Chapter 28

For a moment, I considered using Sire’s Spark to see if it allowed me to illuminate Delacroix’s weaknesses so I could read him and have an advantage in any game we played, but any potential side-effects weren’t worth it.

I crossed through the mesh net portal onto the topmost deck of the yacht. Confused by the small, empty platform, I turned for the stairs when something rippled silver in the air. I stopped and slowly moved my eyes left.

There was a bubble-like structure up here, its silvery iridescence visible only in certain quirks of the light.

A slash appeared in the bubble, light from inside spilling onto the deck, and Delacroix exited, lighting a cigarette. The sea serpent lived in what appeared to be a giant water bubble. That tracked. “Can’t a shedim have any peace around here?”

I strode toward him, but when I was in arm’s reach, he flicked glowing ashes at me. I slapped a stray spark away. “A little respect for the flammable human?”

He dragged deeply, then ground the cigarette out under his boot. “Bother me again and I’ll tear your throat out.”

“Play a game with me. Answers for winning hands.”

He stared at me, his head tilted, then nodded. “I choose it. And if you lose, you take your forfeits like a man.”

“Or the gender-appropriate version, but sure.”

He rolled up the sleeves of his thick waffle-knit pullover. “No running and crying to your boyfriend.”

“What about me has ever given you the impression that I’m some damsel in distress? That said, I want the game and all its rules clarified before I agree to anything.”

“Whatever,” he grumbled, but motioned me inside.

I brushed past him into his lair and froze.

The showpiece of the round room was an enormous chandelier made of weathered bones that dripped wax from the many gnarled candles. The furniture was made of bones as well, all sharp, uneven angles.

I swallowed. “Did you taxidermy all those rat carcasses yourself?”

Stuffed rodents ran the circumference of the room on their own special shelf.

Delacroix guffawed. “Remember my friend Evander? Looks like a bat?”

“Yes?” I looked around for signs of his taxidermized corpse.

My father waved a hand.

The room rippled and settled back into place, revealing a cheery roaring fireplace, comfortable wingback chairs in sage green and earth brown, and stunning framed photos of underwater life adorning the walls.

“He put a glamor on my place,” Delacroix said. “To discourage repeat visitors.”

I examined a print of a salmon swimming past in water so crisp and clear that I shivered, feeling its bracing cold. The fish was just under the surface and the photographer had caught both its progress and the wisps of fog clinging to the dark outlines of pine trees on shore.

Another portrait showed a clownfish, its white and orange stripes popping against spindly pink coral, and the position of its fin suggested it was waving at the camera.

Every breathtaking shot full of character.

“You took these?” I said.

“If it makes you feel better, I ripped out their spines after and swallowed them whole,” he snarked, his jaw and shoulders tensed.

He was hurt that I didn’t believe him capable of it. Fair enough. I hadn’t.

My disbelief didn’t just stem from a demon having this talent, but that my father did. What other surprising truths would I learn if I got to know him, besides that he was a sea serpent who hated people, but loved the ocean enough to document it with creativity and humor? Did he feel about swimming in the sea the way I did about running through the woods? That the freedom of pushing my limits through nature made me feel gloriously alive?

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Your evil rep is intact. What game do you propose?”

He beckoned me to take a seat by the fire while he pulled a set of banged-up bronze scales out of a cupboard. The kind of scales held by Lady Justice, not shoved under a bathtub where it was too much trouble to dig them out to weigh yourself. “Demon quid pro quo.”

I shrugged out of my wool coat. “I hate it already.”

Delacroix dragged a side table between us and set the scales on them. “The game is straightforward. We each get three questions, taking turns to ask them. Lay one hand on each of the scales, then think of a forfeit and a question. If the scales determine that your wager is equal in weight to the importance of the question, it will balance and you may speak.”

“And if it doesn’t?” I set my purse on the floor by my feet.

“You don’t get to ask your question.”

“Be specific. What will it do to me? Does it take my forfeit then and there?”

