Chapter 21

21

E verything goes smoothly, no hint of anything harming her or him. They pick up some of the rather gourmet cat food on the grocery list, and Delina holds it up to Maison.

"And they claim Chance just hunts in the wild," he grumbles.

"There's cat treats here, too," Delina says, definitely grabbing some extra of those. "I knew they must spoil him."

Maison tosses a cat toy into the basket as well, the sort that someone will absolutely trip and twist their ankle over.

The store had acceptable hair products and gorgeous apples and she ends up getting enough to actually make some comfort foods, before they pile it into a cooler with ice packs Gurlien had insisted they take.

It's so close to how shopping back in Prescott used to go.

"Gurlien told me to go to the brewery," Maison says, almost disgruntled, and there's some context that she's missing there, something, but if it keeps her out of the cabin a little longer, she's not going to protest. "Gave me a list."

"He doesn't strike me as a beer drinker," Delina says with a shrug, though her curiosity is buzzing.

"Me neither," Maison replies, "but he was oddly insistent about having me try some. I think he was trying to be social." There's a long pause after that. "Or trying to apologize."

"Not so good at that, is he?"

"Not at all."

The brewery is close, and Maison's just about to vibrate out of his skin with the same unnamed tension.

"Do you think someone's going to attack me here?" Delina asks dryly.

"No, they tracked me by my phone, don't have that anymore," Maison replies idly, which thankfully answers that question. "Unless they're just coating the entire seaboard, and in which case, there's not much we can do."

"Can Necromancy be an offensive power?" Delina asks, as they step inside the brewery.

It's barely after midday, so only a few disinterested bartenders linger at the front, and Maison tucks them in one corner, conveniently away from any window, and it's so familiar, it's so normal, that it makes her heart stick.

The bar is raw wood, the tables made from old fashioned stumps, and the light is on the dimmer side than most industrial style breweries. The floor is more raw concrete, and the tables have stools rather than proper chairs.

He orders for them, referring to an actual physical list written down by Gurlien, and comes back precariously balancing two flights.

"Did Gurlien want to apologize or to get you drunk?" Delina asks, raising an eyebrow at them.

"Good question." He places one in front of her, then cheers her with the first glass from his. "Yes, Necromancy can work on the offense, in theory. If you can provide something with magic, you can almost always take something away."

She shivers at that, then shivers at the sensation of helplessness she felt stuck behind Maison, with someone intent on killing her. "So can you teach me?"

He hesitates, taking a drink from his first beer to stall, then making an impressed face at it. "I don't know if I'm demon enough to do that."

She sips from hers, a surprisingly fizzy wheat beer, and watches him underneath her eyelashes as he obviously wrestles with his emotions and expectations.

"I can—possibly—teach you some basics," he says, after savoring the entirety of his first sample, a dark, rich looking amber. "In general, people are taught by the same genre of magic."

"Were you?" she asks, and he swallows, the long lines of his throat moving. "Are there a lot of Half Demons?"

"No," he admits, "though when I found my other parent, they gave me some…additional help."

The beer seems to loosen him, his shoulders relaxing just a touch, to more of the normal person she's used to, despite the oddness of the conversation.

"But a rule is, if you're to be trained in something, you should be willing to use it," he says, finally focusing an intense look on her, pinning her down.

"I'd be willing to kill someone who's attacking me, that's for sure," Delina says, surprising a smile out of him. "I don't want to cower whenever a threat comes by."

She picks up her second beer, and it's sharp and fruity, almost sour, and by instinct she offers him to taste.

Like nothing's ever changed.

"And if I can attack first, maybe they'll think twice before sending someone after me, maybe they'll let me live in peace," she continues, and he nods, tentative. "You know, set a few examples, disrupt their ways of thinking, that sort of thing."

There's a ghost of a smile across his face, something so close to how he used to look at her when she did something clever, when she had a smart turn of phrase while arguing.

She used to think he enjoyed her being smart and sharp.

"By all accounts, the other necromancer is peaceful." he says, and it's a bit amazing, getting another little hint of information. "I think that you going on the offense would be one of their worst fears."

"Good," Delina says, and can't help herself from being bitter. "They kept me from my mom, they tried to kill me, I should be their worst fear."

Another glimmer of a smile, before it fades.

"They shouldn't be able to hurt your mom, they shouldn't have been able to lock me away, they shouldn't have, you know, shot you. Killed you." The words flood from her as if she could ever stop them. "Maybe my mom should've still been blacklisted, she sounds awful, but…not me."

"I told them, once, about two years ago, that if you ever found out you'd be angry," he murmurs, almost too low for her to hear. "They dismissed me, said I was overreacting."

She sits up, towards him and he reacts in kind. "You were patient with me the entire time, you dated me when I was at my worst, and they thought you just overreacted?"

