CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DAVID
David slept through most of the show downstairs. But once it was over, people started trickling into the little apartment in a steady stream, and the night passed quickly in a heady rush.
Concertgoers floated in and out of Leda’s apartment: admirers, coworkers, musicians, lovers. Eon, the ethereally beautiful guitarist Leda had been dating for the past year, curled up on the couch and plucked out a new tune on one of Leda’s guitars. Once Luis’s rounds were over, he arrived to corner Leda in the kitchen and kiss her soundly, then started talking to another club staffer about trading shifts. Neither of Leda’s partners seemed to mind each other’s presence at all. Luis even offered to walk Eon to their car when they got up to leave.
Leda presided over everyone, resplendent in her glitter makeup. Watching her accept kisses and offerings from her devotees, David remembered just how much he loved his sister. As a child, he’d truly believed there was nothing Leda couldn’t do. And even when it had become apparent that she was not a beautiful witch riding in to save him from his father, that she was just another fucked-up magical kid like him, he’d still idolized her.
Unlike Moira, who was making new friends aplenty with a drink in one hand and a slice of cake in the other, Rhys was no social butterfly. But after a half hour of observing the proceedings from his stiff seat on the couch, he grabbed a drink and started to talk to people. Leda descended like a vulture and enticed him into some private conversation. David eventually caught a few animated snatches when he wandered into the kitchen for another sparkling water.
“How can you ensure results if you change the process every time?” Rhys was saying. He was cradling a beer bottle to his chest, probably his second, judging by the wide look in his eyes. Whatever Leda was telling him had him rapt, the twin furrows of academic interest deep between his brows. “You’re introducing too many variables.”
“I take meticulous notes!” Leda insisted. “I work towards results, not process. I don’t know how you can say the same incantation over and over again, waiting for something to happen. I’d die of boredom.”
“The spell isn’t the whole working, it’s just a controlled environment. But I don’t expect you to get that; chaos magicians are magical anarchists. No gods, no masters, right?”
“No gods doesn’t mean no discipline, or no faith in your own abilities,” Leda countered, eyes twinkling merrily. She was having the time of her life, caught in one of the intellectual dances that had baffled all her tutors growing up. “Dogmatism is a magician’s greatest enemy. I can throw together a spell through spit and a cigarette-smoke sigil and have a record contract knocking down my door any day I want to.”
“The first demon I summoned got me an internship with zero experience and a walk-in interview,” Rhys shot back. He knew the steps to this dance, the little one-two step of one upmanship. It was occultism’s oldest pissing contest.
“Hey, that’s not bad!” Leda crooned, nudging Rhys with her shoulder. “Does that demon have a sister I can talk to?”
“Not on your life,” Rhys said with a laugh. There was a boyish quirk to his mouth that made something buried deep inside David’s chest ache. When was the last time he had seen Rhys smile this much? Leda had that effect on people. Her presence was permission to act out, to unwind, to slough off any societal conventions that fit too snugly.
David sifted through the bottles and cans in the fridge while he eavesdropped. Rhys and his sister were wedged in a corner of the kitchen, only barely aware of his presence. It would be easy enough to palm a beer to nurse in a dark part of the house, or deftly slip a shot of white rum into his seltzer when everyone’s back was turned. That knack for secrecy, for refilling his glass when no one was looking or when everyone else was too drunk to care, was a habit that was hard to break.
David swallowed down the urge and grabbed a sparkling water. He was only feeling tempted to drink because he was in a party environment. The energy was lighting up parts of his brain better left dormant, pressing against old self-soothing mechanisms that would never fully die, not really. He knew all this rationally; his therapist had told him as much.
David cracked open the tab on his drink and threw the water back hard, hoping it would burn. Wishing that it hurt like vodka, like bottoming out but at least feeling alive on the way down.
“Once you get past the mental blocks of right and wrong,” Leda was saying, “that’s where the real magic happens. Losing control every once in a while is good for you. The maenads knew that.”
“But no one can be a maenad every day of their lives,” Rhys said. “Eventually, you come back down from the high and then there’s just blood and spilled wine to clean up. That’s what happens when you let yourself go too far.”
“True, that’s where balance lives. I’d say that’s where magic comes from, our ability to taste extremes and choose for ourselves what serves us best. Most people, when left to make their own choices without being shamed for it, choose a sustainable middle ground between ecstasy and asceticism.” Leda spared a fond glance to Eon, who was in the living room flickering her a come-hither glance with eyes highlighted by white mascara. “Then again, I’ve always been a bit of a hedonist.”
