Chapter Seven
Reluctance had a strong pair of hands, holding me in the pew, unprepared to leave the sanctuary yet.
If the men were right, we wouldn’t be safe until we convinced Medusa to help us.
I didn’t understand the why of it all, but I also didn’t understand the multiverse of realms, the motivations of gods, the chess game of humanity, or why I’d been chosen for the center of it all.
“You ready, Marmar?” Azrames asked.
I glanced at the bottle of wine in my hands. “Just a minute.”
I hated airports, and I dreaded leaving the safety of the crumbling chapel, even if it was for the greater good.
I didn’t want to go out into the world with oxygen-snatching, eyeball-gouging, locust-sending losers fluttering around.
We still had three days, and it felt like they were bending the rules.
Everyone checked their wallets to ensure they had their IDs. I had an Amex to supplement everything else.
With our chaperones at the ready, there was only one thing left to do.
To my surprise, it was Azrames who looked nervous.
“I’ve already spoken to her,” Priscilla said, voice reassuring. “We met in meditation at length before I left my house. She pushed me to be here for Marlow. Whatever this is, I’m meant to play a role. I’m little more than her boots on the ground.”
“The Spider Queen?” I asked.
“No.” She shook her head. “Meeting with the Spider Queen is like meeting with Yahweh. We don’t do it directly, not in this sense.
People who worship Yahweh pray to his angels, his saints, his son.
They don’t expect the high god himself to show up.
When it comes to the Spider Queen, she has her agents of fate, but she is destiny embodied.
“One of the demons I work with is worthy of equal respect, but just like your friends here, she’s able to be more hands-on. Maybe you know her? She’s among the Infernal Divine.”
Azrames nodded uncertainly, and I recognized a face I’d seen only once before. He had been on similar, uncertain footing upon meeting Caliban in Bellfield.
I lifted a finger. “Who is this? And by how much do they outrank Azrames?”
Priscilla, Silas, and Az all flinched at my choice in words. I’d taken a stab at humor, but I clearly had no sense for the gravity of certain words.
“Everyone with a title outranks me,” Az said.
Attempting to spread balm on my mistake, I made a sympathetic face.
“I guess that’s one thing you and Silas have in common?
” I waited on bated breath to see if my attempt at even the smallest of repairs made purchase, and I exhaled my relief at the small smile Silas shot Azrames’s way. We were a bunch of title-free nobodies.
“I had a title,” Silas said dryly.
“I’ve always wanted to meet Duchess Vapula,” Xuan said, redirecting the conversation. “She’s sometimes a he, right? Duke or Duchess?”
“I love them already,” Kirby said.
“You’ll love her” came Priscilla’s reassurance. To the rest of us, she explained, “She appears to me as a woman. She’s a ruling member of the Ars Goetia, with thirty-six legions beneath her.”
We shuffled together a few of the church’s half-melted candles and passed them off to Priscilla for her summoning space. The others busied themselves helping with the setup, which gave me a moment to talk to the other witch.
I angled for Xuan. “You don’t work with…” I tried to remember the language the two of them had used when referencing demons.
“Infernals,” Xuan provided. “No, but I’ve called in a member of the Infernal Divine a time or two for transactional encounters. I’m Hāfu. Half Vietnamese, half Japanese. Vietnam gave me my name; Japan gave me my gods.”
I fidgeted, searching for the word. “Shinto?”
She nodded. “The Kami are the deities. Shinto is the name of the religion. Omoikane is the one I pray to for wisdom, but they’re in the major Kami, and if I had to guess, I’d preempt that they’d tell me positioning myself against the world’s biggest gods is unwise.
Kagutsuchi is a minor goddess of fire. I’ve worked with them for a while, and I suspect they might be down to burn things to the ground.
Kisshōten is who we’re really going to want on our side. ”
“Kisshōten?” I repeated, embarrassed with my botched pronunciation. I’d spent years learning Spanish, but trying to impress Xuan by telling her I was irrelevantly bilingual was as ridiculous as showing up in Poland to inform them I could speak French. Ignorance was ignorance.
“The goddess of good fortune. If we want to win, we want luck and favorability on our side. Her fingers in the pot could be the difference between wins and losses.”
Priscilla looked over her shoulder. “Why don’t you give her a call? I think maybe I should talk to the Duchess alone at first.”
Xuan barely had time to agree before Nia and Kirby began to scavenge the church for more candles. One witch headed for the annex with her supplies, and the other disappeared through the hall, but the crumpled building didn’t offer the privacy one might desire.
