27. Chapter 27
Stone and windowless, with an air of abandonment, the place was so stale and suffocating it made it difficult to breathe. Like the home of a dying person, it had an unnatural stillness, as if the room had closed in on itself a while ago and had given up its will to carry on.
Someone must have beat us here and lit the sconces.
A wilderness of dust; it furred everything, lying thick upon furniture and the bed.
A chaos of blades and various other weapons were scattered across a desk.
If it weren’t for the buildup of dust, it would almost look as though It had just stepped out for a moment.
A tumble of clothes kicked carelessly at the foot of a wooden chest; a baldric dangling from the winged back of a chair; the bedding rumpled as if it had been recently slept in.
Tankards and glasses strewn about the surfaces, lining the mantel of an ash-choked hearth like some absurd decoration.
The dismembered remains of a chair thrown into a corner, as if it had been ripped apart in a fit of temper.
You were a bit of a slob, I eventually offered.
I’m sure if I’d have known I’d be returning with a woman I might have cleaned up.
What am I supposed to do? I felt odd, being in the middle of this stagnant, crowded gloom. As if I had intruded on something private.
He laughed at that, laughed like I’d said something devastatingly amusing. I hear your every thought and you think you’re intruding by standing in my apartment?
Well, you’ve never been what one might call open.
Six years and I knew precious little about you.
All I got from you was snide comments and lessons when you were bored.
You offered me nothing of yourself, and suddenly I’m surrounded with pieces of your life, seeing your family, where you’ve come from—it’s strange.
It’s your room now, too, It said after a few beats of silence. At least for the foreseeable future. I don’t care if you poke around.
Still, I felt uncertain, glancing around at the rusty silks, the oxidized metals, the faded richness and fragile calm.
I didn’t want to disturb anything. It was like looking into the murky painting of a martyr who had died a famous, horrific death.
The demon who’d once lived here had no idea what was about to befall him.
A vein of flickering light came from beneath a door to the right. Washroom, It said, before I could ask the question or even think of it. You might want to clean up.
When I pushed open the door, I found a counter cluttered with yet more blades and a pile of washcloths. How many weapons did one demon need?
What are those? I eyed the metal contraptions impaled behind a recess in the counter. There was no water in here; how was I meant to wash?
They’re taps. And when I continued staring blankly at them: Turn them. We have running water here. Might be best to hold off on a bath, I don’t know if someone will come looking for us, but you can make do with a rag in the meantime.
Running water was a novelty I had never known before, and he seemed amused by my wonder.
I was less amused when I caught sight of my reflection.
I hadn’t had a good look at myself lately and didn’t like what the tarnished looking glass showed me.
Dirt tangled in my eyelashes, a crust of mud on the side of my throat, hair filmed with built-up grease, cheeks and the tip of my nose still rosy from Frost’s chill.
I did the best I could, mopping up the crust and dirt from my face as hot water streamed from the tap, lifting my filthy shirt to wash the dirt that had sneaked beneath it, pushing my sleeves up to my elbows to scrub my arms.
What’s the point of washing off all this muck if you’re just going to keep wearing these filthy rags? It said. Just change. Find something in my drawers. Might be musty, but better than what you’ve got on.
I paused mid-scrub, glancing up at my reflection. You don’t mind?
It’s not like I need them at the moment.
I turned away from the looking glass when I peeled off my soiled clothes, to which I felt him rolling his eyes.
It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.
And you gawked as if I was some exotic beast in a menagerie, I said. You’ve always given me privacy when I’m bathing or getting ready for the day—
In the morning, It said. Which it is no longer.
I didn’t deign to respond to that.
He was apparently much taller than me, I found, when I rummaged through his clothes.
Tall and particularly partial to black. I sat at the edge of the rumpled bed, my lips studded with pins, folding back the sleeves of a black shirt that gaped at my collarbone, rolling the cuffs of a pair of trousers.
Did you notice, he said, in a musing, faraway voice, the fog coming off of Jessa back in Frost?
I had, though I’d not paid it much mind at the time. Too much had been happening to think very deeply into it.
I think she may have been the reason the fogs from the wood seemed to like you, he said, in a much sharper voice.
You think she sent them?
I haven’t seen her since just before she turned four. She was too young to have manifested any power, but there was fog around her in the meadow and I saw it coming from her fingers in Frost. She clearly has some way with it.
