Archon (8 page)

Six

There is very little difference between angels and demons. Except that demons have stopped pretending to be perfect.

—
T
HE
D
EMON
P
YTHON, TRANSCRIBED FROM
The
Lies of Babylon

T
he sun slanted its last rays into the archbishop’s office, illuminating the statues, the leather armchairs, even the snuffed candlewicks with a fine outline of gold. The room was cozy, but its enormous double windows spanned most of a wall, offering an impressive view of Luz and the lower tiers of the Academy. Expense, opulence. The perfect choice for a priest with too much money on his hands. For the briefest moment, St. Mary’s Cathedral, its steeple rising like a brown spike above the buildings surrounding the lower courtyard, looked like it was on fire. Then the clouds began to take over again, and Westwood’s outlying properties dropped back into an ominous grayness.

Stephanie peered toward the west, searching for the tufts of the Tree hidden in Memorial Park, but darkness stole over the world fast, and soon she was perusing the lights blinking into existence throughout the city.

A crow soared toward the window, as if out of nowhere.

She flinched, brought back to reality while its feet scraped across the glass. Ruffling its black feathers, the bird settled on the outer sill and cocked its head toward the sound of the archbishop’s voice. Naamah glanced at the crow from the corner of her dark eyes, an agitated twitch tugging at her mouth. She sat at Stephanie’s right, squeaking in her seat whenever she shifted position, tapping her chin, suggesting she was dangerously bored.

“. . . ah, yes, here we are.” The archbishop finished rifling through a stack of papers and set them in front of him on the desk, finally placing his folded hands on top. “But, of course, I can’t give you this information without anything in return.”

He had a thunderous voice even in such a stuffy room, and a mass of gray hair that seemed overly combed. Stephanie examined the brass nameplate near the candelabra again.

His Eminence Gregory T. Solomon
,
Archbishop of Luz
.

“So what are you suggesting?” she said softly. “Another deal?”

Stephanie set her jaw, tense.

The archbishop stared shortly at Naamah, but flicked his gaze away as she stared back, hard and uncompromising. The demon had her hood up, yet if her fine features and copper skin wouldn’t give her away, the Theban tattoo inked alongside her neck and collarbone would. These priests weren’t as stupid as they acted sometimes. Luz was a world where the supernatural constantly kissed the mundane, and the archbishop was dealing with a demon sitting in his office surprisingly well.

“These murders,” he continued, “taking place in the city. From what I understand, our little truce has been paying out profitably for us both until now. But if the Pentacle Sorority continues its mistakes on a daily basis, we’re going to have a major problem on our hands. Already, I have three junior exorcists lined up, itching to test their skills—”

Naamah slammed her hands on the desk, standing abruptly. She loomed over the archbishop, blond braids dangling out of her hood’s mouth. The demon’s cloak had turned her into a living shadow, swiftly matching the whispers of night that began to overwhelm the room. The glow of the wall sconces wavered, as if her presence oppressed them.

“Your arrogance,” she whispered, “annoys me, priest.”

“
I thought you had her under your control,
” he hissed at Stephanie, never taking his eyes off Naamah. His round face was blanching quickly to a pasty white.

Stephanie kept her smile. His reaction was a lot of fun to watch. “The sorority? No. We know enough to keep our messes hidden.”

“Then who?” he shot back at her, trying not to tremble under Naamah’s scrutiny.

The demon hadn’t budged, clenching the wood like a cat eager to display its claws.

How appropriate.

“An irregularity,” Naamah said slowly. Her voice was gentler this time, but no less lethal. “A rat in the walls. It’s not something you can take care of.”

“That hardly answers my question—”

Stephanie adjusted her ponytail and crossed her legs, enjoying the feel of the leather against her thighs. “There are other creatures to fear besides angels and demons, Your Eminence. In-between things.”

She raised her eyebrows meaningfully.

The archbishop took a breath, slumping back in his chair. He held a hand to his forehead. “God . . . How could this happen?”

Naamah left him and wandered over to the window, crossing her arms while she gazed out into the evening. The crow strutted below her, its yellow eyes glinting in the candlelight. The first sigh of rain washed against the glass.

“Because the world is in a state of flux. Answering to Her call.”

His frown deepened.

“Or haven’t you noticed the weather?” Stephanie gestured outside.

Dull lightning flickered to the north.

