Chapter Twenty-Seven
I gasped for air as if emerging from deep under water. My knees buckled, making me painfully aware that they were still purple from when I’d tumbled to Hell’s cobblestone streets. If I hadn’t been clutching two powerful beings, I would have crumpled to the ground once more. It took me a fraction of a second to recognize the couch, the television, the enormous windows with the distant view of the river, the orange glow of warehouse lights twinkling as they refracted in the late-summer night.
“Are you going to ask if it’s always dark here, too?” Fauna taunted, untangling her hand from mine as she moved about my apartment. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but Azrames shoved his hands politely into his pockets.
“Nice place,” he said appreciatively, and I knew he meant it. It was a nice place. It wasn’t centuries-of-assassination-compensation nice, but I’d done very well for myself. And in the absence of friends or hobbies outside of those that existed in my phone, I’d invested my expendable income in things that made me happy.
Oh shit, my friends.
My hands flew to the skin-tight pants on instinct before I realized that the last time I’d seen my cell phone, I’d been in a cream dress sprawled across the cobblestone streets of Hell. I’m sure it was in the gutter of some other realm, a relic of mortals sitting in Satan’s sewers. I ran for my computer and scrunched my eyes against the tongue-lashing I knew awaited me.
I didn’t even read the messages from EG before responding.
(Marlow) Hey EG, I know it was uncool to disappear for a few days. My phone fell in a gutter on the same day that I ran into an old friend, and I took it as a sign from a universe that I needed to take a mental health break. I should have told you. I’m sorry for worrying you. Please send it up the ladder that none of this is on you. I am going to need a few extensions. At the moment, I can’t give you a new estimated time of delivery until my friend leaves town. She could be here anywhere from fifteen more minutes to a few more days or a week or so. I wish I had better answers for you, but this is as honest as I can be. I just wanted to pop my head back up from the ground before I go back in the earth again—I still haven’t replaced my phone and probably won’t for a minute. Sending love and regrets.
I winced against the hundreds of missed messages from the group chat. Something about them seemed…wrong. I frowned as I began to scroll, looking at the missed messages, then at the slow decrease in frequency. I clicked on one of Nia’s obscenity-laced messages to expand it, and my frown deepened as I looked at the date and time of delivery. I couldn’t believe the coldness in the last thing she’d sent.
(Nia) I called your bio-mother. Believe me when I say it was my last fucking option, and even then, you think I’m going to take the word of the abusive woman who put you in seven thousand dollars of therapy debt? The police were not thrilled with me, nor was she when she chewed me out for having to give a statement. Your car is at her place, Mar. Apparently you brought your lady friend toyour hometown? And honestly, Mar, I’m really goddamn disappointed. I thought you cared about us enough to let us know before you fell off the face of the earth. I am your family. Me. For your sake, I hope you’re fine.
I minimized her message and my eyes went to the corner of my screen, where once again the date and time showed something very, very off.
My hands began to shake as I lifted my face to look at Azrames, still quietly admiring the apartment from the middle of the room. He looked utterly at home in the shadows, his shades mixing flawlessly with their gloom.
“Az?” I whispered.
He rotated toward me, arching a curious brow.
“What day is it?”
His face softened at once. He took two steps close to me then squatted to eye level so that he could meet my face while I remained on the couch. An apologetic sadness pulled his mouth, his eyes, his very energy into a shade of regretful blue as he said, “Time passes differently between realms. What day did you leave the mortals?”
I swallowed, eyes darting to the corner of my laptop again. The cold, white letters and numbers hurt my eyes with their cruel impossibility. I shook my head slowly. My hair tickling my arms was the only sensation that cut through the numbness. “I was only in Hell for a little over a day,” I said with certainty. “Less than that. We got there in the middle of the night and left the next evening. It’s been eighteen hours at the most. It’s been…” But my eyes remained trained on the screen.
“How much time did you lose?” he prodded.
I looked into his face again, struck again by seeing his horns, his skin and coloration made of something entirely other. Fauna and her ethereal beauty had been hard enough to accept, but having Azrames in my apartment was the key I needed in order to accept that, yes, this was all happening to me.
“It’s…September. It’s been two weeks,” I said quietly, suddenly realizing that no excuse to EG or the publisher would be enough. No bangcation or hot girl or retreat into the countryside would make Kirby or Nia forgive me for the nightmare I’d put them through or for the betrayal of holding me while I’d cried, mourning my family for years, only to have my own mother be the one with the answers.
My mother.
I wondered what tale she was telling. For that matter, I wondered what tale she’d been told.
Fauna clicked on a light in the hall, which broke my spiral. I called out to her, “What are you looking for?”
