ample privacy. Let’s sit.”

James led her to a bench that was marked with warning signs and bright orange safety stickers. There were, apparently, twelve adult life vests inside the bench. It was more than wide enough for Elise to settle on top of it, legs folded under her, paper in her lap. The wall of the bridge sheltered them from the wind.

“Did the destruction spell work?” he asked as he sat beside her, much closer than she would have liked. His warmth was distracting.

“I haven’t tried it yet. I can’t find Belphegor to test it out. So let’s do this glamor and make it fast,” Elise said.

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You can’t rush magic. You’re just fortunate that my studies have advanced to the degree that you don’t need to cast a circle of power every time.”

“I don’t care if it used to be harder. Every second I waste
now
is seven seconds wasted on Earth.”

“I’m not sure that’s true anymore,” James said. “How long has it been since we last spoke?”

Elise thought back to the clock on Abraxas’s office wall. “A day in Hell, I suppose.”

“It’s only been three days for me.” His brow creased. “Time is equalizing. I’m afraid that’s a side effect of the fissure spreading. Hell and Earth are leaking into each other. It’s only going to get worse.”

“Especially if you open any more doors and break down walls,” Elise said.

“Do you want to spend your precious time discussing that?”

Yes
. She did want to discuss it. She was still angry from her talk with Neuma, and being near James didn’t help reduce that. Elise wanted nothing more than to beat James over the head and make him see sense, make him realize that what he was doing was insane, it was killing people, it needed to stop. But not now. Not yet. 

First, she had to fix what damage had already been caused, and that meant taking the Palace.

Elise lowered her eyes to the notebook on his knees. “Show me.”

“Draw as I do,” James said. “Begin lightly. The first one is the glamor.”

He began to sketch parallel lines, going much more slowly than the last time she had watched him. Elise copied the unfamiliar motions. She had never been good at drawing, but she was deft with knives, and it wasn’t so different a motion—the slices and swoops, the jags.

He spoke softly as they drew. “What the glamor displays will be slightly different depending on the marks you make. The one I use to make myself look more ordinary is simpler than yours needs to be. This line will make your hair appear shorter…this one will adjust the shape of your nose.”

Elise continued to copy him. It only took a few minutes to complete the light lines, but her hand muscles cramped, and she had to set the pencil down.

James peered over her shoulder. “Excellent. That will do. The next part will be more difficult.”

She lifted her eyes from the paper to watch the land sliding past them, a little bit closer than it had been when she first arrived. She recognized the ports that they were skirting. “That’s Ireland,” she said, flexing her fingers to loosen them. She found herself smiling faintly. “Remember what happened in Dublin?”

He obviously did because he smiled, too. It was all the way back in 2001, before Elise knew of the betrayal, when they had still been friends traveling the world together to fight evil and save lives. The Dublin incident hadn’t been funny at the time. Elise and James had been investigating a possessed castle that was allegedly killing tourists, and there was nothing to laugh about over that.

After a long and difficult exorcism, Elise believed that she had neutralized the castle’s demons. She had celebrated by getting drunk—
really
drunk, with the help of some local university students and plenty of Guinness—and had proven that it was, in fact, possible for kopides to get alcohol poisoning.

Elise had been unconscious in the hospital when James realized that the castle was still inhabited. They hadn’t had a demonic possession on their hands at all, but a rare spirit called a sidhe. The sidhe had almost killed him. Elise had dragged herself out of the hospital, backless gown and all, to save him.

“It was the Guinness’s fault,” James said with a mischievous tilt to his mouth.

“It was
my
fault,” she said. “I should have known better. I shouldn’t have drunk so much.”

“You were young.”

“Not all that young,” Elise said. She had been…what, nineteen, maybe twenty years old? She had already been killing demons for over a decade. She should have realized that she hadn’t neutralized the problem at Castle O’Reilly.

“We survived,” James said. “That’s what matters.”

His fingers curled around hers, and Elise was shocked that she could feel him so clearly. He was very firm. Very
real
.

She pulled her hand away.

“I’ll need to teach you the word,” James said. He kept his hand outstretched, but didn’t try to touch her again. “It will be easier if I can speak
through
you.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What does that entail?”

“No more intrusion than you’re already suffering, I assure you. I will speak, you will attempt to emulate me, and I can…well, let me show you. The ethereal tongue is very unlike its infernal counterpart.”

Reluctantly, she nodded, and James took her hand again. The electric sting of magic coursed up her arm, setting the runes she already carried on fire.

“Keep drawing,” he said. “Darker now.”

He didn’t have to tell her. Elise’s hand was already moving over the page, thickening the guidelines that she had placed in perfect time with James’s drawings. It felt like his hand was controlling hers, too.