Thorne’s laugh was curt. “I notice you don’t say you won’t bother me again.”
“Depends on your definition of ‘bother.’”
“The definition where you decide I’m a threat and take me on as you did Corvus.”
“He brought that on himself.”
“And I told you I won’t.”
“We’ll just have to trust you.” Sidney’s answer was a sneer.
“Get off my boat,” Thorne snarled. The djinni added a rumbling roar to his timbre. “Now.”
Alyce took Sidney’s hand. He was more afraid for her than he was of Thorne, and that could make him do something bad. Fingers laced with his, she stepped over the side.
The tumble could have been more graceful. Her skirt went most of the way over her head, making it hard to relax and float. But Sidney untangled her as even the scant lighting of the River Princess pulled away.
Thorne waited at the edge of the deck a moment, then disappeared inside. The slam and crack of the glass door echoed above the churn of the engines. With the disappearance of the djinni, the teshuva revved up. The urge to flail her way to shore kicked her heart over, but she resisted the panic and drifted in Sidney’s arms.
“Well, he didn’t throw us overboard,” she said.
“You jumped. That’s taking control of your destiny.”
“You were going to shoot him, weren’t you?”
“You attacked him often enough, you said, and he didn’t seem to mind.”
“I don’t think he’d take a bullet from you. I was special, remember?”
“Yes, you are.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of his tone, so she just floated.
“Why the hell did you ask him that question?”
She stared up at the sky. It was gray, the low clouds blocking the delicate stars and reflecting the harsher lights of the city. It was almost as unknowable as the vast, dark depths beneath her where she’d never be able to stand on her own two feet. “It was an experiment.”
“In making me crazy?”
“Thorne wanted me, wanted to love me. But still he said I could not turn him from his path. Which tells me, once again, I am too weak. Not my demon this time, but me.”
“Alyce—”
“You didn’t want me to kiss you.”
“What?” His hands under her shoulders jerked.
She struggled not to stiffen and sink. “I said—”
“I heard you. I just don’t think that’s relevant at the moment.”
“No, I suppose not. That is what I realized. You don’t want to be bound to me. Like Thorne said, you had no choice.”
“I’m here,” he said, but his voice was defensive.
“You don’t want to let me drown. I appreciate that.”
“Alyce—”
But with the return of her demon, she felt a lucidity long lost returning too, as if the teshuva had a view of both the sky and the murk underneath and was willing now to share with her. “I’ve never been a burden before.”
“You’re not a burden. I can hold you up with one hand—”
“I’ve always toiled, on my parents’ farm, for my master, with the demon. I won’t be a burden to you.”
“Alyce—,” he said, trying again.
But she pulled out of his arms. She’d unwrapped the white scarf from her neck as they stood at the stern of the boat, and now she waved it over her head. She started to sink, but with one paddling hand, she kept herself upright and signaled with the scarf again.
Out of the darkness, a halloo echoed. A single thin light skipped across the waves and struck the white scarf like a blink of lightning.
“It’s the Shades of Gray,” Sidney said.
“They said they’d be behind us.” Alyce lay on her back again, looking up, as Jonah’s boat pulled closer.
Archer leaned over the railing, one hand outstretched with a large orange ring on a rope. “You said you’d be thrown overboard, Westerbrook. Must be nice always being right.”
“Get Alyce.”
“Done.” Archer dropped the ring to her, and it landed with a splash. She grabbed at the float. Archer and Gavril hauled her up.
Gavril wrapped a towel around her shoulders. “Should we get Westerbrook too?”
She gave him a look, and he turned back to the side with Archer.
Another moment and they had hauled Sidney into the boat.
“Got ’em?” Jonah called from the wheel.
“All aboard,” Gavril said.
Archer sat on the seat that lined the pointed prow. “Did we learn anything useful?”
Sidney toweled his hair, and, with a shake of his head, the brown waves fell into place. “That an assembly of djinn-men is called an ahaˉzum, and the ahaˉzum is interested in the verge. That Thorne isn’t interested in either. And that he doesn’t know what to do with any of it any more than we do.”
“So, nothing much we didn’t already guess.”
“We learned that I was insane,” Alyce said. Her hair dripped in lank strands over her bare shoulder.
Archer and Gavril suddenly appeared very interested in the pretty city lights.
Sidney cleared his throat. “Just because Thorne remembers you with the other deinstitutionalized patients doesn’t mean—”
She whirled on him. “Nothing much we didn’t already guess.”
He gave her an admonishing look. “Don’t. Whatever you were is not what you are.”
“I guess you would know.” The cruelty of the reminder struck her before the last words cleared her tongue. Did she taste a whiff of sulfur? She turned away, drawing the towel tight around her shoulders.
They stood with the width of the small boat between them, and she felt endless miles apart. Any hope of finding the teshuva’s talisman withered to nothing. Thorne had known her longer than anyone else, and he had nothing to offer. When she hadn’t known she was missing the talisman, it hadn’t mattered, but now … No wonder Sidney didn’t want to be bound to her.
Despite his kind words, since he’d found her, she hadn’t changed at all. She was still damaged goods—out of control, untutored in the simplest aspects of the talya mission, and not even powerful.
She wasn’t sure she liked this new clarity.
No, not true. The clarity made very clear to her that she didn’t like it at all.
Archer was quizzing Sidney on the configuration of the River Princess and any details Sidney might have noticed. Sidney was scowling as he estimated the number of passengers, how much money might be changing hands, whether a swimming talya could sneak onto the back of the boat through Thorne’s lower deck, and what sorts of explosives might best sink her.
Jonah turned the Shades of Gray toward the city, and the lights starred on the tears in the corners of her eyes. She ducked her head into the folds of the towel. She didn’t like crying either.
What was she? Not just human; not true talya. The only one who might understand her suspension between worlds was … Sidney. And she did not want to speak to him of her failings. She might never speak to him again.
CHAPTER 20
At the warehouse, Sid returned the revolver and angel-point bullet to the lab. Alyce had not spoken to him the rest of the ride back to the marina where Jonah kept the Shades of Gray, nor had she thawed during the car ride to the warehouse.
He’d hurt her. But damn it, what was he supposed to have said? That he might have … feelings for her in return? All his life he had trained to be a Bookkeeper, and Bookkeepers didn’t deal in feelings. Feelings were uncharted territory. He’d never found a single fucking chart on feelings anywhere in the London league offices—not once.
He threw himself into his computer chair, ignoring the squelch of his lake-soaked pants. Liam had asked for his notes on the relic shard and possible uses, not to mention jurisdictional issues with the sphericanum. His fingers rested on the keyboard without typing.