“Az!” She shouted from the next room. “Come help me with something.”
He sauntered into the hallway. I closed my laptop and followed him with my face creased in confusion. She was on her hands and knees as she peered under my bed.
“Explain yourself,” I said calmly, leaning against the frame of my own bedroom while a Nordic nymph and shadow demon helped themselves to my personal space.
Az flattened himself on the floor, sliding his long arm into the dark space beneath my bed. He emerged a moment later, hands wrapped around a small…something.
“Explain yourself faster,” I said, eyes widening in surprise.
Fauna sighed. “Like I said, Silas wants you.”
Azrames extended the object to me. “It’s for sympathy,” he said. “In witchcraft—”
“It’s a poppet,” I said, breathing out the fear-laced word torn from fairy tales. I turned over the tiny golden figurine. It had the unmistakable curves of a human shape. I dug my fingernail into the metal, and my eyebrows lifted in surprise at the nearly imperceptible indentation that confirmed that it was, in fact, gold. I turned it over to see a curious combination of swirls, circles, intersecting lines, and curves etched into it.
He nodded, though it was riddled with his frown. “Almost. Poppets are generally for hexing, and this is more for connection.”
“He’s looking for his in,” Fauna said, crawling onto my bed. She crossed her legs before saying, “Can I just say something?”
We both looked at her before I answered, “I’m confident you will anyway.”
“I think this is a really good thing,” she said, voice lowering until it was scarcely more than a whisper. She looked at the tiny shape in my hands, then back up to me. “Knowing what we know…he could have forced our hands. Instead, it looks like he’s trying to get you to want this.”
I almost dropped the figurine. “He wants me to choose, what? Heaven? The bond? Him?”
Azrames pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe all of it. Maybe he just knows how this will shake out the moment the heavenly hosts find out and hopes you’ll take the step of your own free will before you’re forced into chains. After all…” Azrames looked at his feet, eerily quiet as he said, “He and I both know what it’s like to serve that god.”
I threw the figurine onto the bed. “What sort of free will is that?” I demanded, quoting years of theology about accepting the faith of my own volition.
“I had the free will to rebel,” Azrames responded. “And as a result, I’m locked out of Heaven. There were consequences. My choice to fall cost me friends, brothers, a kingdom, and family. I’m engaged in thousands of years of slaughter with smaller numbers on our side and a ruler who values equality, which also means he’s less likely to sacrifice us. Which is great, except when it means—”
“That you might lose the war,” Fauna said, reaching up to squeeze his arm. “You won’t,” she promised. “I mean, you probably would if it were up to Marlow alone, but I’m the wheel steering the ship, here. I’m not going to let her do anything stupid.”
I wanted to argue, but she was right. Everything I’d known about Heaven, Hell, the pagan realms, Norse mythology, and international deities had been like Plato’s blind man in a cave. I’d done my best to make sense, then fiction, based on my limited understanding. I was not qualified to wage war.
The tightness in my chest worsened. I wanted Caliban back. I wanted him safe. I wanted him with me. Instead, not only had I sent him away, but he’d gambled with his life, his kingdom, and with every single pantheon by putting out a mark to protect me. He’d been willing to burn it to the ground, and I’d sent him away. Now his soul and the lives of everyone and everything—mortal and immortal alike—rested on my shoulders.
“Will Silas know that you’re here?” I asked.
Both looked at me skeptically.
“I don’t want to wait. He didn’t bring anyone with him when he came to my apartment or when he involved my mother. If you truly think he’s trying to keep other angels out of it—”
Fauna winced.
“What?”
“Your mom…” she said slowly. “If she’s been praying, and knowing the level of her clairvoyance, she may have been spilling more to the angels than we’d want them to know. Now, hopefully this doesn’t change things. As long as Silas kept his mouth shut about the contract he took, your battle is with him. But your mother may have made things harder. She could have told them about me, about our visit, about our disappearing act.”
“Shocker,” I breathed. I shook it away like a dog drying its coat before saying, “Fauna, we smell alike. Even if he smells you here, he might think it’s my fae blood, or just the time we’ve spent together. Az…” I looked around before reaching for the book of matches behind my bed. “Time to light every candle in my apartment to mask the smell of your smoke.”
Fauna nodded with a slow, proud smile. “Maybe we’ll burn something on the stove?”
“We’ll cover it all,” I agreed. “And then, I’ll call him.”
“What will you do?” Fauna asked.
I exhaled slowly before gesturing to the still-sheer shirt. “Maybe I don’t know the rules about giving my name to gods and fae, or about making deals, or about the realms. But I know a thing or two about men, and when it comes to weapons, mine is sharp as a goddamn needle. I’ll do what I do best.”