“Yes, smarty pants, so it has to be something personal that you don’t want to lose. Above all, make sure that your forfeit is equal in weight to your question and don’t modify your question after it’s gone to the scales.”

“How do I know you’ll answer honestly?”

“The scales will know,” he said in a bored voice and stretched out a leg, rubbing his knee.

“How?”

“I didn’t agree to twenty questions as a lead-up. You playing or not?”

Delacroix was a demon, but he had a code of honor. One only understood by him and containing two loopholes for every iron-clad certainty, but existing nonetheless. The thing was, while Demon Daddy was passionate about underwater photography, his other interest lay in collecting information. He’d expect me to give something up in return, but if he asked about Cherry, did I dare answer?

Would refusing simply confirm any suspicion he might have? Would the magic in the scales harm me—or worse? Delacroix might not know about these demon prisons, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who might have that intel, and I planned to be armed to the teeth with facts when I met with Dr. Olsen and Dmitri tomorrow.

If he wants to see us, let him , Cherry counseled. It won’t be the end of the world .

“Who asks first?” I said.

“You can.” He clanked the scales together, then sat back in his chair.

The contraption rattled, the scales bouncing on their slender chains. A golden glow swam up from the base to encompass the entire thing.

“It’s ready,” Delacroix said. “Lay your hands upon it and think of your forfeit and question. Remember. Make them equal in weight.”

“Yeah, yeah. I got it.”

The second my hands touched the warm metal, Delacroix’s chair magically spun around with its back to me.

Asking him to confirm whether the silver padlock was a demon prison was big but not wagering-my-life big.

“Hurry up,” he groused, still facing away.

I’d never have come up with my forfeit if it hadn’t been for his photographs. He’d shared something of himself with me and I wanted to return the gesture. I’d wager a memory. If the scales didn’t balance, then I’d lose it forever, but my desire for Delacroix to see it was even stronger than the pang of loss that shot through me.

I forfeit the memory of putting on my Maccabee ring and saying the tikkun olam oath.

An image, like a hologram, of me at my Maccababy graduation appeared, with my ring poised to slide onto my finger.

I sucked in a breath.

“All good?” Delacroix said without a trace of concern.

“Peachy,” I said, annoyed with myself for giving in to sentimentality with a demon and risking a cherished memory.

My question is, are shedim imprisoning other shedim in these lock prisons?

The image of a silver padlock appeared over my other hand.

I stiffened, bracing for the memory to be ripped from my brain.

A soft gong clanged, and the images disappeared.

Delacroix’s chair turned back around. He looked disappointed. “Ask your question.”

I pulled the silver lock out of my purse and placed it next to the scale. “Are shedim imprisoning other shedim in these lock prisons?”

Delacroix blinked at the padlock. Then his eyes narrowed, his gaze assessing. He flipped the lock bottom side up, changed one finger to a claw, and jammed it into the keyhole.

My father screamed, crimson spikes exploding out of his throat and blood tears streaming over the streaks of silver scales along one cheekbone. He yanked his finger out and threw the lock into the fire.

“No!” I jumped to my feet.

The blaze flickered wildly, shooting black sparks into the air. Its smoke carried the pungent aroma of charred metal, and each lick of flames sounded like a chorus of twisted voices singing in union.

The blaze roared up, then winked out, leaving the unmarred padlock sitting in the ashes.

Delacroix’s breaths came in heavy rasps. He wiped the blood from his eyes.

“Is that a yes?” I said.

“Where did you get that?” he demanded.

I flicked a finger against the scales. “Your turn.”

Water rose out of the floor, and I tensed but it didn’t assault me. It coalesced into a mirror showing Sachie driving away from the hospital at her usual breakneck speed.

Worried, I studied her grim expression, but if her father had taken a turn for the worse, she wouldn’t leave. She must be getting food.

The image widened to depict the rest of the street. Water suddenly shot out of a grate like a pipe had burst. It was a very familiar plume that reminded me of seawater.

