Chapter Ten
“Why are you here?” came the boom of his stinging demand.
A sharp wave of thieves’ oil and spice flooded the space where the infection had festered moments before. The pulp from where the cat-like child had stood only seconds ago oozed slowly toward the drain at the center of the room. Aquamarine dripped where crimson blood should have been.
I shook my head, mind tumbling, heart thumping in the cage of my chest. All I could do was beg. I looked at Silas, eyes pleading as I asked, “Can you help me get out?”
A muscle in his jaw flexed. Through clenched teeth, he said, “You shouldn’t be here!”
“What was that?” I panted. My eyes darted between the turquoise liquid and the man responsible for its demise.
His jaw ticked once more in thinly controlled temper.
“Silas!” I demanded. “You have to help me.”
“Stop saying my name,” he hissed.
The skin around his eyes went taut. For the first time, I noticed the sword clenched in his fist. It was how he’d taken out the cat-like boy, and I’d been too horrified to look. I tried to remember if he’d been holding or wearing a weapon on our first encounter, but too much of that night mixed like swirling paint. I only remembered Silas reaching his hand in a way that seemed to go into Richard’s skull, as if he’d pulled the man’s tongue backward through his mouth and into his throat. It had all been so impossible. And yet…
“It’s better for us both if you pretend you never saw me,” he said.
“I beg to differ,” I said breathlessly.
“I shouldn’t be talking to you. You’re not my human,” he said.
Rage rocked through me. “I’m no one’s human! I’m alone and locked in a basement. And whether you like it or not, I can see you. For the love of god, you have to help me.”
His brow creased. “Answer my question first, human.”
“Marlow,” I corrected breathlessly, hands still flat against the cool wall.
Surprise shone through the glittering crown of each iris. His eyes were every bit as metallic in their golden glow as Caliban’s were silver, as if one wore the sun and the other the moon.
“What?” he asked, the word coming out in a baffled staccato.
“My name is Marlow.”
His russet brows lifted further as he said, “Oh, so you’re stupid.”
The assertion was enough to stabilize me. I shook my head as if he’d splashed a bucket of cold water on my face. I wanted to be angry but could only manage confusion.
“Excuse me?”
Silas wiped a bluish stain from the child-like monster from his sword before re-sheathing it. It was with tired patronization that he said, “You let yourself into parasite-infested basements and give out your name. It explains why you allowed a sigil to be painted above your door without even realizing it was there.”
“I—” I choked on my indignation. My defense fell to the ground. I only understood half of his insults. “I know your name!”
He dusted off his hands on his pants, cleaning his palms from any specks of bluish goo. He didn’t bother to look at me as he said, “No, you don’t. You know what I’m called as of late. You may also use the name Silas, though I’d prefer that you not call me anything at all. Spare us both the headache and pretend you didn’t—”
“Wait.” I lunged for him, digging my nails into the exposed flesh of his bicep.
He looked at my hands as if the fangs of a venomous snake had punctured his skin. The bright, striking smell of spices intensified as his eyes burned with surprise that I had touched him. His gaze shot from my fingers to my face as he demanded, “What the hell are you?”
I didn’t release my hands. I searched his face for help, for sympathy, for something.
“You can’t let me die,” I said on a hurried exhale.
He breathed in slowly, looking at me as if seeing me for the first time. His appraising scan of my face, my eyes, my body was enough for me to loosen my grip, if only slightly. He plucked my hand from his arm with a powerful motion and dropped it to my side. I took a step back, feeling utterly self-conscious. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but after what the cat-child had craved, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.
Finally, I said, “I came looking for Caliban. Or for you, to be honest. For something. For anything.”
He made a face as he looked to the blue pulp on the ground, saying, “Well, you found something. Good for you.”
“Silas, please,” I begged. “Caliban hasn’t visited me in months. Summer is almost over and I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried everything. I don’t even know where to start. I’ve read everything. I’ve talked with countless witches—”
He scoffed at the word.
I knew men. I knew how they worked, how to assuage them, how to get what I wanted. But as I studied the beautiful face before me, I found no familiar purchase. His reactions weren’t clicking. It was like grappling against an oily surface, desperate for a point of contact. Struggling to reason with him, I plowed forward with honesty.
