Chapter Twenty-Five • Occam’s Razor • Lillith
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Ifeel. So. Stupid.
For years, I’ve lived without my mother anywhere near me, and I’ve never once thought to look for her—to find out how she managed to leave Del Lune and not immediately get crushed by an anvil falling from the sky, Looney Tunes–style.
I guess I wrote her off so long ago because of Nan’s encouragement to do so. She’s always been gone, so she’s always been just about as good as dead to me. Or maybe I just assumed she was dead. Because Del Lune has always been crammed into my skull as the only place the Nightingales could live.
But would someone selfish enough to abandon their daughter really leave the town they’re confined to, knowing it meant certain death? Why go through the trouble? Seems like a quick plummet off the Del Lune cliff faces would be a surer way to die. No cartoon coyotes necessary.
“What’s wrong?” Wren asks, pulling me out of my dissociative episode.
“I just... I don’t know why I never thought to search for my mother before this. Now that you’re saying it, it’s an obvious thing to do. For all I know, I could have been working on getting out of Del Lune for years.”
Bastion shakes his head and I think he’s going to ridicule me, but he doesn’t.
“There are workings that can dissuade minds from looking too closely at things. They’re often compulsion spells that have been slightly modified to be a little gentler—a little more like camouflage. She probably worked one of those.”
“Why now, though? When she left almost thirty years ago?”
Bastion shrugs. “Maybe she used the Nightingale Pearl as the taglock, and when the demon destroyed it, he also destroyed the spell.”
“Shit,” I say. “Fuck.”
Damien puts a steadying hand on my thigh and I meet his eyes. He gives me a gentle, crooked smile as if to say, be easy on yourself, sweetheart.
“Lilipad,” Wren says gently. “We also knew about your mother and didn’t think of it. It got all of us, you know? It’s not a failure on your part. It was a strong spell.”
Something just doesn’t sit right with me that my mother, who basically turned her nose up at everything to do with magic, including her own daughter, is apparently a powerful enough witch that she can do such a masterful compulsion spell.
Something felt better about that when I figured she was living somewhere like Reno, with no magic and no joy.
But no. She successfully pulled the wool over our eyes for so long.
“So. You said you think you know where she is?” I ask.
Wren nods. “I used a little bit of your hair to do a dousing ritual. She’s... actually nearby. Not Del Lune. But in California.”
Close by is relative, of course. It can take upwards of ten or twelve hours to drive up the coast. “SoCal or NorCal?” I ask.
“SoCal,” she says. “Inland. Some place called Fawnskin that’s really close to Big Bear Lake.”
I inhale and let out a shaky breath. I’ve never been so frustrated by my bloodline curse. To know that my mother is living her best life just a few hours away makes my gut churn. And I can’t even go there. I can’t even confront her.
It feels cruel.
“Well, too bad I can’t fucking leave,” I say.
“We’re playing a show in Big Bear next week,” Damien says, his voice light—tentative—as if he’s unsure that I’ll want him to go and wants me to weigh in before the others seize the opportunity.
“No way,” I say. “I’m not sending you to confront my mother on your own. Not when it’s clear she has a pretty firm grasp on her magic. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I can go with him,” Wren says. “Lilipad, we shouldn’t let this opportunity slip. She may have an answer to getting you out of the house.”
“I don’t want you in danger either,” I say.
“Don’t patronize, Lillith,” Bastion says. “You know as well as I do that Wren’s magic runs as thick in the blood as it does for the Nightingales and the Bramblethorns. She’s better at protective magic than both you and me.”
“Bastion, my mother cast a spell that lasted over two decades,” I say.
“By using a taglock she didn’t make,” Bastion argues. “It probably wouldn’t have worked otherwise.”
I look at Damien and he quirks an easy smile at me. “Little bird,” he says. “I’m going to be in town anyway. Let me do something to help you out, here. Let me figure out how to break your shackles, so I can bring you on the road with me and show you off to the whole fucking world.”
I don’t see it. But I can feel Bastion rolling his eyes.
I look at Wren and she nods. “I’ll keep him safe, Lilipad. I promise,” she says.
Damien pulls me into him, tucking my head under his chin right when I need him to. “I don’t want to be apart again,” I mumble. “I feel like you just got back.”
“This will help us, right? Potentially?” he says. “Because I don’t want to be apart from you either.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“And I’ll spend every free moment this week with you,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
“And I’ll keep you busy while he’s gone,” Bastion interjects.