And he picks up another one of his beers, a dark beer so almost black, and downs it in one go, before he leans close to her, intent. "Delina, you were not the difficult part of the job."

She lets her hand fall to the small glasses on the tray.

"The hard part was never you, it was the net of politics and things I had to do for my bosses, the awfulness of all the lies, and the ridiculousness of the people going after you. Never actually you."

Delina squashes down her first instinct to scoff, to deny it, and instead just stills herself. Makes herself listen.

"The times I could exist with just you, not have to deal with the fear over my mom, over the net of responsibilities and expectations, those were probably the only times I wasn't stressed out of my mind."

Delina cheers him with her next glass, out of a lack of anything else. "Glad I was the easiest part of the job."

He sighs, which she honestly anticipated at that. "You know what I meant."

She thinks she does, if she dares to hope instead of actually use her brain, but she just takes a drink instead.

"I couldn't ever just be a normal person," Maison says, sitting back. "My entire life I was always the kid Half Demon who couldn't do anything they wanted me to do. I was always the failed experiment, good for some things but not what they wanted at all. You were the first person who treated me like I could be interesting outside of that."

"Well, yeah," Delina says, and her heart pounds. "You were the hot guy in the apartment next door who painted pictures on the back of envelopes, of course that's interesting."

His eyes crinkle up at the edges. "They put me on assignment with you because I can do half decent shields and they said you didn't form friendships with the other people they tried. I applied for it because doing research on demons in France was boring, and maybe I would actually have free time to take some art classes."

Knowing that's the reason he applied for his specific job should be hurtful, should be painful, but instead, her lips tug up in a smile. "Of course you did."

When they had first started dating, back when she was finishing her degree, he had taken nightly classes in painting and sketching, and would bring them back to her to show.

"Of course, all I knew about the assignment was that you were getting threatened, I had—of course—known about your mother, heard they locked away any magic, and that's…it." He gives her a sheepish smile. "Nothing about your personality, what you wanted to do with your life, nothing. Nothing about your dad, nothing about anything you were trying to accomplish, nothing about how you were, you know, actually fun."

Dimly, she knows this should be slightly insulting, but still she just props up her chin on her hands, looking at him.

Maybe it's the week she's had, maybe it's the growing awareness that she can feel his heartbeat with merely a thought, maybe it's the fact that she brought him back from the actual dead, but the part of her that should be angry with him wanes.

But one bit wriggles under that shield.

"I talked to the Wight again," she starts, and Maison jolts upright, all traces of softness and fondness gone from his face. His eyes glint red for just a brief second, before returning to normal.

"When?" He asks, sharp. "When and what did she say?"

"Cool it, you're not on bodyguard duty right now," Delina says. "She couldn't get through the circle trap."

"I'm always on bodyguard duty," Maison replies automatically, then wrinkles his nose at her. "Of course not, Chloe does nothing subtly. What did she say?"

"One or two demons checked my flare in the parking lot. She said you would deter a weak one."

Maison absorbs that information like he would anything else, like she just informed him of dinner plans or a cancellation of a night out. "That's charitable of her."

"And," Delina pushes on, despite some instincts telling her she should cool it, she should back off, "said that because we were bonded, it would scare people away. What," she flicks her eyes to his, as if she could tell his honesty just by that, "did she mean by that?"

For a few long moments he remains still, before he pushes himself up. "Do you want another round?"

"You're avoiding the question," Delina says, crossing her arms. "Get me one of the first glass."

He nods, then whirls away, taking their empty flights back to the bar, leaning against it as the beer tender pours the glasses, before he turns towards her, still leaning against the bar but watching her.

His chin dips down, his gaze somewhere between terrified and emboldened, and she hasn't seen that expression in years, so she sits back, her heart pounding.

He looks like he'd consume her if she let him, and it scares him just as much as it should scare her.

It only lasts for a heartbeat or two, before the bartender passes him their beers, and he's back on his way as if nothing happened. As if the expression never occurred to him, as if they were a normal couple.

"First thing to know is I didn't know this would happen," he responds, handing her the glass, and she would bet anything that he spent the entire time mentally rehearsing.

"That's an auspicious start," Delina says, taking a sip. "I feel like my barrier for accepting information is far, far lower now. You could tell me any number of things and I don't know if I'd have a reaction besides ‘sure.'"

She gets a flash of a dimple.

"Sometimes demons form bonds with people they have connections with," he says, which is about what she surmised. "Human research doesn't know if it's intentional or not. My… parent…told me it isn't." He takes a large drink from his beer and, besides herself, she notices that his hand is trembling. "I think I did that to you."

"You think?" Delina prods, and he gives her an honest-to-god dirty look, his fingers tight against his glass. "So what's the ramifications?"

There had to be ramifications. He wouldn't be this nervous without ramifications.