“Which is?”
“He’s a man, right? I’ll do what I’ve always done. First, I’ll make him think he has the upper hand. Then, I’ll get him talking.”
How long had it been since I’d stood in my doorway after returning from the sulfur and blue pulp of the Cheshire-cat massacre only to see an angel in the middle of my living room? I remembered him extending a hand, making a joke about how anything could be lurking in my closet in the moments before Fauna stepped from behind the shadows. I focused on that memory, calling on it to comfort me. He hadn’t known she was in my apartment then, and surely he wouldn’t sense it now. I prayed—though to who, I had no idea—that Fauna and Azrames would remain concealed as I settled on my couch. Then I’d knelt, as I had in childhood when talking to God. Finally, I’d taken to pacing.
Candles flickered around my apartment as if I were holding a séance. The entire unit clashed between the fragrant vanilla, the cinnamon bun, the fireside, the balsam, the pumpkin pie, and the fireside embers I’d stocked and stored around the place, fetching them from every closet, every bedside table, every dusty hiding place under the sink until they were all ablaze. Hopefully, the smells would be as overpowering for him as they were for me. The room danced with shadows, while every piece of furniture, every belonging, every nook and cranny reflected orange in its dim light. I knew that meant he’d be able to see me, my every expression, my smiles, my frowns, my uncertainty, my pain, my fear, all with perfect clarity.
Clutching the sympathetic poppet in my hand, I followed an indiscernible intuition and pressed it against my heart. Without knowing why, I squeezed my eyes closed and whispered his name, inviting him in.
Perhaps it was my fae blood, perhaps it was cowardice, but the instinct to close my eyes was right. The room filled with a painfully white light for the briefest of instances. Perhaps if my eyes had been open, I could have written it off as the gripping claws of an ocular migraine. Instead, I knew it for what it was.
I looked up, and there he was.
“Marlow.” He said my name as if it were an apology. I’d forgotten how golden his eyes were, and a tiny tug of curiosity wondered if those magnificent irises had been the birthplace of halo lore. They darkened, the glittering light behind him folding in on itself as his muscled shoulders slumped slightly. He was in the same cream-shaded armor he’d worn before, and, knowing what I did about his rank and the controlling nature of his realm, I wondered if he was in uniform.
I took a step backward from the towering man and held up the figurine. “What is this?” I breathed, horror and offense plain on my face. I didn’t need to fake my outrage.
His eyes went from the golden statuette in my palm to me. Guilt wove itself through his features. The glitter around him gave way to the flicker of candles as he said, “I…I’m sorry. I’m doing everything I can.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, voice trembling.
“Listen, Marlow, it’s more complicated than you realize.”
My fingers tightened around the poppet as I made an angry fist. No, it wasn’t more complicated than I realized, despite his condescending assertion. I understood so much more than he gave me credit for. I bit my tongue as I fought the urge to spit his words back at him, resisting my temper in favor of information.
“Then help me realize.” I failed to keep the venom from my words but decided it was fine. It was honest, at the very least, which I’m sure he could sense. So far, nothing I’d said or done had been an act. “You nearly left me to die in a basement. I had to beg you to get me out of there. Now, you’re everywhere. You’re in my apartment. You’re in my family. You’re leaving tiny gold statues under my bed!” I couldn’t help the involuntary response as I chucked the poppet across the room. He flinched as it hit the wall as if the impact caused him physical pain. I stirred my voice into equal parts confusion and desperation as I begged, “What do you want from me?”
“It’s about you, and it isn’t.” He blew out a breath. He ran his hands through his hair, and between the boyish gesture, the defeat in his voice, and the collapse of his posture, he looked positively…human. “It’s not fair that you’re caught up in this, Marlow. It isn’t. But here we are, and we can’t change the dice that have been cast.”
I took a step closer and watched him soften sympathetically as I approached. The thieves’ oil scents of frankincense and myrrh were strong enough to overpower the candles that burned throughout the apartment. Everything about his tone, his posture, his message confused me. I was ready to be angry. I was ready to be furious as I plied him for information. I’d prepared a variety of tactics that had proven endlessly useful in my career of getting industry tycoons, actors, financial experts, and old money to open their wallets in conjunction with their lips. I sat on a vault of secrets nearly as powerful as my well of savings.
They’d prattled on to a pretty, polite, blank canvas. I’d smiled, nodded, and touched their arms supportively while they’d projected their fantasies onto me. I was a friend. I was a lover. I was a bimbo. I was an empty vase, a static television, a college girlfriend, a confidante, a nobody. Nothing they said to me had mattered, just as I hadn’t mattered. I’d mirrored their anger, their excitement, their indignation, their pleasure, persuading them to give more, share more, reveal more. And with each secret, each whisper, each coin of information, I’d slipped it into the bank within myself and accrued more and more until I could buy myself a kingdom built on knowledge as its stones.