“I came looking for a way to find him. I had no leads, except that Caliban said he’d marked Richard…the man you killed in my apartment. This is his house,” I clarified at his quizzical expression. “You said Richard was marked. Is that why you’re here for this…child? Some mark?”
Silas’s face gathered in disapproval. “The parasite had nothing to do while people stopped coming to the basement. When I killed the host, it released the…wait. It’s so easy to forget you shouldn’t be talking to me. It’s your fault the parasite showed up. Anyway, use your cell phone, human—”
“Marlow.”
He tilted his head back as if to laugh. He bit his lip, forcing the sound back into his belly before he relaxed. He looked at me and said, “You will be dead within a month if you keep throwing that around. Good luck with your life.”
“I don’t have reception!” I lurched toward him again, gripping at the broad stretch of muscle once more.
Silas wrapped a thumb and forefinger around my wrists and removed my fingers from his arm once more, plucking me from him as if dislodging a leech. “Clearly you can see through the veil…sometimes. Maybe it’s because of—what did you call him? Caliban?—the sigil he had over your home.”
My nod was too eager considering I couldn’t entirely confirm what he was saying.
Silas went on. “The parasite’s markings are an extension of his host’s. You shouldn’t be able to…I don’t have time to figure out why you can see us, let alone touch us. Maybe this host and his attachment had sigils up as well. But when it comes to him…” He grimaced ruefully at the memory of the one who’d spent more than two decades by my side before his face softened. “Actually…he—Caliban—already owes me one. Marlow, you said?”
I nodded.
Silas made a contemplative sound as he relaxed into his shrugging posture. He scanned me once. “Next time he visits, ask him to lift your veil.”
My mouth dropped open. I decided against explaining to this stranger that I’d been abandoned. I’d sent Caliban away, and he’d obeyed. Finally, I asked, “Can you do it?”
“Of course I can.”
My face lit. “Will you?”
A dark chuckle. “Absolutely not.”
Maybe it was his displeasure, or maybe it was my own fear seeping back into my bones, but the spiced scent of anointing oil fought for my attention against the sickly-sweet odor of festering wounds that still dripped on the floor. The basement shrank, closing in on me as it became entirely too small. The bald rods of fluorescent lights were too bright. It was as if I heard the sirens in the distance telling me the tornado would approach once more.
I couldn’t let him leave me.
“Please!” I calmed my voice before repeating, “Please, Silas. Do this for me. I really, really need it.”
“You’ll go mad,” he said with certainty. From his level chin to the set of his shoulders, I knew the conversation was over. Yet the voice within me told me that if he’d needed to go, he could have. Instead, he said, “And even if I wanted to…” He saw the light in my face and clarified, “Which I don’t—there’s a bond that happens when one of us takes in a human. It’s a permanent decision on both ends. I don’t want to be responsible for you in this lifetime or the next. If you get into trouble, it would be my fault. And clearly, Marlow—human woman who’s gotten herself into two near-death situations in a single season—you would get into trouble.”
“Three,” I said.
He arched a half-curious brow before turning his back on me.
“The man in my apartment, the boy tonight, and this basement now. If you don’t get me out of this room, I’ll die down here. It’s locked and no one is coming for me. I can’t call for help. If you leave me, you can add my blood to your hands.”
He took a step away, but I felt his hesitation. He rotated toward me. I watched the debate in his eyes and hated him for his indifference. I wasn’t sure what he was weighing. What incentive could there possibly be to allow me to starve to death until my bloated corpse was found by a forensics team in the subsequent weeks? I didn’t know this man—this thing—from Adam, but he was my only hope, and he was genuinely considering murdering me through inaction. My eyes narrowed incredulously as I watched him.
“Silas!” I yelled.
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
I knew I didn’t have room to argue. I couldn’t push him. I couldn’t force him. He was…nonhuman. Even in the cold, unflattering light of the basement, there was a beauty, a handsomeness to him that I rarely, if ever, saw in anyone, even art. His broad shoulders, square jaw, and rippling muscles were astounding on their own, but there was something else about him. An unmistakable glitter fluttered around him whenever he moved, almost as if he were glowing. It was a second light, a cleaner, better light than the one that hummed and flickered ominously overhead. He was in the same white-and-beige leathers I’d seen him in when he’d snatched me from certain death. Even then, he hadn’t done it to save me. He’d been irritated that I’d seen him. I supposed some things didn’t change.
