Chapter 13 #2
Lira knew what she was, and said nothing. Analise thought of all those moments when she’d felt so alone, thinking she had no one to talk to when all along … and now this, this Order of the Dawn, demon hunting …
She shook her head in disgust. Her hands were shaking. This was why she avoided people.
The kitchen was silent, then, Lira, broke it:
‘Should I…’
‘Give her a minute.’ Ezra’s voice. ‘I’ve got a bit of an idea how she’s feeling right now.’
You really don’t, Analise thought bitterly. She clenched and unclenched her fingers, waiting until the rage melted into a dull throb before she went back in, retaking her seat. Lira looked utterly miserable.
Jem cleared his throat.
‘Go on then,’ Analise said coolly.
‘The Order consists of alchemists and members of the church, and those like us—hunters’ Jem said.
Ezra didn’t react, barely moved.
Analise narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You knew this?’
‘Only a recent acquisition of knowledge, but yes.’
Lira reached for Analise’s hand again. ‘Yes, I knew what you were, and it was your magic that drew me to you in the first place. But then it was you, Analise. I got to know you, and—’
Analise pulled her hand free. Heat swept over her and for a moment, she couldn’t see.
Across the table, Ezra was watching her.
‘And you?’ She directed her emotion at him, not knowing what else to do with the fear that was coursing through her.
There was something in the way he was looking at her that caused every muscle in her body to tense.
She bit back the instinct to run. ‘Since we’re all sharing, what secrets are you keeping?
Are you a member of this organisation as well? Did you know what I was?’
‘No.’
Analise kept her eyes pinned to his face. ‘You’re something though, aren’t you?’
Ezra’s expression didn’t change.
She opened her mouth, but Jem cut across her. ‘The demon marks are increasing. The bodies you’ve come across, Analise, are a piece of a much bigger puzzle. Another marked man was pulled from the river this morning.’
‘I see,’ Analise said faintly. ‘But none of this—secret organisations, demon hunting—explains why you’ve put me in here.’
‘For your safety, like I said,’ Jem replied.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that.’
Jem and Lira exchanged a glance. Jem rubbed his face. ‘The person following you is not a person at all, but a Familiar, a—’
‘I know what a Familiar is,’ Analise ground out and they all looked at her. ‘There must be dozens of them in this city, mine can’t be the only one—or are you keeping people in safe houses all over London?’
Safe houses belonging to The Order of the Dawn, not the Gendarme, as she’d been led to believe.
‘As you’d know then, Familiars follow those who’ve entered into deals, reporting back to their master, who, if people don’t pay up, sends his demons after them,’ Jem explained.
‘I’ve not entered into any bargains with Asmael,’ Analise said. ‘I’m not a fool.’
‘I know,’ Lira said. ‘Which is why we can’t work out why a Familiar has attached itself to you.’
‘Especially because a Daughter of Lilith can free a Familiar from Asmael’s influence,’ Jem added.
Analise had never heard that before. Her anger slipped for a second. ‘They can?’
Lira frowned. ‘You didn’t know that?’
‘I don’t know anything,’ Analise said, her voice rising. ‘Everything I’ve ever done has been instinctual.’ A thought struck her like a punch. ‘Do you mean I could have gotten rid of him years ago?’
‘Years?’ Jem echoed, his voice sharp. ‘You’ve had Familiars following you for years?’
‘The same one, actually.’ Analise was exhausted all of a sudden; her temples ached. She rubbed them, then caught the terrified look Jem was giving his sister. ‘What? What does it mean? I swear, if you don’t tell me, I’ll curse your soul to wander the space between worlds when you die.’
‘I’m sure the nuns told you that Asmael vowed to get revenge for being cast out of Heaven, and he swore he would walk the earth in his true form with his army of demons and every man, woman, and child would belong to him,’ Jem said.
‘The Daughters of Lilith have been the shield of the world since Asmael’s Fall.
God gave Lilith the power to not only guide the dead, but to commune with them,’ Lira explained.
‘And she gave the Daughters the power to create the amulets, but now, they’re not working, and people are dying. We think—’
Analise held up her hand. ‘I don’t want to talk about this any more.’
The amulets weren’t working?
‘Analise,’ Lira began.
‘No,’ Analise said forcefully; her hands were shaking again. Fear tunnelled through her, replacing the rage, the hurt, and twisting her insides. ‘Not now.’
