6: He made a Harp of her Breastbone

"Oh, you're awake," I said, shutting my bedroom door behind myself.

Airial looked a bit groggy, first, and then scared. She scooted back against the wall and cowered there.

"What do you want?" she asked, with surprising strength. More than I'd expected, anyway.

"At the moment? Nothing," I said, shrugging and leaning back against the door. "Jack's in a stupor over Sidney. But he'll talk to you later."

"I'll never tell him anything!" she said defiantly.

"That's cute, when you do that," I replied scornfully, "But yes, you will. If you want to live for very long."

"How do I know I will anyway?" she shot at me.

"Who does?" I shot back, then, "Are you hungry? Do you want dinner?"

"I don't want anything of yours," she said.

"That's funny," I replied, "because I was going to let you have the bed. Maybe you'd prefer the floor?"

She didn't respond, only stuck her nose in the air and refused to look at me.

"Spoiled rich girl," I said, smiling. "That shouldn't surprise me."

Her face clouded in anger, and she snapped her head back down to look at me.

"I'll have you know, I'm used to much plainer things than this! At the Temple my room is—" she started, but shut up abruptly. I smirked anyway.

"So you do live at the Temple," I said. She responded by sticking her chin out in anger and defiance.

"We already knew it," I said. "Deductive reasoning and such."

She continued to glare at me.

"That makes you even prettier," I murmured, but then realized that it probably wasn't a good thought to share with her. And indeed, her eyes went wide, and she shrank against the wall.

"What're you going to do to me?" she whimpered.

"Actually, I'm going to go back downstairs," I said, feigning nonchalance and moving across the room, to the closet. I retrieved Gaudium Gladius, and she gasped.

"When did you get that? What happened to Sachever? What did you do to him?" she nearly yelled, straining at her tied wrists.

"Nothing. Yet. You had the sword, Airial."

Her eyes were huge. Her beautiful chestnut-brown eyes.

"Is that a surprise?" I asked.

"It was so bright, this time," she mumbled vaguely. "So much brighter than before."

"Than ever before?" I wondered.

She nodded, as if in a trance.

"It's never been like that, before. That was… bright enough to burn cities to the ground. But only wicked ones."

"Then why didn't it?" I snapped. "Or are you speaking metaphorically?"

She seemed to snap out of her thoughts, and she turned her head away from me, nose in the air again.

"Do that all you want," I told her. It was very nearly funny, but still incredibly frustrating. "You'll talk, when the time comes. Jack will see to that."

"I'm not afraid of him."

"You should be," I told her. And why shouldn't she be?—I am.

"No," she said. "If you knew what I know, you wouldn't be afraid."

"And what do you know?" I sneered.

She smiled at me without a hint of malice or even irony.

"I know that love always wins," she said simply.

My chest knotted in sudden anger, and I stalked over to the bed, unsure of what I was going to do, but strangely gratified by the way her bravado disappeared immediately, and she shrunk against the wall again.

"You say that love always wins—you keep saying it, over and over—but how, how in God's name, do you know what love is?" I nearly yelled at her, unsure of where these words were coming from, or why they were coming now. "How does anyone know what love is? You can't pick it up. You can't feel it, or taste it. How do you even know that it exists? How can you believe in something that you can't even feel?"

"But you can feel it," she protested weakly.

"But maybe that's just the power of suggestion," I shot back, gripping the handle of Gaudium Gladius hard—hard enough that my fingers started to go numb.

"I believe because I want to believe," she said.

"And that's ridiculous," I growled. "Believing in love is like… Is like believing in magic. You can't prove that it doesn't exist, but you can't prove that it does, either. Like the Shekinah. It's all one big conspiracy!"

"They can all burn you," she murmured, "If you use them wrong. But they're so beautiful. Can't you see that?"

"I don't believe in it," I said, ignoring what she'd just said, and turning toward the door. "I don't."

"What are you going to believe in, then?" she asked softly, behind me. I whirled around again, and stalked over to the bed. Blind rage had me in its fist, now, and I grabbed her chin and jerked it up roughly so that her eyes met mine.

"I don't have to justify myself to you," I hissed. "I don't have to do a single damned thing for you, because I have complete power over you. I could kill you now—Jack wouldn't care that much." As I said it, her eyes welled up with tears—beautiful eyes, beautiful tears, beautiful face. They streamed down her cheeks, and her breathing quickened in panic. I stared down at her for a moment, feeling excitement over this build in my chest. The power I had over her. For every Deva like her who had ever looked down at me—or any Animal—for being more human. "I could kill you right now," I repeated, and she made some low sound in terror, and for a second I listened to her without really registering this. But after a second, the sheer wildness of it shook me out of the previous feeling of power over her. That noise, it was so… primitive. So very human, and animal-like. …She was half-human, too—I felt sure that no Deva would be capable of making that sound.

I let go of her face, and backed away, watching her sob.

"I don't believe in love," I said lowly, and slammed the door on my way out.

Downstairs, Jack sat staring at the television without really watching it. He looked up as I approached, and met my eyes. Silently, I held the sword out for him, and he took it.

"Such a high price we paid for you," he murmured to it. He bit his lip, and ran one hand down the length of the blade.

"We didn't pay anything for it," I said softly.

He looked up at me angrily.

"How can you say that?" he snapped.

"Because," I replied. "He was going to die anyway. Gemma said so."

"It could have been you," Jack said sharply.

I didn't say anything. Didn't let him see how much that comment—and the truth of it—stung. I just stood, and watched him, and waited for him to say something else.

He sighed.

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Just that, well… It could have been either of you. …I'm glad you're still alive, Lory."

"Thank you," I said stiffly, wondering if that was a compliment.

He looked away from me, down at the sword.

"So how does it work?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I said. "He told it to illuminate, didn't he?"

Jack shrugged, held the sword up. "Gaudium Gladius," he said sternly, much to the amusement of the Newly Dead. "Illuminate!"

"Nothing happened," I said, after a moment. Jack gave me a disgusted look.

"No kiddin', Lory." He turned back to the sword. "Gaudium Gladius," he said again. "Illuminate!"

"That isn't gonna work, Jack," said Magdalena from the stairs. He looked up at her, glaring.

