Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Eleven days.
That's what I think about while I eat breakfast alone in the small dining room off the east wing. Eleven days until Heaven's deadline. Eleven days until the army arrives and everything we've been training for becomes real.
Two days, and I still feel it. The residual hum of two bonds burning brighter than before, wound together in my chest like braided wire.
The other five bonds are quieter this morning. Kael's ember warmth at a low simmer. Lysander's ache turned down to background noise. Idris's slippery awareness barely a whisper. Dorian and Caspian, distant pulses.
I take another bite of toast. Chew. Swallow. Try to feel normal.
Croesus is somewhere in the house, probably in the study Seraph grudgingly lent him.
He doesn't need sleep, none of them do, but he's been resting more since the binding deepened.
Going still and quiet in a way that reminds me of meditation, his consciousness dimming to a low golden glow while his body stays perfectly alert.
He told me once that it's the closest they get to dreaming. I can't imagine it.
Seraph is in the training arena. I can feel him there, a sharp silver point of focus, running through combat drills which border on obsessive.
He hasn't rested in days. Not since the threesome.
Not since the binding flared and showed us something none of us expected.
I think it scared him more than he'll admit, and Seraph's response to fear seems to be train harder.
I'm reaching for my coffee when my phone buzzes.
It buzzes again. Not a text. A call.
I glance at the screen and my hand stops halfway to the coffee.
Luna.
Why the hell would she be calling now? She should be in class. Fear surges up fast enough to choke me.
I pick up.
"Luna?"
"Raven." Her voice is wrong. Thin and tight and pitched too high, the way it gets when she's working very hard to sound normal and failing.
Luna doesn't scare easily. Whatever put this tremble in her voice is real.
I set down my toast. "What happened?"
Both angels stir inside me. Sensing my spike of fear even through the walls I keep between us. Croesus's golden presence sharpens from its resting state. Seraph's silver focus snaps toward me like a compass needle finding north.
"Nothing. I'm fine. It's probably nothing." She takes a breath that almost rattles. "Something weird happened. Yesterday. I didn't want to wait until Sunday because I keep thinking about it and I can't stop."
"Tell me."
"Okay, but don't freak out."
"Luna."
"Right. Okay." Another shaky breath. "So I was at my apartment yesterday. Just studying. Normal Tuesday. And someone knocked on the door."
I wait. The hairs on the back of my neck are already rising.
"I looked through the peephole and it was this man and woman I didn't recognize. They were dressed really nicely. Business professional. He was in a dark suit and she was in this gray blazer thing. They looked like they could have been selling insurance or something.”
"You didn't open the door."
"I did open the door." She must hear my sharp intake of breath because she rushes on.
"I know, I know. But they seemed totally normal.
And they said they were from a genealogy research firm.
One of those companies that traces family trees.
They said they were doing a project on families in the area and they had some records connected to our last name. "
A genealogy firm. Asking about the Vesper line.
"Go on."
"So I let them in. They sat on the couch. They were really polite, Raven. Like, weirdly polite. The woman offered to take her shoes off. They both had this very still way of sitting, like they were trying really hard to look comfortable and not quite getting it right."
"What did they look like? Specifically."
"Um. The man was tall. Maybe six feet. Brown skin, shaved head, really sharp features. Good-looking in a way that was sort of. Too symmetrical? Like a model." She paused. "And the woman was shorter, East Asian, long black hair, perfect posture. She had these really intense dark eyes."
"What color?"
"What?"
"Their eyes, Luna. What color were their eyes."
"I don't know. Dark? Both of them. Just dark brown, I think. Normal." She pauses. "Why does that matter?"
It matters because demons carry red flecks in the deep black of their irises, like sparks caught in dark water. But only those with angel blood or demon blood can see them. To Luna, with her human father's blood running clean through her veins, demon eyes would look like anyone else's.
Normal.
Just dark.
"It doesn't," I lie. "Keep going."
"Okay so they started asking questions. Nice questions at first. Where our family was from, how long Vespers had been in the area, that kind of stuff.
But then it got specific. They started bringing up names I've never heard.
Great-great-aunts. Cousins from the 1800s.
People I didn't even know existed. They had dates, Raven.
Birth dates and death dates going back like two hundred years. "
My free hand is gripping the edge of the table hard enough to turn my knuckles white.
"And then the woman asked about Gramms."
The room goes cold.
"She used her full name. Meredith Vesper.
She said they had records showing Gramms had been involved in some kind of, she called it 'legacy work.
' Said there was a family obligation that had been passed down through generations and they were trying to document how it worked.
" Luna's voice drops. "She asked if I knew anything about an inheritance.
Not money. She was very specific about that.
Not financial. She said 'contractual inheritance. ' Like that's a normal thing to say."
Contractual inheritance.
They know about the debt. About the seven years passing from grandmother to me.
Who the fuck are they?
"What did you say?"
"I said I didn't know what she was talking about.
Because I don't." There's an edge now, frustration bleeding through the fear.
"Raven, they asked about you. By name. They knew you weren't home.
They knew you'd been gone for months. The man said something like, 'Your sister is honoring the family's commitments, isn't she?
' and he smiled, and it was the weirdest smile I've ever seen.
Like he was amused by something I wasn't in on. "
I'm on my feet. I don't remember standing. The chair scrapes back across marble.
"Did they threaten you?"
"No. That's what's so strange. They were so polite about all of it. Like they were having a perfectly normal conversation about perfectly normal things and I was the one being weird for not understanding." She pauses. "But there was this smell."
"What smell."
"I don't know how to describe it. Like old matches?
Or like when the pilot light on the stove goes out and there's that faint sulfur thing?
It wasn't strong. I only noticed it when the woman leaned in close to show me something on her phone.
Some old photograph of a woman she said was a Vesper from the 1850s. "
Sulfur.
Not ozone. Not the clean, electric burn of something holy. Sulfur and smoke and the faint stink of things that have been burning for a very long time.
This isn't Heaven.
This is the other direction.
"Luna, listen to me carefully."
"Wait, I'm not done. Because the weirdest part was how it ended. They'd been there maybe twenty minutes, and then this guy came in from the hallway."
I go still. "What guy?"
"He came down the stairwell. I heard the door open and he was just there in the hallway behind them.
I think he lives in the building? Or was visiting someone?
I don't know. But he stopped when he saw my door was open and these two people on my couch.
And he just sort of leaned against the doorframe and said, 'Everything okay in here? '"
My heart is hammering.
"And Raven, the second he showed up, they changed.
The woman's head snapped around so fast. Like she could feel him before she saw him.
And they both went really tense. Really still.
The man stood up first and said they had all they needed and thanked me for my time.
The woman touched my hand when she left.
Just lightly, on the back of my wrist. She said, 'You're important.
We'll be in touch.' And then they were gone.
Like, fast. They didn't even wait for the elevator. Took the stairs."
The silence hums between us.
"Luna, the guy. What did he look like."
"Oh." And something shifts in her voice. The fear doesn't disappear, but something else pushes through it. The irrepressible current of a nineteen-year-old's priorities reasserting themselves despite everything. "I mean. He was. Okay, don't laugh."
"I'm not going to laugh."
"He was really cute. Like, really really.
" She's doing the thing she does, the words tumbling out faster as she gains momentum.
"Dark hair, kind of messy, this stubble situation that looked like he'd just rolled out of bed but in a good way.
Leather jacket. Beat-up jeans with a hole in one knee.
He just looked so, I don't know, cool? Not trying to be cool.
Just was. And he had this sort of rough voice, kind of smoky?
He smelled like cigarettes, which normally I hate, but on him it kind of worked. "
Ash.
I close my eyes.