“Are you going to ask where I went when Fauna and I disappeared?”
He closed his eyes. “You went either to the Nordes or to Hell. I don’t know how you did it, but you did.”
I nodded slowly. “Are you going to ask what I learned?”
He took a step toward me, and I watched his hand reach for me just as it had when he’d offered the bond. It rested briefly on my shoulder, sliding down my arm with the barest of touches before he dropped it altogether. He turned his head as he looked to the wall.
“Why haven’t you told anyone?” I asked.
He met my gaze then, golden eyes flashing. I knew in my core that he understood my question. We’d cut through the bullshit. We’d skipped the pleasantries, the dances, the guessing games until I asked what I’d summoned him to ask. He’d responded to the most urgent of tiers, and he’d done nothing with it.
“Why hasn’t Heaven—”
He raised a hand to silence me, and I complied. Maybe it was the way he stiffened or the quick intake of air, but I knew with immediacy that the truth of my question couldn’t be spoken aloud. I realized my foolishness in a moment. If Azrames, Fauna, and Silas could be in the same apartment, then so could anyone. Thanks to the ink marring my skin, I’d be able to see them whether or not I was within the unit. If they loitered just beyond earshot, though, I might unravel the good Silas had done by keeping my secret.
“I called it in” came his low response.
My blood chilled. My lips parted, pulse quickening. I blinked rapidly to try to bring moisture to my eyes, but I couldn’t. I wanted to study his face, to search for answers, to ask what he’d done, but all I could do was focus on the shallow breaths that barely kept me alive.
He’d called in the favor.
It was too late.
My lungs weren’t filling. My panting grew quicker until it was too late. I took a backward step, buckling against the pain of my bruised, purple knee as it gave out from beneath me.
Silas had his arms around me in a moment, hand under my head just before it smacked against the obsidian floor. He scooped me up, pressing me into chest and muscles and frankincense and spice as he relocated me to the couch, muttering a low string of agitated curses. I groaned against my own weakness, hating my stupid, swollen knees for failing me.
“Don’t say anything,” he said, voice low. “If you know, then you know. Don’t say it out loud.” I looked up at him, confusion widening my eyes. He still hadn’t released me, warm hand cupping the back of my head as his arm remained around me. He eased me to a seated position as he said, “Just nod if you understand.”
Though I’d spent some time with Fauna insulting my intelligence, I understood that wasn’t what was happening. He wasn’t questioning my ability to understand; he was asking whether I comprehended the gravity that my words might have. I nodded slowly, and as I did, he released me. He moved away, but only slightly. His knee bumped mine and I winced, hand flying to the goose-egg-size welts that decorated each kneecap from my collapse into Hell.
He frowned down at my outfit as if seeing it for the first time. His gaze went first to my knees, but I didn’t miss how they traveled up, snagging briefly before meeting my face. Even in the candlelight, I could see the blush creep into his cheeks.
“Are you hurt?”
I shook my head. “I just banged my knees when I…I don’t know. Jumped realms?”
His gold-brown brows bunched as he lifted a large hand. “May I?”
My lower lip lifted in a pout. He didn’t wait for an answer before his hand touched one knee, then the other. The warm, tingling sensation radiated from my joints through my body, filling me with a decadent, downright sinful pleasure as something far more indulgent than healing coursed through me. I nearly choked on it, eyes closing, lips parting in a gasp as the tingling ended. When I looked back at him in shock, his mouth was quirked up in a half-hearted smile.
“I’m glad I could make you feel…better.”
I swallowed. I wanted to be angry, but it was hard to feel anything through the haze of dopamine. I didn’t have to glance down to know that my breasts had pebbled against his nearly translucent shirt. I bit my lip, shaking the treacherous chemicals from my mind as I tried to look at him through the haze.
“Silas,” I meant to say seriously, but his name came out a bit too sensually. I coughed and didn’t miss the smile. “Silas,” I repeated, this time managing to lasso the gravity the situation required. “You called in the bargain. You have to tell me—”
“Minor entity.” He cut me off loudly as if speaking for the room to hear. “Made for an easy bargain. There’s been a job out west that a handful of the faithful have been petitioning us to take. I haven’t wanted to tackle it, as it’s below my rank—but their prayers have grown annoying. One pagan deity or the other is making the agriculture in this town thrive like it’s eighth century BC. I was made aware of it months ago, but I knew it would start shit with the Phoenicians. I thought it would be easier to make Hell take the hit. It’s a small gig,” he said, voice a little too heavy as he landed on the final sentence. His eyes burned into mine, begging me to understand.