"How do you know?" he demanded.

"Well, it doesn't take a genius," she said almost coyly, coming down the stairs and brushing her hair behind her ears. "Maybe just a woman. …It's not your sword. Why should it work for you?"

Very slowly, his face was turning red.

"What does that have to do with anything?" he snapped.

"A lot, I bet," she said. "I mean, lots of people have dogs who won't do tricks except for their masters, right?"

"It's a sword," he said angrily. "A piece of metal."

"Not the way you describe it," she said. She stood in front of the television, across the coffee table from Jack. I noticed dully that even his ears had turned red with anger.

"Swords don't have masters," he said.

"Maybe they do," she said calmly. So bravely.

"Swords don't have masters, damn it!" Jack yelled. He threw Gaudium Gladius across the room, over the heads of the Newly Dead. The sword slid, hit the leg of his desk.

"You said they found it seventeen years ago," Magdalena shouted back. They were nearly nose to nose, now, teeth practically bared. "You also said this Sachever kid is about seventeen. Does that mean nothing to you, Jack? Are you really that dense?"

And suddenly, just like that, the blood drained away from his face. He stared at Magdalena, slack-jawed, and she stared back, still angry, but slightly triumphant, too. And just as suddenly, he grabbed her face, and kissed her. She squeaked.

"Maggie," he said, pulling away. "Why aren't you a detective or something? Genius!" He turned to me. "Had you thought of that, Lory? Had you?"

I shook my head warily.

"Look at you!" he crowed at Maggie. "My genius!"

She smiled and blushed.

"I… I don't know exactly what this means, for us," Jack cried, grabbing two fistfuls of his own hair. "But it means something! Maybe swords do have masters!"

"Maybe destiny is not on our side," I muttered.

"Who believes in destiny, Lory?" Jack asked. "So maybe the sword is only his, but what does it matter? He can't use it if he don't have it, right? And he don't!—we do. It's perfect, either way. Lory! Lory! Tomorrow, let's blow the Temple up, just like I was planning on doing."

"Jack, I have to work tomorrow."

"Okay, so I'll do it with Sidney, then!" In his exuberance, this statement took a second to sink in. As it did, he brought his hands down from his head, and looked me in the eye. His eyes went hollow, dead.

"Maybe later, then," he said numbly, and moved past me, up the stairs. After a time, we heard his bedroom door open, and shut again. We all looked around at each other. Fabian retrieved Gaudium Gladius and tried to give it to me.

"No," I said. "Let Magdalena take it to Jack."

She stared at the ground for a moment, and then nodded, and accepted it hesitantly. She disappeared upstairs after him. It seemed to be mutually agreed that it was time for bed.

I slept on the floor that night, while Airial slept on the bed. She seemed to be afraid of me, now—truly afraid. I found myself not really caring very much. I just wanted to go to sleep, even on my pathetic nest of blankets, one pillow, and wood floor. And I did indeed go to sleep quickly.

And I dreamed that Thistle and I were on a raft, and floating down a lazy river—deep green-brown—on a day that was heavy with sun and heat. The banks of the river were far off, and impenetrably tree-lined. I could see neither behind us or ahead of us very far. Just the sky, and the sun, and the river, stretching endlessly ahead and behind. And she was kissing me.

"Thistle," I said, surprised that she was with me for reasons I couldn't explain—where else, after all, would she possibly be?

But perhaps she was also somewhere else, some part of my mind piped up. Drinking coffee with Magdalena, maybe. I lay on my back, squinting up at the sun and feeling her lips on my body, and wondering why she'd betray me like that—by drinking coffee with Magdalena.

"Thistle," I said again.

"What?" she asked, sitting up and blotting out the sun from the sky, so that a corona of light spilled out around her. "That's not really my name, Lory," she said. "It's Lexina. Remember? I told you so. Don't you remember?"

I sat up, and held her hand in my own.

" I remember," I said, "But it's not important right now. I have to go. Jack is drowning." Although he was nowhere to be seen—the river was quiet and still in all directions—I knew that somewhere, he was drowning.

"No," Thistle said, smiling and leaning against me. "Jack can swim. Stay here."

"No, he can't," I said indignantly.

"How do you know?"

"He told me so."

"I think he lied to you. I've seen him swimming before."

"I have to go help him," I said.

"Don't go," she said—no, pleaded. "You'll drown, too. I know you will."

"You can save me, if I start to drown. It'll be all right, Thistle."

"I can't save both of you. I could only save you, and maybe not even that."

"Why not?"

"I can't even get off this raft, anymore, Lory. I can't swim, either."

"So stay here. I'll come back for you."

"You won't be able to," she warned me sadly. "The current moves too fast. I'll be way downstream, by then."

"I have to help Jack," I said, sliding off the raft.

"That's your choice, then," she said sadly, starting to float away. I saw, as the raft drifted quickly away, that she was crying.

But I woke up, and discovered that it was Airial who was crying. And for some inexplicable reason, I felt guilty about it. I'd made this angel cry. I rolled over, and tried not to hear it. Eventually, I went back to sleep.

When I woke up, I rolled back over to check on Airial and found her eyes already on me.

"What are you doing?" I asked sharply, sitting up.

She looked startled, but not exactly scared any longer.

"I was watching you breathe," she said.

I continued to stare at her, waiting for an explanation.

"I…" she started nervously. "I don't know why. I just was thinking how amazing it is that someone as horrible as you breathes exactly the same way I do. Exactly the same way Sachever does. Like every other human breathes. Which goes to show, I guess, that you may be evil, but you're only human."

"Only human. You say it like it's dirty. You say it like it's something to be ashamed of. You're half human, too."

"We're all human."

"Devas are not human," I said obstinately, standing and collecting my bedding.

"We're all human," she repeated. "We all want love. You could have it, too. You'd be so much happier, if you'd realize that. I… I think your friend realized that, in the end. Just before he died. I think that's what Gaudium Gladius can do for you, even though it still destroys you."

"Shut up!" I barked at her. She cowered again.

"I suppose I'll bring you breakfast," I said, after a moment. "You'll need food. And Jack will want to talk to you, later."

She said nothing, and looked at her hands in front of her. After a moment of watching her, I turned and opened the door.

