Night
I hadn’t yet seen full sunlight in Rome, just the diffused kind. Clouds hung constantly over the city, letting only a glimmer of moonlight or sunlight through. I missed the light streaming in through the station’s large windows. And now, while in the station’s Night, dawn tried to seep through the windows, but the outlook remained gloomy.
In a necessary break in protocol, Kensey emerged from the staircase door we used to travel between the station’s dual layers of Night and Day. He’d attempted to better blend in with the Dark Ones by wearing a dark suit, which the station must have provided. I’d never seen him dressed for Night. The effect was… startling. Always scruffy, always half-dressed, and here was my brother appearing to be an exemplary staff member. He’d even brushed his hair.
He grinned on seeing me and pulled me into a quick embrace. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine. Night suits you.”
He tugged at the collar buttoned close to his neck. “It’s suffocating. I don’t know how you wear all this without getting tangled in buttons and laces.”
“Practice.” I beamed and looped my arm in his.
We walked silently through Night, passing closed doors, aware the Dark Ones slept within.
“Tell me about this new guest,” Kensey asked once we’d entered my office. He withdrew from my arm to close the door behind us.
“He’s fifty or sixty years old. I’m not very good at reading human ages. He seems nice, but he hasn’t revealed how he knew to find us here, and given how he walked off the street like that was normal for him, I find it all very—”
“—convenient?” He ran his fingers through his hair, upsetting the neat brush lines. The clean lines of his suit wouldn’t last long either. If there was dirt or dust to find, the black fabric would soon be caked in it.
He drifted to the large window and admired the gray-hued cityscape outside. “Rome, huh… I’ve wanted to go ever since I found a book about the Coliseum in the library, remember?”
“I remember you made a sword and pretended to be a centurion, then tried to stab me, claiming I was a foreign invader.”
“Until you made a better sword.” He threw a sad smile over his shoulder. “Gerome had to stop us from declaring all-out war.”
The memory was a warm and welcome one. Sometimes, we’d conspired to tease Gerome with our antics. That had been before he’d taught us how to live and thrive in different worlds.
He turned his gaze outward again. “My sword was better. Gerome told me so.”
Typical Gerome.
“Then he played us both, because he told me mine was the best.”
Gerome had never played favorites. Kensey stood at the window with his hands clasped behind his back, and I was struck by how similar his stance and clothes were to Gerome’s. Gerome had often gazed out of the window as though thinking of distant places. He’d stood the same way in the weeks before his death. I’d never gotten around to asking him what was troubling him. And then he was gone.
I couldn’t ever lose Kensey like that. Bringing him to Night was a risk, but I needed him here.
If Angelo was among the European resistance, as I suspected, Kensey would know more. I needed my brother in on this, even if I feared one man walking unarmed through a strange city to reach us might spark my brother’s adventurous spirit.
Rome.
Kensey would want to see the Coliseum. Etienne could convince him to stay within these walls until we knew what awaited us beyond. Kensey certainly wouldn’t listen to me. I’d have a quiet word with Etienne soon.
“Where’s Etienne?” I asked.
“Sleeping. He’s finding it difficult, I think.” He turned away from the window, but his gaze snagged on the covered mirror. “Any more signs from whatever was trying to come through?”
“No. We caught it in time, I think.”
All the mirrors in the station had either been turned toward the walls or covered. Large mirrors served as entranceways to the demon realm, and as I’d recently trapped some furious vampires there, I had no wish for them to reappear. One vampire, in particular, concerned me, but I wasn’t wasting time thinking about Jack. In the end, he had tried to do some good by saving me, but that didn’t negate the fact that his actions had brought the queen to my door. Hopefully Caine had killed him by now or the demons had. Demons and vampires famously didn’t get along.
“We need to discuss Etienne,” I began.
“Yeah, well… he is what he is.” He shrugged, tucked his hands into his pockets, and dropped his gaze. “What more is there to say?”
“Why didn’t you tell me he’s a Dark One?”
Kensey sighed and looked up. “You know why. You would have treated him differently.”
“Of course I would have. It was my job to train him, and he’s one of them—” Kensey started for the door, but I stayed hot on his heels. He wasn’t escaping this conversation that easily. “He’s a liability—”
My brother’s strides fast ate up the short walk to the lounge. “And that’s exactly why I didn’t tell you,” he said, forgetting he was here on the quiet. His presence in Night as a human dressed in Night Station clothing demanded attention, but luckily, dawn had caused most of the guests to retreat to their rooms. A few spotted us, but there was no reason to assume they knew who Kensey was.
