Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls (16 page)

They ducked into a row of shoulder-high racks strewn with odds and ends. Sid grabbed a fist-sized granite frog that would make a worthy missile and a … shite, the lawn gnome was plastic. But Alyce hadn’t slowed, so he hastened after her.

There. At the end of the row was a bank of smudged windows, charcoal gray from the October sky beyond. A talya-sized figure in black flitted past. Alyce breathed out softly and cocked her arm, her glitter-painted Christmas wreath–cum–ninja shuriken throwing star at the ready.

Sid whispered her name—or didn’t whisper, really, but more thought it and laid his tongue over the syllables, but she glanced toward him nonetheless. He tilted his head at the gnome in his hand and mimed lobbing it grenade-style into the next aisle, with a sweep of his other hand indicating the probable path of the investigating talya. She nodded and ghosted across the open aisle, staying in her row instead of crossing to the next row over with a shot at the talya.

She faded just a few steps into the shadows, lingering near the open aisle. Sid tossed the gnome over the top of the shelves, and the hollow plastic thunked noisily on the wooden floor.

Sure enough, the talya charged down his own row, parallel to Alyce. Without a glance at Sid, he crossed the aisle, fixated like a pouncing cat.

Maybe the talyan needed a movie night or two. Honestly, didn’t everybody know that trick?

Alyce bounded out of her hiding spot and nailed the talya in the backside. The wreath burst apart in a shower of fake bay leaves and silver glitter.

“Baird, out,” Nim called from another high perch. “Since when do you not watch your back, sparkle boy?”

“I was distracted, damn it.” The talya brushed at the seat of his jeans and grimaced at the glitter on his palm. “Well, could’ve been noodle art.”

Sid straightened, popping above the shelves where Baird could see him. “Yeah, that nickname would be worse.”

The talya shot him the middle finger and a big grin full of white teeth. “Al dente, asshole.”

From the corner of his eye, back the way they had come, Sid glimpsed a dark shape. Nim and Baird were trading another gleeful insult. Alyce stood halfway into the open aisle, her baby blue housedress much the worse for wear but still a pale gleaming target. She watched the byplay with her head cocked and that delighted little smile curving her lips.

Before he could call her name—whispered, shouted, or anything else—the bombardment was inbound.

As kitchen sinks went, it wasn’t big—more prep-sink-sized. It was still going to hurt like a son of a bitch.

As heroic dives went, his was kind of prep-sized too. But he just needed to get between Alyce and whichever talya was sneaking up on her in the hopes of winning—or pinning—her heart.

He was still in midair when the sink smashed into his shoulder—the feralis-bitten one, of course.

Alyce spun toward him in a pale blue blur. Before his knee crashed into the floorboards, her arms were already reaching out to him, slowing his descent.

She saved his skull, but the point of his shoulder rebounded off the floor. The gray numbness was obliterated in a blinding white wave of pain like newsprint in a gasoline flame.

He cursed, not quite as loud as Alyce with her double-octave growl of outrage.

“What the hell, Pitch,” Nim snapped as she jumped down to the floor. “You’re out of the Alyce game.”

“I wasn’t aiming at her.”

Sid righted himself, his good hand braced on the floor. Always nice to know he’d thrown himself into the line of fire for nothing.

Baird shook his head. “Westerbrook isn’t a valid target.”

“Not anymore,” Pitch said. “C’mon—I didn’t use the claw-foot tub.”

Pushing Alyce’s hand away, Sid drew himself to his feet. He refused to steady himself on the nearest shelf, and for a wonder his spectacles had stayed on. “That’s it. This game is over.”

Jonah hurried down the aisle toward them. A multipronged hook was attached to his stump in place of his right hand. “Why’s everybody standing around? She didn’t get everybody out already, did she?” He looked at Nim. “Do I owe you that fifty bucks?”

Nim shook her head. “Westerbrook called a halt. I think we shocked him with our childish behavior.”

Jonah turned a glower on Sid. “We’re not allowed a little fun?” Nim wrapped her fingers around his forearm, just above the cuff where the hook connected, becoming part of him. In the shadows of forgotten furniture, a half-dozen massive shapes converged, talya blackness broken only by heat-lightning flares of violet. They were the remaining hopeful suitors.