Richard had been marked. Even if I didn’t know what the words meant, I clung to the fact. This mark had brought Silas to my apartment then, and though I had no concept of the specifics, I knew a similar incentive had to have pulled him here now.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for Caliban to owe me two favors,” he said finally, voice thick with reluctance. He sighed, “I guess that means we’re taking the stairs.”
It was unceremonious, but I didn’t care. I bathed in relief, practically dancing as Silas led the way. He rested a hand on the doorknob until it melted into a shimmering constellation of copper and gold. When he moved his hand away, the knob retained its earthly shape, but the door opened noiselessly on its hinges. He stepped onto the top floor of the house and ushered for me to follow.
I’d barely released the anxious breath after cresting the stairs before I dared ask, “And the veil?”
“Not a chance. And please, Marlow.” He paused, resting his weight on my name.
I looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to tell me to stay safe.
“Do us both a favor, and never see me again.”
I shivered on the corner outside of the taped-up house like a wet kitten, rain-drenched and trembling. The night was dry, but every part of me felt dirty, soaked, and terrified. I sat directly beneath the puddle of a streetlamp as if the light might keep away the terrors that lurked in the shadows, and I stared at the sleeping houses, wondering if any of them knew who and what had existed just a few homes away. I couldn’t get warm no matter how tightly I tucked my arms against my chest, hugging myself against the curb and waiting the twenty minutes it took for a driver in the remote neighborhood to find me. I triple-checked the license plate to ensure I was getting into the right vehicle and not crawling in the car with yet another Cheshire cat.
I’d lost the remaining scraps of my mind.
I was in desperate need of the pudding cups and numbing pills of a grippy-sock vacation. It had been nearly a decade since my dad had come home to find me in a snowbank outside of the house next to an empty orange bottle and driven me to the ER. They’d put me on a seventy-two-hour hold, which had leeched into the three-week in-patient stay before they determined that I was no longer a harm to myself or others. I’d wanted to drift off while looking at the bright, silver burn of the moon and diamond-soaked night sky. It was a memory I’d done my best to bury. While I no longer wanted to end my trips around the sun, I was an inch away from having the driver take me directly to the psychiatric facility to check myself in voluntarily.
The last time I’d been unable to deal with the world, it had been because of my imagination. This time, it was because of my reality.
It had been years since I’d given a rideshare driver a poor rating, but if this loud-mouthed son of a bitch didn’t shut the hell up, he was getting one star. The man with one knee on the wheel and an arm loosely draped over the passenger’s seat couldn’t smell the trauma pouring from me despite my raised hackles, my crunched position, my wild eyes, and my unwillingness to speak. I reeked of confusion and terror, yet he didn’t stop prattling.
The driver’s voice and the deafening dubstep thumbing through his speakers competed for my attention against flashing visions of the night. My nerves were so frayed from my brush with the nightmarish, cat-like child with the vibrantly blue blood. I’d been trapped in a locked basement. I’d walked into the killing room of a man who’d wanted me dead. Agony wrapped its icy talons around my heart and squeezed, forcing the remnants of dread through my veins. Then there had been Silas. Sword. Golden eyes. Shimmer and indifference and power. He’d said so much, and I’d understood none of it, save for one.
He’d told me to ask Caliban to lift the veil.
The veil.
I knew enough from literature, mythology, and fantasy to understand its meaning.
I could see through the human realm into the one filled with Cheshire-cat children and tall, muscular men with short tempers and, hopefully, Caliban.
It was all I wanted to think about, but the rideshare driver remained on his boisterous soapbox voicing his opinions on politics and religion. I was officially resigned to giving him zero stars and refusing to tip when he started referring to women as females. I did my best to tune him out while I focused on Silas’s words.
A bond. If he lifted my veil, we’d be bonded.
“And that’s why, I told her, listen: men are hunters. We’re not made for monogamy, we—”
“I’m sorry,” I said curtly. “I’m really tired. I need to sleep. Would you mind turning down the music so I can nap for the rest of the drive?”