“His elven parents will influence him,” I added, jogging to catch up. Only minimal staff worked in the daylight hours of Night, and those we passed dutifully pretended not to hear us. “He’s in a position of power by my side, and they know it. They’ll use him, and he likely won’t know he’s working for them.”
“Like Lilith uses you?”
“What?” His words struck like a slap. “She does not!”
His wry look cut off my denial. “C’mon. The incubus is her personal knight, and you’re sleeping with him.”
“That’s not—we’re not—”
He’d seen Rafe in my bedroom and assumed the worst.
I opened my mouth to explain and swallowed instead. Kensey had harbored a Dark One for years without telling me, and then he’d passed him to me for guidance and training and still not told me. We were supposed to be a team. Kensey and Lynher. Lynher and Kensey. He was all I had. I trusted him. But he hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me Etienne, his lover, wasn’t human?
“Lilith is playing you,” he added. “She wants our station. She’s always watching you. She’s always involved in any trouble. I don’t like how something as powerful as her has such an interest in you.”
“Do you think me so incompetent, brother? What Lilith wants doesn’t matter. They all want to get their claws in the station, but it’ll never happen.”
“So, you’re not with Rafe? Because if you were, the vampires might see that as a station hostess siding with their enemy. It would unbalance—”
“I’m not with anyone. I have more important things to do than screw Dark Ones. Unlike you.”
He stopped and squared up to me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You and Etienne… you’re together-together, and you didn’t tell me about that either. I need to know these things!”
“You don’t need to know everything. We each have our world, and we do things our way within them. That’s how it’s always been. Who I sleep with is not your concern, dear sister.”
But who I slept with was! “Fine. Then you don’t need to know about Rafe and me.”
“You are with the incubus?”
“He has a name!”
The sound of a throat clearing cut us off.
Angelo Canali stood outside the breakfast room. His coat had been put away somewhere, leaving him in drab gray trousers and a wrinkled brown sweater. Something I hadn’t noticed before was the square of white showing from his clergyman collar. He was a religious man. That explained the strange hand gestures.
Throughout history, religion had complicated things, although it had lost its footing since magic had appeared.
“I couldn’t help but hear your arrival,” he said, admitting he’d heard every single word.
Kensey thrust out his hand. “Kensey Aris, and you’re Mister Canali?”
They shook like old friends. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Signor Aris.”
“You’re a religious man, Father?” Kensey asked, obviously as surprised as me.
“Ah, yes, but please, do call me Angelo. There’s no need for formalities among friends.” He touched the collar. “I tend to my flock and keep them safe. The city is mostly clear of Dark Ones, but the world is not kind to us, as I’m sure you have experienced.” He glanced at me, and his eyes held an unspoken comment, one I couldn’t decipher. I really was terrible at reading people. Demons, vampires, jinn, fae—I could read them, within reason. But Gerome had been my primary human contact for any great length of time, and he’d always been honest and level, leaving little room for me to learn the intricacies of human deception.
“How do you know of my sister and me?” Kensey went on, asking all the right questions.
“Let’s talk some more over coffee, shall we?” Angelo gestured at the table laid out for breakfast, inviting us to sit.
Fresh croissants and jam, yogurt, and fruit. At least, while here, the station ensured we wouldn’t starve. I poured Angelo a coffee and did the same for Kensey, trying to meet his eye, but he was engrossed in Angelo’s telling of how he’d heard of the station’s arrival.
“Your waystation is infamous,” he said, taking up a silver spoon to stir his black coffee. “I knew of it when Gerome was the host.” The spoon chinked repeatedly against the side of his porcelain cup. “A dark jewel in her crown.”
Kensey stiffened. “Her crown?”
Angelo waved the concern away. “Rumors, I’m sure. Let’s not spoil this meeting with talk of vampires.”
“If I may ask, Angelo, what’s your interest in our station?”
“I have something of a problem, you see. And I’d like for you, Signor Aris, to help, if you can.”
I smiled politely and picked up my coffee, letting Kensey take the lead. My brother had a talent for getting people to talk. Ten minutes alone with him and strangers often told him their secrets. People—those we’d rescued in the past—tended to see me and pinch their lips together.