Archbishop Solomon straightened himself, flipping through the papers with a finger. “What I want to know is, yet again, why do you think this blood head in particular, mentally unbalanced or not, is a threat? And what do you intend to do about it if she is? In other words”—and now it was his turn to lean forward, intending his whispers for Stephanie’s ears alone—“why do you go sticking your pretty nose where it doesn’t belong?”

She stayed silent, keeping her composure. If only she had Naamah’s blades, her strength, her utter lack of remorse.

He was really asking for someone to put him in his place.

“Why did you summon a demon into this city, Miss Walsh? To prove that you are indeed a witch? To shove the prophecy in our faces? Because it’s a fatal and ignorant game to play. People are dying out there. People will continue to die. And if there’s something I learned from my years of theology— it’s that their kind,” he pointed at Naamah, “don’t understand sympathy.”

“So you’re concerned for me. How encouraging.” Stephanie stood from her seat, her hand outstretched. “I think it’s time for me to leave.” She curled her fingers, beckoning. “But not empty-handed.”

“Watch your step,” the archbishop muttered. “To humanity, the Archon is the Ruin, not its overlord.”

“But there are two who can be the Ruin.” Stephanie took the papers from him, reviving her smile. “It simply comes down to the choice She makes.”

She scanned the documents briefly, overwhelmed by a sense of satisfaction.

. . . Angela Marie Mathers. Date of birth, the sixth of December . . . schooling, ten years of private home tutoring, intensive counseling at the Forwallis Institution . . . parents, deceased . . .

Normal enough. Stephanie continued scanning, turning through pages, at last reaching confidential psychiatry files.

Here it was. The important information.

. . . personality, self-destructive with suicidal tendencies, a marked inclination to the imaginative bordering on delusional; patient has suffered from psychotic episodes with vivid hallucinations—

A startling
crack
sounded throughout the office, its force like a gunshot.

Stephanie dropped some of the papers, swearing to herself. The archbishop was frozen in his chair, gazing at Naamah with a grim expression that suggested he was fast approaching some invisible precipice. She’d punched through the window, her fist making a neat hole in the glass. Blood streamed from her fingers, but she ignored it, instead examining the black feathers stuck to her skin. The demon flung them to the floor, cursing in a language neither of them understood.

“The crow got away?” Stephanie said, shivering slightly.

Naamah smiled and her teeth appeared, shockingly white. She looked to the priest, a warning behind her eyes. “Back to its rat’s nest.”

Seven

Witches are easy to manipulate. Because if they are up to no good, they also think the same of everyone else.

—
T
HE
D
EMON
P
YTHON, TRANSCRIBED FROM
The Lies of Babylon

T
he dead student must have bothered Angela more than she’d thought. Her nightmares had revolved around the gray angel, and those crimson eyes that both fascinated and repelled her with their suggestion of disease and blood. In their depths, she saw herself reflected blacker than pitch, as if all the dirt in her soul had been brought to light. Unfortunately, when she arrived for her first afternoon of class, the sickness inside of her seemed to spread rather than mitigate. Kim was the student teacher presiding over her Literature session, and the moment she took a seat next to Nina, it was painful not to stare at him, thinking about what the night would hold. Suddenly, the image of that dead girl was all around her, haunting her with unspoken accusations.

“You look suitably pathetic,” Nina said, drumming her fingers on the desktop. “Are you seeing the dead in your sleep now too?”

“So that was who they were.” Angela allowed her sarcasm to be heard but stared ahead at the chalkboards. “And here I thought you were making it up.”

“Just more angels, huh?” Nina laughed and laid her head on her arms, eyes closing. “You might not be happy, but
I’m
glad your latest suicide attempt crapped out. With you here, this class might actually be tolerable for a change.”

“
Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes . . .”

Kim’s voice echoed gently from the entryway of the classroom, rolling in that charming monotone he managed so well. He seemed so out of place up there, standing next to the head teacher, both of them better suited to a chapel than a schoolroom. Why was this Academy so contradictory? The chamber was too large for the number of desks—all of them warped with water damage but carved down to their legs with elegant grapevines and scrollwork—yet there were too many students. Many of them sat near the base of the walls, clipboards cocked and ready for notes. Lyrica was one of them, and of course she glanced at Angela now and then, probably trying to catch her glancing at Kim.

Angela smiled thinly at her.

Lyrica returned to her clipboard, scribbling furiously. No, her gesture said, you’re mistaken.

Like hell I am.

“. . . and we should discuss the meaning of this passage, in terms of Dante’s original influences . . . this, the most famous quote from his masterpiece work
The Inferno
. If you would please read the quote for us—”

She knows somehow about Kim and me. Or at least she suspects. Hopefully, he won’t do anything to tip her off—

“Angela,” Nina hissed.