Alyce gripped a Christmas icicle ornament like a knife in her hand.

Sid returned Jonah’s glower. “I guess my dictionary shows a different definition of fun. Bowling, for example.”

“Well, you’re playing in our world now,” someone said.

Sid didn’t bother identifying the speaker, though he thought it was Lev, the lanky redheaded talya—or maybe Amiri, the tall Maori. Didn’t matter. They obviously all felt the same way.

And they were right. The only reason he’d stopped that sink from hitting Alyce was because it had been aimed at him. He’d just been in the way. He wasn’t a talya contender
any more than he was still suitable for … anything besides what he was, a bloody borrowed Bookkeeper.

He held himself as if someone had duct-taped his spine to a curtain rod, but it felt more like glass. “Sorry to spoil your fun. But I came up here to get Alyce. I want a baseline reading on her metaphysiology before you break her.”

Nim gave him a steady stare. “She’s strong.” Her words sounded like a warning, one he wouldn’t honor with a response.

He took the icicle from Alyce’s hand and lobbed it to Jonah. Nim caught it. “It’s getting dark out. You can go entertain yourself with the horde.”

Alyce gave him a reproving look. “That is not a game.”

The other talyan didn’t chime in to agree, but the combined weight of their stares as the violet lights guttered out chipped at the stiffness of his stance. As twisted as his life had been, at least he
had
a life. The talyan had an eternity of death and destruction for the good of a people who would never know it. And he, who did know better, was flipping them shit.

He nodded once. “Of course, Alyce. And you’ll be out with them just as soon as I clear you for service.”

“We do want what is best for her, Bookkeeper,” Jonah said softly. “Honing ourselves in the fight against evil is all we have.” He reached for Nim with the hand he had left. “Well, that and each other.”

It was such a simple touch; yet Sid’s face heated at the contact. The other talyan melted away, as if they too were disturbed by the flare of energy. Sid’s Bookkeeper brain wished he’d had them both rigged to an etheric resonance sequencer to capture that moment—maybe next time.

Without another word—really, what could he say?—he led Alyce out of the antiques graveyard, down five flights of stairs to the basement. His steps clanked wearily on the metal grate of the stairs. Alyce with her bare feet might as well have been a ghost.

“Thank you for trying to protect me,” she said softly.

“You didn’t need it.” A flush of embarrassment heated his skin. Although considering the state of his shoulder, maybe that was just trickling blood.

“If I had, though, you were right there. Just as you were right there when the devil-man tried to stab me. Without you, I would be dead.”

The memory of Nanette’s scream echoed in his head, and he swayed a little. He paused with one hand on the rail.

Alyce flitted around to the step below him, peering up worriedly. “You are hurt.”

“Not as bad as some others.” He went around her and took a step down, but he stopped again when she touched his shoulder from behind.

The tentative contact should have been too light to register through the bone-deep ache, but his skin shivered at her nearness. He tightened every muscle, ignoring the way the ache intensified, to prevent himself from turning to face her.

“You aren’t talya,” she said. “You don’t have to pretend. Not with me, not when they aren’t around.”

Her statement—not talya—shouldn’t have stung. It was only the truth. But how could he explain to her that meant he had to pretend even harder? He didn’t have the advantages of immortality or running rogue to cushion the blows.

That would explain his weakness when he just closed his eyes while she slipped her hands around his neck to undo the top buttons of his shirt.

From her perch on the step behind him, she slipped the oxford down from his shoulder. “Oh, Sidney. Why didn’t you say anything?”

He bit down on a curse when she eased back the gauze pad. At least the fresh blood kept it from sticking. “Which time?”

“I should not have played that stupid game.”

At the remorse in her voice, he couldn’t stop himself
from turning to her. He pulled the shirt back into place, hiding the evidence of his human frailty. Except the gory stain still gave him away. “You were having fun. I was the one out of place.”

She shook her head, hard enough to make the dark locks of her hair dance around her face. “We were a good team.”

He took the bandage from her. “Nanette might not agree.”

She stilled. “Could we have saved him?”

