Chapter 34 Emory
“LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: You want me to slow down your heart?”
“Precisely.”
Virgil looked at her like she’d grown a giant raven’s head and serpent’s tail.
“You have Reaper magic,” Emory explained again. “You can technically stop my heart. What I’m asking you to do is bring me to the brink of death, just to the point where I pass out.”
“Okay, first of all, I’ve never done anything like that before. And second, how do you know I won’t accidentally kill you? Don’t put that on my conscience, Em.”
“You won’t kill me. I trust you.”
Virgil huffed a laugh, rubbing at the back of his head. After her disastrous talk with Romie, Emory had come to him with this plea for help. She needed to contact the demon again. And if it took fainting to reach him, then she would find a way to make herself faint.
“Why is it so important to talk to him?” Virgil asked. “He’s gone. We shook him off. I hope a giant raven-snake plucks his eyes out. Bottom line, he’s not our problem anymore.”
Emory shook her head. “We haven’t seen the last of him. He’s after something, and I want to know what it is.” And most importantly, he knew things about her magic—things she needed to understand.
Especially if Romie was right about hurting her on the ley line.
Virgil sighed, looking at the ceiling. “To think you were an innocent once, not so long ago, and we were the ones corrupting you to do dangerous deeds.”
“I’m not that girl anymore,” Emory snapped, thinking of her conversation with Romie.
“Oh, I know you aren’t.” He flashed her a sly grin. “You’re far more fun.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“Let the record show that I still think there’s a safer way to do this, but…” He threw his hands up. “What can I say? I’m an enabler. A proud supporter of terrible decisions.”
Emory grinned at him. “I know. That’s why I came to you.”
Virgil clutched at his heart.
They set up in a well-appointed living room, Emory lying down on a divan so she wouldn’t fall flat on her face. Virgil slashed his palm and bled into a bowl of water, bloodletting to call on his Reaper magic.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready.”
“When you see dear old Keiran’s ugly face again,” Virgil said, “punch it for me, will you?”
“You’d have to show me how to throw a punch first.”
Virgil gasped in mock offense. “Do these hands look like they’ve ever thrown a punch? I’m insulted. Go ask one of those winged weirdos. They’re the buff warriors. I’m just the pretty face.”
He was indeed a pretty face to look at as her heart slowed. Emory felt herself slipping into oblivion, and then she was falling through the strangeness of the sleeping realm.
Keiran-not-Keiran was there waiting for her like last time. The golds and silvers in his eyes flashed as he sized her up.
“I see you survived the eldritch in one piece,” he remarked.
She couldn’t tell by the tone of his voice if he was pleased by this or not.
“You knew those beasts were about to attack us,” Emory said, “yet you were in here with me. How can you be in two places at once?”
He made a vague motion with his hand, looking bored by the question. “The same way a tree exists both above and below, feels the air and the earth in equal parts. The same way your magic can be more than one thing at once, and so much more if you’d let it.”
“You seem rather preoccupied with my magic for someone who tried to kill me.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “When I truly mean to kill you, Tidecaller, you’ll know.”
So that was how it would be. Veiled riddles and not-so-veiled threats.
Emory studied him. “What do you want?”
Her question seemed to unsteady him. Almost as if he hadn’t considered it before.
He quickly regained his composure and said, “Wanting is such a pathetically mortal thing. I’d forgotten how dreadful it could be until I stepped into this.
” He motioned at himself—at Keiran’s body, which was not his own.
Emory couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Is any part of him still there?”
Dark satisfaction played on Keiran’s lips at whatever he saw in her expression. “Would you like him to be?”
He advanced toward her, and it took everything in her not to flinch away from him. He can’t hurt you here, she thought to herself, hoping desperately that it was true.
“Would you like me to tell you that I can taste his memories of you? How deeply he cared for you. How eager he was to tell you those three little words you yourself chose to keep trapped in your throat at the last.” He reached out a hand to brush her hair in a motion that was so very Keiran-like, she stood rooted to the spot, unable to extricate herself from his hypnotizing gaze.
“How shocked he was that you’d let him die, in the end. ”
This snapped her out of it. Emory wrenched herself away, disgust roiling in her stomach. “He deserved it.” She struggled to keep her composure as she forced out the words. She wasn’t going to let him use her shame like a knife, plunging it right through her heart.
Keiran hummed pensively. “Perhaps.” He cocked his head to the side.
“The way he saw it, he believed he was going to make you into something more powerful than what you already are. A formidable vessel to house the power of gods.” His eyes darkened.
“Funny how that works out. He was so very wrong, but still, he would have gone to the ends of the universe for you.”
“That’s not… He didn’t care about me. He just needed me. Used me.”
“And paid the price for it with his life.”
There was an appreciative note in his words that unsettled her. But he was right.
Emory thought of Baz—how she had done to him exactly what Keiran had done to her. Used him when she needed him, when it suited her. She didn’t deserve his forgiveness. Not when she herself could never forgive Keiran.
She wanted to believe she was nothing like Keiran—that she would never let herself become him. Someone who was willing to sacrifice his friends. Someone so deluded he’d thought he was doing the right thing, that he was going to save her by eradicating everything that she was.
But maybe she’d already started down that path.
“How does it feel,” the demon said, voice low and sinister, “to get retribution against someone who wronged you?”
Emory thought of Keiran’s ghost, of his hand around her neck, his silent promise of keeping a choke hold on her even in death. And now here he was, plaguing her still.
If surviving him was retribution for what he’d done to her, it didn’t feel like it. It only made her feel hollow.
“Is that what you’re after?” she asked. “Retribution?”
“Retribution. Vengeance. It’s what I’m owed.”
“For what?”
The gold and silver around his pupils blazed in a way that promised violence. “Everything that was done to me and mine.”
Emory took a step back despite herself. “Who are you? Tell me your name so I can stop thinking of you as Keiran.”
“I have had many names,” he said, “none of which I care to remember.”
“Then you won’t mind if I call you demon.”
“Said in such an endearing way? I insist.” He looked her up and down. “But enough about me. I’d rather talk about what you’re after. Have you found the heart yet?”
The heart—this world’s key.
Emory’s own heart stumbled. If he got to the key before they did…
She felt the dawning of consciousness pull at her, beckoning her back to herself. Before she could be swept away from this strange place, she said, “If you hurt my friends again, I’ll kill you.”
“I’m positively trembling with fear,” he deadpanned.
“I’m serious.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. Though, from what I’ve seen, you seem to be doing a fine enough job of hurting your friends on your own. Careful, there. A Tidecaller’s power is a double-edged sword, as I’m sure you know.”
She glimpsed a wry smile on him before the scene dissolved, and she was pulled up through the darkness and into the light as she regained consciousness.
It was a jarring thing to have those last words ringing in her ears as she opened her eyes to find not only Virgil staring at her but Romie, Nisha, Aspen, and Vera too. There was another face in their midst, that of the page they’d met earlier that day, looking at her with wide, eager eyes.
“Can we see some magic now?” Caius asked, making Emory very nearly wish she were back in that strange in-between space with the demon.