She seems to love you, I said, remembering how she’d smiled at me before the guard had ripped her away. Maybe it was the only way she could think to call you back? Maybe they could sense you in me? They’d wrap around me like hands. Play with me, run through my hair. Almost childlike.
He considered that for a moment. It’s not like I can ask her. My mother won’t let her near you for the rest of the time you’re in Hell.
I pulled the leftover pins from between my lips and dropped them back in the dish I had found them in.
Dusty steel littered the desk, too, parchment scrolls and bound journals and ragged quills stacked up in unwieldy drifts.
The chair exhaled a cloud of dust when I sat.
I waved it off and grabbed a blade off the desk at random, shaking more dust off a rag I found crumpled atop a pile of leather scabbards.
You’re polishing my blades? It asked.
I’ve nothing else to do. My mind was sluggish but somehow my body wasn’t. Your brother, back in the antechamber. He looked like an incubus. Except, I supposed, for the black eyes.
He isn’t a full-blooded incubus, but he’s mostly that.
And at the little chill of fear I felt at the back of my neck: He would never hurt you.
He’s not a torturer. He has no taste for it at all.
He works with the hounds. All of Fang thought it a waste when he left.
Strength like his has a very high value in that circle.
How can he be mostly incubus, your mother doesn’t—
Different mothers. His is a succubus. My father had incubus blood as well. I only share one parent with all my siblings. Marriage and monogamy aren’t really things demons go in for. There are some long-term demon couplings so it isn’t completely unheard of, but it isn’t the norm.
I felt my eyebrows knit as I rubbed circles into the blade with the rag. ‘All’ your siblings?
Five brothers. Jessa is my only sister. She and I are my mother’s only children.
And you love them very much, I said, holding the blade out, watching the sconce light bleed down the metal.
That surprises you?
No. I laid the clean blade on the desk, reached for another.
Brushed the dust off the open pages of a bound journal, its spine cracked and twisted.
His handwriting was long and spiky, an irritated, quick scrawl I had to squint to decipher.
You were keeping track of something? I wasn’t the best reader but I knew it was some sort of log, dates followed by two sets of numbers separated by long dashes.
Why do you ask?
You said I could poke around.
I meant more in the way of looking through my underwear drawer. I wouldn’t mind that.
I rolled my eyes. I spend very little time thinking about what sort of underwear you wore.
No? I give yours a lot of thought. You’re always so careful about where you look when you’re getting dressed, but you’re not wearing any now, I can tell.
Because they were filthy.
Of course they were, but now you’re in my clothes without even the thinnest barrier between them, which is slightly preoccupying—
Don’t you have better things to be thinking of?
I have nothing better to be thinking of, stuck in here while we wait for my mother to make up her mind.
I said nothing, shaking my head as I returned to the dusty blade.
Your lofty silences are very telling. You think you’re saying nothing but you’re not. I can feel when your cheeks get hot, you know. I can feel every pressure point in your body.
You’re very tiresome when you’re bored.
You’re very cute when you’re trying to pretend you’re not embarrassed, It said, and I heard the rich, honied undertow in his voice, the way he was trying to drag me into his current.
Keep it up. I imagined ice pressed upon my cheeks, recalling the bone-chilling cold of Frost. Keep talking.
I’ll add it to the list of things to tell your mother about.
I don’t think she’d be pleased if she knew some of the lewd things I’ve heard from you.
She seems the cold and formal type if you ask me and I’m sure she didn’t raise you like that.
Well that’s a little uncalled for, It said, as surprised as if I’d slapped him across the face.
I guess that’s one way to put a damper on things.
Mention my mother when I’m trying to picture you in my bed.
I felt him fit his hands behind his head, settle back in his cell.
I bet the mere thought of her could wilt the most determined of erections.
I don’t know how the fuck my father managed. I guess he always did like a challenge.
She’s very beautiful, I offered, watching my eyes refract over the steel of the blade. She looks like a painting.
Can we go back to the part where you’re not wearing underwear?
You’re very single-minded.
No, I’m very—
He broke off. I was on my feet immediately, his father’s weapon in my hand, because I’d heard it too. A thud at the door as if a body had been thrown against it, the unmistakable sounds of a brawl. Blows landing, the metallic clang of steel, fingers scrabbling, a choked-off grunt.
I didn’t even have time to ask It what he thought it was before the door burst open, framing a demon with knives strapped to his bare chest and around his waist. A blade dripping blackish blood was in his hand and there was fury in his eyes, an anger that was directed, full-bore, on me.