"You know," she said suddenly, and I turned back again.

"What?" I asked.

"You know," she repeated, "You talk in your sleep."

"Oh, do I?" I asked, slightly amused. "And what do I say?"

She looked up at me—just looked at me for a moment. Then she smiled, a little bit. A knowing smile, but a sympathetic one.

"You said 'Lexina.'"

I froze for a second, and then glowered at her, and left the room. Outside, I leaned against the door, and tried to remember what I'd dreamed about. Had it been about Thistle? It had been, I thought, but I couldn't remember exactly. I remembered waking up and hearing Airial crying. I remembered feeling guilty about it, briefly. And I wished that she was really human. So that I could feel justified in that guilt. And so that I could feel justified in admiring how beautiful she was.

"I'm going to wait to talk to her until you get home from work," Jack said, before I left. I nodded as I went, and was privately glad. I wanted to hear what she had to say firsthand. I wanted to hear her say it.

Work was slow. Five days before Yule, and suddenly freezing again and snowing—of course no one wanted ice-cream. It was so slow that Hugh left at noon, in fact.

"It's not worth having two people here," he said. And so I was alone, which really didn't bother me much. Really, that had been one of the things that made the ice-cream truck so pleasant, after moving in with Jack—the solitude. The chance to be by myself for even a little bit. I'd never really had that—not since I'd been taken to the home, anyway. Mostly, I didn't mind. Living alone, even for the short time that I'd done it, had felt strange. It felt, without other people around, as if something was missing. As if too much of the world was taking place without me knowing it. And when I'd been on my own, trying to figure out life outside the home and in the so-called real world, Edward and Beatriz had started their odd courtship.

No, being alone made one miss too much.

After school, a small group of students came in. Young high-schoolers, I guessed. It was hard to be sure, because of the way they came in—like they owned the place. They were Animals, though.

"It's spooky," said one of the girls.

"No way. It's the smart thing to do," said a boy with a crew cut and a letterman's jacket. He was very clearly the leader of the group. He swaggered, and they all clustered around him at the bar, but didn't seem too eager to order. Or even to acknowledge my existence.

The second girl—a brunette with a ponytail, agreed with the first boy.

"What would you expect them to do, after all these people dying? It's very rational," she said, and my ears perked up. "Anyway," she continued, "What've you got to worry about? Got secret connections with the Hungry Ghosts?"

All right, now I was definitely listening.

"No," the first girl said. "It just seems like such a violation of people's rights. Don't you think?"

"No," the boy said. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to have the bus stop I'm waiting in blow up."

"But it wouldn't," she protested.

"Yeah," said the second boy, who had thus far been silent. "They only kill Devas, after all."

"Now they only kill Devas," the first said.

"But soon," the second girl interjected, "they won't be able to do anything at all. Not with the phones being tapped and whatnot. The Seraphim'll catch 'em. Wait and see."

I stared, transfixed. Phone lines tapped? Those idiots had finally thought to do something, instead of hoping that we'd just magically turn up?

The second girl started to say something, but suddenly the first boy looked directly at me.

"Hey," he said, interrupting the girl while simultaneously wrapping an arm about her. "Could we get some service, here?"

"Whenever you're ready," I said nicely, although slightly put-out by the way he demanded it.

"We're ready," he replied. "Gimme a chocolate malt."

"I'll have a strawberry shake," said his girlfriend.

"I don't want anything," the other girl said, and the other boy just ordered a soda.

I got to their orders immediately, still listening.

"Know what else?" the boy asked. "The Seraphim think they might start raiding houses and businesses and stuff."

The first girl gasped.

"You're kidding," she said.

"Nope," he replied. "Once the phone thing turns up some suspects—or once they find some in another way—they're going to be raiding houses looking for evidence if there's the slightest suspicion."

"It's like martial law!"

"It is. Can you blame them?"

"Yes," the first girl said.

"I'm starting to think you really do sympathize with them," the second girl snapped.

"Let's talk about something else," the first girl said nervously. "I just don't like the idea of them raiding houses and things." They fell, after this, into a conversation that revolved around uninteresting gossip.

As I was giving them their orders, the bells on the door jangled again, and I looked up.

"Magdalena?" I asked, surprised. To my acute embarrassment, all of the high school kids looked up, too. Magdalena, for her part, just smiled and shook snow off her coat.

"Hiya," she said. She came up and sat down at the opposite end of the counter from the kids, near the register.

"How did you get here?" I asked her in a low voice. "Where's Jack?"

"He's working, too, Lory," she said, smiling. "I took Sidney's car."

"But… you thought Mink's bike was unlucky. Why not Sidney's car?"

"Because you drove him to the mall, Lory."

"That's creepy, Magdalena. Don't say things like that." Talking about him brought back that sick feeling like someone had scooped all my organs out. I cleared my throat. "What're you doing in town, anyway?"

"Just lookin' around," she said. "Seeing if maybe any beauticians need some part-time help. I want to work."

"What did Jack say about that?"

"He doesn't know, yet. He won't care. It's more money, right?" She flashed her teeth at me nervously. She didn't believe it. Neither did I.

"What'd you do with Airial, before you left?" I asked.

She gave me a look.

"I let her take a shower, and then put her back in your room. You're a pervert."

"Well, where else would you put her?" I demanded. "You wouldn't want her in your and Jack's room. The Newly Dead'll be in and out of their rooms all day, and Sidney—you wouldn't put her there."

"…Guess not," she said. "But please, Lory. Don't do anything to her. She's so young. She really is only seventeen—I asked her."

"Shut up, Magdalena," I said, turning away from her, leaning on the opposite counter.

"Don't sulk about it, Alister," she said. Something about her using my real name felt strange. Wrong.

"I wasn't sulking," I said. "I was just thinking… Thistle was seventeen."

"That… That was different."

"I know it was," I replied. I looked down at the counter under my hands. White plastic. I tried to let that make me think of something else, but it didn't. It brought nothing at all to mind. White plastic was white plastic, and that was all.

"I'm sorry," Magdalena said.

"Why?" I asked. "It's not like it was your fau—" And then I stopped abruptly, and turned back around to face her. She didn't meet my eyes.

