Dark Light of Day (10 page)

“It’s next week, Peter,” I said, groaning, covering my face with my hands. “When we first came up with the plan to search for the Reversal Spell, we had nine
years
. Now we have seven
days
. Don’t you think it’s time we called the search off?”

“Absolutely not. I found something. Another reference.” I took my hands off of my face. He came to sit beside me. This time he was flush with excitement.

“Remember I was telling you that the ancient book of Revelation referenced the Reversal Spell? That the spell had been written down in the immediate aftermath of the Apocalypse at His command?” I nodded. “Well, I did some digging. Most people believe that Armageddon was the last battle of the Apocalypse. But I don’t think so.”

It was my turn to frown. How could that be? Peter was arrogant, and he spent more time studying the archives than anyone I knew, but even he couldn’t rewrite history.

“I was in the Divinity Archives and I found a working draft of a manuscript titled
Last Stand
. It was never published. The draft was pretty rough, but from what I can tell it was an account of the end of days. The true end. According to
Last Stand
, a small portion of the Savior’s army survived Armageddon and holed up on the far shore of some river. They huddled there, dejected and weary, waiting for the Savior to rally them for the final battle. But he never came. Instead the Host did. But instead of killing them, they offered a truce. The terms of the truce were recorded by scribes on both sides. The Savior’s scribe was the same person who wrote the draft of
Last Stand
… Jonathan Aster.”

Our eyes met.

“Do you know where the Savior’s army made their last stand?” Peter asked. I shook my head.

“In Etincelle. Think about it, Noon. It makes sense. The far shore of some river has to be a reference to the Lethe. Everyone knows Armageddon was fought here, on the ground that became New Babylon. And it would explain why Etincelle was settled by both Angels and Host.”

What he said made sense, but still…

“You’re losing me, Peter. What does this have to do with us—here and now?”

“If the Reversal Spell was recorded after the end of the Apocalypse, then it may have been recorded as part of the truce terms between the Host and the Angels. And if Jonathan Aster was the scribe who recorded the truce… where would you search for it?”

The Aster estate.
It was almost too much to hope that the
spell that could make everything okay was right next door to where I grew up. Could Luck be that cruel? That kind?

“Your house,” I said.

Peter nodded. “Or, more precisely, the Aster Archives in the crypts beneath it. I’m headed back to Etincelle tomorrow morning.” He pointed to a duffel bag beside the door that I hadn’t noticed before. “Want to come?”

I hesitated. “I don’t know…”

“If you help, we’ll find the spell twice as fast.”

“Maybe…”

Finding the Reversal Spell was what I wanted, right? I didn’t want to be a Maegester. Heck, I didn’t even want to be a Barrister, although I’d miss Ivy and Fitz. The three of us worked well together. Each of us had our strengths and weaknesses. Fitz loved all the idiosyncratic rules of Council Procedure, but was hopeless at Evil Deeds. Ivy seemed to intuitively understand all the confusing promise doctrines like oath estoppel and unjust empowerment. Whereas I’d become surprisingly adept at Sin and Sanction. Fitz and Ivy depended on my near perfect recall to quiz them on the hundreds of sins the residents of Halja could be found guilty of. I suppressed my guilt over the upcoming Sin and Sanction midterm. It wasn’t as if Ivy and Fitz were helpless without me.

Peter smiled. It was the first real smile I had seen from him in a long time. It transformed him from a dour, hand wringing intellectual into a beautiful, bright, and highly capable young Angel. I smiled back.

“Have you eaten yet?” he said. “I’m hungry.”

I shook my head.

“Want to go somewhere on your side of campus? How about Marduk’s? It’s been ages since I’ve been there.”

I ate there every night. But it wasn’t every night that Peter was in such a good mood.

“Okay,” I said, slipping my arm through his as we walked to the door.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he said, turning back to the coffee table and grabbing the piece of mail I’d noticed earlier. He
handed it to me. “This is for you. It’s a letter from Night. I brought it for you from Etincelle.”

“He’s okay, right?”

He nodded. “That’s what your mother said when she gave me that to give to you.”

Well, at least that eased one of my concerns. I grabbed Peter’s arm again before his good mood could change and marched him to the door.