“What?”

“Recite the translation!” She shoved her in the arm.

Angela looked around. A mosaic of expectant faces had locked on her, waiting for her to stand up at her desk and recite . . .

“The translation, Miss Mathers,” Kim said. His lips fondled her name delicately, but his expression was enough to give it all away. Some of his hair hung in front of his eyes, barely hiding the light behind them—searing, and full of expectation for the evening. “Page 102, the second line.”

She slid out of her seat, standing in the middle of the class, unable to hide and feeling the pain of it. Lyrica must have caught on to the teasing inflection in Kim’s voice. Her face openly displayed all the satisfaction that would blossom once Stephanie found out, and she was tapping her pen against her clipboard,
tsk tsking
Angela’s stupidity. Angela lifted the book higher, blocking her out. “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here . . .”

The remainder of the class was even more painful. Kim focused on her with a partiality that would make any of the other women jealous. His way of showing more interest, she supposed, but in the end, it only made her future confrontation with Stephanie more of a problem. Yet Angela had known what she was getting into. And it wouldn’t surprise her one bit if Kim was flirting for both Stephanie’s and Lyrica’s sake, merely to rub salt in their wounds, just like Nina had warned.

Angela let out a sigh when the session ended, bowing with the rest of the students and leaving the room with Nina after most of the others had already fanned out into the hall. A din of voices erupted again, the chatter muffled by the noise of shoes scuffing tile. Gargoyles grinned down from nooks in the hallway’s pillars, hunting as they always did, in stony silence.

At least Kim hadn’t bothered following her.

Maybe because he didn’t want anyone to murder her too soon.

“I’d ask if you’re taking drugs, but I know they probably don’t help you much,” Nina said. She scowled at another student who bumped into her, perhaps deliberately. Nina wasn’t the most popular person at the Academy, by far. If anything, her friendship with the creepy blood head girl in tights and arm gloves was helping out her social status. “Or do they just make you spacey? Too bad sleeping pills are meant to conk you out. I have a lot of those.”

“Sorry.” Angela unbuttoned her blouse collar and tugged it away from her neck. “I’m just kind of out of it today. I have a busy night ahead of me.”

“Really?” Nina’s tone seethed with suspicion. “How so?”

“You wouldn’t be interested.” She led them both around a corner, leaving the majority of students behind. The new hallway was darker and less well traveled, but it connected at the far end to one of the glass tunnels linking one tower to the next, the round panes glittering with the reflection of too many candles to count. Standing in the middle of that circle of light, five silhouettes had gathered, carefully surrounding a much more familiar one—a student with fluffy curls and a distinctive way of clasping her hands. Sophia. Angela could make out the silver of her shoes as they walked closer.

Lyrica stood against the wall, watching Angela’s steady approach with a coolly innocent face. In the brief time Angela and Nina had lingered behind in the classroom, collecting their books, she must have dashed out and told Stephanie everything she’d seen and heard.

And Stephanie must have believed some of it.

She turned from Sophia, and though it could have been Angela’s fear at work, Stephanie appeared more confident than the first time they’d met. Even her expression—while outwardly cheerful—hid an unnameable triumph behind it. But directly beside her, the young woman with the mass of blond braids, Sophia’s punisher, outdid her in second impressions, analyzing Angela with eyes that glittered like onyx. Up close they had the unnerving largeness she recognized from her painted angels, though their lids had been brightened to a misty red. She was the only person not wearing even a semblance of the Academy uniform, dressed instead in a coat that hid her clothing and perfect figure down to her ankles. The tattoo on her neck must have been a nonsense design—meaningless letters made of loops, long lines, and miniature pitchforks.

Angela didn’t like her then, and she didn’t like her now. At all.

What’s going on? Stephanie found out I had class today. She knew Kim was the teacher. And she might know by now that we have some kind of interest in each other.

But would she react to that so fast? Somehow she seemed too smart for that.

“What the hell did you do?” Nina whispered in Angela’s ear. Yet the second they walked closer to join the other sorority members, Nina slid to a careful distance, hovering in the background, as if Stephanie had drawn an invisible line she couldn’t cross. Her loyalty apparently stopped where one territory bordered another, and a short glance from Stephanie was all it took to cement that fact. She mumbled under her breath, receding even farther.

It’s weird. Stephanie is a blood head, yet she’s treating Nina like a freak.

Maybe she didn’t remember what it was like—to be feared more out of disgust than respect.