"Maybe it is," I said.

"I'm sorry, Lory. I know. …I was wrong."

"So you did call the Seraphim," I said levelly, and then stopped, and glanced at the kids down the counter. They didn't appear to be listening, but nonetheless I leaned forward across the counter, at Magdalena. "Why?"

She wouldn't look at me.

"Why?" I repeated, more forcefully. Still with no response. "They could have traced that call," I said. "They could know where we live." No response. Suddenly, the kids all got up, as one, and moved to the cash register. They paid, and left, and Magdalena stared down at the counter.

"Don't you ever wonder what happened to your parents?" she wondered. "I do. I guess it's different for you, though, huh? Your parents didn't abandon you. You were ripped away. Mine disowned me."

"You and Jack have such a fixation on parents," I said. "I really don't care all that much. Maybe because I don't remember them that well."

"And you're close to your sister, too. …You never wonder about them?"

"Of course I wonder about them, sometimes. You take everything so literally. Really. Nothing's ever that black and white, is it?"

"Lory!" she said, suddenly looking up. "Let's go visit them!"

"What?" I asked, nonplussed and slightly shocked.

"You remember where you lived, right?"

"Of course, but—"

"Let's go out there. I'll drive. Come on, Lory. You know you want to."

"I don't know."

"Let's at least drive out and see your house."

"But why, Magdalena?"

"Because they might be happy to see you again, Lory. I want to do something nice for someone. This could be it."

I sighed, and thought about it for a moment.

"Fine," I said, after a time. "Just let me close up here, first."

"Oh, thank you, Lory!" she exclaimed, a little bit too excited. "Thank you!"

"You're too eager about this. I feel like you're leading me into some sort of trap. Turn left here."

She did.

"What kind of trap could I possibly be leadin' you into? You're giving me directions. …You lived out in the middle of nowhere."

"We still live out in the middle of nowhere, Magdalena. I like it."

"We don't live this far out."

"It used to be in the city, you know," I said. "Suburbs. People stopped living here after the Animal population started shrinking—or that's what my dad always told us. It turned into Animal slums, and eventually it was abandoned. We'd find old ruins of buildings, sometimes."

"That must have been fun, for little kids."

"We thought so. …They were kind of scary, though. Something about old things that people don't use anymore. It's a strange feeling. …Magdalena, why did you call the Seraphim? Did you want us to get arrested? Killed?"

"No," she said quietly. I turned away from the semi-familiar landscape out the window and watched her. She wasn't wearing as much makeup as she usually did. it made her seem less like Magdalena and more like a new person—someone I didn't know.

I looked out the window again after a moment. It was all different. Because I was bigger, now, I wondered, and saw things from a higher perspective, or because things had changed that much?

"Why, then?" I asked after a time.

"You know, Lory," she said, "I think we should understand each other better than we do."

"Take another left, just there," I directed. "Why?"

"I think we're a lot alike.

"Oh, do you?"

"Yes. I really do, Lory. I've been thinkin' about it for a while, and we really have a lot in common."

"You don't say," I said dryly. "Do tell, Magdalena."

"Well, really," she said, apparently unaware of the sarcasm, "It all comes down to Jack, in the end."

And suddenly—inexplicably—I was uncomfortable. I wanted her to stop talking, but she didn't.

"We're both really devoted to him. I know you are—maybe even more than me. I don't know. I know I'd do just about anything for him, but… He doesn't really appreciate it, I think. Maybe it's because we're so devoted to him. I mean, really, we are. It's kind of pathetic, when you think about it. We're really very pathetic people, I guess. Especially because he doesn't care about us that much."

"There's nothing pathetic about it," I said sharply.

"But it is, don't you see that? You have to. It's horrible that we've devoted—or at least pledged to devote—our whole lives to this man, and he probably wouldn’t care at all if both of us died tomorrow. He'd find someone new, and use them the same way he uses us."

"I'm not devoted to a man," I said. "I'm devoted to a cause."

"You say that, but I don't think it's true. You'd be lost, without Jack. Same as me. I just wish I'd realized it all sooner, Lory. We're lost."

"I'm not lost," I said.

"If you were a woman, I wonder if you'd be in love with Jack like I am."

"I have no way of knowing that," I said stiffly, crossing my arms over my chest and looking out the window.

"Still, even though we're so much alike, Lory, I feel like I don't know who you are. Even though I've lived with you for three years. It's like we just live in the same apartment building or something, and that's it."

"I don't understand what this has to do with you calling the Seraphim."

"Everything!"

"Oh, sure, I see. You don't think you know me very well, so you decided to have me arrested. It all makes sense, now. Thanks, Magdalena."

"That's not it at all! You're not letting me finish."

"Next left again. There's no point in finishing. We're here."

She turned, and I found myself going up the driveway of my old home.

"This isn't legal," I murmured, suddenly very, very nervous.

"Like this is the one illegal thing you care about," Magdalena muttered.

"Let's leave, please," I said suddenly, surprising even myself a bit.

"Lory, what're you afraid of?" she asked.

I thought about it—really thought about it—for a second. What was I scared of?

"I guess," I said, after a moment, "I'm afraid of… of finding out that my parents are happier without us. Or that they've had other children."

"See?" Magdalena said. "You just opened up to me. That's good, Lory."

I crossed my arms more tightly over my chest and ignored her.

And then we pulled into the driveway in front of the house, and I could tell right away that it wasn't right.

"This is where you lived?" Magdalena asked, aghast. And I realized with a start that most of the windows had no glass, and the glass in the door was cracking, and largely gone. The yard was in disrepair, when I remembered it being perpetually neat and well-groomed. That had been daddy's hobby—the yard. Tree branches lay scattered across it now. No flowers grew—just weeds. Dead grass.

"What in hell?" I muttered.

"Lory," Magdalena said, "I don’t think anyone lives here. You're sure this is the right place?"

"Of course I'm sure, you idiot," I said, leaping out of the car and hurrying toward the house as if it was a dying friend that I still hoped to save.

"Lory, wait!" Magdalena called from behind me. I ignored her. The front door was open, and I rushed through it.

Inside, the house was empty and dirty. It didn't look like anyone had been inside for years and years.

