“And maybe you can ditch your demon while you’re there.”
He froze in midstride, anguish sharpening the lines of his face.
She cringed at the sting of cruelty in her words, but she couldn’t stop needling him for the self-immolation that lurked at the heart of his craving. “If my demon can uproot a malice from our realm, why not another teshuva? A cure for possession.”
“There is no cure. Possession is a terminal case. Except for the part where you never die.”
She wrapped her arms around herself—since no one else would. “You’ve said things are changing.”
“But we still don’t know how. Or why.”
“Well, that’s why you were testing me tonight,” she reminded him. “And why you told Liam you wanted to take on the next djinni instead of fighting horde-tenebrae on the sidelines as usual. Why are you so afraid of hearing you might be right?”
“Because what if I’m not?” His voice was low.
“Is hope that hard to grasp?”
“I can’t remember. It’s been so long since I reached for it.”
As a grim silence fell, she sensed the demon settle within her and wished she hadn’t provoked him or it. “Which battle was it, Archer, that began this war for you?”
His gaze strayed toward the window, the gray light bleak in his dark eyes. “The War Between the States.” His lips twisted. “Everyone notes the irony of the term ‘civil war.’ War is never civil. Of course, the Latin meant citizen. One citizen against another. The teshuva against the other legions of hell.”
She processed the time. A hundred and fifty years of fighting. “No wonder,” she murmured.
“I tried not to.”
“You really think a demon can open the Veil between the realms, that we can banish all the wayward evils that plague our world and end this war?”
He met her gaze, jaw flexing on words he wouldn’t say.
Her cell phone rang, and she almost jumped out of her skin. She ignored the muffled tone in her bag.
The ringing cut out as her voice mail picked up. After a moment, the phone rang again.
Archer lifted one eyebrow. “You going to answer that?”
“You going to answer me?”
He shrugged. The ringing stopped and started again.
With a curse, she grabbed her bag and dug out the phone. What could possibly matter more than her role in the existential dimorphism of good versus evil?
“Hello?”
“Sera. Thank God you’re all right.”
For a second, she struggled to align the words with her life at the moment. She really wasn’t all right, and God didn’t have anything to do with it.
“Jackson?” Her oldest brother never called beyond confirming mealtimes for major holidays. “What’s wrong?”
“We just heard about your apartment. You hadn’t called us, so we didn’t know what to think.”
She frowned at his tone of mingled reproach and relief. “We got it all cleaned up.”
“Cleaned up? They said the building was a total loss. And all the dead . . .”
Her skin chilled as all the blood rushed to her pounding heart. “I’m sorry, what?” She nudged Archer away from the computer, found his Internet icon, and entered her keywords.
The picture bloomed on the screen. For a moment, disbelief and vertigo left her stomach roiling.
Flames engulfed the building, spreading downward. The two silhouetted firefighters looked small and helpless against the inferno.
SEVEN DEAD—THREE CHILDREN—IN FREAK APARTMENT BLAZE.
“Oh my God.” Her knees gave out at a nudge from behind, and she collapsed into the chair Archer had pulled out for her. With a quietly exhaled curse, he leaned closer to read the article.
“You didn’t know?” Jackson’s voice was incredulous. “Where have you been?”
“My apartment was broken into. I’ve been staying with a friend.” Her attention drifted as she scanned the article in shock and she reminded herself to guard her tongue. No sense blurting out something even more disturbing.
“You could’ve stayed with me,” Jackson said.
She grimaced. She hadn’t moved in with her brothers even after the car accident. She loved them, but their mother’s fate had left them with an aggressive head-in-the-sand philosophy of life. Their father’s decline had focused them even more myopically on their ambitious careers, vigorous social climbing, and high-profile philanthropic projects. She was proud of them, and they drove her nuts with their single-minded attention to mundane matters.
“I told you it was a bad neighborhood,” her brother fretted. “Break-ins. Arson.”
Her world spun again. “Arson?”
Archer tapped the screen over the words “possible arson.”
“At least you’re safe.” Jackson paused. “Where did you say you’re staying now?”
“With a friend.”
“That Betsy has just been trouble, getting you that job—”
“Not Betsy,” she said. “No one you know.”
“Well, bring her over for dinner, as thanks for saving you.”
She slanted a glance at Archer. “I don’t think he’s ready for dinner with the family yet.”
Jackson was quiet. “He?”
“My sometime lover, Jackson.” She rubbed her forehead at the sputtering she heard on the other end of the phone. The room on her end was deathly silent. “I can put him on the phone if you want to thank him now.”
Archer backed away.
She imagined Jackson doing much the same. “Geez, Ser, some stuff I’m still too young to know.”
“Prude.” Affection for her brother welled up, as if the images of fire had burned a hole through a lifetime of daily dross to pure emotion underneath.
“Nut. If you need anything . . .”
“I know.” Her gaze strayed to Archer, who stood looking out the window, legs braced, arms crossed.
A hundred and fifty years since he’d heard the voices of his family. No wonder he hadn’t let himself care for anyone since, knowing the people he came to love would die while he went on.
Assuming she survived so long, would she be the same? Were the mysteries that the demon had promised to reveal as important as seeing her father through his last days, as watching her nieces and nephews grow up?
For once, the answer didn’t matter. How could she willfully narrow her worldview again to birthdays and Christmasses, even the solemn rites of deathbed vigils, knowing a war raged in the shadows without her?
“I love you, Jackson,” she said softly. “Talk to you later.”
“Yeah. Sera, would Dad have liked him?”
She closed her eyes,Archer’s silhouette etched starkly on the back of her eyelids. “Probably. Before.”
Before her father lost his mind. Before Archer’s possession.
Jackson sighed. “Just keep being safe, okay?”
A little late for that. “Okay.”
As she disconnected, an updated photo showed blackened stalagmites, all that was left of the building. She could almost smell the sour stench of burned insulation and electrical wiring. The article said no definitive cause for the deadly blaze had been found.
The chill that had briefly left as she talked to her brother crept in again. “What are you thinking?”
Archer turned from the window. “That it’s a good thing you were here.”
“Was it my fault?”
“Did you set the fire?”
She pushed herself up from the desk. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s a long step from breaking and entering to fatal arson.” He hesitated. “Unless you’re a djinn-man. Then it’s as easy as breathing. The pattern of the fire in the photo isn’t natural.”