Chapter 20
At the edge of the ethereal, where the blue haze of the unformed faded into stars and shadows, paths to other worlds flickered in and out of existence.
A man sat at the entrance to one of those trails, playing a zither and staying in tune about half the time.
He set it aside as Ligat approached and stood up with a nimbleness that would have been remarkable, had anything been remarkable out there.
“I hope you’re not expecting to go any farther, friend,” he said.
“Not a step,” said Ligat. He doubted that he could, even if the road had been unguarded.
Beyond was one of the worlds in the Deep Astral, a perilous place for visitors.
Only his dual nature had let him get as far as he’d done: An immortal would have drawn predators or other guardians, while a mortal would have been lost and probably shredded on the star-winds. “I came to speak with you.”
The guard grinned, exposing small fangs. “And here you are. All wishes should be so easily granted.”
He looked like a Chinese man in most respects.
In addition to the teeth, though, his pupils glowed golden and a prehensile tail twitched behind him.
He wore a rich orange brocade robe and a black hat, the sort of clothing that Ligat had mostly seen as bad caricatures in storybooks before his service to Perthrux.
That memory hadn’t arisen on his last errand to this place. He frowned. “I have a request.”
“You’re in good and substantial company, friend. But you know I won’t deal with your master. I don’t associate with demons anymore. Must I refresh your memory?”
“No.” Ligat held up his hands hastily. He knew himself outmatched—even Perthrux would be. “This is my errand, not its.”
The gold pupils flamed as the guard turned his full attention on Ligat. He cocked his head, and the tail twitched again. “Hm. Hmmm.” The man set his hands on his hips. “Interesting developments afoot. You won’t get the uncut version, of course.”
“I wouldn’t presume,” Ligat replied, bowing his head and letting himself feel just a touch of relief.
“Oh, you would and you do, friend, but that’s fine. That’s fine. And what do you offer in return?”
Ligat smiled and reached for the bag at his side. He’d done many errands for Perthrux over the decades, not to mention a fair amount of exploring on his own initiative, and frequently indulged himself in a bit of scavenging. After all, one never knew what might come in handy. “Let’s talk,” he said.
* * *
Hazel hadn’t given the laptop enough credit.
When the screen exploded, after she’d stopped freaking out and confirmed that she wasn’t hurt, she’d been mostly annoyed about the loss.
It made both work and research wildly inconvenient.
She hadn’t realized just how used to watching movies before bed she was, or having music on while she did chores, or how quiet the house was without them.
By day, working, it was only a small change.
The forest pressed closer at sunset. Washing up the supper dishes, Hazel glanced out the window and watched the light turn from gold to gray as a bird called out from nearby.
Maxwell would have known what it was. She just listened and shivered, not reacting to the bird itself—which was probably the size of her hand and ate mostly seeds—but to the clear, isolated notes of its song.
Without her laptop, reluctant to use her phone casually in case it broke too, she had no human contact at all. She couldn’t even see the lights from other houses when darkness fell.
Hazel had never minded her own company, but that had been with other people maybe a block away and with all the distractions of modern life around her.
Now she’d lost human voices, even recorded ones, and any link to the outside world that didn’t take half an hour or more.
The conduit had pared her world back again, peeled off another layer of normal life and left her exposed to the cold, titanic universe.
It didn’t help that she had to constantly keep some part of her mind alert, constantly on guard for the next ethereal incursion or the next attack by Ligat’s master.
Her knife reassured her a little, and so did the small packet of herbs and blessed salt that she always kept in a pocket these days, but they also reminded her of her situation—of a life under siege, with no sign of it ending well.
Tea and cookies gave her a small refuge, a Len Deighton novel another, and retreating to her bedroom likely helped most of all. It didn’t bring her life back or the rest of the world closer, but she felt much more secure behind her wards and in a room with only one small window.
Hazel had bought thick blue curtains for that window the day after she’d cast the wards and seen the face. She’d always pulled them tight when darkness fell, knife in her hand and every nerve on high alert in case whatever-it-was showed up again, until she’d met Ligat.
Closing the curtains had gone back to being a more casual habit after that, and she’d been too involved in her research to think much about it either way.
The night after her laptop self-destructed, she looked for him.