He runs a hand through his soft brown hair, sending it sticking in all directions. "To you, none."

"Again, auspicious," she says, and gets another almost smile. "Good to know, what are they?"

"You're not going to like this," he warns her.

"I'll be the judge of that," she says sharply. "In the last week or so I found out my mom was a magician, insane, and possibly a war criminal. I can raise people from the dead, someone tried to kill me, and my entire life was a lie. Spit it out."

"I can always find where you are," he starts, slower than she would like, but any answer is better than none. "It might take me a few days to pinpoint, but I can always tell what direction you're in."

"Good if I get kidnapped," Delina says.

"Yes, that's a plus, that's how I found the cabin, that's what I thought happened until I got there," Maison says, almost dismissive. "If I concentrate and I'm close, I can tell your general emotions. Happy, sad, pain, angry, that sort of thing. Like a minor feedback loop. Apparently, that's stronger in actual demons." Here he trails off, staring down at the raw concrete floor. "For actual demons, it's a…claim. Raising a flag in the sand. Warning of others to back off. So no other demon would get close."

Delina's heard enough about magic and about demons and about all the unfair rules of the world than to know better than to ask if it's breakable. Nothing in her world would be that simple, for him or for her.

The despair and embarrassment in his eyes tells that for her.

"Was this in your College's plan?" Delina asks, instead of poking at him, instead of any of the storm of emotion welling up inside of her. "Make you bond with me so you wouldn't complain about being stuck with me?"

He regards her, steady, and the light hits his hair just right, casting shadows across his face and highlighting his cheekbones. "If it was, they didn't tell me."

"Fair enough," Delina replies. "Is this something else I should apologize about?"

"No," he all but interrupts her. "Not at all."

"Just makes things a hell of a lot more complicated for you?" She ventures a guess, and he nods, something close to misery on his face. "Makes you feel shitty about me finding out and all? As if your mom wasn't enough of a motivation?"

He lifts one shoulder into a shrug, and there are a few other things buzzing in the back of her head, implications and struggles and commitments it entails.

"So when I called you my ex," Delina forges on, and he closes his eyes, like he's waiting for the ax to drop, "that's more complicated for you than it was for me."

He doesn't confirm it, but neither does he deny it, just taking a drink from his beer, and a smidgen of hurt worms into her.

So not only was the relationship fake, not only did he lie to her, not only was he set up to stay with her for forever, his drive to convince her to stay, the glimmers of affection she still saw in him, all of those were borne from some non-human instinct that she can't fully grasp.

And he was stuck with it.

"Wow, yeah, this is shitty," she says, drinking the fizzy beer perhaps a bit too fast than she should, and it almost burns down her throat. "You're right, I don't like this."

"Didn't think you would," he responds, surly. "That's why I didn't mention it."

"Okay no, stop that," Delina says, setting her glass down with a thunk. "Stop keeping things from me just because you think I won't like them, stop holding shit back. I don't care if you think I won't like it, I don't want to be left in the dark for the rest of my life about anything. I'm tired of that."

His lips thin, but he nods.

"Any other big bombshells? Any other bullshit that I should absolutely know about?" All fondness from the earlier conversation is erased, and she pulls herself as tall as she can while sitting on the cold metal stool. "So I can actually make informed decisions for once in my life?"

He just stares at her, a pillar of misery and frustration, his jaw tight, and drinks his beer.

On the drive back, Maison flinches, then grabs Delina's hand resting on the shifter.

"What?" Delina asks, the knot sitting in her chest still prickly.

"Drive faster," he says, voice strangled, and when she risks a glance his eyes are red.

So she does, pressing down on the gas, speeding the ratty little sedan down the empty, misty highway.

Maison doesn't let go of her hand until they're over the demon trap, and Delina guides the car to a stop right on the other side of it, and he stares at her as she clumsily puts it back together, his eyes glittery.

"What was that?" Delina asks, after the circle clicks back into place with a finality she swears echoes in her bones.

Maison exhales, finally, and shakes out his hands, his jaw tight.

"That," he starts, and his voice cracks, just a bit, "was a blanket demon scan of the entire area."

Delina blinks at him. "Oh shit."

"Yeah," Maison replies, harshly. "Not good."

"Did they…did they find me?" Delina asks, and they're still standing in the mist, on the side of the road leading to the cabin.

"I don't…" he swallows, and she can see his throat bob. "I don't think so. I think I camouflaged you fast enough, I think."

Delina stares at him, and he's pallid in the mist, leaning against the ratty sedan.

"Okay," she says finally, now even more unsure of footing. "Thank you?"

He blanches.

"I mean, I'm alive, you're alive, job well done?"

"Please don't thank me for stuff like that," Maison replies, as if it pains him. "I really don't like that."

"Fine," Delina says, opening her car door again. "I take it back, that was weird and I didn't like it."