Darkness Undone: A Novel of the Marked Souls (27 page)

He took a breath to continue, then let it out again. “More words, right? But you did ask.” His wryly amused expression faded. “Alyce?”

Despite the shelter of her coat, she shivered uncontrollably. “What did you say?”

“Which part?” He turned toward her to rub her arms, but the friction of the wool felt far away. “Are you all right? You asked when the world stopped believing in demons.”

“And witches.”

“In this country, I think the last witch hunts petered out beginning of the eighteenth century. The point where doubts crept in was probably the Salem trials in— Alyce!”

Without her conscious thought, she was running.

The demon whipped her like cat-o’-nine-tails against the backs of her legs, driving her onward with the uncontainable urge to escape.

She forgot Sidney was possessed too.

She’d gone a half-dozen strides before he tackled her from behind. They went down in a tangle of flapping coats.

She fought him. “Get away. Get away.”

“Alyce, I’m not leaving you like this.”

“We have to get away!”

“From what?” He hauled her upright, his head swinging side to side as he tried to track the threat.

Her breath heaved. “I don’t know. My devil says get away.”

“My teshuva says I’m going to have bruises from that kick, but nothing worse.”

She strained against his hold. “There is worse. There was worse.”

Sidney led her to the closest bench and pressed her down. He held her there when the teshuva tried to straighten her legs again, despite the suddenly fierce ache in her knee. “Why doesn’t your demon want you to think about the Salem witch trials?”

“It was me,” she whispered. The cold of the bench, the water, the sky, sank into her bones and out through her skin on the other side, as if she didn’t exist in between. “I killed my master. I was the witch.”

It all flooded back to her in a cold rush, as if the demon had spewed back the memories it had hidden, and she clung to Sidney’s hand lest the deluge wash her away. “Every night that summer, the master of the house came to my room and whipped me. He wanted me to confess.”

“To being a witch?”

“To admit I was tempting him. He said he wanted me to stop.”

Sidney’s fingers tightened on hers. “Why did he keep coming to your room—at night—if he didn’t want to be tempted?”

“I asked that too. Then he used his fists.”

“So the teshuva killed him.”

She pulled free of Sidney’s gentle grasp and ducked her forehead to her knees, fingertips pressed to her temples. In her head, the gray tide seemed to roll closer, a threat and an escape. “No.” She wasn’t sure if she spoke to Sidney or to the teshuva. She did not want the pardon of willful blindness
from either of them. “This was before the demon. I killed him.”

She raised her head, refusing to hide. She might be afraid to confront the memory of what she’d done, and the demon had granted her reprieve for a long time, but the dread—the not knowing—was worse.

Sidney raised his hand to cup her chin, his thumb soothing her cheekbone to brush away the bruises that had long ago faded.

It was as if she were one of those oversized tomes in his lab, strapped to hold the weight of musty pages together, the constraints loosened at his touch. The memories fell out in a flurry, so she could pick up each one, dust it off, and remember.

“I was a servant in his house. After my father died and we lost the farm, I needed to take a position. I had nine years on my contract, and I’d served seven. Seven years seemed like such a long time, but …”

“But not compared to more than three hundred years in service to the teshuva.” His hand slipped to her shoulder, and he pulled her close under his arm.

She curled up against him, his presence more of a shield than even the thick wool of the coat. “Three hundred years? Has it been that long?”

“I suppose you haven’t been reading the papers.”

She rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes. “It’s so clear now. Not the three hundred years, but before. As though no time has passed.”

His storytelling voice rumbled through her. “As far as the teshuva is concerned, that’s no time at all. When it possessed you, it couldn’t find the balance it needed to keep you—”

“Sane?”

He squeezed her. “Coherent. Those centuries must have passed for you as they would for an unbound demon, just
drifting. I wonder how you got from the East Coast to Chicago.”

“Drifting. Before I met you, I avoided any talya; when I saw their eyes, I knew I was too weak. But I remember pieces. Mostly pieces of the tenebrae.” She pressed her hands over her closed lids, as if one more layer of flesh could block out the visions. “There was a hospital that locked me up. And there was a church. I went to a church once and asked the man there to chase the devil from me. Or kill me. He might have been the janitor.” She forced herself to put her hands in her lap and look at him. “Not enough to fill three hundred years, is it?”