“If we’d known the djinn-men were casing the joint, maybe. If we’d known Daniel was outside. If we knew where every act of evil was about to happen …” He couldn’t muster a shrug. “Bookkeepers try to keep track of everything, but we’re not that good.”

“Not good then,” she echoed. “But repentant.”

“That is the theory.” Leaving the open buttons of his shirt flapping, he continued their descent.

Familiarizing himself with the lab had been his first task when he’d arrived in Chicago. All leagues had the same basics, but each Bookkeeper customized to local needs. And a certain amount of intradisciplinary egotism meant that sometimes the sharing of ideas, techniques, and hardware improvements between Bookkeepers was not as robust as might otherwise have been ideal for the salvation of humanity.

But then, the battle between good and evil had been going on a very long time. No one had quite understood the need for a more concerted effort.

As interim Bookkeeper, Sera had kept sketchy notes of the changes the Chicago league had experienced. But she had been playing catch-up with the history and traditions even a novice Bookkeeper would have known.

Plus, her handwriting was terrible. Obviously she had her background in the medical fields. And now they’d been tossed the wrinkle of more overt djinn activity.

Point being, he had plenty to keep him busy; he could have waited to bring Alyce down here. He didn’t have the
lab organized to his specifications. He couldn’t even log in to the league network since Archer had hacked the computers to trace Bookie’s embezzling.

But he couldn’t leave Alyce to the untender mercies of her would-be lovers.

Not yet. She didn’t know herself. How could she be expected to choose among them?

“You are angry,” she said.

He hadn’t flipped on the lights. He composed his features before he did, then tossed the bloody gauze in the trash. “I’m not angry.”

“Your teeth are grinding.”

He pushed aside a stack of file folders on an exam table. “I’m tired, and my shoulder feels worse than when the feralis was chewing on it.”

“Which is why you have dark circles under your eyes and you are holding your elbow close to your side. But you grind your teeth because you are—”

“Fine. I’m angry. Jonah should have known better than to put you in danger.” No, he still wasn’t being truthful. “
I
should have known better than to leave you with them.”

“They wouldn’t hurt me. They want me here.”

“Well, I want you too. And I found you first.” He patted the exam table. “Now, hop up.”

Her gaze cooled with guarded distance. “You won’t strap me down?”

What had happened with the doctors she’d gone to? Scratch that. He could guess what they’d thought. “No straps. Look, there’s blood on your dress. Is it theirs or yours?”

“I think it’s yours.” She crossed to him and inched her hip up onto the table. “Why do you want me?”

“We need to know more about the female talyan. We need to find out what sparked your reappearance. We need to know what you know.”

“I don’t know anything,” she said.

“Then we’ll find out together.” He walked to the other side of the table, and she owled her neck to follow his progress. “Just let me …” The streak of red across the back of her dress made his teeth grind harder. In the darkness upstairs, he hadn’t noticed, but under the lab fluorescents, her skin gleamed white through the slashed fabric and smudges. “See, I was afraid of this.”

She craned her neck a little farther. “I can’t see. What makes you afraid?”

“That your talya friends play too rough. I thought no one tagged you.” Had one of the males staked a
symballein
claim? Liam would be pleased.

Meanwhile, Sid held his breath, waiting for her answer, and each nanosecond stretched into eternity.

But she shook her head. “I jumped from one of the shelves, but my knee twisted. I fell into a piano. Nim said it wouldn’t hold a tune anyway. To make it fair, she said I should stay on the ground because the men are too big to hide.”

“Oh, and we’d want to be fair.” In his relief—though he had no cause to be relieved—he couldn’t keep the snide note from his voice.

“Not to the tenebrae,” Alyce said. “But to one another.”

How quickly she’d become one of them. Sid pushed down a twang of jealousy more sour than any old piano. “The wire cut right through you.”

“It is nothing.”

“Let’s make sure of that.” He pulled a crash cart closer to the table, found scissors, and carefully cut down the back of the housedress.

Alyce clutched the front to her chest and stared over her shoulder at him, eyes ringed in white.

He kept his focus on her back and made a scholarly sound of concern. “Yes, just as I feared. It looks like you hit high C.”

After a heartbeat, her lips quirked. “I can’t sing.”

He lifted his gaze. “Really? I would never have guessed. You have a lovely voice.”