Chapter 30
For once, I can’t hear Inge pacing and muttering quietly to herself, which paradoxically makes it even harder to sleep.
Without her small noises to focus on, the house is too quiet.
I can’t squirm and try to get comfortable, because the chaise longue I sleep on creaks and I don’t want to wake Maher.
But every time I close my eyes, all I can imagine is Diavola, somewhere beneath us, dead.
Which is irrational, because she isn’t even trying new methods right now.
We’re waiting on several deliveries—it’s difficult to source the world’s most corrosive acids and dangerous poisons, which is both aggravating and comforting, and we’ve had no luck finding someone who will craft a diamond blade—and until we have novel options for her, Diavola’s only on fair duty with us.
With me, today. But after the Ferris wheel mistake, I stalked along, silent and determined.
We barely spoke at all. I couldn’t even look at her, remembering how it felt standing next to her gazing out over glittering Paris, thinking of Inge and Maher’s urging that I just kiss her and see what happens, knowing I can’t indulge any of it.
I have a job to do, and I’m going to do it, and nothing will stop me.
Rest isn’t going to happen tonight. But standing nearly ruins my attempts to be quiet for Maher’s sake. My feet hurt so badly from all the walking that I have to bite my knuckles to keep from crying out.
I gingerly creep down the stairs to the ground floor.
I expected to find Inge down here so she could give me tasks to occupy my mind, or at the very least Diavola, who could accompany me on a midnight sweep.
It wouldn’t accomplish much, but it would give me something to do. There’s no one here, though.
Maybe Inge had the same idea and took Diavola out with her. Though Inge still avoids Diavola, so that seems unlikely. Inge might really be asleep for once, upstairs in the bathtub.
There are few things lonelier than being awake in the middle of the night.
People everywhere, but no one to talk to.
I wish I had accidentally woken Maher after all.
Needing reassurance that we’re making progress even if it doesn’t feel like it, I open the door to the cellar.
It’s pitch dark down there, so I take a lamp from the kitchen, light it, and then wander down to stare at the cage.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, stopping short. Diavola’s illuminated in the golden pool of my lamp.
She’s sitting on the stone floor, gazing at our trap for the Watcher.
The steel cage dominates the space, bars stretching from floor almost to ceiling.
It’s open at the top for now to accommodate the trapdoor, but once we have the Watcher inside, we’ll slide a heavy steel lid into place.
It’s a brutal and inelegant piece, but it’ll do the job. We assume. We hope.
Diavola doesn’t even glance up at me. The cage has the same effect on her that her eyes have on me. It’s like she’s fallen into it and can’t look away.
And then it strikes me how awful being down here must feel for her.
Because she hasn’t found a way to kill the Watcher yet, and there’s no guarantee she will.
Which means this cellar could be yet another cave for her.
Is she imagining the next hundred years, stuck in this room, guarding her devil until he inevitably escapes again and sets the whole thing back in motion?
And this time she won’t even have the comfort of visiting her sister’s family.
Determination wells, fierce and burning in my chest. “We’ll figure it out. You aren’t alone in this anymore. We’re going to kill him.”
Diavola looks up at me at last. It’s a trick of the flickering lamplight, but it looks as though her eyes are filled with tears.
If she could cry, in this moment I don’t know whether they’d be tears of relief or despair.
Either way, I’ll share it with her. I step all the way into the cellar and set my lamp on the table, now scored and burned and eaten away with the scars of Diavola’s attempts at self-harm.
“Can you see in the dark?” I ask.
“No.”
“So, you were just sitting here, alone, in the blackness.”
“Yes.”
“Can I join you? Minus the blackness part. I’d like to keep the lamp on, if that’s all right with you.”
Diavola dips her delicate chin in a nod and I sit.
“Oh God,” I groan with relief, sticking my legs out in front of me and leaning against the wall. I’m glad I didn’t get dressed. It’s much easier to be unladylike when wearing a nightdress and robe.
“What’s wrong?” Diavola asks.
“My feet. Not all of us glide along the ground as though skimming the surface of an icy lake. Some of us have to tromp like ungainly baby horses, and this fair is simply too damn large.”
“Is that why you’re awake? Your feet hurt?”
“Yes,” I lie, because that’s simpler than admitting I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
“That’s easy, then.” Diavola turns her back on the cage, sits across from me, and lifts my right foot into her lap. Before I can protest, she rubs a firm circle in the center. I let out a groan. And then immediately burn with embarrassment.
A smile like the lamplight, flickering and warm, appears on Diavola’s face. She continues her massage. I start babbling, for fear of letting out more sounds that belong in the privacy of a bedroom.
“How can you do that?” I ask.
“It’s just a foot rub.” Diavola pauses. “Is it—should I not?”
“No, God no, please don’t stop.” To my relief, she keeps going.
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the rough, cold wall.
Cellars always remind me of Joren, so even when they’re unpleasant, it’s a pleasant association.
“I meant how do you know the exact right amount of pressure to use? You said you can’t feel anything.
So, why is this the—” I stop, holding my breath so I don’t gasp from the combination of pleasure and pain she’s providing.