Sach flinched and swerved, almost hitting the car in the lane next to her.

“Leave her alone,” I said.

“Then answer when I tell you to. Where did you get that lock?”

“It was found on a drug lab bust.”

“And?” The magic mirror showed water seeping up out of a manhole cover a couple of car lengths away from my friend.

Delacroix didn’t use the scales when he asked the question, already abandoning the game.

Hating him with every atom in my body, I walked him through Bratwurst Demon killing herself after crying she wouldn’t go back.

Sachie made it into the parking garage at HQ.

I pointed at the mirror. “She’s safe now behind wards.” Though if she’d left the hospital to go to work, there was either a massive emergency at HQ, which I’d have heard about, or she’d fought with her parents and bolted.

“I’ve still got you .” Delacroix motioned for me to keep talking.

“Do you only keep promises when they’re threats?” I smacked the brass scales, sending one side swinging. “Enough with the one-way flow of information. Play the game we both agreed to.”

The watery mirror morphed into a tentacle.

Yelping, I sprinted for the door.

The tentacle knocked me onto my belly and wrapped me like a fly in a spider’s silk, leaving me hovering face-up in mid-air.

I gasped, struggling to get free.

“Talk,” he growled.

I hit my watery bindings a couple of times, trying to indicate I couldn’t speak.

He loosened its hold a fraction of an inch. Barely enough for me to drag in a breath.

Under duress, I shared my concerns that Maccabees didn’t kill demons, we only sent them back to the demon realm.

My father stood over me. “There’s more to it than that. Keep going.”

When I hesitated, he slammed me against the floor. The air was knocked from my lungs and tears streamed down my cheeks.

Cherry itched to be set free. Our scaley armour would protect us but revealing her to Delacroix when I was at his mercy would make this nightmare infinitely worse. She stood down.

Prompted by that fucking water tentacle tenderizing me, I told Delacroix everything: “Unchained Melody” and Chandra matchmaking demons with Eishei Kodesh. I relived Chandra’s murder in precise gruesome detail, my one tiny victory that I kept Cherry out of the story and that Delacroix bought my explanation that Chandra had told me about the runes and scorch marks on the lock. If a demon accepted it, the Authority would as well.

By the time I got to plus codes and locks on the pedestrian overpass hiding prisons in plain sight, my left shoulder was broken. The blazing pain clawed at me, but it didn’t come close to the hot rage that I choked on.

After explaining that love locks showed up after Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in Serbia, I backtracked to the shedim attack on the Maccabee team who’d created the magic cocktail in our rings. My lungs burned from the taste of salt water.

Delacroix had no sympathy for the bout of coughing that plagued me from his repeated near-drowning attempts and snarled at me to keep talking.

The theory that shedim incorporated their magic into the foundational strain we’d been using for the last few hundred years to send demons into their prisons was pulled out of me after two of my ribs and my left hand were shattered.

I finished my story in a whisper, feeling like a ship bashed by waves against large rocks, and swimming in and out of consciousness from pain.

“Is that everything?”

I nodded, curled on the floor, cradling my broken hand and biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood in order to remain lucid. Delacroix might have kept promises that worked in his favor, but he cared little for agreements to play games according to the rules he, himself, had set.

Sach had no idea how lucky she was to have Ben, a parent who didn’t manipulate, menace, or maim his kid when he didn’t get his way.

The door flew off its hinges, sailed across the room, and shattered against the wall.

Terrified, I flinched and curled tighter into a ball, despite the blaze of pain that racked my chest.

“I’ve got you now, Aviva.” Ezra picked me up so gently off the floor that I didn’t even feel it. “You ever block me from her again,” he said in a low, deadly voice, “and I’ll burn this fucking place down with you in it.”

Delacroix didn’t react to the threat. He stood by the fireplace, holding the silver lock to the light with an inscrutable expression on his face.

Don’t kill the messenger , I thought, and lost consciousness.