“Let’s give them some space,” Silas said, offering Kirby and I gentle touches on our respective arms as he guided us away from whatever was about to occur.
He steered us toward the atrium, Nia in tow.
Azrames stayed behind to formally greet Duchess Vapula, while the witches settled into whatever they needed to call upon their deities.
The door that separated the atrium and the sanctuary had barely swung shut before I noticed Silas stiffen. The muscles between his shoulders tightened, back straightening slowly as he righted himself. Through gritted teeth, he turned to the three of us and said, “It appears we’re not alone.”
The hot, summer evening was windless. Maybe that was why it took me an extra second to sense the herbaceous, misty, evergreen scents of cypress and wet forest floors.
I would have recognized that smell anywhere.
My eyes widened. My heart soared. My face lit.
“He’s here?!”
***
Kirby and Nia responded to the panicked pivoting as I searched behind both of them, scouring the rubble for signs of Caliban. Their worry transformed into something else entirely, faces paling in unison, and I knew precisely why.
I sensed him before I saw him, spinning on my toes toward who I knew would be there.
The debris scraped beneath my feet as I turned.
Marble-white hair, silver eyes, broad shoulders, and a black T-shirt stretching over a well-muscled back and chest awaited me.
A hard, masculine mouth quirked into a question.
We hadn’t spoken since I’d taken my stance in the metaphysical shop.
While Azrames had stood guard, I’d said some hurtful things. And he…he’d said some perfect things.
“Thank you,” I breathed. Not hello. Not I miss you. Not I love you.
I’d intended to thank him for jumping to help Nia, but I knew he’d already accomplished so much more.
The peeling wallpaper, the crumpling building, the entire world melted around us.
“You’re hurt,” he breathed, sweeping my hand into his own. All that remained was a thin pink line where I’d injured myself.
“Angels were in the mirror,” I said. In this world, the nonsensical sentence was perfectly clear.
He took a protective step toward me. The room’s temperature dropped several degrees. He took my hand in his own, and I savored the touch. I knew I was meant to introduce him to my friends, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak.
Leave it to the angel to ruin my reverie.
“Your men?” Caliban asked. I knew he was speaking to Silas, even if he didn’t address him directly.
Silas sucked his teeth. “No. I have three days to let them know if I’m falling. Marlow has not been extended the courtesy of such a timeline, whether or not I’m here.”
Caliban ran his finger over my palm once more. “Interesting.”
Silas widened his stance, crossing his arms as he said, “Nia, Kirby, meet the demon Prince who’s ruined Marlow’s life.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” he said, but he didn’t look away from me as the words left his mouth. They remained fixed wholly on me.
“For fuck’s sake, Caliban,” Silas grumbled, “we’re at war. Can you be civil long enough to say hello? Shouldn’t you still be indebted to me or something?”
Caliban looked up at long last, amused. The pale light filtering through the filthy windows gave his skin a slight pearly shimmer. “Sure,” Caliban said. “Call it in, Silas. See what happens.”
He hadn’t even bothered to turn toward Silas as he’d issued his challenge.
His fingers traced burning lines as he brushed the hair back from my face, sending prickles down my spine as he tucked it behind my ear.
The others didn’t know our history of favors and debts. They didn’t know that Caliban had paid Silas back tenfold. They couldn’t possibly know why things were tense, beyond the battle of angel versus demon. And yet, no one missed the poorly controlled flash of anger as Silas’s eyes darkened.
Caliban left a hand on my back as he moved toward my friends, taking Nia’s hand first, then Kirby’s, as he greeted them both as Azrames had done: with the respectful brush of lips over knuckles.
“I’m going to go…over here…” Kirby murmured.
Nia’s eyes flared as she nodded. “I’m going to…umm…maybe you two need… I’m going to give you two a moment.” The pair leaned mutely against the wall, staring off into the shell-shocked middle distance.
I didn’t blame them. Caliban had that effect.
I was fuzzy. I was happy. I was whole.
Seeing him was like taking MDMA straight to the vein. I was calm and excited and in love all at once. I was happy and dizzy and somehow inexplicably miserable. My stomach churned. I’d never get over the butterflies when he looked at me, nor would I get past the same three words that never grew old.
He was real, he was real, he was real.
Silas remained planted in front of the arched, wooden church door like a bouncer at the world’s strangest club.
The world fell away as I said, “You’re finally here.”