Despite seeing little more than the back of his head, I caught his profile as he suppressed a sneer. He turned down the music and allowed me to remain with my thoughts.
My eyebrows bunched as I returned to Silas’s implication. On the one hand, it didn’t seem horrible to make someone who’d already saved me twice responsible for my ongoing wellbeing. On the other hand, I had no idea what sort of implications might come with such an agreement. And if I were Shiva and had third and fourth hands, they would force me to consider both that Silas had unequivocally said no and that Caliban had left me.
The driver pulled up in front of the warehouse, and I exited without saying goodbye. My card let me into the building, and it was with sinking disappointment that a new, unfamiliar face greeted me from the receptionist desk. She was chipper and talkative. I instantly disliked her, though my dislike for friendliness was hardly her problem.
My mind opened like internet tabs, one after the other, new thought after new thought running simultaneously until the computer of my brain slowed, each new page sluggishly sorting through thoughts and possibilities.
The house.
The basement.
The child.
His smile.
Oh god, that scabbed, toothy, horrible smile.
The six-year-old had unhinged his jaw like a snake. If he had been given five more seconds, his sharpened teeth would have sunken into my flesh. He was going to eat me. I couldn’t explain how I knew, but I felt it in my bones. Perhaps my dread had been sensing him all along. I’d detected the predator slinking in the basement wearing the humanoid skin of a boy.
The elevator doors opened, and I forced my feet forward. Another card, another pad, another beeping door before my apartment swung open. I switched on the light closest to the door to reveal…
My heart dropped.
I was not alone.
“What…”
Silas turned to me from where he’d been eyeing the photos on my wall. His arms remained folded across his chest. His eyes darkened, nothing particularly friendly greeting me as he surveyed me.
“How did you get here?” I’d meant for the question to come out with force, but every piece of myself that had broken and scattered at the sight of the childish entity cracked once more. Renewed fear coursed through me. The ground wobbled as I realized how little control I had over my own life, my own autonomy, my own safety. A locked door meant nothing when beings like Silas, Caliban, or the Cheshire cat could slither in. “How did you get in? How did you get here so much faster than me?”
“Come in so you don’t look like a lunatic shouting at an empty apartment,” he said.
“No.”
I remained planted in the doorway, watching the man who stood in beige and white in the middle of my living room, knowing he’d stood in the exact spot only weeks before.
“How did you get in?” I insisted.
His lips remained pressed in a tight line. He huffed an impatient puff of air before saying, “Anything can get in. For all you know, there are beings in your closet and under your bed at this very moment.”
“That’s not funny.” I swallowed.
“Good, because I’m not joking.”
I tried to breathe. Tried to remember that he hadn’t hurt me. Tried to convince myself that he wasn’t my enemy…but then again, he’d very nearly let me die in a locked basement less than two hours prior. Apparently, two hours had been long enough for him to vanish into whatever hole he came from and reappear with a conscience. Perhaps he’d come to apologize for valuing my life so little.
His eyes softened. He looked at me for a long time. Finally, with resignation, he said, “I’ll do it.”
I blinked.
The veil.
I lurched into my apartment on autopilot, closing the door behind me. I didn’t trust him enough to move any closer. I eyed him for any sign of deception. I’d barely been able to convince him that my life was worth saving, and a moment later he wanted to offer me the gift of sight?
I shook my head. “But…the bond. You said…”
“I’ve had time to think, and I changed my mind.”
“How much time?”
His chest moved with his deep inhale and exhale. He extended a hand, asking, “Do you want it or not?”
I looked at his outstretched palm uncertainly, then back up at him. I scanned the clean, modern lines of the apartment as if hoping Caliban might be waiting, but I knew better. I’d told him to leave. I’d told him not to come back. If I wanted to see him again, I’d have to find him. And in order to find him… If I took Silas’s hand, if I bonded myself to the shimmering stranger…
From the shadows came the coo of an airy female voice. I made out the subtle hourglass edges of hips and legs as she stepped into view. Her musical words were laden with an unmistakable smile as she said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Silas dropped his hand. A renewed string of curses bubbled from him with an angry, male snarl as he said, “Ah, for fuck’s sake.”