Chapter Three
Three
“This is fine,” I muttered the next morning, returning to my rooms after Gilli and Jelan left for class. “I’m so fine. No demons anywhere.”
This evening, I would demon-proof the place, but for now, I didn’t even have time to shower if I wanted both to eat breakfast and to run through my Intro to Theurgy and Thaumaturgy Theory exam flash cards again.
I rubbed neshem oil on the charaktêres on my comb, muttered the spell, then raked the teeth through my greasy curls.
It restored them to halfway decent shape.
As I braided my hair back into one thick plait—no time for anything else—I glanced out my window at the wind flag raised on the weather pole.
Tan with white stripes: a medium-strength dry wind from the west. The clouds swirled slightly too vibrant a pink against the blue sky, making me frown.
Though I’d only been in Talum a month, I’d noticed the strangeness of the winds and weather, and the whole student body talked nonstop about how something must be off with the magic that governed the natural world.
I tried not to think about it, nor about my missing bracelet.
It wasn’t as though red string would have kept the demon away when everything else failed.
And the silly old story about meeting your husband after losing your bracelet didn’t mean anything.
Grandma said when she’d met Grandpa, she’d yanked her string off, marched up to him, then acted shocked to find it gone. You made your own destiny.
It just shook me up, that was all.
Fully dressed, I stepped out of my bedroom—and found Daziel sitting on the sofa, once more reading A Household Guide to Demons, his red salamander resting on his shoulder.
“No!” I cried, half-inclined to stomp my foot. I was infuriated instead of scared—hard to be alarmed by a boy reading a book with a friendly-looking lizard.
But he had promised to leave me alone.
Daziel looked up. His face was just as strange as yesterday—the planes and angles a little too sharp, the pure blackness of his eyes unnerving. But it was impossible to deny how strikingly handsome he was, too, even if it unsettled me. “Good morning.”
I supposed this was why you were supposed to ward against demons—they were notoriously difficult to get rid of. “You can’t be here.” I pulled on my boots and started lacing them up. “You promised to leave.”
“I didn’t specify for how long.”
I grabbed my blazer off the hook, exasperated. This was like arguing with my youngest sister, Selah, who thought arguments were about semantics instead of the heart of the matter. “I take it you’re a law student, then.”
He answered my snipe as though I’d been serious. “Shedim study the laws, but that isn’t my specialty.”
“What’s your specialty, irritating people?” I stomped into the hall.
Daziel followed me to the stairs and down, his footsteps unnervingly light. “I can carry your bag.”
I clutched it tighter. No way I was handing over my possessions, no matter how much they weighed. Also, I didn’t want to give him a reason to feel less guilty about being a pain. “No. It’s mine.”
“It looks heavy.”
“I carry it every day. It’s fine.”
He narrowed his eyes. Apparently I’d finally managed to annoy him. “Are you always this unaccepting of help?”
“Are you always this hard to get rid of?”
As we reached the third-floor landing, the door to the stairwell swung open. I froze. Oh no. How was I supposed to explain a demon walking down the stairs with me at seven thirty in the morning?
élodie stepped out. She glanced up, her composed expression morphing into one of abject surprise and, worse, alarm. Her mouth fell open. “Naomi…?”
I grimaced. “Hey.”
“Um—who—I mean—” She swallowed and schooled her expression. Apparently, élodie, unlike me, had mastered politeness in unexpected situations. This made me grumpy. “Honored to meet you. I’m élodie bat Amit.”
“One of Naomi’s friends?” Daziel bowed. “The honor is mine.”
élodie’s gaze flickered to me, her shock deepening, I expected, at the logical conclusion that this demon was my betrothed.
Unexpectedly, satisfaction flared through me.
While boys might buy my excuse, girls saw through it.
élodie and Birra definitely knew I’d made everything up.
You know, Birra had said pityingly, after I turned down a boy in our Intro to Household Magic class, you don’t have to lie.
Henri’s a great guy, and it’s not like you’re going to get anyone better.
Especially not…She’d looked me up and down, as though my very being made the reason self-evident. Well, you know.
Yet now I’d provided incontestable proof of a demon betrothed. And while humans were wary of demons, we were also fascinated by them—they were, after all, powerful, magical beings. Catching the attention of one might be foolhardy but also undeniably thrilling.
Still, much as I liked showing élodie up, I should swallow my pride and ask for her help. She was one of the best spellcasters in our year. I took a deep breath. Dad always said the sooner you admitted your mistake, the sooner you could move on.