Rhys followed her gaze, dark eyes as bottomless as the far reaches of space. “How do you know?” he said suddenly. “That you love them both? At the same time, I mean.”
Drunk. He was only uncalculated when he was drunk. A shadow passed over his face like he had just let some terrible secret slip.
Leda smirked at Rhys with a knowing that made David’s stomach twist. “How do you know you love anyone?” she asked.
“There’s no not loving them,” he said, exorcising himself of the words. “It’s like an invasive species; you could cut it down, but it’ll just keep coming back.”
“Sounds like you know already, then.”
Rhys looked down at his glass and glowered. Disappointed in himself, then. “I’m sorry, that’s a rude thing to ask.”
“It’s not the weirdest thing people have asked me about being polyamorous, no worries. People have questions, I get it. They usually have a couple more when they find out I’m also sleeping with my ex-therapist and her wife, and currently in talks with this dreamy rope top in Brooklyn who might tie me up, if I play my cards right.”
Rhys immediately flushed scarlet and stammered something incoherent before Leda’s ringing laughter cut him off.
“He was right when he called you a consummate Catholic! So cute.”
“Excuse me,” David muttered, brushing past them both. Leda tried to say his name, to entice him back into the kitchen and into good spirits, but he pretended like he didn’t hear. He just found a quiet seat in the lively living room, doing his best not to look back at Rhys.
Leda sent everyone home after a few hours, though David got the impression that on any other night the party would have raged on well into the night. Moira gave David a kiss on the cheek before she left, and Rhys, perhaps emboldened by the beer or the late hour, followed suit before gathering up his coat and wallet. They went home to Jamaica Plain and left him to Leda’s hospitality, and David couldn’t help but notice that the apartment was a little dimmer without them in it.
The Murphy bed was a piss-poor substitute for his ergonomic Swedish mattress, but he made do. He managed to snag a few restless hours of shuteye, then hauled himself out of bed early for a scalding hot shower. He itched for his routine, for his morning protein shake and HIIT session, but the shower soothed the worst of his nerves.
When David emerged into the kitchen, Leda was standing at the stove in sweatpants and a slouchy men’s tank top, briskly scrambling eggs. She smiled at him, her labret piercing winking. “Morning. You hungry?”
“I am, actually,” David said, leaning against the counter. “Coffee?”
Leda pushed him a full mug. Unsweetened with a splash of cream.
“How did you sleep?”
“As well as I ever do in someone else’s house.”
“Like shit, then. You’re looking pretty rough around the edges.”
Tossing a hand towel over her shoulder, Leda began to portion out two plates of eggs. She looked him over, her piercing gaze cutting right through any lies he could muster. It reminded him of his father, if his father had ever looked at him like that out of love, not bottom-line appraisal.
“I think we need to pick up our conversation from last night about you not doing so hot. What’s been going on?”
David sipped his coffee and stabbed at his eggs for a minute, working up the right words. Asking for help was not his strong suit. Asking from one of the only people he actually admired felt like adding insult to injury. “I can’t channel, I can’t sleep, I’m exhausted all the time… And I keep having these blackouts. I’ll be fine, and then I’ll start getting lightheaded and sick to my stomach and seeing things…”
“What kind of things?” Leda said, all the sparkle gone from her eyes. She was worried about him. That somehow made the conversation harder.
“I don’t know. Memories, I think. Memories that aren’t mine.”
“And you think this has something to do with that old story Dad used to tell to scare his business partners?”
David’s eyes skimmed hand-drawn sigils taped to potted plants and appliances, her tiny household altars of pennies and red thread and pinches of tobacco meant to draw and trap energies to be used to power spells later. If anyone could believe what he was afraid to even let himself consider, it was Leda.
“Deals have two sides to them. Everything comes with a price,” he said.
“If that’s the case, why didn’t the deal take Dad? Or his dad or his dad?”
“Contracts have loopholes. Trust me, I’m a lawyer.”
“Ass,” Leda murmured, doctoring her coffee with powdered creamer and a shot of vanilla syrup.
“The contract was full of lots of esoteric bullshit,” David said, following her into the living room and taking a seat on the ottoman. “Something about a demon named Baelshieth. Ring any bells?”
“None.”