“And do you remember when the demon came to you? Your teshuva buried it for a long time.”

She was silent a moment, feeling the ebb of the demon daze. But had she really struggled clear, like climbing a mountaintop to rise above the clouds, or was this an outbound tide that would sweep in again? “Why is it letting go now?”

“Because you’re strong enough now to balance it, strong enough to remember.”

She didn’t feel particularly strong. Only Sidney’s arm around her shoulders held her upright. “Maybe because you’re here, to hear and explain.”

Though he didn’t move, his body stiffened almost imperceptibly, and she wriggled out from under his arm, from under his weighted stare. “Or maybe not.” She paced toward the rail. “Even if I remember, I don’t have to think about it. That’s what you do.”

“I know exactly the second the teshuva took me,” he said, as if she hadn’t just refused to share. “When we stood in the alley last night and the malice swarmed you, I knew I couldn’t stand there and watch.”

Away from the curve of his arm, the wind off the river snapped at her, and she shivered. “So I am the reason you are possessed.”

“That isn’t what I meant. I want you to know I wouldn’t just stand and watch, and talk, and study. I want you to believe I’m not here for the footnotes alone.” He didn’t reach out to her again, but his gaze was steady.

She stared down at where she’d twisted her knuckles white and tried to match his detached tone. “A devil had come and was loose among us. One of the slave women who belonged to the farmer down the lane, she knew. She had the sight, but no one believed her.”

“No one but you.”

“Not even me. But—but when the master said I was tempting him, I knew what would happen.
That
I could see as clearly as the old woman saw the devil circling. We’d already heard the fates of the evil women of Salem.”

“Was there no one you could go to for protection?”

“Everyone had gone crazy. They saw witches in the women and devils in the dogs and evil in every shadow.”

Reluctantly, he nodded. “The lesser tenebrae are drawn to the etheric energy of an unbound demon.”

“And the demon was there for me.” She took a breath. “I didn’t know that, but I knew my master’s frustration would boil over into accusations. I did tell then.”

“Considering the time period, it must have been hard for a servant to report her employer’s misbehavior.”

She shot him a disbelieving look. “Hard? Impossible. I didn’t tell them the truth. Not the whole truth. I went to our neighbor, whose cow had broken into my master’s fields and later died. I said my master poisoned the cow.”

She wrapped her arms tight around herself, scant replacement for his warm bulk. “I said I’d been whipped to stop me from speaking. After the magistrate saw the wounds on my back, they took me away. The neighbor accused my master of witchcraft. They hanged him. And he wasn’t the only one.”

Sidney sat back on the bench as if she had pushed him. “You?”

“No. I … watched. I only watched.” She clutched the tightly buttoned neck of her coat until she couldn’t swallow past the knot of her fingers. “Once I tried to scream. I think that was the moment the demon came to me.”

Sidney rubbed his eyes. “I don’t remember all the specifics of the Salem witch trials.”

“I do,” she whispered. “The pointing fingers. The black cloaks of the magistrates. The dead.”

“I’ve read how symptoms mistaken for deviltry—convulsions, hallucinations, that sort of thing—might have been caused by ergot poisoning in the rye crop.”

“That and the wandering demon.” She wouldn’t accept his false consolation. “The demon that wanted me. And my words added to the dread.”

“You were as much a victim as any.”

“But my words started the deaths, and I didn’t die.”

“I think you’ve found there is worse.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees as he stared at the river. “The teshuva resonated with the flaw in your soul, but it came to you where you had no chance of becoming what it needed. Worse, its presence brought the tenebrae, which only deepened the burden of its debt to the light. Maybe it thought—as nearly as we can imagine it thinks—that it was doing the right thing to make you forget for so long.”

She scowled. “Or maybe it was easier for the devil to have a servant who didn’t ask awkward questions.”

“I like questions.”

The blunt statement eased her grip around her neck. “You aren’t afraid when I ask.”