It was just an impulse, really. She was at the window, she knew he’d been assigned to keep an eye on her, and peering out to try to glimpse silver in the darkness was natural.
Hazel was surprised she hadn’t done it before, though she wasn’t expecting the anticipation she felt when she looked around or the disappointment when she saw only the lawn and the trees.
Stupid, she told herself.
Sure, their conversation had been oddly fun for an exchange that had confirmed many of her fears, and yes, she’d had that dream.
True, Ligat’s attitude toward the demon had seemed less Renfield-esque devotion and more the annoyed party line of an employee who knew any negative comments would show up on his performance report.
None of that would make a difference when the orders went out. Ligat was still an enemy.
She shouldn’t be wondering when he’d seen her and how she’d looked.
The idea of him watching her shouldn’t make her thrill all over, shouldn’t make her want to slow down when she pulled her shirt off or shift when she was reading on the porch so that her shorts rode up just a little more on her thigh.
If desire followed instructions, human history would have been very different.
Hazel had never thought she was an exception, but she’d never really tested the theory before either.
Her few past lovers had been perfectly acceptable men.
Her crushes had been celebrities. The last time she’d really fretted over wanting a guy she shouldn’t, she’d been thirteen and deeply infatuated with the college student who worked at the video store and called her Hayley half the time.
Hazel flopped down on her bed, buried her face in her arms, and groaned. As if she didn’t have enough problems.
Maybe transference was the answer, she thought. Maxwell was cute. Nothing much could happen with him, not unless she came up with a really good explanation for why she couldn’t leave the house for long or invite him in, but it would be far better to let herself daydream about him.
He made her heart beat just as fast, after all, and she’d wondered more than once what would have happened on the porch if she’d thrown caution to the wind and straddled his lap. He was kind. He was smart. Most importantly, he was normal.
* * *
She slept on her side, one hand tucked under her chin, her bed a pale island in the middle of a dark and empty room.
Looking through her window—peering through it, the lady would have said—Ligat thought of fairy tales and Norse myths.
Hazel had managed the forest of thorns or the ring of fire herself, though. The modern girl was truly a marvel.
The last time he’d glimpsed her sleeping, she’d been in her apartment.
It had been simply a circumstance then, a sign that she wouldn’t be active for a few hours, and Ligat had gone off to his own rest or attended to other duties.
Curtains had blocked his view in the country ever since the first time Hazel had glimpsed him.
Sometimes he’d caught sight of her pulling them firmly shut and known, as he had before, that he didn’t need to bother with observation for a while.
Ligat hadn’t seen any light from her room when he came through the forest and noticed the gap in her curtains.
That wasn’t an impediment: He, like most ethereal creatures, could see in the dark.
It probably meant that Hazel had already gone to sleep, but he drifted closer anyhow.
When he saw her and confirmed his suspicions, he lingered this time, eyes tracing her shape through the thin blankets.
Hazel’s short hair spread out behind her on the pillow, a small dark nimbus that would slip like water between a man’s fingers.
It had done that in Ligat’s dream, one of the few details he remembered, and he suspected his subconscious was spot on about its predictions.
Her breasts would probably feel the same in his hands as when he’d dreamed them too.
The thin shirt she wore to bed would provide almost no barrier.
He was half hard just looking at her, pushing at the fastening of his robes, and he wondered what Hazel would make of that. Had he been imagining the spark of heat he’d felt between them while he was bound? It had been a very long time since he’d flirted. Manners had changed.
Decency hasn’t.
The thought kicked like an electric current, shameful and startling in equal measure.
Dreams and sparks, whether or not they existed, weren’t invitations. Hazel wasn’t likely to welcome an enemy into her bed, nor to want anybody watching her when she was asleep. Ligat stepped back from the window hastily.
The medium had let down her guard, but Ligat wasn’t going to gain any useful information from that.
As before, he had an excuse to head back into the deeper ethereal, to rest and return when she was more active.
Spying on her like an adolescent who’d snuck in to see a fan dance was wasting time.
All the familiar logic fell into place as he turned around and headed off.
The initial regret, though, that was new. More accurately, it was old: a voice he’d thought had fallen long since, from behind a door not just closed and locked but paved over.
A ghost had spoken to him.