I watched Angelo for any sign he wasn’t what he appeared to be. He wasn’t vampire, not as far as I could tell. Jack had fooled me, but Jack was different and hopefully unique among his kind. But I wasn’t thinking about him. No, Angelo’s wrinkled hands and slightly nervous tremors marked him as human and an anxious one. I supposed the station could be a daunting place.
“We have a ghoul problem,” Angelo said. “Just a few, you understand?”
“A… ghoul?” my brother asked.
He deferred to me, but I’d never heard of such a thing.
“Go on,” I prompted.
“You have not encountered ghouls? They are vicious creatures. Utterly mindless. Rome was once overrun with their foulness. But I learned how they respond to certain words, and I was able to somewhat contain them—drive them out—but I am one man, and Rome is a large, ancient city made of twisting streets, full of hiding places. I cannot rid them entirely. But with your help?”
My smile tightened. “What words?”
“Prayer,” he said, “repeated over and over.”
I caught my brother’s quick glance. He was as skeptical as me.
“A chant deters them?” Kensey asked.
Angelo stiffened. “I suppose you would call it that.” Knowing he was losing us, he leaned forward. “We number many hundred. I have taught many others how to… resist the Dark Ones. Knowledge I can share.”
“Resist?” Kensey echoed. He looked at me, his expression woefully open.
“We thought, with your arrival—the great Kensey Aris—we could pool resources,” Angelo went on.
Apparently, I wasn’t included in Kensey’s so-called greatness.
“Yes!” my brother exclaimed.
“Kensey, we should discuss this,” I muttered.
“What is there to discuss?” He beamed. “We have allies!”
We didn’t know who Angelo really was or what he wanted. My brother’s eagerness to find the European resistance was clouding his judgment. There was more at stake here. We were on back foot, reeling from Jack and the queen’s attempt to take the station from us. Now, we were in a new city and had no idea how things worked here with rooms full of Dark Ones. They would be getting restless soon. Angelo had arrived while we were at our weakest. If he wanted this station, now would be the time to strike.
“Might I bring some allies here to meet you? You’ll see I am not just one man but an entire city who can help,” Angelo said.
“Please do…” Kensey loaded his plate with pancakes and drizzled syrup over them. “Visit me in Day. It’s safer, and I’ll see to it you’re all protected.”
For the first time since arriving, Angelo hesitated. “Day? I’m not sure I understand.”
“You will.” Kensey shoveled neat triangular pieces of pancake into his mouth.
The pair discussed how Italy wasn’t nearly as infested with Dark Ones as America was. The resistance, with the help of the Catholic church, had driven them out, including the vampires, months ago. Angelo suggested Kensey might like to take a stroll along the banks of the Tiber River, so long as he had a pistol loaded with salt and iron, plus a healthy dose of God at his side.
Kensey would surely decline, but to my horror, he agreed.
Picking bits off my croissant and dipping them in jam, I ate in silence. After breakfast, I thanked Angelo for his time and watched Kensey escort him back to the front door. They shook hands, full of smiles and promises to meet again tomorrow morning.
The door closed. My brother’s grin waned when he saw my scowl. “Oh, come now, Lynher.” He approached and planted his hands on my shoulders, looking me in the eyes. “Trust me, won’t you? I know what I’m doing.”
“You invited strangers into our home.”
“I’m aware.” His hands fell away. “Every friend begins as a stranger.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“I know.” He smiled sympathetically. “And that’s why Gerome had you host Night and me host Day. Do you want to serve the Dark Ones forever? Because nothing will change unless we make it change. We need help.”
My pride demanded I deny it, but I’d barely made it back from a bloodfarm where I’d seen vampires slaughter people no different from me. A vampire had marked me, and another had almost drained me. If it hadn’t been for Rafe’s quick thinking, I’d have lost my soul too. Growing up among the Dark Ones didn’t mean I would survive them. Kensey was right. While our life expectancy was higher than those in the bloodfarms, it still wasn’t great. The Dark Ones tolerated us. The second we let our guard down, they’d kill us.
He pulled me close and tucked my head under his chin. “Trust me, Lynher. You have your world, and I have mine. We trained our whole lives for this, remember?”
I did trust him.
But lately, everything had been so much harder, and doubt was creeping in. “I know… I’m just… it’s been hard.”
His embrace tightened. “We’ve got this.”
I owed him more respect.
“C’mon.” He folded an arm around me. “Day awaits.”