"Lory," Magdalena said from behind me. I ignored her, and hurried through the living room, to the kitchen. Empty. Broken windows. A stain on the wall where the refrigerator should have been. The checkered tile floor was filthy. So were the countertops. Someone had left a large polka-dotted bowl out on one. One single bowl.

I turned on my heel, went back to the stairs between kitchen and living room. The carpet was dirty, and I took them two at a time, and ducked first into Beatriz's room at the top and found it as empty as the rest of the house. The wallpaper—pink and yellow flowers—was peeling. A poster of some old children's book still hung on one wall—a rabbit in a sweater and hat. I left the room, and caught Magdalena coming up the stairs out of the corner of my eye. Ahead of me, the door to my parent's room was open, and it was equally empty. This left only one other room—mine.

I pushed the door open slowly, half expecting some hideous, horrible thing before me, but there was nothing. My room was as barren as all the others, my wallpaper as faded and peeling as Beatriz's, my floor as dusty and worn. Still, it had been mine, and seeing it thus made my throat tighten, and brought back to the front of my mind all the recent unpleasantness of life. Sidney was dead. Thistle was dead, and a traitor. Magdalena had called the Seraphim—had tried to kill us all. Everything and everyone was dying, or changing, or changed, and I hated it, and wanted to go back and back and back, until I was again the little boy with the thick, dark hair who had slept in this very room, and played with toy cars in that kitchen, and run through the woods outside, looking for bird's nests. I wanted the safety and comfort of this house, again. I wanted to know that someone—anyone—would catch me, if I fell.

Suddenly, Magdalena's hand was on my shoulder.

"Lory," she said, and I jerked away, startled. I took a few steps back, away from her, and stared at her. She looked so concerned, standing there, looking back at me. So pitying. So motherly.

I wanted to hit her.

"Lory," she said again. "I'm sorry."

"Damn right you are," I said, and my voice shook.

She looked startled.

"I—" she started to say, but stopped at a motion from me.

"You have plenty to be sorry for," I said. "You nearly got us arrested. You killed Thistle. You brought me here. You brought me to… to this," I said, indicating the room with disgust. I felt, standing in that room, as if I had disturbed something—some ghost of myself. I felt like being here was dishonoring that, with all of my failures, all the things I hadn't accomplished, and never would. Why had I let her bring me back here?

"I'm sorry," she said, voice strained. She sounded like she might cry.

"You should be," I said, and turned away from her to look out the window.

And standing outside on the hill where my life here had ended was a young girl—lithe, and wearing a thin white dress, and no shoes. My chest felt filled with ice water as I saw her standing there, hair blowing in some wind that didn't touch the trees. Her back was to me, but slowly—so slowly—she turned. She was smiling. She mouthed a single word that I knew even without hearing:

"Run."

I began to back away, eyes never leaving the window. Even from here I could smell it. Gardenias.

"What's out there, Lory?" Magdalena wondered aloud, coming up behind me. She gasped.

"The poor, pretty little thing! Where could she have come from? Oh, she must be freezing! I'm going to go help her," she said, turning and about to leave. I reached out, and caught her arm.

"Stop," I said, turning to her. "Wait. Just wait." I turned back to see what horrible thing had occurred, but the girl was gone.

Behind me, Magdalena gasped again.

"Where'd she go?" She pulled at my arm. "Come on, Lory, we've got to go find her. Come on!"

Reluctantly, I followed her down the stairs, out of the house. More reluctantly still, I followed her part of the way up the hill. A deep sense of foreboding took hold of me, but because of what had happened here or because of what I'd just seen, I wasn't sure.

"Where'd she go?" Magdalena wondered, standing on top of the hill. I waited farther down, not quite wanting to be at the crest, where the girl had been standing—where, once upon a time, I had been standing.

"I can't see anyone," Magdalena said wonderingly. "How could she have gotten away so quickly?"

"Look around," I said to her. "Do you see footprints?"

She turned in a circle, looking at the ground.

"Just… Just mine," she said curiously.

"What might that suggest to you?" I asked. I sounded almost bored.

"Was she… a ghost?"

"Something like that," I said, turning and going back to the car. "Someday, I imagine she'll deign to let us know for sure. Until then, I'm sick of her playing with us. Let's go."

I continued walking down the hill, eyes on Sidney's truck. Would it be like a horror movie, I wondered?—would the truck not start, leaving us stranded in the middle of nowhere, with an abandoned house, and buildings that had been abandoned for far longer, and a spirit as old, perhaps, as the earth itself, and all of my own ghosts? …Oddly enough, I didn't care, at that time. Bring it all on, I thought. Let it try to scare me. It won't work.

"Lory, wait a second," Magdalena said, still from the top of the hill. I stopped, but didn't turn back. She went on, anyway. "What's this cross up here for?" she asked. "Is someone buried up here?"

I did turn, then.

"Cross?" I asked. "Where?" And as soon as I said it, I saw—there was a small stone grave-marker, in the Celtic style. It was a style, I remembered, of which my mother had been fond. Magdalena had cleared the snow away from around it with one foot, and it stood at the top of the hill, now, like a sentinel—right where the girl had been standing, and right where fate had dropped me.

"Did someone die, here?" she asked again, apparently quite concerned. I had to laugh.

"Maybe someone did," I told her, and then went to the car.

One thing that you could not fault Jack on was his sense of the dramatic. When we got home, we found that he'd tied Airial to a chair in the kitchen. He'd turned out all the lights. He had a flashlight pointed on her.

"Is this really necessary?" Magdalena wondered, flipping the light on. She took a seat beside me at the table.

"Maggie!" Jack protested. She gave him a hard look, and he turned around in disgust. "Forget it," he grumbled. "Just forget doing things my way." He focused his wrath on Airial. She looked petrified, even with the lights back on.

"Now," Jack said, straddling a backwards chair and scooting a little bit closer to her. Her head moved back, like she wanted to get as far away as possible—like a spooked horse. God, she was beautiful.

"Who are you?" Jack asked. "Who are you, really?"

She looked like maybe she wanted to say something, but was too terrified to speak. I'd told her that she'd be scared of him, hadn't I?—and yet, her eyes kept flicking to me, afraid. Afraid of me, too. And something about it thrilled me.