When I can speak again, I continue. “The best thing that’s ever happened to me? ”
“Oh.” Diavola pauses once more and I open my eyes, peering at her. She’s gazing down at my foot in her hands, an uncertain frown on her face. “I just know when it’s right. Because of your reaction.”
“My deeply embarrassing reaction?” I squinch my face up in regret.
Diavola’s full, pale lips twitch into another smile. “That, and your feelings.”
I’m about to ask if she means my expressions, and then I remember how she described the Watcher consuming pain. Diavola said she could do something similar when it came to emotions. Not smell them, exactly, but draw them in.
My stomach sinks in horror. If I thought I was humiliated by my animal groan before, it’s nothing to what I’m experiencing now. On the Ferris wheel, and all day today, and every moment we’ve ever spent together—I’ve been trying to hide my feelings from someone who can literally breathe them in.
I want to sink into the stone floor. But before I can stammer an excuse to leave, Diavola frees one of her hands and pulls something from a pocket in her flowing white dress. I didn’t even know she had pockets. It seems too practical for such an unknowable, unearthly creature.
“You were looking at this today. I hope you don’t mind.” She waits until I hold out my hand, then drops a silver miniature into it.
I turn it over. It’s a delicately crafted bench, a near-exact match to the bench in the entry of my home.
I’d paused at a silversmithing display in one of the buildings we visited today and stared at it.
Mama’s never found the right piece for that area of her tiny house, and there it was.
Our bench. I was overwhelmed looking at it.
“Thank you,” I whisper. “It’s perfect.”
“I could tell you wanted it. Why didn’t you get it?”
“Wait, did you steal it?” I look up, not alarmed so much as amused. Diavola, immortal revenant, committing petty theft.
“I did not,” she says, looking offended. Then, like a cat slinking into view as it’s about to pounce on prey, a smile slides into place on her face. “I asked very nicely, and the man gave it to me.”
“Well, as long as you asked nicely.” I laugh and slip the bench into my robe pocket.
It makes me miss Mama. I wish she could be here with us.
Though then I’d worry even more about her.
I’m glad I know she’s safe at home. It’s strange, but ever since she told me the truth about her past, I haven’t had my nightmare about the house slipping into the ground with her in it.
Having everything out in the open deepened our trust and connection, and my subconscious let go of some of my fear for her.
And now, at last, I get to bring a present home to her like I always knew I should.
Assuming I get to go home, which I dearly hope I will. The bench feels like a promise to Mama. That I’ll come back, and help her maintain her homes, both small and large.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Diavola prods. “Why didn’t you buy it?”
This was a kindness deeper than Diavola understands, and I want to answer honestly for once.
“The same reason I don’t go to the opera, or wander through art museums, or stand along harbors and let the salt wind tangle my hair.
Because I don’t deserve to. Any time I take for myself, any indulgences for pleasure or leisure, I’m failing…
” I trail off, trying to understand who, exactly, I’m failing.
Not my father. I shouldn’t feel indebted to him anymore, though it’s hard to shake off after building so much of my life around him.
But it isn’t just him I’ve built my life around.
“I’m failing all the bodies I’ve seen. All the lives I’ve observed after their end.
Joren taught me what a responsibility that is, a solemn privilege for us to be the last people to care for their mortal forms. And I’ve seen so many bodies, Diavola.
So many lives ended, and I’m the last person who cares for them.
I haven’t filled my debt to them. How can I pause for beauty when their souls aren’t laid to rest alongside their bones? ”
Diavola gently puts my right foot on the floor and picks up my left, continuing her massage.
“I walked every night through a dead town, and I lit a candle not for myself, but for my sister. So she’d have reason to hope.
I planted roses because I deserved little spots of beauty, and I liked watching them grow over everything that caused me so much pain, knowing that someday all those memories would be gone, but the roses would still be there.
The thing I love most about humanity is their desire for beauty.
That they create it for themselves and others, just to make life a little better.
You carry the dead, and I would never ask you to stop.
But you aren’t dead yet. It’s not a betrayal of them to take joy in that.
If anything, it’s a betrayal of them not to. ”
I wipe under my eyes, telling myself it’s just the relief of Diavola working the pain and tension out of my feet. Sniffling, I nod. “I think I’d like to go to the Louvre with you. You can show me your favorites.”
Diavola’s dark eyes twinkle in the lamplight. “And we can go to an opera, so I can experience it through you. I want to know what you feel there.”
I laugh. “I’d much rather take you to a dim and smoky club when all this is over.”
Her fingers freeze, and I do, too. Because we both know what kind of clubs I favor, and the implication of what I’m proposing.
This is the first time we’ve spoken of an after—assuming we’re actually successful.
And in my after, Diavola still exists. When she explicitly asked me to promise that she wouldn’t.
“Diavola, I—”
There’s a loud thump overhead, followed by the muffled sound of Inge cursing.
“You should try to sleep.” Diavola releases me and drifts deeper into the cellar, next to the cage. The lamp doesn’t reach her there. All I can see is the flash of her eyes, watching me. And then turning deliberately away.
I stand, wishing we could continue our conversation.
And also desperate not to. Because Diavola didn’t say no to my invitation.
But she didn’t say yes, either. As I walk back upstairs to reunite with my living friends, I wonder if Diavola is fixated on the same thing: the promise I never actually made.