‘It’s probably best if you both go,’ Ezra said, and Analise looked at him in surprise.
Jem nodded. Lira’s face was downcast, but she stood, following her brother into the hall.
Ezra walked them out. Analise remained at the table, staring blankly at the window.
Dust motes were caught in a single shaft of sunlight.
It reminded her of the convent, of the chapel, and the way the light would stream into the room in thick bands of gold.
She hadn’t had enough to drink to handle this.
A couple of whiskeys had done nothing to take the edge off and now, her brain was buzzing and she wanted to cry.
She grabbed the bottle and tore the cork free.
By the time Ezra returned, Analise was clutching the whiskey to her chest. She wasn’t sure if she’d drunk any or not. Gently, Ezra took it from her.
She stared at him, tracing the lines of his face slowly, settling on his eyes. A flash of summer light through brilliant green leaves, she thought absently.
‘Analise?’ he prompted.
‘I swear,’ she said, her voice low, rough, ‘if you’re lying to me about anything, I will never speak to you again, Ezra.’
He nodded, but she couldn’t tell if it was in acceptance or defeat.
‘Does this change things, knowing what I am?’ she demanded.
Ezra dragged a hand through his hair, his expression conflicted. ‘No. You didn’t choose it.’
Analise huffed, then got up, pulling the frying pan and a bowl from the cupboard.
‘I’m hungry.’ She needed to think about something else for a moment.
Shock was setting in and her head was filled with images and words, voices—things she thought she’d buried.
‘This is where you teach me to cook. But.’ She pointed a fork at Ezra.
‘One smart-arse remark, and I’ll stab you. ’
He held up his hands, then joined her at the stove. ‘What are we having?’
‘Eggs,’ Analise said. She snatched up an egg from the basket on the bench, looking to Ezra for instruction.
‘Crack it on the edge of the bowl, but gently because you don’t want—’
She smashed the egg against the rim of the bowl; shards of shell joined the white and the golden yolk. ‘Should I get another?’ Her hands were shaking.
‘And waste an egg? Fish the shell out,’ Ezra said, grinning as she grumbled but did as she was told. ‘I’ll do the other. To show you.’ He cracked an egg into the bowl one-handed and gave her a wink. ‘I can do a lot of things with one hand, in case you were wondering.’
Analise tried her best to follow his instructions, but all she could think about was Lira, her brother, this Order of the Dawn and the Familiar. She could see his coal-black eyes boring into hers. Mother Superior’s warning words churned around her head. An ex-Gendarme was helping her cook eggs.
And there were demons in the world. Just like the book said there would be.
In the end, the eggs were hard and she mangled them, but they tasted fine. Analise’s magic was pulling and tugging at her skin. She was close to falling apart. There were gravestones behind her eyes and the smell of dirt was in her nostrils.
‘What’s something you miss from the convent?’ Ezra asked, startling her, but the question gave her something to hold onto, to use to reel herself back even as it pulled her into the past.
‘Cake.’
‘I didn’t take you for a cake girl,’ Ezra admitted. ‘I was thinking bloody meat and chopped liver.’
Analise made a face. ‘We used to have cake once a week. Nothing fancy, just a honey cake, but it was delicious.’
‘Weekly cake is rather decadent for nuns,’ Ezra commented.
‘I think they did it for me. It gave me something to look forward to. I wonder if they still have cake,’ she mused. That shaft of sunlight gilded Ezra in pale gold, his white-blond hair a halo of fire. She dropped her eyes.
‘They don’t break out the cake when you drop by for a visit?’
‘I’ve never been back,’ she admitted. ‘I ran away. I wanted a life, so I ran away and I’ve never returned to the women who raised me to thank them for taking me in, for not letting me die, for treating me as one of their own for twenty years and now—’
‘It’s not always easy to go back,’ Ezra said. ‘Going back means looking back, and sometimes that’s hard, so it’s safer not to.’
Analise stole a glance at him, catching him watching her. Like the first night they met, he rested his hand near hers on the table. Her breath caught as, slowly, he reached out and stroked the side of her finger.
She had the sudden urge to shove the plates off the table and pin him to it, tear his clothes off, take control of something while everything else was out of control.
She pulled her hand back. ‘I miss cake.’