"Who are you?" Jack repeated, a bit more loudly, more forcefully.

Ever so slightly, Airial shook her head.

"You will answer me," Jack said slowly, pulling a long knife out of the inside of his vest. He unsheathed it, and the blade danced with light, looking almost for a moment like a small Gaudium Gladius.

"C'mon, honey," Magdalena coaxed. "He won't hurt you. It's all right. He just wants to know a little bit about you, that's all. Right, Jack?"

Jack didn't answer, only continued to stare at Airial.

"M-my name is Airial Achard. I'm in the eleventh grade," the girl said after a time. "My father, Hugo Hoffman, worked for the Reproduction Clinic. My m-mother was Susanne Achard."

"And what'd she do?" Jack demanded.

"She… she worked for daddy. But after.. after I was born, she devoted herself to the Temple. And me, too."

"So what happened?" Jack sneered. "Daddy wanted you back?"

"N-no… Daddy… Daddy didn't want me at all—he wanted me to be devoted to the Temple. To be a priestess. The Temple wouldn't take me."

"Why not?"

"As far as I know, they never gave Daddy a reason. …My mother died not long after I was born."

"And who's Sachever?"

"He was our servant, that's all. That's all I know! P-please, don't hurt me. Please."

"Not so brave anymore, are you?" I found myself wondering aloud.

"Maybe not so brave to begin with," Jack chuckled. "Keep talking, princess," he commanded. "How long had he been working for you?"

"Not long at all! Only a… a few months. I don’t know where he came from."

"You're lying," Jack said lazily, picking at his fingernails with the edge of the knife. "But we'll get back to him later. I want to hear more about you. And the Temple."

She said nothing. Her eyes were huge with fear.

"Talk," Jack commanded, prodding her leg with the hilt of the knife and her mouth opened and shut, but without sound.

"Ask her a question, Jack," Magdalena suggested. "You can't just expect her to know what you want to hear."

Jack did not look at Magdalena, but I could tell he was thinking this over. Also, I could tell that he was getting fed up with her presence, and with her knowing what do better than he did.

"You know where we are," he said at length to Airial. "You're half-Deva. You don't feel the Shekinah. But you know where we are. How?"

"I don’t know," she said. "It's like… Well, all my life, I've been able to feel muted things. If daddy got angry at my step-mom I could feel it. I would know where he was. Sometimes it… It was almost like self-defense. I would know where he was, and I would avoid him, because I hated to see anyone so angry. Since I was maybe five, though, I could feel other things, sometimes. At first it was only a little bit, like a friendly punch on the arm, but then… It started getting stronger and happening more often as I got older. I'd get images of places I'd never been—a playground, a bedroom, a cafeteria. But in the last few years, I've been seeing other things. Places with crowds. And fires. And people being hurt. And then, on the news there it would be—everything, just as I'd seen it."

"So you're psychic? That's what you're saying?" Jack asked.

"Not at all," she said. "I feel all of you. Because inside of you—all of you—something is twisted. And what you do, it twists the Shekinah in the same way. Devas don't feel it. It runs too deep. It's like… oh… you don't feel that your house is on fire. Not unless you're close enough to feel the heat, or smell the smoke. Or, if you're swimming in a river, you don't feel the big fish swimming along underneath your feet—not unless they brush up against you." She was speaking almost conversationally, now, and I was enraptured by what she was telling us—or by her telling it, or some such thing.

"So why can you feel it?" Jack asked.

"Because I'm meant to," she replied.

"No, that's not good enough," he growled. "There's a reason. And that's not it."

"The… The priestess told me it's destiny. I'm something old—my mother, an Animal. I'm something new—my father, a Deva. And I'm both of them combined. But I'm myself." She smiled. "I am three, and I am one."

I gasped without really meaning to.

"What?" Jack snapped.

"That's what Gemma said," I said in a voice that was tight with fear. "That's what she told me exactly."

"What?" Jack asked. "When?"

"When I…" I stopped, and realized how ridiculous it would sound. "I saw her again. J-just after Sidney died."

"That's what Gemma told you about Airial?" he demanded.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "That's what Gemma told me about herself."

Jack looked away from me—back at Airial. I looked back at her, too, and wondered if Jack was thinking the same thing I was.

"Could it be," he started, "that they're…" He trailed off.

"That they're what?" I asked—because although I knew, I wanted to pretend differently.

"That they're the same thing?" Jack finally finished. We both looked at her again.

"I'm myself," Airial said simply. "That's all I can say about it."

Jack exchanged a look with me.

"What about the Temple?"

"What about it?" she asked.

"Don't get smart with me," he growled, half jumping off of the chair, as if he'd pounce on her. She cowered, and looked frightened again. "You're getting too cocky," he said, sinking down. "You may be three and one, but you'll still die, if someone slits your throat open. …How did you get to the Temple? Why did they agree to take you in? What did they give you there—what did they tell you?"

"We got there walking," she said. "After he… after that bastard killed my father!" She indicated me with her chin, and her voice shook with rage. I was surprised—slightly taken aback. And also slightly attracted to the fire in her eyes. God, everything she did was beautiful—was glorious and comely and enchanted.

"One bastard killed by another," Jack said, smirking. "Go on."

She looked contentious for a moment, but continued anyway.

"We just kept walking until we found it. We knew we'd get to town eventually, if we kept going—we just didn't know where. …It was so cold, we couldn't stop. I… I tried to. I wanted to. But Sachever made me keep going. I'm so glad he did. I would have frozen to death. I wanted to stop—I was so tired—but he made me keep going, he—"

"He saved your life. Blah, blah," Jack said. "And you got to the Temple. Then what? Why did they take you in?"

"We had nowhere else to go," she said. "They'd take you in, too, if you had nowhere else to go."

Jack exchanged a look with me.

"Don't think so," he said. "But that's not the point. They gave you Gaudium Gladius, didn't they? Why?"

"…They didn't give us anything. They'd been expecting us, though. You'll have to ask them, yourself," she said. "They wouldn't tell us much, either. But it's destiny, I know it is! They didn't give us the sword—it called to Sachever. He found it."