“Angela.” Stephanie regarded her again. “You’re in luck. I was about to go back to the Sorority House with some of the other members. I hope you wouldn’t mind joining us for the walk.”

Her fingers had wrapped like a clamp around Sophia’s wrist, but Sophia herself made no attempts at freedom. Instead she stared at Angela with hopeful, yet at the same time, very glassy eyes, looking more than ever like a doll. One that Stephanie was stealing away to a dank basement near the sea.

“That’s fine.” Angela had to suck back the irritation in her voice. “Although I’ll be going back to my dormitory once we reach an intersection.”

“Oh? Sorry to hear that.” Stephanie tugged Sophia, leading everyone into the glass tunnel. “I was hoping that maybe you and I could get to know each other better. You are Brendan’s sister after all. I can’t believe I didn’t catch on to that sooner.” She covered her mouth, sheepish. “Stupid of me, right?”

Lyrica was the first to laugh, also making certain to flank Angela’s left while Stephanie flanked her right. The other sorority members followed them, silent except for the occasional murmur or whisper.

She’s acting way too nice. And she knows someone told me that she and Brendan are a couple. I don’t like this.

Angela glanced back at Nina, who was still standing in a dark corner, watching everyone file out through the tunnel. She gave Angela the slightest wave and trotted away in the opposite direction, her figure fading into the smoke of the evening. Soon Angela was walking on glass, escorted by Westwood Academy’s most influential student, and ahead of her Luz continued to glow like a skewed paradise, its lights blurred by the water dripping along the contours in the panes. A shadow passed over them, another. Crows were soaring to their evening roosts. Night seemed to arrive earlier every day.

“Anyway,” Stephanie said, as her boots tapped across the transparent floor, “I’ve been curious about you for a while, Angela. Your brother’s told me a lot about you and your family.”

“Like what?” Angela conjured up a memory of the flames, racing up and across her old bedroom curtains, burning their satin drapery to ash. Why couldn’t the floor just crack, sending all of them to their deaths together? Would that be too easy?

“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing,” Stephanie said, her grip on Sophia’s arm tightening noticeably. “Well, I wouldn’t worry. He had only good things to say about you.”

“Like
what
?” Angela repeated.

Stephanie paused in front of a door, a hatchway, set into the glass. She was examining Angela’s tights and arm gloves with furtive shifts of her eyes, and the skin around Sophia’s arms practically puffed around her fingers. Sophia, though, barely had a word for Angela. She would look at her once in a while, but otherwise, she was acting like they’d never met.

“By the way,” Stephanie continued, a hand on her hip, “have you seen my boyfriend lately, Angela?”

A trick question. It had to be. Was she referring to Brendan or Kim?

“I haven’t talked to Brendan since I’ve arrived.”

“Really?”

“He’s nowhere to be found. Like he never even existed.”

“Have you asked any of the other novices?”

An even worse trick question. Sophia’s breath caught in her throat, like she’d planned on saying something. Would she get in trouble too if Stephanie found out? Angela took the hint and diverted the topic. “I’ve been considering it. Is there anyone in particular I should ask?”

Stephanie sighed, rubbed a hand on the glass. A channel to the ocean roared beneath them, dampening a rumble of thunder. “You’re not a bad liar.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She gestured toward the blonde with the braids, holding out Sophia to her. “Just for a minute,” Stephanie whispered.

The blonde sighed in annoyance.

Then she opened the hatch, grabbed Sophia by the back of her blouse, and before Angela could completely understand what was happening, shoved her forward so that she leaned dangerously into the night. If it weren’t for the blonde’s hand, twisted inside her shirt fabric, Sophia would have already plummeted into the channel. Wind whipped through the hole, blasting Angela’s long hair from her face, flapping it behind her like a red banner. The sea crashed beneath them, almost more deafening than the thunder. Churning. Merciless.

If Sophia didn’t plummet, it would be a miracle.

Angela cried out, dropping her book satchel. Her clipboard flipped into the wind.

She’s going to lose her. Any second.

There wasn’t any way that blonde would have the strength to hold Sophia for long. Her blouse was straining, one of the buttons popping off and falling into the water.

“Do you understand how things work here, Angela?” Stephanie’s voice was loud, and yet too calm for what was taking place. She watched Sophia’s skirt bluster against her knees, entertained, but with all the sophistication of a cruel child. “You might have made a few friends here and there, but I’m the only friend that’s going to count. And you shouldn’t hide things from your best friend. Right?”