They couldn’t understand. Hell, he couldn’t either, but understanding was his task, in the same way theirs was to risk themselves. Alyce just had a more dreadful way than most.
“That demon of yours cuts both ways, doesn’t it?” He turned back to the bed.
She lay curled on her side, hands fisted under her chin. “I heal fast.”
“Good thing.” He sat at the foot of the bed. There was plenty of room with her knees bent to her chest, even with the big black boots taking up an inordinate amount of space. “Is this sort of collapse normal for you after a fight?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it against so many before.”
He closed his eyes, glad for the sake of his suddenly wobbling knees that he was sitting down. “You terrify me.”
“I thought it was only dread.”
“Only.” When he opened his eyes again, he realized that even with perfectly functional legs, he wouldn’t just walk away from her. “Let’s get these lovely new boots off you.”
“Do you like them?”
“They are very … steel-toed.”
“Nim says either the heel or the toe should be a weapon, and I couldn’t stand up in the shoes she liked best.”
The image of slender Alyce in white stilettos rocketed from his brain stem to his occipital lobe, burning a permanent pathway in his brain as it flashed like lightning in front of his eyes. It made him think sitting on her bed wasn’t his best idea ever.
“Right. Shoes off. Sheets up. Sleep.” He could work the steps and still make his escape.
When he tugged at her laces, she sat up. “I can do it.”
He caught her hands and turned them palm up. The crescent punctures of her nails had healed into the faintest of moons, but the bloody streaks remained. “You get your boots off. I’ll get a washcloth.”
In the bathroom, he found her blue granny dress neatly folded, bloody smears right side up. She’d kept the rag, as if she might need it later. How could he reassure her that this was her new home when he had already revealed how quickly he intended to leave?
He stared at himself in the mirror as he ran the water to warm it.
What did he want? How could he even ask that when he’d chosen to give up everything for London?
He gripped the edge of the sink.
The double thuds of her boots hitting the floor made him straighten, and he wrung out the washcloth.
God, he was in a peculiar mood tonight. He’d barely seen a thing with his limited human vision, but that moment in the alley had opened his eyes.
He returned to Alyce’s bedside. She sat with her knees still pulled up to her chest, feet tucked under her hem. She held out her hands, palms down, so he perched beside her and tucked her hands between the damp folds of the cloth.
“It was interesting,” he said. “What you did out there, by yourself.”
“I wasn’t by myself.” She regarded him steadily. “You came. And you shouldn’t have.”
Her words were true enough, which didn’t lessen their sting. “Yes, well, you did all the hard stuff, such as turning the malice into etheric dust motes.”
She stared down at their joined hands. “Not much, is it, compared to what Sera and Jilly and Nim can do?”
“They’re different from you, as they are different from one another. That’s part of their strength.” He’d meant the words as consolation, but now that he said them, he wondered at their deeper meaning. Together, the first three talya women formed an unusually effective hunting team. Was that demonic evolution? Or was there a more organized hand at work?
“You think even more than you talk,” Alyce said.
He realized he’d been silent a long moment and chuckled. “A hazard of the job. Not so hazardous as yours, of course.” He swiped the cloth across her hands.
She showed him the immaculate flesh. “Okay?”
He nodded and tossed the cloth on the bedside table. He started to rise, but she took his hand.
He hovered awkwardly, one foot on the floor, one knee still bent on the mattress.
Her eyes glimmered. Not violet, not tears. He couldn’t quite identify …
“Stay,” she whispered.
Ah. Right. “Alyce, I know you heard when I mentioned London—”
“I’m not asking forever. Stay now. Stay the night.”
“Alyce …”
“There’s not much night left. I know dawn is coming.”
That should be a good thing. The return of light meant the tenebrae slunk away; it meant they’d survived another fight. And yet her voice trembled with wistfulness.
He supposed days and nights hadn’t meant much to her, lost with her demon.
It wasn’t pity that moved him, but awe at her fragile strength, that she could fall before the tenebrae and yet stand again. He knew he’d never have such endless resilience.
In his own inconsequential human way, he’d tried to be strong, when his mother had walked away from the cold and silent house where Bookkeeper secrets had gathered in a smothering dust. But as his girlfriend had discovered, the words with which he’d tried to fill the silence were hollow. And she too had left. Then the metaphorical distance between them that she always complained about had become an existent and enduring entity.
Maybe becoming the London league Bookkeeper wasn’t the be-all, end-all aspiration he’d proclaimed. Maybe it was just an end. But it was a place he knew and understood, and there he wouldn’t hurt anything—anyone—who didn’t deserve it.
He pulled free from Alyce’s grasp, and her shoulders drooped.
He curled his fingers behind her neck, half expecting her reven to shock him as her gaze flashed up to his.
“You’ve bewitched me,” he murmured. “It’s the only explanation.”
Her eyes widened. “Witch?”
“I should know better than this.” He drew his other knee up onto the bed, and she dipped toward his greater weight. “I do know better.”
“We can only know so much,” she said. “Even you.”
“Are you teasing me?”
“No. Maybe. Stop talking.” She lifted her face, an invitation. “Stop thinking.”
And he took the invitation—and took her. He kissed her until her lips reddened, and an answering flush rose in her pale cheeks. He buried his fingers in her hair, combing out the last of the valiantly clinging braid. She moaned against his lips, and the civilized part of him said, Wait, while the rest of him—a burgeoning part, in more than one sense—urged him onward.
The rush of it terrified him.
Was he no better than the tenebrae? Taking what she offered so fearlessly, with a not-so-secret darkness in his heart?
He groaned her name again, more helpless than she had ever been. Bewitched. Bedeviled. Be damned.
For once, he understood the talya thrill to freefall.
She pulled herself up to her knees, hands framing his face to slide his specs away. They clattered somewhere in the shadows. Well, he had plenty of duct tape.
She matched him, tongue to tongue, lips, teeth, and she laughed against his mouth, a breathless sound of delight that made him feel like a talya-sized hero, swelling his heart, his head, and less noble parts of him. He swept his hands down her arms, left bare by the white dress. Crystal white in October; what had Nim been thinking?
Alyce rocked into him, bumping his hands aside. She’d tugged the dress out from under her knees, and before he could speak, she’d yanked it over her head.
No sacrificial virgin had underthings like this.
He offered half a thought of apology toward Nim’s obvious shopping prowess, and then all thought evaporated.
White silk and lace. Barely enough to fill a shot glass. As a man with a scientific bent, he should have been thinking in terms of milliliters, but since his brain had gone missing … Yeah, a shot glass was more up his alley right now.