Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
Inever really paid too much attention to my dreams. Given my life, what I did, it was reasonable that I’d see things at night that didn’t quite make sense, things I didn’t want to fully understand.
Mordechai and I had this discussion more times than I could count.
He was a big fan of spirit messages. For good or ill, he believed your dreams weren’t just a matter of your synapses processing your day’s experiences and emotions physiologically so your body’s systems could better react to the stresses of it.
He believed that God sometimes talked to you in your dreams. Which sounded nice.
Except tonight, I saw my demon in my bedroom. In the flesh.
This couldn’t be real for many reasons. One, we weren’t in my bedroom at Max’s, or even at my house.
Instead, we were in a room in some palatial hotel, with golden papered walls and a bed approximately the size of Rhode Island.
Secondly, I was standing in front of a mirror—and I had no reflection. But the demon looming behind me did.
“Hello, Delia.”
I glared into the mirror, memorizing every detail, even as my mouth twisted into what I hoped passed as an amused, offhanded grin. I couldn’t speak at first; I didn’t want to speak. I only wanted to stare.
The demon—my demon—wore the shape of a man, but no man had ever looked like this.
He was dressed like the European kingpin from Descent in an expensive black suit and crimson, open-necked shirt.
Dark hair spilled across his shoulders, catching the lamplight as though it were spun from shadows.
His cheekbones were sharp enough to cut, his mouth lush and dangerous, his eyes the same fathomless pools I’d painted on my bedroom wall…
eyes that could drown me in ancient grief or burn me alive with longing.
“You wanted to see me,” he said. Not a question.
“I want you gone,” I retorted.
“But I’ve only just begun to explore the possibilities here.”
The room tilted, half opulent, half wrong. The damask wallpaper seemed to pulse with my heartbeat, the bed looked too vast, the sheets too smooth. My breath caught, despite myself, and I struggled to keep my heart rate even.
“Mmm.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “I know what you’re doing, you know.”
It was his turn to smile, and I steeled myself against the torrent of naked longing that poured through me. “Do you?” he murmured. My God, he shouldn’t be so hot.
“I totally do.” I went on the offensive. “I mean, it clearly must’ve pissed you off that I thought Volkov was hot, yeah? But what if it wasn’t the guy’s great shoulders and the way they filled out a suit that I liked so much? Maybe I just liked the eyeball hanging out of his head.”
Unperturbed, the demon strolled closer to me. Shadows rippled behind him, almost wings, almost nothing.
“I like this new Delia,” he murmured. “Think of the fun we could have together if you just let it happen?”
I snorted. “Let you happen, you mean? To me? I’ll pass, thanks.”
“To you…” He lifted his hand and a breeze spun up between us, though there were no windows in this room.
It chased across my cheek, lifting my hair, curling around my neck like a promise.
With the pulse of its cool touch, my body formed before my eyes, so that there were now two reflections in the mirror—his and mine—with mine coming into sharper focus now, pale skin, dark hair, huge, skeptical eyes.
Eyes that faltered a bit as the demon spoke again, and a swirling heat passed between us.
“For you…” This new sensation skated over my shoulders, diving down between my breasts, and more of my body formed.
In my reflection, I could see that I was still marked with the poetry he’d inscribed on me.
Only the words were moving now, sliding across my belly, curling beneath my breasts, diving down—
“In you,” he finished, and I didn’t miss the raggedness of the moan, hated the way my body responded as he stepped closer to me, the air now scented with jasmine and plumeria and dark, heady notes of bourbon-soaked chocolate.
“Sweet, powerful Delia,” he whispered, and somehow, he was right behind me now, his tall, powerful body dwarfing mine, his hands coming up to curl around my shoulders, turning me toward him.
“Tell me,” he whispered, as his dark eyes stared into mine, ancient and powerful and sure. “Is it agony you fear…or ecstasy?”
Bringing his hands to my face, he brushed back my hair with the softest flick of his fingers. Then he bent down to kiss me, his mouth an inch from mine—
The dream shattered. Not because I woke—because something else interrupted.
A different memory, clawing its way up from whatever dark place I’d buried it.
Mordechai. The cemetery. Blood on his face.
And me, standing over him, laughing.
I awoke like a shot, my eyes wide, my heart too large for its spot in my chest, my lungs stretched to bursting.