Then élodie smiled at Daziel. “It’s so funny, no one believed Naomi when she said she was betrothed to a demon. But here you are!”
My pride snapped into place. I couldn’t do it. Daziel seemed more nuisance than danger, and élodie was more annoying still. “Here we are,” I said shortly. “Excuse us. We’re running late.”
Daziel followed me, leaving, no doubt, a bewildered élodie behind. Madame Hadar wasn’t behind her desk in the entranceway, so I couldn’t ask her for help; plus, I didn’t want to with élodie in earshot. Frustrated, I slammed my shoulder into Testylier House’s door to open it against the winds.
Dad said the winds hadn’t been like this when he grew up, but in the last few years they’d increased in ferocity.
Even without the wind flags, you could tell the direction they came from by their scents: The northern wind carried marshy loam and sea salt from the delta; the east wind, the forests; the west, the faintest hint of the wilderness.
The south required no gentle hints—when the southern winds blew, they carried rain and thunder and lightning.
There were other winds, too—the harsh Trio Winds of winter; the dry Maestril of spring; the rare Corisoc, which covered everything in a layer of fine red dust from the southern deserts.
And while I found their wild strength intoxicating, it definitely wasn’t normal.
“Where are we going?” Daziel asked. The salamander poked his head out of Daziel’s shirt, his small black tongue darting out as though he could taste the winds.
“The boulangerie. Then school.” If Daziel was here because he thought we were affianced, maybe the best way to get rid of him was to be blunt. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m breaking up with you.”
“What?” He stopped in his tracks. Walkers parted around us—a pair of middle-aged women with pumping arms, a pack of schoolchildren in matching uniforms, a businessman who gave us a dirty look, then stumbled back when he realized what Daziel was. “You’re what?”
“I’m dumping you. I’m ending our betrothal.”
Daziel swallowed and blinked rapidly. He sounded, of all things, lost and a little wounded. “Why? Have I offended you?”
“You did break into my rooms.” This was absurd. I refused to feel bad for having boundaries. I started walking again, and he fell in beside me. “It wasn’t a real betrothal. We don’t even know each other.”
He made a frustrated sound. “That’s what the betrothal period is for.
And I do know you. Your name is Naomi bat Yardena.
You’re from the Naphtali tribe, near Foillefw.
” I didn’t recognize the word; I wondered if it was a demon name for the high plains near my village.
“My name is Daziel, son of Cathmeus, son of Khasmodai. I am apprenticed to the stone-garden keepers.”
“What does that mean?”
“I tend rocks.”
“Sounds…enthralling.” We passed a stone wall draped with bougainvillea. The flowers matched the pink clouds so unnervingly I almost tripped, certain they’d been red yesterday. Maybe I’d been mistaken—or maybe magic was getting even stranger in Talum.
He gave me a wry smile that transcended species. “Yes, I feel similarly.”
I recognized the droll, exasperated note in his voice—it reminded me of my own when I’d told my parents how badly I wanted to see the world beyond our village.
“Is that why you’re here? You’re bored. You somehow heard me say your name, and you were like, ‘Great excuse. Peace out, wilderness.’ How old are you? ”
He set his jaw mulishly, like I’d challenged his brilliant plan. “I have eighteen winters. I’ve almost reached my majority.”
My age, then. I felt a touch of sympathy, though not enough to let myself get dragged into his escape plans. “Don’t you have somewhere else to go? What are you going to do here—follow me everywhere?”
“We can explore the city.” He sounded hopeful. “There’s supposed to be dancing and opera and food enveloped in boiling oil.”
Had he never tasted donuts, or falafel, or fries? Now I genuinely felt bad for him. And I did yearn to explore the rest of Talum, since so far, I’d barely left the Scholars’ Quarter. But I imagined exploring it with a demon would cause chaos. “I have school.”
We reached the bakery, where a long line snaked out the door.
When we joined the end, the customers shot Daziel alarmed looks—notable, since Talumizans made a big deal of never being surprised by anything.
Once I saw the grand duke’s cousin on her way to the opera, and all my friends from outside Talum gaped, while the city kids acted almost sick with ennui.
I noticed they could precisely describe her outfit later, though.
“I don’t mind school,” Daziel said cheerfully. “At home, we study constantly. I am considered the top of the lykeion.”
“Cool,” I said. “Congrats. Isn’t your family going to miss you?”