28. Leah #2
“Leah was indeed working a job for me when she saw you last,” Syrus says.
His voice is smooth and light, the kind of tone he uses when he’s trying to charm someone—usually me.
And it’s working, I can tell, seeing Evie relax as he talks.
“It was through her arrangement with me that your sister learned she was nephilim. Though we had to part ways for a while after that.” He looks at me, a question in his eyes, and I nod.
I trust Syrus to only reveal what he should.
“You see,” he says, moving over to the couch again as Evie and I follow.
“I’m a demon, as is my friend Vizmodeus, here.
” He bends to offer Viz the glass, cradling the back of his head so his friend can take little sips from it.
“If we’re going to be staying under your roof, I thought it only fair that you know. ”
“Okay,” Evie breathes, her eyes wide as saucers. Again, to her credit, she doesn’t scream or run away. She just puts her hands to her swollen stomach and exhales as if trying to absorb this. “Well, thank you for telling me.”
Why did I ever think of Evie as fragile? She’s handling this with amazing composure. Syrus flicks an amused look at me.
“Thank you for being so polite about it,” he says. “I understand why many Stratans are wary of our kind. But please know that we are good friends of Leah’s. In fact, we would do anything to keep her from harm.”
He’s got that king’s way about him now—a regal grace to his manner without any of the intimidation he sometimes uses as a demon lord. I know he’s doing it on purpose, winning my sister over with his simple confidence and good manners.
“Of course,” Evie murmurs and then snaps out of the spell Syrus has cast on her, her brow creasing once more. “I still don’t really understand what you’re doing back in Strata, though, Leah. Or how this happened.” She gestures to Viz.
“I was in Aradis,” I say, a story of half-truths coming together that leaves out the danger of the trials, the possession, and most of the failed coup.
“Syrus had a…um…disagreement with the ephilium. It wasn’t his fault.
A misunderstanding. But anyway, they went after him and Viz, and I stood up for them.
Obviously, that’s made things difficult between me and the ephilium, so I had to leave Aradis. ”
Evie watches my face carefully. “Why do I get the feeling that there’s more to it than—” She stops, frozen for a moment, then turns to look back at Syrus. Viz’s eyes have closed again, and Syrus is gently shaking him back awake.
“Is Syrus…um…a common name in Infernum?” she asks weakly.
Ah. Right. Now she knows he’s a demon, Evie’s putting some pieces together.
Syrus looks up at her with a smile I can’t help but find devastatingly handsome, although maybe it would just seem smug to anyone else.
“Not especially,” he says.
Evie’s eyes go so wide now they might pop out of her head. “Are you—”
Thankfully, at that moment the door opens, and Jeremy walks in with Martha behind him. She lifts her chin at me in recognition, but Jeremy has frozen in place, eyeing my wings. Then he nods to himself, like he’s privately accepting this shift in the reality of things.
“I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something different about you, Leah,” he says wryly. I grin, a lot of the tension broken, and usher Martha over to Viz.
“What have you got for me this evening, girl?” the medicine woman asks, opening up her bag of treatments as she studies Viz.
“M’hello,” Viz manages to mumble when she crouches beside him, pulling up his eyelids to study his pupils. Unlike Syrus, they don’t have the telltale ring of red around them, so Martha doesn’t start asking questions until I’m done explaining the nature of Viz’s wound.
“And he’s stayed conscious since he woke up the first time?” she asks, starting to unwind the makeshift bandages.
“Yes,” Syrus answers. “Although he’s almost dozed off a few times.”
She nods. “That could just be exhaustion at this stage, though you were right to keep him awake, and—”
Her hand stills as she sees the green stain on the bandages and around the cut to Viz’s head. The lake water only changes a demon’s outsides, not their insides.
“I thought you might want a change from the last patient I brought you,” I say, trying to keep it light.
Martha gives me a hard stare, tuts, and then turns back to her patient. “I’ll want eight jars for this, missy,” she mutters.
I exhale with relief, but see that Jeremy is a little pale, having spotted Viz’s green blood too.
Evie is pulling him over to the kitchen, where they have a conversation in low tones that I’m sure is her explaining to him what she knows.
I suspect she leaves out her suspicions about exactly who Syrus is, given Jeremy doesn’t immediately demand we get a hundred miles away from his pregnant wife.