I feel Damien’s arms stiffen around me, he even pulls me closer into him. “Come the fuck again, Bunyonass?” he snaps.
“Relax,” Bastion says in a long-suffering tone.
“It’s not an innuendo. Lillith and I can do research on replacements for her curse ward.
We may not be able to make it so she can leave Del Lune, but she can at least get out of the house and follow you around like the little kitten she’s pretending to be. ”
“Man, do you ever stop being a prick?” Damien asks.
“No,” Bastion, Wren and I all say in unison.
Damien snorts a laugh and I actually find myself smiling a bit.
There’s something warm in my belly at the thought of Wren and Damien spending time together.
I like the idea of my best friend and my boyfriend getting to know each other, even if I’m worried about what might happen when they confront my mother.
“Wren, you’ll keep me updated on everything when you’re gone?”
“Full play by play,” Wren promises.
“And I’ll share my location with you, so you always know where we’re at,” Damien promises. “And I’ll call and text you every second I get.”
“Nauseating,” Bastion grumbles.
“Stop being a wet blanket,” Wren says, slugging him in the arm.
Bastion looks at her, holding his arm, expression aghast. “What is wrong with you, you brute?!”
“Guys, can I go back to showing Damien around, please?” I finally ask. “As much as I love you guys for looking for solutions for me, I really just want to hang out with my cute boyfriend.”
“Aww,” Damien says. “You think I’m cute?”
My heart balloons with sudden affection as I lean into him and pepper him with kisses on his cheeks and neck and lips. “Obviously.”
“Gods, please leave,” Bastion gripes.
“On it,” Damien says, picking me up unceremoniously and throwing me over his shoulder as I squeal. “Thanks for all the fun, kids. We’ll see you later.”
“Do you even know where you’re taking me?” I ask, voice full of laughter, trying to crane my neck to look at him.
“No idea,” Damien says. “But you definitely need some cheering up, and I believe that’s my job.” He gives my ass a couple of friendly pats. I lift a hand and wave to Wren, who beams brightly at me.
“Make good choices!” Wren says after us as we exit her bookshop. Bastion looks pointedly away from our new-relationship bliss.
Damien keeps me hitched over his shoulder as he heads down the cobbled streets of The Buried City. Something occurs to me as we pass a restaurant that serves primarily fae patrons. Something we could do.
“Hey, Damien?”
“What’s up, sweetheart?”
“What do you say to having our second official date?”
Gravity shifts as he drops me from his shoulder, capturing me in a bridal carry. His two-toned eyes are warm and crinkled at the edges, his sharpened teeth shining in the illumination of the gaslamps on the street.
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” he says.
“Good,” I say. “Let’s you and I head back to the Cat’s cradle.”
He sets me down on my feet, presumably to have me lead the way. But he slows a bit.
I look up at him as I come to a stop. “Something wrong?”
“Is there like... a currency exchange or something? I mean, do you guys use cash to pay for stuff here?”
I snort a laugh. “Most people take mortal money down here, and other places accept different forms of currency. But not money—not like you’re thinking.
There’s no physical currency that The Buried City uses.
Some business owners ask for secrets, some of them ask for blood, some of them just want little trinkets,” I say.
“But even if they didn’t, I don’t mind paying for you. I don’t care about that sort of thing.”
His lips press and his dark brows dip.
“Damien—I thought we were feminists.”
“We are. But that has nothing to do with me wanting to take care of you. I acknowledge that you’ve been fully able to provide for yourself without needing my dumb ass, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to spoil you. And if we can’t do it in Del Lune anymore, I’m going to try to do it here.”
I step toward him and he lazily drapes an arm over my shoulders before pulling me in and leaning down to kiss the top of my head.
“You’ve had a really stressful few weeks,” he says.
“All I want to do is get your mind off things and show you how nice things can be between us, even if circumstances make things hard.”
“I know I have almost a whole week before you go, but I don’t want you to leave,” I say, my chest aching. “I really wish I could just throw caution to the wind and follow you everywhere you go.”
“I know. And believe me, nothing sounds sweeter to me than seeing you backstage or finishing a set and collapsing into your arms in the green room,” he says. “We’ll do our best to make it happen, I promise.”
“And what if we can’t? What if I really am confined to Del Lune forever?”
“Then I’ll move to Del Lune, and when you’re ready, I’ll move in with you,” he says as if he’s talking about choosing a different restaurant to eat at, and not completely uprooting his life to be with me.