“So,” I asked, “what time is the ferry leaving tomorrow?”

M
arduk’s was crowded. Peter and I waited for a table. One finally opened up, a deuce near the front door, and, regardless of the constant draft creeping in, I finally began to relax. How could I not? We weren’t leaving tonight—the last ferry had left hours ago—so I shrugged off my remaining unease about our planned early morning departure. I reminded myself I hadn’t wanted to come to St. Luck’s in the first place. When I began to think about how much work I’d put into school already, I concentrated on the menu. As I skipped over a baby spinach salad in favor of grilled vegetables, I remembered the evergreen in my locker. Which led me to think of Sasha again and the things he’d said to me. And that reignited my earlier anger.

I feel like I’m talking to a corpse.

If the Reversal Spell worked and I retained only half the amount of magic I currently had, no one would ever associate me with death again. My healing powers would rival my mother’s, before her mysterious decline. My touch would be a balm to the sick and soothing comfort to expectant mothers. At the very least, I’d be able to eat a bite of fresh salad without it rotting on the way to my mouth.
I vowed to look up Cousin Sasha after I had blessed my one hundredth crop of wheat so that I could dare him to look me in the eyes and call me a—

Three things happened almost instantly. I set my napkin on fire. Peter knocked over his water glass, putting out the flames, and Ari walked through the door. If I had doubted
before whether there was any vestige of Peter’s cloaking spell left, I knew then that every shred of it was gone. The feeling I experienced when Ari walked into Marduk’s was as different from the prickly, skittering feeling I was used to experiencing around him as demons were different from Angels. It was as if a small sun had entered the room. Heat, or something like it, radiated from Ari. The intensity of it left me feeling blistered and burned. I instinctively reacted, putting up the magical equivalent of a hand to repel the force assaulting me. But I had no idea what I was doing or how much counterforce I used. I only know that Ari turned toward me then, first with a look of shock and then one of absolute focus, as he made his way through the crowd toward our table.

Peter shoved the half-burned sopping wet mess that had been my napkin into his pocket. He scowled at me, his earlier winsome expression completely gone.

Ari arrived. He wore a long dark wool cloak over a charcoal gray, thick weave sweater. Small snowflakes glistened in his hair, melting in the heat of Marduk’s. In the warm underground glow surrounding us, Ari’s dark eyes appeared almost entirely black, devoid of pupils and eerily intense. I concentrated on controlling my emotions. I felt like two people. The first was a wannabe Mederi who was desperately infatuated with a seriously hot, super powerful Maegester in the making. Having Ari stand this close to me when for weeks we had done nothing but ignore each other was difficult. I couldn’t help remembering how it had felt the day of Shivel’s orientation lecture when he had put his hand over my demon mark. What would it feel like now, without the barrier of Peter’s cloaking spell?

What would it feel like without the barrier of clothes beneath his palm?

I turned away, blushing. When I turned back Ari stared at me, a set expression on his face.

The second person I felt like was a real-life she-devil. I wanted to crisp Ari on the spot for his little tree trick, but doing so in such a public place was hardly a good idea.

“Did Sasha find you?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“And?” Ari said, completely ignoring Peter.

“And,” I said, my voice betraying my anger, “I told him to go to Luck with my blessing.”

Ari inhaled sharply and leaned over the table toward me.

“I was hoping he’d talk some sense into you. I’d have thought you’d have come around by now.”

“Excuse me,” Peter said, placing his hand on Ari’s chest and physically pushing him back from the table and away from me. “Who the hell
are
you?”

Ari looked at Peter, almost as if he were seeing him for the first time.

“Ari Carmine,” he said, offering his hand. Peter waved it off, declining to take it.

I knew Peter’s feathers were likely smoothed by Ari’s Hyrke surname but I didn’t want Peter getting any ideas that Ari was a friend.

“Ari’s a Maegester-in-Training here, Peter.” I lowered my voice so that only the three of us could hear what I was saying. “Ari left a special present for me in my locker today—didn’t you, Ari?” I said, smiling up at him with syrupy sweetness and, I hoped, a murderous look in my eye. “And then he sent one of his minions to come talk to me.”

“Sasha’s not one of my minions,” Ari snapped. “He told me he was your cousin. Wait—what present? I didn’t leave anything in your locker for you.”