He shook his head. “Too stupid to be afraid.”

“Too curious.”

“Same thing, maybe.” His eyes reflected the gloomy water. “I’ve been told not to go back to London. The place I thought I had is gone. And I can’t even feel bad about it because it means Wes is home, with Dad, where he should have been all this time.”

“Can you talk yourself into believing that?”

His sideways glance struck hers. “Eventually.” His lips quirked. “If I talk long enough.”

She stood, wavering just a bit, as if she’d suddenly found Nim’s sky-high heels strapped to her feet. She wasn’t any taller, but her perspective had changed, and the demon shifted in her. Was it accommodating the changes, or just uneasy?

Sidney was at her elbow in a heartbeat, though he kept his hands to himself. “Okay?”

“It all looks different. How many times have I walked here and not remembered?”

“We’ll find the answers, somewhere.”

“There’s one place we know to look. And I
am
hungry.” She steadied herself without reaching for him, but it was good to know he was there. “How about some diner food?”

Alyce pushed back from the table, her hand over her belly. “How did I forget to eat all this time?”

“I don’t know,” Sidney said. “I guess the teshuva was eating for two.”

Therese bustled up with another plate. “You haven’t tried the piri-piri.”

Alyce groaned. “I don’t think I could— Oh, it has hot peppers?”

Therese beamed. “Is there anything you’re afraid to try?”

“Not a damn thing,” Sidney drawled.

A smile eased the thoughtful crease permanently etched between his brows. To have his focus firmly on her warmed her more than the spicy food. As a servant, she had been invisible. She had preferred to be invisible, since the alternatives were worse. The weight of his gaze, though, made her feel not pinned but wanted.

Good intentions did matter. She told herself the prickling in her eyes was only the heat of the peppers.

She was happy. She shouldn’t even think it, for the suspicion that feeling happy practically begged evil forces to snatch it away. Although her suspicion was entirely warranted, considering what she knew of evil forces. But maybe she had to be fair, since those evil forces had brought her to Sidney.

And speaking of evil forces … “You want to look at the verge again, don’t you?” She pushed her plate away, the peppers suddenly roiling in her belly.

He nodded. “I didn’t have the eyes to truly see it before. I’m curious.”

In the storeroom, he uncovered the doorway. He started his descent while she tugged the door back into place.

At the bottom, the glaring lights beamed on the verge and the recording machines whirred gently. Sidney picked his way across the patchwork of raised pavers that kept them out of the ooze and went to read their cryptic messages. She circled the mutant feralis husk and leaned in to watch the sluggishly churning other-realm energies.

It still looked like a mouth to her. The ether inside it roiled like an incessantly licking tongue. Whether it had something to say or was just a hungry maw, she couldn’t tell.

Sidney’s muttering distracted her, while the nearness of hell quelled her demon—and maybe she’d been a little too happy or she might have realized they weren’t alone.

When she straightened away from the verge, a forearm closed tight over her throat.

The leather-clad arm cut off her shout of warning as effectively as the overpowering wave of a superior demon disrupted her teshuva. She remembered this terrible feeling of helplessness. The crippling etheric blow had been the same the last time she’d tangled with Thorne.

“Miss Alyce, what are you doing down this rabbit hole?” His whisper in her ear was pitched so low she almost missed it.

Across the verge, Sidney was unfolding an accordion of paper that one of the machines had been spewing in a tidy stack beside it. “Interesting,” he said. “There was a spike just before we—”

He whirled around. “Alyce?”

The harsh lights left the periphery in darkness, but his gaze locked on hers for a heartbeat before shifting upward, to the devil-man who held her. “Let her go.”

“That’s the first thing you want to say? Not ‘Who are you?’ Or maybe ‘What do you want?’”

Sidney let the paper drift to the damp ground. “I don’t give a fuck who you are or what you want. You’re holding Alyce.”

“Ah.” Thorne’s breath held a note of amusement—and a darker thread Alyce couldn’t pin down. “You must be Sidney, the
symballein
bastard. Well, I know you won’t be able to form a coherent sentence while she’s in my arms.”