“But you’re here now. They must believe in your work.”
He put the scalpel in a small oven and set a timer. The stink of heated steel drifted through the lab as he purged the knife, burning away the last traces of proof of his possession.
Other than the demon now lodged in his soul.
When he faced her again, his hands hung empty at his sides. “They expect me to fail. They said making sense of the upheaval here this last year is impossible. They think there’s nothing to be done except what we’ve always done.”
“That is not enough,” she said.
“I might have agreed, especially after what happened at the church. But I have failed, exactly as they predicted.” His smile cracked hard and unamused. “Well, not exactly as they predicted.”
He walked toward the bank of gently humming machines she had no names for and stood facing their blank displays. He tilted his head wearily to one side, as if he too were trying to make sense of the dials and triggers. “What am I supposed to do now?”
The undertone of desperate dismay triggered the devil in her. It uncoiled with a familiar, threatening chill that might have frightened her once, as she lost control of herself. But Sidney had noted that its dread cut both ways. Did the control work both ways too? Who was the master in her soul?
The chill seemed to lift a bit, and between its loosening mists, she caught a glimpse of what she’d been.
“I didn’t know either,” she said softly. “When I was possessed, I thought the world had come to an end.”
Sidney’s shoulders stiffened, and he turned to face her. “I didn’t say the world was ending. Just my world.”
“What other world did I know?” She curled in tighter on herself, as if she could squeeze out memories. “I wasn’t smart like Sera or strong like Jilly or sensual like Nim. I was small—only a servant.” The teshuva’s haze hovered around her vision like a stubborn fog bank. Very deliberately, she said, “I remember …” And an edge of the fog peeled up. “I remember my master spoke of devils. He reveled in them as a goodwife delights in her hens’ many eggs. In his speaking, he summoned them.” She took a breath, and when she exhaled, the teshuva’s protective mist dissolved. “His words conjured fear and brought the demon that came for me.” She looked up, refusing to hide her face. “If I had remembered before, I would have recognized yours. I could have told you.”
Sidney gripped the counter behind him. “I know you couldn’t have stopped it. No one could.”
“But before you said—”
“Wishful thinking. Possession occurs when the demon resonates with the weakness in your soul. The weakness doesn’t vanish just because we know it’s there.”
She couldn’t hold herself any tighter. “Then we had no choice. Despite what Nim likes to say.”
He came slowly across the room, and she wondered what force drove him. His teshuva? Her self-pitying words? He stopped just out of reach.
“I have to talk to Liam. He’s going to be furious. And then I have to call my father. Will you go back to your room now?”
“I could go with you.” The suggestion sounded small, squeezed past her constricted throat.
He shook his head. “I know the dangers of an unsettled possession. I’ll be fine.”
That wasn’t why she had offered. But her throat closed the rest of the way, and there was nothing left to say.
CHAPTER 14
“Is it Friday yet?” Liam spiked his fingers through his hair again, though the morning wind chuffing across the warehouse roof kept trying to flatten it. “This week has sucked.”
As reactions to Sid’s revelation went, it could have gone worse.
Clouds were massing higher, but at the horizon, the pale blue sky was quartz sharp—the same shade as Alyce’s eyes, bright with desire.
The view kept blurring as Sid struggled to focus around the corrective lenses of his spectacles. Finally, he tucked them into his breast pocket. “You think your week’s been bad?”
The league leader scowled. “I’d finally gotten the crew hammered into some shape that wasn’t slicing at itself as often as the enemy. Then you showed up and threw everything out of whack. And then Alyce. And now you again.”
“So sorry.” Sid pushed a hefty dose of sarcasm through the word.
“Sorry is right. Sorry excuse for a …” Liam bit back the rest.
“No worries, old boy. I already said it myself. Shitty Bookkeeper. Worse talya. What was the teshuva thinking?”
Liam waved one hand. “None of the league—Bookkeeper or talya—has ever pretended to have a clue what the demons think.”
Sid wondered if that was supposed to be some sort of apology. “On the plus side, you don’t have to convince me I’m possessed.”
“True. And that part is always so awkward and circular—‘yes, demons exist; no, you’re not crazy; yes, demons exist’—like some damn square dance.” Liam straightened abruptly. “Fuck. I know who your partner was, don’t I?”
Despite the chill in the wind, Sid’s face heated. “I hope you’ll be discreet with your hypothesis,” he said stiffly.
“Only thing worse would be if you’d slept with Sera or Nim.”
“Not worried about Jilly?”
“She’d kill you before I could.” Liam groaned. “Why couldn’t you have balanced the teshuva’s virgin ascension the old-fashioned way? With a nice round of fisticuffs? Any of us would’ve been happy to oblige. But I suppose you found your own virgin ascension.”
Though Liam’s tone was more cynical than crude, Sid’s gut tightened as if someone had punched him. The shock radiated up from the newly etched reven on his belly and stole his breath.
And his common sense apparently, since he suddenly found himself toe-to-toe with the rangy league leader.
Toe-to-toe did not mean nose-to-nose, unfortunately. He canted his head to pin the taller man with a hard stare. “I’ll ask you not to say such things about her.”
Liam did not move a muscle, and still his presence seemed to double. The demon’s mark at his temple flared violet.
Sid had always considered himself a pro at conflict avoidance. After all, as a mere child, he’d weaseled his way into a quasi-military/religious underground organization that had taught paranoia to the Templars. Everything he’d achieved had come from books and brains and that early bit of blackmail.
Brawn had never been his MO. The demon was definitely a bad influence, because even once he thought it through, he didn’t back down.
Liam gave him a slow blink. “I am not going to fight with you now, talya. You are already good and possessed.”
Sid tried to roll his weight from the balls of his feet to his heels, a nonconfrontational, purely conversational stance. The effort had him swaying from side to side. His muscles were not his own anymore—not entirely.
“Knock it off, teshuva,” he hissed. “I don’t want to fight with you too.”
Liam’s lips quirked. “Just give in to it.”
“It wants to punch you.”
“Oh. Then I hope you win this fight.”
“I want to punch you too.”
“Goodness. How did we not notice you were talya material?” Liam tilted his head, letting his direct gaze slide off Sid’s. “Probably all the tweed distracted us.”
Between the note of almost fond amusement and the redirection of the challenging stare, the tension across the back of Sid’s neck eased. He angled his body toward the open sky. “I don’t plan to start giving in to any random impulses, mine or the teshuva’s.”