"He found it? Where did he find it?"

"I don't know. Some room. Some closet, somewhere, where it was stored, because no one knew what else to do with it, and they didn't want to display it. Because its power comes from the Shekinah. They didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands… But now that's happened anyway," she said softly, dropping her eyes.

"If it was put away," Jack said, "how'd your boyfriend find it, then?"

"He's not my boyfriend! And I told you. It called to him. Like the Shekinah calls to me, sometimes. But…" She trailed off, and then looked at the floor.

"But what?" Jack asked, trying to catch her eye.

"I… I don’t think…"

"No," he said, sitting up again. "You don't have to think. You have to tell us what happened. You have to tell us what they told you."

"I don't have to tell you anything," she said quietly, almost as if to herself.

"What was that?" Jack growled.

"I said… I don't have to tell you anything!" she cried, throwing her head up, a defiant look in her eyes. "You're a bunch of terrible people, and you need help! We keep offering, over and over, to find help for you! To find you love! But you keep refusing. No one rational would do that. You're all sick. Let me go!"

"Sick, are we?" Jack asked. He smirked, and toyed with his knife. "I simply don't agree," he said. "But I might be sick enough to actually hurt you, if you won't talk."

"Go ahead!" she said. "Hurt me! I'll be like hundreds before! I won't be anything special!"

"No," he said, his good humor slipping away, and his tone becoming dangerous. I recognized it. It made me want to leave the room. "You will. Because you have something I want. And I'm going to get it from you."

"Nothing you—" she started to say, but he interrupted her with one hard slap across her cheek. Her head snapped to the side, and I started to jump up—as if to rescue her from him—but dropped quickly to my seat again. When she looked up again, there were tears in her eyes, and her defiant expression had melted away.

"Now what were you about to say?" Jack asked.

"It wasn't anything important!" she protested. "Just… the sword is missing a piece. Everyone knows that. But it's not at full-power now, they told us. And it won't be, until the piece gets put back in. They've never found it—it's just a little round metal thing, it could be anywhere—"

"Little round metal thing?" I interjected.

She looked at me, frightened, but nodded.

"It said 'jewel,' on the case at the Temple. …Little round metal thing," I repeated, contemplatively.

"Lory…?" Jack asked.

"That thing, Jack," I said, looking across the table at him. The anger was gone—he looked puzzled. "That thing we found in the catacombs."

"You were in the catacombs?" Airial asked, but was ignored.

"What thing?" he asked.

"The thing I tripped over," I told him. "The other day, it… I touched it, and… I don't know what happened. It was all so bright." I had stood up almost unconsciously, and as I moved into the hall to find my coat, Jack followed.

"What're you doing?" Magdalena asked from the kitchen door.

"I don't know," Jack answered.

But I did. I put my hand into my coat pocket, and immediately the cool metal of it met my fingertips. I pulled it out, and found that it was just as I remembered it—round, engraved with vines and leaves.

"Do you think…?" Jack wondered.

"I do," I said honestly.

"It would all be so simple, wouldn't it?" he chuckled. "We'd hold the ultimate power in our hands. Maybe we wouldn't be able to use it, but it would be ours, anyway. No use wondering about it. I'll get Gaudium Gladius—we'll know for sure." Saying this, he hurried off up the stairs.

I wandered back into the kitchen, with the disk gripped tightly. Magdalena looked up at me, expression unreadable. Airial stared at the floor. And I thought about what a normal kitchen it was—no instruments of torture, no bizarre things hanging from the walls or ceilings, not even much of a mess, really. It was just a humble, everyday kitchen. I wondered what Airial thought of it.

At length, Jack appeared in the doorway again, sword in hand.

"Give it to me," he demanded, holding a hand out to me. "Give me the disk. The medallion. Whatever it is."

I dropped it into his hand, and he held it up to the light, beside the sword. Airial gasped.

"Where did you—" she started, straining against the ropes that bound her to the chair.

"Nowhere, my dear," Jack said.

"Does it fit?" I asked nervously.

"Looks like it," he said, grinning.

"Don't do it!" Airial shrieked, starting to cry. Jack ignored her, and stared instead at the sword.

"Who cares if I can't make it glow?" he muttered. "It still has sharp edges. I can still take it. Kill anyone with it. Like it killed Sidney. Just the same way."

"Don't!" Airial cried again. "It will become an arm of the Shekinah—that's what they told us! That's what they said at the Temple! It will have the full power of the Shekinah behind it, and no one will be able to control it anymore. It will be too powerful—you don't know what could happen! Don't do it, don't!" Tears ran down her cheeks, and I looked from her to Jack, wondering what he'd do.

After a moment, he lowered both sword and disk, a gleam in his eye.

"I knew you weren't telling us all that you knew. No," he said slyly. "I won't. Because you're right. It'll be too powerful. And the only person who will be able to use it is Sachever—should it ever fall back into his hands. I can't take that chance. I can't give him that much power. Better to kill him with it when it's only sharp metal, than to want a power not meant for me so badly that it makes me blind to the truth." He threw the disk down on the table, while Airial hung her head and cried hysterically.

"Don't kill him," she sobbed. "He's sweet, and good, and he only wants to help you—help everyone. Don't hurt him, please, please. Don't hurt me."

"Lory," Jack said. "Take her back upstairs. I'll talk to her again, later."

"Thank you, Jack," Magdalena said, reaching up to touch his arm.

"For what?" he snapped, turning away and leaving the room.

Magdalena stayed and watched as I knelt by Airial and untied the rope that bound her to the chair. Her wrists were still tied. She was still crying. I debated, for a moment, simply throwing her over one shoulder, but then decided against it. I gathered her up in my arms. She struggled against me and uttered a small shriek, and then relaxed—not relaxed, really, so much as gave up.

"Lory, be nice to her," Magdalena said. "Let her go to sleep."

"I thought I'd read her a bedtime story," I snapped, following Jack out of the kitchen, but grabbing the disk off of the table first and pocketing it.

"You don't have to be an asshole," Magdalena yelled after me. I carried Airial up the stairs, listening for Magdalena's footsteps trailing after me, but they didn't come.