My hands scrabbled at my belly, but it hadn’t changed, wouldn’t change.
I turned and felt the thing turn with me, I scrambled back in my bed and felt it shift back as well.
It filled me full, pressing into all the broken places, pushing apart all the scars. It filled me, and it knew me.
It was me.
“Get out,” I tried, but no sound came out of my throat. Nothing moved or fled into the night. Mercifully, nothing else clattered in the house beyond me either. The demons were quiet. Waiting, I thought. Watching. Wondering what was going to come out of this room tomorrow.
I felt the blackness press me down again, and I stumbled back to bed.
Somehow, I must have slept. Because when I opened my eyes, Mordechai was there.
It was that last night in the cemetery, all over again.
Mordechai was there and he was healthy and whole, staring at me with his wise, gentle eyes.
He turned and walked with me down the path of tombstones, clasping his hands in front of him, as he always did.
I snuck a peek at those hands, old man’s hands. I liked his hands. They were gnarled and rough with age, but worn down too in all the right places, from holding hands and comforting shoulders and placing a benediction on the bowed heads of the faithful. They were good hands, a rabbi’s hands.
They were not blistered in any way.
Standing beside him, I found myself wanting to reach out and touch Mordechai, hold his hand the way he’d held so many others’. But he stepped away as I raised my arm, his gaze swinging back to me. Understanding. Knowing.
The thing inside me began to shiver. Not with dread, but with excitement.
I didn’t understand, but I knew something was wrong.
We walked on until we came to the little courtyard, and my demon began to dance.
“No,” I whispered.
Yes. You know what you did. You’ve always known.
The cemetery solidified around us. Not a dream anymore. Memory. And I couldn’t look away.
“No,” I said again.
Yes.
Suddenly Mordechai turned to me, regarding me with all the earned wisdom of his years in his eyes. But he had changed, somehow. Standing there, he seemed more stooped, more ancient. Weaker. Had the blockage already started forming in his artery? Had the blood already started to cease its easy flow?
That’s not what he died of. Stop lying to yourself.
I knew that truth suddenly too. Knew it with the resigned certainty of someone who’d read the plot of the movie before even setting foot inside the theater. But I couldn’t stop that movie from unspooling before me now, playing out horribly in front of my eyes.
“Delia, do you know why I’ve brought you here?” Mordechai asked.
“To tell me about the boy in the house?”
That part was true, real. That part I remembered. But in this reality, Rabbi Mordechai kept talking, his eyes steady on me, as the lines on his face sank deeper.
“I have prepared all I can,” he said. “Look at me—”
“No,” my shout seemed ripped out of my lungs, the cry of a wounded animal. He must not speak; he must not speak! I stared at Mordechai, knowing I needed to get away, but my feet wouldn’t move.
“Why do you trouble this young woman, blessed by the Creator?” he demanded of me—of the thing inside me.
But I wasn’t the one who answered him. Instead, the demon within me spoke, harsh and mocking.
“She is blessed by no one!” I opened my mouth too wide to laugh.
I felt it, and it hurt, but I couldn’t stop the words pouring out of me.
“Her mother was a drunken whore when this one was conceived. But she prayed, oh how she prayed to let birth pass her by. She prayed first to God, then she prayed to the angels. Then she prayed to any god who would have her, did you know that? She wouldn’t, couldn’t take responsibility herself, was too damned stupid to kill it, to let this spirit sicken and die like so many others did.
In the end, she gave birth. And she regretted her words, regretted her prayers.
But it was too late by then. We always listen. ”
I was hissing the words now; they felt like steam and fire in my belly. “Always.”
“The Creator listens too.”
“Not as closely.” Laughter curled and twisted. “As you well know.”
Mordechai bristled, his face going redder. “You are wrong. This choice you think you made? It was made for you. But no more, servant. Begone!”
“Oh, now you want me to go? After all this time?” The demon’s words were out before I could stop them. Out of the mouth of the me I was watching in my dream, and out of my memory before I could clamp down hard on the impossibility, the horror of it.
Rabbi Mordechai didn’t flinch, didn’t back down. He nodded. Nodded. “I hoped you would not grow beyond the tiny seed of doubt and darkness placed within such a strong soul.”
“And yet you didn’t root it out?” I demanded in my own voice. “You didn’t take it from me when you had the chance?”