Jessa Slade - Darkness Undone

Though the cold hadn’t seemed to touch her, now Alyce shivered against him. “What did I do to deserve this?” She pressed her forehead against his shoulder, muffling her voice. “Why can’t I remember?”

“It’s not a question of guilt.” If it had been, he couldn’t believe she would ever have attracted a demon’s attention. “It was your penance trigger; like fault lines that run all the way through your life. When the teshuva came into our realm, seeking its redemption, its unbound energy was the earthquake that cracked the contours of the soul that matched it: yours.”

She canted her head to gaze up at him through the tangle of her hair. “So I haven’t really been alone?”

Had he ever heard colder comfort? “I suppose not.” Though his wound panged in protest, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching over to tuck the unruly wave behind her ear. Somehow, one dark strand looped around his finger, once, twice, and again, in a silky bond.

Her lips parted. She didn’t speak, but his attention fixed on the glimmer of candlelight on the secret inner curves of her mouth. That kiss she’d given him as he’d awakened in the darkness after the alley fight … He’d been too stunned to make sense of it then. And now he had too much sense to try again.

He had to pinch out this flicker between them now, while it was no more threatening than the candle. Except he couldn’t seem to let her go.

“Alyce, I’m sorry no one was there for you.”

“All along, I had the demon.” She leaned into his touch, her cheek resting against his knuckles. His pulse heated and flickered like the flame, reminding him that every conflagration started with a spark. “And now I have you.”

Her artless trusting kicked up his heartbeat another notch, in alarm this time. She ranked him alongside the teshuva in influences on her life? “Now you have the Chicago league of talyan too,” he reminded her.

“They’d still have me? After what I did?”

“There’s a strong possibility they’ll like you more than ever.” He gave her hair a gentle, teasing tug, then forced himself to release her. The lock stayed coiled in a loose ring the diameter of his finger.

He needed to focus, and now he was thinking of jewelry. “When female talyan began reappearing, they brought with them talismans from their demons. The talismans serve as a failsafe, a kill-switch for etheric powers. Did your teshuva give you something? A ring or a bracelet or a …” She sat straighter and was shaking her head, but he continued. “Or a tiara? Nothing?”

She spread one hand to indicate the empty hole around them. “I have nothing.”

Well really, how many places could she have dropped it—whatever it was—in this city? Chicago was only a bit more than two hundred square miles. Unless, of course, she didn’t have a talisman because her teshuva was too weak to need one, or because she was rogue, or because …

“Sidney?” She nudged his knee, and he wondered how long he’d been thinking. “I can’t go back there. Not yet. All of them together make me feel …”

Her pupils dilated, like a sudden spill of blackest ink, and in the depths, violet flared.

His heart missed a beat in limbic panic, but he didn’t flinch. “I suspect, since you went through possession without a veteran talya to guide your way, your teshuva settled unbalanced in your soul. It chafes like an ill-fitting shoe.” He smiled at her reassuringly. “Maybe that’s why you don’t have the talisman. Maybe that’s why you don’t like shoes.”

“I like shoes,” she said. “But they are hard to steal. Unless I kill someone on the street and take what I want.”

Only half hearing her, musing to himself, he continued. “The unbalanced teshuva would also explain your memory loss and your rather disturbed …” He stifled the rest of the analysis. How inappropriate to share his conjecture with the subject herself—and about as flattering as that housedress.

Then his mind caught up with his ears. “Talyan destroy the horde-tenebrae. You mustn’t kill people.” Belatedly, he considered she’d been living with teshuva violence and without talya or Bookkeeper guidance. He found it hard to believe she’d have gone so far astray. But then, most people didn’t believe in demons either.

“I have heard many mustn’ts.” Her tone dropped an octave.

He frowned. “Killing people is one of the really, really don’ts. Especially not for shoes.”

“But for evil, yes?”

“Well …” He might be a Bookkeeper, steeped in the lore and modus operandi, but this was out of his league. Maybe it was out of every league, which was why Liam Niall’s Irish skin had gotten even paler at the mention of a rogue.

She nestled closer to him. “Which evils deserve destruction?”

It was like cuddling a pipe bomb, all thin, hard lines and precarious menace.

If he was going to contain the danger, he’d have to be as steady and dispassionate as any bomb tech. It would be hard to unravel the more-sensed-than-seen snarl of live wires with sweaty, shaking hands. Not just his studies were at stake but Alyce’s survival.

The first time he’d been seduced by shadowy secrets, he’d been a heedless child and lost his mother. By the second time, with Maureen, he’d learned better, and he’d lost only his heart.

This time, at least, he had nothing left to lose.

Alyce angled her cheek against his shoulder to look up at him, her gaze fixed on his as if he’d spoken every word aloud. Too bad the Bookkeepers a hundred years ago who invented the energy sinks to dampen talyan etheric emanations hadn’t created a portable version as protective against emotions as a bomb tech’s Kevlar was against shrapnel.

He tried to plaster over his grim thoughts with a quick answer to her question about evils. “Stick with ending the nasties that don’t look human. That’s the malice and salambes—the smoky incorporeal ones—and the ferales like the big corpse-husk ones you pulled off me. Sound good?”

She nodded. “There are as many of those as there are mustn’ts and don’ts. I can never get to the bottom.”

“But now you’ll have help from the other talyan.”

“And you.” The fall of her dark lashes softened her gaze.

He stifled a twinge of unease. Certainly Kevlar would hold up against eyelashes. “Of course. Me. While you need it.”

“Need you.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “Would you like to meet just one or two of them? They’ll keep their teshuva latent and not overwhelm you.”

“If you like.”

No other Bookkeeper would believe in a talya this submissive, a teshuva subdued to the point of somnolence—at least when she wasn’t sleepwalk-slaughtering. His unease welled higher. What if she really wasn’t talya? What if her demon wasn’t repentant?

“Alyce, why did you save me last night?”

She peaked her brows and gave him a disbelieving look, as if he were being unnecessarily stupid. “The devils … The ferales would have killed you. It is what they do. I destroyed them. That is what I do.”

Did she have an instinct for good? Or merely for innate carnage? Could he unravel the two impulses and find what she was at her core without a slackening of the strict nonintervention policies of a good Bookkeeper? He’d have to; only a highly trained scholar could aspire to such heights of philosophical indulgence and metaphysical parsing.

And there were no repentant Bookkeepers.

He shook his head. “Whatever the reason, I am ecstatic you found me, Alyce.”

“My demon—my teshuva—found you last night,” she corrected. “It showed me the signs and told me something was different, something …”

“That it was finally ready to be part of the league?” He gave her an indulgent chuckle and pushed carefully to his feet. He held his good hand down to her. “Better late than never.”