Day
From a top-floor window seat, I could just make out Angelo’s ex-convent building among Rome’s daggered skyline. The old church, with its piercing spire, had been a hive of activity before magic became real. The winding city streets would have bustled with people and vehicles. Now, it was silent.
I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my chin on them.
Rafe hadn’t returned. It shouldn’t have been a concern. He was as restless as a tomcat most of the time, but his absence felt different. His words about being my knight, about my claiming him—I believed them, and him, and I owed him more than the acquaintance role I’d positioned him in so far. The station protected him too. All my staff were protected, and I’d failed to keep them safe.
Would any of the staff return once they learned the station was safe? Not with an overseer as a host. I’d figure out how to get rid of Jack, but for the moment, I couldn’t ignore how he’d been useful. He had gotten rid of the ghouls, which I’d planned for him to do all along. But having him in place as a host went against everything Gerome had taught me. And the lies Jack had told about how Gerome had stolen the key from him. Preposterous.
I couldn’t do anything about Jack yet, and we had more immediate matters to worry about.
Rafe should have returned by now.
Lilith was absent too, her room empty. At least as empty as I could tell without using the mirrors to look for her.
Had their demon troubles caught up with them in the confusion at the convent? In the past, I’d spent a great deal of time trying to get rid of Raphael. I’d tolerated and used him to further my control. But now his absence gnawed at me. I’d last seen him chasing after Angelo. “These fools don’t deserve you.” Some humans weren’t worth saving.
I considered walking back into the old convent with Jack “The Ghost” Overseer at my side. But that would prove I was everything Angelo feared, and while the priest and I had issues, his people were trying to survive. I could help them. The station could help them, provide for them, feed them, and clothe them. Kensey would help too. I was sure of it. As soon as I removed Father Angelo from the equation.
Angelo didn’t have the power to trap a demon like Raphael, did he? Rafe had said the building dampened his powers. If he’d been distracted or wounded, Angelo might have seen an opportunity…
All of this felt as though it was out of my hands, but I had a back-up plan. One final ace up my sleeve. It was a dangerous play.
I looked at the dusty mirror beside the window.
Dangerous but manageable.
Night always was.
The old room groaned and creaked, pulling my thoughts back into it. The floor and walls sighed as sunlight warmed them.
On the plus side, the station had never felt so full of power and color and light. Its touch at my wrist hummed, feeling like a friendly hand in mine. I might have been sharing my home with a mass-murderer, but the station approved.
An electrical buzz hummed through my veins, lighting up my bones in warning. Jack’s reflection in the mirror showed him in the doorway, beyond the reach of the sun’s rays. I’d hoped to avoid him in Day, yet here he was. If he truly was a host, then he’d always known the station had two realities layered on top of each other. He’d know many things, certainly more than me. But how could I ever trust it?
Unfortunately, ignoring him wouldn’t result in him leaving.
“You know everything, don’t you?” I asked, staying in my window seat, draped in sunlight. Safe.
“Everything? No.”
I watched his reflection enter the room, neatly avoiding the patches of sunlight creeping across the floor.
“You know about Gerome, this station, maybe even what’s in room 3B?”
“Not 3B. That room has always been locked, and my key wouldn’t open it. I tried.”
“But you won’t tell me what you know.”
I observed his reflection, waiting for the vampire to think up his next words, his frown clear in the dirty glass.
“You attempted to trap my soul in a jar. You’ve repeatedly tried to stab me in the heart. I suspect this truce isn’t genuine. Only a dimwitted fool would tell Lynher Aris his secrets.”
He drifted around the room. Sheets covered all the furniture. Kensey and I had spent hours investigating the old pieces, replacing the sheets whenever they’d come loose. Disturbing them had felt wrong. There wasn’t much up here, just a few old but beautifully crafted couches and empty shelves, but I’d always liked this room. In Day, it caught the sun and held on to it.
“I’m one human. What can I possibly do to you?”
“A human trained by Gerome.” He pulled back a sheet covering one of the couches, revealing the sweeping curve of an old chaise longue beneath. “A human whose mark protects her outside the station boundary. A human who successfully trapped me in Hell. So forgive me if I don’t trust you.”
His disturbing the sheet had thrown dust motes into the air. They danced in the sunlight like tiny pixies. He pulled off another sheet, uncovering a table. Then pulled the sheet from a larger item in the corner—a glossy black grand piano. Kensey and I had tried to play it once, but I couldn’t read music, and we’d ended up in fits of laughter.
“I do not wish for us to be enemies. I never have,” Jack said. He stroked his fingers along the piano’s polished surface, caressing it in a way that spoke of familiarity.
I turned from the window, curious at his familiarity. “What else could we be?”
“Business partners,” he said, removing a sheet from the stool.
An odd look crossed his face. His smile wavered, and he momentarily forgot I watched. Sadness softened his eyes, chasing away their vampire emptiness. What did he see in this piano? Who did he see there? He removed his jacket, laid it atop the piano, rolled up his sleeves, and took up his place on the stool.
He placed his fingers over the keys and began to play.
I did not expect the notes to fill the room, for his fingers to dance across the keys, or for such slow, solemnly, beautiful music to come from a creature like him. As the sun’s rays stretched across the floor, he played from the shadows.
I could not play music. Kensey sometimes played guitar, but I didn’t have the ear or the patience for it. But this wasn’t just music. Emotion poured from the notes. Rawness fed them in a way words could not convey. He played with more than his fingers; he played with his body, leaning into the ebb and flow as though the music had taken him somewhere far away.
Surely, no soulless creature could make music like his.
His soul was right there, in the way his music took my hand and led me away from every fear, from all the doubt, from all my mistakes, and allowed me to forget that he and I were enemies. That this world was broken, and we were on opposite sides of the divide.
His fingers stopped. His music died, unfinished.
I ached for the ending, the words to ask him to continue on my lips, but he glanced over his shoulder, remembering he wasn’t alone, then collected his jacket and paused. He would surely speak, tell me about the music or its name, but he left, not looking back.
Gods and spices, that vampire had been sent to test me.
I balled up the sheets, tore off those that remained over other pieces of furniture, and threw open the windows, letting in the breeze to clear the dust. The room glowed with character, the sun filling every corner and nook. It seemed as though whoever had lived here had stepped out and would soon return. And it seemed as though this room might be their sanctuary.
Had this been Jack’s room?
No, it was impossible. Vampires didn’t live in sunlit rooms, and they didn’t play music like he had. They were tools, crafted to do the queen’s bidding. She did not teach her creations how to read music and play piano. She taught them how to kill and harvest, to serve only her and her insatiable hunger to destroy everything.
This wasn’t Jack’s room. If I believed that, I’d have to believe he could be a host, and I could not allow him to manipulate me into thinking such a thing.
With the sheets under my arm, I turned in the doorway, standing where he had stood when he’d arrived. The sun warmed me all over, luring me into staying a few moments longer.
His music had been beautiful, but the man was not.
A black butterfly with yellow tips on its wings flitted in through the window and danced around the room before landing on the piano. Its wings spread. Once. Twice. Pulsing in the sunlight. Then it fluttered back out the window and vanished into the glare.
Butterflies and souls in jars.
Enough delaying. It was time to find Raphael.