Can it really be that easy? What about his band? What about future records, future tours?
I know his band means everything to him.
I knew that even before I met him. How successful can he be if he’s shackled to me?
I’m not foolish enough to demand all or nothing, but how happy can we be if he has to be on the road for an entire year and can’t come home to see me?
I don’t need Wren’s abilities to know long distance would put a strain on us.
We’re both such physically affectionate people, Damien even more so than me.
Not being able to touch for that long would be a damned nightmare.
I’m not sure what my face looks like, but suddenly Damien cups my face in both hands and smooths his thumbs over the plane of my forehead, displacing my bangs a little. “What’s that look for?” he asks. “Where’d you go off to in that head of yours?”
I blink, chewing on the inside of my lip. “I just... uhm—anticipating relationship complications, I guess,” I mumble.
“You know that you can’t pregame that shit, right?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that no amount of over?planning or worrying has ever stopped something from being hard when the time comes. No one has ever said, ‘Man, I’m so glad I spent weeks or months or years worrying about this thing before it happened; now I don’t have to feel any pain or discomfort over it,’” he says, with such a cheerful tone that I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it.
“Right,” I finally say, my heart feeling a little more buoyant. “You’re right.”
“Let’s just... enjoy this as much as we can, Little Bird,” he says.
“Let’s cross the tougher bridges when we get to them.
We only get to be in the blissful honeymoon phase for a little while, so let’s just bask in it.
Let me spoil you, let me crash in your annoyingly tiny bed, let me make you breakfast after I deny your orgasms all night—”
“Excuse me?” I interject. “You wouldn’t do that to me. That would be evil.”
“Depends how much of a brat you’re being,” he teases, cracking a sinister and yet impossibly charming grin before kissing the tip of my nose. “I think you’re losing the flogger for the tease right now, babe. We’re having a conversation here.”
“Yeah. That’s not how that idiom goes,” I say through another laugh.
“No? You sure?” he asks.
“Pretty sure,” I say.
“Huh—we’ll have to google it,” he says with a wink.
Then he leans in to kiss me, slow and deep and...
gods, his tongue. He kisses me just long enough for my breath to quicken, and my knees turn to jelly.
When he stops and grins, he’s supporting my weight against his firm, large body, and I want nothing more than to go home and climb into my annoyingly small bed with him.
“So, you going to lead me to this Cat’s Cradle place or what?” he asks, his smile a little too knowing.
He brushes his thumbs a little firmly over my upper and lower lips and I realize his own mouth is smeared with my favorite merlot lipstick. I reach up to clean it off and he avoids my fingers.
“Leave it,” he says.
“Really?”
“I love wearing evidence that you chose to kiss me—or bite me—or generally mark me in any way.”
“But... but it looks silly,” I say.
“Do you still think I’m hot?”
“Yeah,” I say. Honestly, it’d be impossible not to think that.
“Then I don’t give a fuck. Now take me to dinner before I get cranky,” he says.
I scoff and then let out a full, rich laugh. He looks at me like he’s won the lottery. Maybe we both have. “Alright, alright,” I say, taking one of his hands in mine and leading the way. “Let’s go see Miss Floriana.”
We start walking and I feel him watching me, almost incessantly. When I finally look up at him, he’s smiling softly at me.
“What?” I ask, the word coming out a little breathy.
“I’m just...” He shakes his head. “I... have no idea why you’re putting up with me. I have no idea what a woman who has actual magic flowing through her veins wants to do with a horny idiot like me.”
I smile softly. “You ever heard of Occam’s Razor?”
His brow furrows. “Can’t say it rings any bells,” he says.
“When you’re out of town next week, you should Google it,” I say.
He huffs, his eyes narrowing. “Are you up to something?”
“Of course I am,” I say, lifting his arm and sidling into his side. “And you’re going to let me be up to something.”
“Am I?” he asks.
“Of course,” I repeat. “Because if you do, I’m going to suck the soul right out of you when we get home.”
“Oh—” he says, brows lifting. “I think I like this Occam guy.” Then he pauses. “Wait: you do mean that in the sexual way, right? Not, like—in some—obsessive, ‘keep your boyfriend’s soul in a bottle’ thing?”
“Depends on how much of a brat you intend on being,” I tease.
And when he laughs, the sound warm and musical, I think I’d do just about anything to hear it forever.