Martha stitches Viz’s cut up properly, then gives him something she says will help with the concussion. It also makes him sleepy, which she said isn’t a problem as long as we wake him in the middle of the night to make sure he still stirs.
For Martha’s payment, I ask Evie for some appropriate containers, then watch everyone’s fascinated faces as I get Syrus to fill them with shadow which will eventually turn to mist. The medicine woman seems bemused, but pleased, when we hand them over.
“Thank you,” Syrus says. “You’ve done us a great service.”
She just sighs as she packs her payment away. “I might as well start opening up a business for wingers on the plains at this rate.”
I consider telling her that there’s definitely some medical tourism opportunities when it comes to the healer-starved ephilium but settle for a more pressing question.
“My friend with the stomach injury, how is she?”
Martha nods. “I saw her a few days ago. She’s almost good as new. That lad is taking good care of her.” Something sparkles in her eyes. “Though I suspect that’s no great hardship to him.”
I’m not sure what she means by that, but I don’t push her to explain. She leaves after that, and an awkward silence falls over the little house.
Once upon a time, I lived two lives and kept them very separate—scavenging in one corner, playing housemaid to my own family in the other.
Now all my worlds have collided in one room in the space of a few hours.
I stare at my sister, and Syrus, and Jeremy, whose eyes keep flicking curiously to the wings on my back like he’s dying to ask about them.
“I can hide them,” I blurt out to my brother-in-law. “With magic, I mean. That’s why you couldn’t see them before. It’s the same with Syrus.”
“But why are they black?” he says.
“Jer! You can’t just ask people why their wings are black,” Evie gives her husband a reprimanding look. Which is funny, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen my sister look truly stern in her life.
“It’s okay. It’s, um…a nephilim thing,” I say, ensuring my gaze doesn’t go to Syrus.
Jeremy nods, like this is all totally reasonable. “Okay.”
I deflate a little, hating how stilted this all is.
“Look, I realize this isn’t ideal. But I swear we’ll get out of your hair as soon as possible.
I just wondered if we could stay the night?
I don’t think we should move Viz anywhere else until he’s had some time to rest, and I have some stuff I need to figure out—”
“Leah,” Evie says, stepping forward and grabbing my hand. “You can stay as long as you like.”
I exhale in relief, because this is so different from the begging and threatening we had to do with Ghola. Of course Evie would offer this, even if she’s nearly nine months pregnant and the house is tiny and I come with a pair of demons.
I squeeze her hand back. “Thanks, but really, it’ll just be until tomorrow. I know you don’t have a lot of space.”
Jeremy shrugs. “The house isn’t big, but we have a second room we’re setting up as the nursery.
Plus, there’s an old mattress in the attic space, and the couch of course.
Enough space for you and your friends to sleep.
The only issue is…” He looks at Evie, and her hand flies up, as if she just remembered something.
“Oh! Yes,” she looks guiltily at me. “We actually had plans this evening.”
“You did?” I say, though I don’t know why I’m surprised. “I’m sorry, Evie, we’ve just barged in here and taken over. What was it?”
She twists her hands together. “We were going to go have dinner with Father and my mother.”
I almost choke in surprise. “They’re speaking to you again?”
Evie shrugs. “I think Mother decided that it looked worse acting like I didn’t exist and the marriage never happened—people really would think there was a scandal then.
Whereas now Jeremy has a guild license, she could maybe pretend it was part of a plan all along. And she’s excited about the baby.”
I work hard to keep my face neutral. Ada must hate that her daughter married a butcher, but apparently, she hates the idea of being cut out of being a grandmother even more.
And if Evie still wants them in her life, then who am I to tell her otherwise?
I tried to make all the decisions for Evie for a long time, and she only really got her happy ending when she stopped listening to me and followed her heart.
“We can always send our regrets,” Jeremy says, and I think there’s a note of hope in his voice. Would he really rather spend the evening with two demons than his mother-in-law?
Actually, yes, of course he would.
“Er, please don’t cancel on our account,” I say, throwing Jeremy an apologetic look. “In fact, maybe you should go. It’ll raise eyebrows if you don’t—and they might come here to check on you,” I say, then I shift, nervous about asking the next question. “Are they…?”
In that way of people who’ve lived together a long time, Evie understands what I’m asking without me needing to finish the thought.