“Rhys found the name scattered through Evgeni’s records.”
“And you think this Baelshieth character is crawling around inside your head? That sucks, man.”
“You don’t seem worried about your own health at all,” David countered, bristling.
Leda let out a triumphant cackle of laughter. “I’m no Aristarkhov son. Just because Dad’s blood is in my veins doesn’t make me a viable heir to any grandfathered demon contract. I never thought I would appreciate medieval sexism, but here we are. I’m assuming you all came here because you need my help? No offense, David, but you aren’t really one for social calls.”
“None taken,” David said.
Leda tapped a short black fingernail against her lips, ruminating. “I wish I knew more about demons, but I just don’t work with them. I can commend you to some wonderful Satanists, although most of them don’t really believe in the Devil in the traditional sense. My tattoo artist does, though, and he knows his way around an unhallowed bargain.”
“Rhys has got the research covered,” David said. “I was hoping you might be able to give me advice on how to, I don’t know, handle this? Is there any avenue we haven’t explored yet? I can’t keep getting sicker, Leda. I can’t.”
“Well, have you tried to talk to it? You don’t really know what it wants, do you?”
“It wants to wreck my life,” David muttered, and the venom in his words surprised him. He hadn’t realized how much he hated the thing growing inside him until that moment.
“It sounds like you’ve only tried to repress this spirit, and that isn’t working. Sometimes the best way to face darkness is to walk right into it.”
“Yes, well, I’ll keep that in mind,” David said. His headache was starting to come back, building in his ears like the pounding of a distant war drum. The dizziness would follow, and if he was lucky, that was all that would follow. He passed a hand over his face and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Just think it over,” Leda said. “There’s no need to rush. Kick back, my place is your place. Just let me know if you decide to summon any demons; put a sock on the door or something.” She stood and gathered up their dishes, and hummed to herself while she wandered back into the kitchen.
David was left with nothing but silence, until Leda poked her head around the corner of the room and said, almost as an afterthought: “I guess we’ll figure out how serious this thing is on your thirtieth, huh? Live through that and you’re probably fine for life.”
The muscles in David’s stomach clenched. “What do you mean ‘on my thirtieth’?”
“The timeline,” Leda said, looking genuinely confused. “On the curse?”
“What timeline?” David demanded.
“Oh God, I thought you knew!” Leda exclaimed, black eyes going wide. “It’s part of that old story. Maybe you just forgot. Or, you know what, maybe I heard about it when I went flipping through dad’s journal looking for juicy blackmail.”
He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, but he wasn’t sure his legs were trustworthy at the moment. “What timeline?”
“The demon is supposed to come to collect when the Aristarkhov turns thirty. That’s the terms and conditions of the soul-snatching. At least according to folklore.”
David’s mouth was dry as ash, and there was a tinny ringing in his ears. “My birthday is in a week,” David said tightly.
“It’s an old story,” Leda sighed. “Details get exaggerated. Demon deals don’t just kill people, and I’ve never heard of one being transferable anyway.”
“One minute ago, you were on board with the idea.”
“I can hold multiple potentialities up here without committing to any of them,” Leda said, tapping her forehead. “Chaos magician, remember? We operate in multiple realities at once. In one reality, there’s a demon out for your soul. In another reality, you’re overworked from playing psychic since you were a kid and will probably be fine. No use committing to one until we know which one we’re living in.”
“Fine, fine,” David muttered. In that moment, he wanted Leda to disappear. He wanted to be left alone with the darkness and his own despair, to mourn the thirties he might never get.
But that, he reminded himself quickly, would be unproductive. He had to focus. He had to force himself through.
“I should get going,” he said, pulling himself to his feet and reaching for his coat. God, his head was killing him.
“David,” Leda started, looking injured. David didn’t let her get any further. If she tried to press him to stay, he would give in. It was too tempting to curl up in Leda’s house and let his sister fuss over him while the world went on turning outside his door. He needed to get back to Rhys and Moira, he needed to get back to his day job, and he needed to keep working to unravel his curse. He didn’t have any other choice.
“I’m fine, Leda. Really.”
Leda pressed her lips together skeptically, but then she nodded. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
David gave his sister a brisk kiss on the cheek before gathering his keys and his wallet. They had never been big on sweet talk and physical affection, not even when they were children, and David was still getting to know the woman she had grown into, but she accepted the small gesture of familial love graciously.
“Me too.”