“Sasha as in Sasha de Rocca?” Peter asked, his tone both incredulous and angry, but Ari and I ignored him.

“The evergreen,” I hissed. “That was low, Ari, even for you.”

To his credit, Ari blanched. “I didn’t leave an evergreen in your locker. Is that… do you actually think…” He shook his head as if to clear it.

“Let me get this straight, you left a
plant
in Noon’s locker? Why? How did you even… ?” Peter was slow to the party but he played catch-up fast. He realized in seconds what had taken me a day to figure out.

Peter’s cloaking spell had never hidden me from Ari.

“Who are you?” Ari asked Peter. “I haven’t seen you around. Are you a friend of Noon’s from home?”

“Peter Aster,” Peter said. He stared at Ari with narrow, calculating eyes.

Ari’s nonplussed look continued. “Aster… You’re an Angel?”

“That’s right.”

The two men sized each other up. Ari likely saw a thin, anemic looking academic while Peter likely saw a hulking, shabbily dressed demon beseecher.

“I didn’t—wouldn’t—leave a plant in your locker, Noon,” Ari said finally, turning to me. “Come on, how would I even get it in there without killing it myself?”

“Just stay away from me,” I said. Ari looked away. “Come on,” I said to Peter. “I just lost my appetite.”

Peter stood up, looking grumpy. He tossed his napkin to the table. “Fine. I’ve got some more research to do and you still have to pack.”

“Pack?” Ari said, his voice low and deep. I’d never been afraid of Ari, but just for a moment I could imagine what it must be like. “Where are you going, Noon? Did you forget our deal?”

“What deal? We never had a deal.”

“We had an understanding. You said you wouldn’t leave.”

“Any understanding you think we had was broken when Sasha showed up at my locker today.”

“Let’s talk outside,” Ari said, looking straight at me, ignoring Peter again. I shrugged and got up slowly. I didn’t want him to think I jumped at his command. Ari turned and made his way to the door. I followed, purposefully staying a few feet behind him. Peter trailed me, looking peevish.

The entrance of Marduk’s fronted an alley. All of the other doors along the street were back doors to buildings already closed. Outside, it was cold and dark. One streetlamp glowed but it was some ways away. We climbed Marduk’s outer steps to street level, crossed the alley, and stood in front of another door, likely locked for the night. There was a
small awning over the door that kept most of the falling snow off of us.

“Where are you going?” Ari said, wasting no time in launching back into our interrupted conversation. “You can’t just skip class like that.”

“There are more important things to worry about than class,” I said, refusing to look at him.

“Like running away.”

“I’m not running away.”

“The hell you aren’t, Noon. Bryde’s Day is next week. You’re twenty-one. The
only
place for you right now is
here
,” Ari said, pointing at the ground beside him. “You know what you have to do.”

Peter stood absolutely still. He was no longer peeved; he was livid. Out here, his face appeared translucent. His lips moved slightly, as if he was talking to himself, but I recognized what he was doing—getting ready to cast a spell.

“If you leave, I’ll declare for you,” Ari said, forcing all of my attention back to him.

“What?” I said, stunned. “But you can’t… I… We’re so close. I just need more time.”

“You don’t have it.”

“Give her until Bryde’s Day,” Peter said.

“Why?” Ari said, his patience clearly wearing thin.

“Why can’t you just leave her alone?” Peter said. Two angry spots of color appeared on his cheeks.

“I can’t,” Ari said, looking surprised at his own admission.

“All we’re asking for is a couple of days,” Peter said.
“Pacta sunt serv—”

Instantly, Ari waved his hand in a slicing motion across Peter’s throat. Peter made a strangled noise and grabbed his neck with both hands. He tried to talk but no words came out. He just stood there, his mouth opening and closing, his lips smacking and his tongue clicking, while his eyes grew wider and his face redder. Ari had leeched the oxygen from around Peter, making him breathless and, more importantly, speechless.

“Stop!” I cried, shoving Ari. How had the situation deteriorated
so quickly? Luckily, Ari did stop. He looked down at me and a little sliver of fear ran up my spine.

“Set your spellcaster on me again, Noon, and I’ll rip the larynx right out of his throat.”