My lashes fluttered rapidly.
I did. He was announcing for the listening walls—whether Heaven, Hell, or all the realms, that he and Caliban had a low-level bargain to deal with a minor pest problem. His raised tone rang a curious note. I had no idea whether or not he was telling the truth, but he clearly wanted to be heard.
But…the Phoenicians? I knew the pantheon as the bad guys from Sunday school stories. Could an angel really be talking about the Canaanites, the Philistines, Carthage, and the cut-and-dry biblical antagonists around the Euphrates?
I reached my hand toward where his rested on his knee, wrapping my fingers around the top of his hand and squeezing for emphasis as I asked, “Did you really?”
He flared his eyes in warning. His tone changed, lifting his pitch to an arrogance I hadn’t heard before. His gaze remained unchanged, golden gravity fixed on mine as he said, “If you think he can’t handle a Phoenician nuisance, then perhaps Hell’s lost its touch. It’s just outside of the town of Bellfield. Typical deal: idyllic town seems too good to be true because it is. Be my guest if you think he needs backup. Tell Hell thanks for squashing our cockroaches so we don’t have to get involved.”
Cockroach. I knew how Heaven felt about this pantheon in particular.
My mind flashed to horrible thoughts, feelings, and pictures of Sunday school. I was flung immediately into the memory of a scratchy dress and a cold, metal folding chair, surrounded by other children. The teacher used a flip book to illustrate the very graphic retelling of the Canaanite religion of the Old Testament that had been Yahweh’s main rival. The teacher had laughed as she had shown cartoon images of a scene so violent and horrifying that I’d mentally buried it until I began unpacking religious traumas on my therapist’s couch.
She’d told us about the infamous competition between Yahweh and Baal.
She started the story on the smiling, kindly face of Yahweh’s favorite prophet, Elijah. In the next picture, he pointed an accusatory finger as he issued a challenge to prove Yahweh’s superiority over Baal’s. They would both sacrifice a bull on an altar, but they would not light a fire themselves. Instead, the priests and prophets would pray to their respective gods, and the winner would burn the sacrifice.
The next pictures had been so red. Drawings of large, dead cows, of pools of blood, of knives and gashes in the arms of strange men. Baal’s priests had cut and harmed themselves, mutilating themselves in humility while they begged for his intercession. They were things children weren’t meant to see.
The Sunday school story told that, though they’d prayed day and night, nothing happened.
The teacher’s eyes had twinkled with victory as the story had taken a turn. She’d flipped the pictures to show the room crowded with children in their nicest church clothes the next scene in the story. In an act of showmanship, Elijah had asked the people to fill barrels full of water and soak the altar until the wood, the bull, and the trench were so saturated that it would be impossible for a fire to burn. When Elijah had prayed, Yahweh had answered, consuming the sacrifice, the wood, the stones, and the water until nothing but ash remained. Then, he blessed the land with rain.
When I’d asked my parents why God had stopped doing miracles, they’d raised their hand as if to hit me for such a heretical question. Working through their tempers, my mom had explained that He did miracles all the time—they just didn’t get written down anymore, since the Bible was finished.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me to hear that, thousands of years later, Heaven and the Phoenicians continued to hate one another. But it left a much bigger question in its place. When it came to Heaven and its enemies and allies, the Phoenicians may as well have been Hell.
Traumatic memory had snatched me from the present. I thought of the fires consuming the water-soaked bull in the story as the flickering candles drew me back.
I realized my hand was still on Silas’s in the same moment it took him to turn his palm upward, snatching my wrist before I could pull away. He pulled me in. His free hand brushed a strand of hair away from my face as he drew unbearably close, reminding me of the serotonin that had gushed through unspeakable parts of me at his touch only moments before. For a terrifying moment, I thought he might kiss me. He left his free hand on my cheek, lips brushing my ear as he whispered, “I did you a favor. I don’t know how long he’ll be there before others find out. Look to the Wild Prairie Rose. Get to him first.”
He pulled from my ear and planted a gentle kiss on my cheekbone as if it had been his intent all along. Heat radiated from the place where his mouth had met my face, and this time I had no one to blame but myself for the tell-tale way my body responded below the flimsy cloth. He noticed, too.
Silas squeezed my hand and stood. He looked to where the poppet had tumbled near the far wall, then back to me before saying, “Keep it on you. You know…should you need me.” With a confusingly charming wink, a flash of white light, and the barest edges of residual glitter, he was gone.