I dropped her on the bed, and immediately she moved as far away from me as possible, against the far wall, and it was only belatedly that I realized that I'd been touching her like that—holding her so close against me that I could feel her heat, feel the absence of it now that she was no longer near me. And I wanted it back. I wanted someone to hold onto, even if she did hate me.

I was so lonely.

And for a second, I wondered if all that time she and Sachever had been right. Maybe we were all just lost, and looking for love, and finding other things instead that would never be quite what we wanted them to be—finding people who were never quite what we thought or expected, and trying to be happy with them, even while we hated them for not living up to our desires. Or was it maybe that we hated them for twisting so easily into what we wanted them to be? For a moment, I wondered if perhaps that was what Sidney had been trying to tell me—that we'd been wrong about all of it, and that we were looking for love, or understanding, or something beautiful and silvery and elusive, that was perhaps not so elusive after all.

And then, from the bed, through her sobbing, Airial mumbled something.

"I… I hate you!" she said, softly, and then again, louder, through the tears. "I hate you!"

I took a single step back, aghast at this sudden change, forgetting my previous line of thought.

"You're ruining everything!" she sobbed. "Can't you see it? Can't you see that you're killing everything beautiful? If you… If you hurt Sachever in any way, I'll… I'll…" She broke down again, into incoherent sobbing, and I felt something flutter in my chest.

"Please," I said. "Don't."

She looked up at me then, with her red eyes, and her tearstained cheeks, and her tangled hair, and she was still the most beautiful person I'd ever seen.

"Don't cry," I said, stepping forward toward the bed again, but clumsily, awkwardly—as if I'd forgotten how to walk properly. "I hate seeing people cry." Without thinking, I dropped onto the bed on hands and knees, and reached out to her with one arm.

"Get away from me," she said hysterically. "Stay away!"

"Please, please stop crying," I repeated, not registering her pleas. Only her face, her tears, the terror in her eyes. I wanted to make it go away. "I never meant to make you cry. You're so beautiful. You're so beautiful that I can't think when I'm near to you. But I don't want you to cry, or be afraid," I continued, crawling closer to her.

"Get away from me!" she cried again. "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!"

And I was touching her—holding her tied wrists down, to keep them from hitting at me, as they'd been doing. She was so close, and so perfectly-made, and smelled so wonderful.

"I don't mean to frighten you," I insisted, and it sounded so bizarrely rational that I didn't know quite where it was coming from. "I want you to be mine. I want to be able to see you every day, because you are… you are… I don't know what you are," I said, and then laughed. "But it's something that I want."

She was looking up at me with so much fear in her eyes. I no longer wanted her to be afraid of me, though. I wanted her to stop crying, and realize that I wouldn't hurt her—wouldn't let anyone hurt her.

"Do you… do you remember," I started to ask her, "that first time I saw you? You made me forget what I'd come to do—you made me forget that I was supposed to be blowing that bus stop up. I had to come back for it, because of you. But it was worth it—because you're so beautiful. Did your father ever tell you that?—how pretty you are? I bet he didn't. He was a wicked man, Airial. I don't care what you think of me, but you have to know that—babies don't belong in glass boxes." I didn't even know what I was saying any longer, only that I was staring into her eyes, and she wasn't looking away. "He didn't treat you very well, did he? I would be different. I would. I want you to be happy. I would make myself rich for you, Airial, so that I could surround you with beautiful things. So that I could buy you beautiful clothes, and see you wearing them, everyday. Everyday."

And then I brought one hand to her face, and tilted her chin up, and kissed her, and she was so sweet. Honey was the first word that came to mind, but that wasn't right. Nectar, maybe—flowers, and yellow pollen, and sunshine, and green, green grass. She tried to pull away, but she couldn't, because she was against the wall, and she had nowhere to go. No way to turn from me. And it was wonderful, until suddenly the door opened, and something with a sharp corner hit the back of my head. It knocked our teeth together, catching my upper lip painfully in between. I tasted blood in my mouth as I turned, and found Magdalena staring at me with a look in her eyes that suggested that she'd like very much to snap my neck. On the floor was a hard-bound book—it looked like the thesaurus, and I wondered vaguely why she'd been carrying it in the first place.

"Alister Siderius," she hissed, and Airial started crying again. I disentangled myself from her and stood, wiping my mouth with my sleeve. My lip was indeed bleeding, I discovered.

"What in hell were you doing?" Magdalena yelled. "What kind of sick, perverted…" she started to mumble under her breath, pushing past me to get to Airial. I didn't catch all of what she said, but it wasn't anything complimentary—that was for certain.

She knelt down on the bed beside the girl, and wrapped her arms about her, and glared at me. I glared back. The spell had been broken. My thoughts were clear again, not hazy or misty or confused any longer. And I wanted Magdalena's blood as much as she wanted mine.

"You… you bastard," she yelled at me. I scowled, and backed up into the doorway, putting my fingers to my lip. It was probably going to start swelling—already it was starting to throb. A few of the Newly Dead—Jethro, Lucas, and Triss—peered out of one of their open bedroom doors. I glared at them, and Jethro quickly closed the door again with a startled look.

"What the hell were you trying to do to her, you sick bastard?" Magdalena yelled.

"Nothing," I said.

"That sure as hell wasn't nothing," she said. "Get out of here. Just get out."

"It's my bedroom," I snarled. "Where am I supposed to go?"

"Go take a cold shower," she said. "Go sleep on the couch. Just you stay away from her."

"I—" Couldn't think of anything to say to that.

"She's not Thistle, Alister," Magdalena said lowly. "Thistle isn't coming back."

And that made me angry.

"No, Magdalena," I yelled at her. "You pretty effectively ruined the chances of that happening, didn't you?" I whirled around and slammed the door behind myself. Stomped down the stairs. Kicked one of my shoes off, and ripped the other one off and threw it at the front door. I wanted something else to destroy, to rip apart, or throw, or something—something I could imagine was Magdalena's face. I had to settle for taking an ice pick violently to the single, giant lump of ice in the freezer. I held what I could get to my upper lip until the throbbing went away, and the ice melted down enough that I couldn't hold onto it any longer. I threw it contemptuously onto the floor, turned out the living room lights, and seethed on the couch until I finally fell asleep.