Glyph-lines burned around the door of the Dream’s refrigerated hold. Cat climbed down a rope ladder; Raz dropped in straight-legged, and rolled his shoulders, producing a drum line of pops and cracks. “Do I have to sign in blood?” he asked. “Naked, dancing under a full moon?”
“I wouldn’t complain.”
He smiled halfway but didn’t rise to the joke.
“Ink’s fine,” she said.
“Do you have a pen? I left mine in my other pants.”
She produced a ballpoint from her pocket; the white barrel glowed in the shadows. He reached for it. She did not offer it to him.
“So that’s why you wanted to come down here,” he said. “Privacy.”
“We need to talk.”
He spread his arms. “Cat, we each have our own problems. When we’re close, those problems get mangled together. Best to back away.”
“That’s why you spend so much time on the ocean,” she said. “Can’t back off any farther than that. If you could go to the moon you probably would.”
“My job is on the ocean. I like my job. If living there helps me manage, why not? You don’t understand what I deal with. You think you do, but you don’t.”
“Because every time I try to get closer, you push me away. You think you’re the only one in the world with a problem? There’s nothing wrong with you.”
He laughed without humor and jabbed a finger toward his mouth where the fangs were. “Everything is wrong with me. You want to learn how far you should trust desire, spend fifty years trying not to see every passing person as a well-cooked meal. Hells, you don’t even have to see—you smell them. There’s nothing natural about this. I was dying, and I was given a choice. I chose to live. Not live—survive. And even that went sour. Life skews. It’s skewed us both.”
“Which is why you’ve spent five decades on a rampage, tearing people’s throats out.”
“Of course not. I have a condition. I manage it.”
“Can you extend me the common fucking courtesy of understanding that I’m trying to manage, too?”
“You don’t care about me. You need people like me. I’ve seen it before. For you I’m a hit, that’s all. A fang.”
“No.” She stepped toward him. “I like you.” Say it fast, like tearing off a bandage or a scab. “I want you. Maybe you’re afraid of what that means. I know I am. But I’ve known enough need to tell the difference between that and this. And I’ve known enough suckers to tell hunger from attraction. If you want to say I’m wrong, fine. But I’m not.”
He shook his head. “If things were different, maybe. If I didn’t have my problem, if you didn’t have yours. But now, I can’t trust you.”
“You can,” she said. “You do. But you’re scared. Of me, because I screwed you over last year when I was out of my head. But under that, you’re scared of yourself.”
“If I lose control, people die.”
“We can be careful. And if all else fails, I can kick your ass.”
This close to a human being, Cat would have felt the warmth. He could feel hers, she knew. He could hear her heartbeat. He was an inch taller than her, which didn’t matter except when they were this close. She reached for him.
He took the pen from her and stepped away. He unspooled the scroll atop a crate of dried papaya and read it through once more as Cat watched—bandage peeled back, scab ripped free, blood flowing, stunned by the speed of his retreat.
He signed on the dotted line. Tara’s glyphs’ light swelled. The boat did not sway, but the world beneath the boat swayed, and settled into a deeper trough.
Raz wrung the scroll closed and tossed her the pen. She caught it by reflex.
“There,” he said. “That’s done.”
She opened her mouth, unsure what to say.
* * *
The echoes of the sunset song stayed with Tara through their cab ride to the Ash, which was all to the good, because Jones was no conversationalist. She watched out the window and made notes in her book.
“You’ve never been here before?”
“Of course I have,” Jones said. “But you see something new each visit.”
“Just you wait.”
When they reached the broken tower, the sky was the blue of blood seen through skin, and pierced with bright stars. Jones followed Tara through the rubble, stepping where she stepped, touching what she touched. “Nice place.”
“A fixer-upper.” Tara parted the curtain of creepers that lay across the stairwell opening. “Don’t touch the walls. I’ll keep back anything that could hurt you. And watch your step.”
“Can’t you”—Jones wiggled her fingers—“make light?”
“You don’t want to see what lives on these walls.”
They climbed. Jones did not question the few sharp decisive sounds Tara made, or the occasional flash that ensued when she killed something vicious. Tara reminded herself to speak with the goddess—firmly—about the general unsuitability of temple traps and rat kings and hand-size poisonous spiders to modern temples.
As they neared the twelfth floor, Tara found that she could see. The darkness silvered, less cavelike and closer to the dark of starlit cornfield night, swelling with form, navigable despite obscurity.
“I thought you wouldn’t make light. Powers man was not meant to know and so on.”
“This light isn’t mine,” Tara said. “It’s the courtesy of our host.”
Silver chiseled geometry from the dark. They ascended steep stairs. Ahead, the tunnel ended.
Tara expected the roof of the day before, the broken dome and stone-strewn platform beneath the wrecked orrery. What she found was different.
Solid moonlight completed the broken arches and patched and polished the pitted metal. The roof was clean. In its center rose a granite throne flanked by curving horns claw-carved from the rubble that once littered the platform. The carving lacked mortar: gravity locked each piece in place. The work would have taken a human sculptor months without magic or machines, but Seril’s children were their own magic, and their own machines.
Gargoyles awaited them.
They stood in a loose circle around the throne. Wings crested monstrous shoulders. Aev, nearest, looked down at the human arrivals with the same composure Tara’d seen on Abelard’s face praying, and mistaken for haughtiness. Shale, at the circle’s rear, watched Tara, uneasy, trusting. A year ago Tara couldn’t have identified the meaning behind his fangs. She could now—and the other gargoyles’ expressions too, the determination on the face of tusk-toothed Gar and the haughtiness of scale-skinned Scree, the nervous twitch in great Grimpen’s cheek.
None of which mattered beside the light that occupied the throne.
The goddess wore a cloak of majesty. There were many faces within her face.
Tara stepped out of Jones’s way. The Crier emerged into the light. Her pen rested against notebook paper. Ink seeped from its tip.
Tara tried to conceal her satisfaction. She thought she did okay.
Jones lowered the notebook and approached Aev. Tara followed, flanking, in case of ambush or gonzo journalism.
“Ms. Jones,” she said, “this is Aev, who leads Seril’s children.”
“We’ve met.”
“You are in much better health than when last we spoke,” Aev said with a wry rumble.
“Is this the part where you give me instructions? Don’t offer or accept anything? Don’t make any bargains?”
“The Lady is eager to meet you,” Aev replied. “Any deals you make with her are yours to keep. She will communicate in your mortal tongue.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Can I get you anything before we start? Water, coffee? Doughnut?”
Jones blinked. “Water, thanks.”
“Water will be found.”
Shale walked to the rooftop’s edge and dove into space.
“Of course,” Jones said. “You don’t need water yourself.”
“Our few needs are met by moonlight, earth, and rain. He will return.”
“Thanks.” Jones flipped forward in her notebook until she reached a page not blotted with the ink of her surprise. “Let’s go.”
Aev ushered her toward the throne.